The Corpse Queen Read online

  Molly laughed, understanding. “An aunt. Gave you a big fat donation for the church, did she?”

  Mother Superior didn’t answer. Instead, she simply turned away, her large black habit cutting a dark swath across the room.

  Sister Abigail entered from the hall, a small bundle under her arm. The usually kind nun shoved it at Molly, refusing to meet her eyes. And when she spoke, there was no warmth in her voice.

  “Leave the shoes. They’ll be another one, just like you, needing them soon enough.”

  * * *

  They gave her rags to wrap around her feet.

  Molly wanted to refuse the noon meal but was not foolish enough to do so. She’d need all her strength for whatever was to come next. Grudgingly, she fell into line with the other girls, their eyes picking hungrily over her. Finally, the whispers became too much, and she went outside to wait for the carriage.

  Sitting on the frozen steps, she opened the bundle Sister Abigail had given her. There was not much useful she’d inherited except for a single worn coat from her mother, too big when she’d come here at thirteen. Molly slipped it on now and was surprised to find that it fit perfectly.

  She thought back to the frightened girl she’d been then.

  “It’s only for a little while,” Ma had promised.

  Molly had stiffened, jutting her chin out like a hero setting off in one of the books Da was always reading—Ivanhoe or Beowulf. There were never any women beginning great journeys.

  “Take me with you,” she’d begged. “I can help.”

  “You’ll be safer here.” Already, Ma was looking over her shoulder at the borrowed wagon, eager to return to Da’s side.

  “If you go, you’ll get sick too.” Molly’s voice quavered. “You’ll both die.”

  Ma smiled, her voice growing soft. “If it’s my time, then I’ll go gladly. There’s no sweeter way to enter heaven than beside the one you love.”

  Ma had at least gotten her wish, Molly supposed. The consumption killed them both.

  She shivered, wiping the tears from her face and folding her frozen feet beneath her dress.

  The cut on her hand had slowed its bleeding, but she’d had to keep it pressed to her chest, so that now her dress, too, was smeared with blood. No one had seemed to notice.

  Nor did they notice the missing kitchen knife, still tucked like a secret into her pocket.

  Overhead, the first fat flakes of snow began to fall. A priest pushed through the orphanage’s doors, nearly knocking into her. “Are you Molly Green?”

  Molly rose from the cold stone steps, the fresh snow seeping into the rags on her feet. “Yes.” She tried to look proud, but the man hardly saw her. He wore his holy cloaks, and Molly knew he must be Father McClellan, with whom she was to travel. There were always priests passing through the parish, their beetle-black robes as common as cockroaches.

  He sighed, taking in her unsightly appearance, the dirt from the grave still clinging to her. Mother Superior had refused to let her back upstairs to wash.

  “Come with me, then. The sisters say I’m to take you into town.”

  Molly followed him to the waiting carriage, but when she tried to get in, he stopped her.

  “I use this time to prepare my sermons.” He didn’t bother to hide his disgust as he looked at her now. “You can ride up top with the luggage.”

  * * *

  The journey from the orphanage to the city usually took nearly two hours, though the priest’s stopping at passing parishes to bless the sacraments would add another four. At each church, she was told to wait outside. Molly tried to sleep, legs pulled tightly to her chest, but the wind was biting. Finding two large trunks on top of the carriage, she crept between them, grateful for their shelter against the snow. She had not had time to properly grieve for Kitty. It had been three days since her friend disappeared, and during each one of them Molly had prayed she’d simply run away. Now she knew the truth. Kitty was dead. For the first time, she let herself cry for her friend, the tears stinging her cheeks.

  The winter sky was so clouded with snow that Molly could hardly see the countryside through which they passed. Kitty had traveled this road each day on her way to work as a maid in Philadelphia’s wealthy homes. Molly herself had not ever been offered such an opportunity. Had been forced, instead, to the kind of chores that did not demand an audience—mucking the stables, pulling the weeds. The nuns had thought her too taciturn, too abrasive, to show to the society ladies.

  “You hardly speak, but when you do, your tongue is like to strip the paint off a table,” Sister Abigail had said once, and Molly supposed it was true. She’d never much cared what anyone had thought about her, other than Kitty. And she had especially little patience for those like the rich women who came to the orphanage looking for help. They had never suffered a day in their lives, yet they still complained as if the world were ending if they found a single spot of dust on their silver serving spoons.

  The wind sent a shot of pain against the raw skin of her palm. Hissing, she lifted it, trying to see just how bad the wound really was.

  A jagged gash a quarter of an inch deep bisected the skin.

  But staring at it, it was not her own flesh she saw but Kitty’s.

  And the line of blood where the tail had been.

  The boy Kitty was seeing must have done it; he’d killed Kitty to hide the baby. But Molly could not understand why he had mutilated her body. The cold, impersonal nature of the cut was far worse than anything the river had done to the woman he’d claimed to love.

  Pregnant. How could Kitty not have told her?

  For the first time, Molly realized it was not one death she was mourning, but two.

  She and Kitty had been like sisters, their bond stronger than blood. Molly had thought that there was nothing the two of them didn’t share. When Kitty had met Edgar, it had been Molly she confessed to, Molly to whom she’d turned for help.

  “He says he loves me.” Kitty’s face had flushed when she’d said it, eyes shining like two new coins.

  The orphanage lent out its girls to houses in a kind of work program so that they might learn skills that would serve them later in life. Women from the city sometimes came all the way to the orphanage to pick the girls for themselves, teaching them to do menial labor as a form of “charity.” Kitty was learning to be a maid. She’d been to several houses before, and her cheerful demeanor had given her a good reputation. It was at her newest house that Kitty had met Edgar, the family’s oldest son, studying to be a doctor. She’d fallen in love by the end of her first week.

  Molly had tried to be gentle. “I just think it might be better to wait. Find yourself a life outside of here first. Meet him as equals.”

  “We’ll never be equals.” Kitty had grown solemn. “But he can give me a good life. He wants to, Molly.”

  And what could she have said? She knew Kitty too well to argue. It was always like this with her. Kitty’s passions changed as often as the wind. One day, she was saving every bit and bundle of flower and stick she could find, because she wanted to become a florist; the next, she could find no greater excitement than studying the lives of saints.

  Surely, Edgar was nothing more than this, Molly had thought. A fancy. Something that would pass.

  And so, when three nights ago, Kitty woke Molly, breathless, to say that Edgar was waiting in the woods, Molly had not stopped her, as she should have done. Better, she’d thought then, to let the affair run its course, burn itself out like a fever. Let Kitty find out for herself what it meant to forever chase after the wants and wishes of a man, as Ma had done.

  “Come with me, Molly.” Kitty’s fingers had drummed nervously against her pillowcase. “Please.”

  “No,” Molly had said. “You don’t need me for what the two of you are going to do.”

  Had Kitty hesitated then? Molly thought b
ack, but the memory was too painful.

  Come with me, Molly. Please.

  She should have gone. If only to make sure Kitty was safe.

  The carriage’s erratic bucking jolted her out of her thoughts. Molly saw that they had left the dirt roads and finally entered the city.

  Philadelphia greeted her with a cold slap.

  Large, belching factories sent a thick, smoky fog into the air. Children with hungry faces stared up at her passage, a few throwing rocks for fun. A half-dressed girl with haunted eyes held out a filthy hand, pleading. The nuns had told them of orphans who ran away to these streets only to have their bodies dug from early graves and sold for a quarter. Molly reached for the hand. With a snarl, the girl lunged. Molly scuttled backward in alarm.

  She was in the territory of the Corpse Queen now, and there was little place for morality.

  Molly pulled her coat tighter.

  Soon enough, she’d find herself at the home of whoever had sent for her. It was certainly not an aunt. Sentimental Ma would have thrilled to tell Molly of such a relation, and Da’s only sister had died when he was young. But such things were not uncommon. A middle-class family, needing cheap labor, would claim one of the orphans as their own. Create a blood tie where none existed. Molly bristled to think what kind of home Mother Superior had sold her into, perhaps for the price of an offering at the church.

  At least it was a place to sleep for the night. Certainly, it could not be worse than the orphanage.

  But as the carriage continued on, through and out of the slums, Molly began to grow alarmed.

  Each house they passed was larger than the last, stone walls flanking imposing brick buildings. They were traveling into what was clearly the wealthiest part of town.

  Her heart began to beat wildly. Surely, this could not be right. She hadn’t the training to work in a neighborhood like this.

  The carriage stopped in front of an enormous house, its Gothic figure looming out of the shadows. From atop the gabled roof, two stone gargoyles peered at her with dead eyes.

  When she didn’t move, the priest jumped wearily from inside. “Get out.”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s been some kind of mistake—”

  “The Lord doesn’t make mistakes.” Grabbing her hand, he nearly tugged her off the roof.

  And before she could protest further, he was gone, the carriage’s wheels rattling over the cobblestone, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the snowy Philadelphia street.

  3

  402 HIGH STREET.

  Molly stared up at the address, looped in intricate iron across the gate.

  Overhead, the snow fell harder, night gnawing away the last of the daylight. Taking a deep breath, she approached.

  The gate’s metal frame was cold and heavy in her hand as she pulled it open.

  Statues flanked the path like corpses, their marble bodies twisted into unnatural shapes. Whoever lived here had particularly macabre taste.

  A disfigured Hades leered at a cowering Persephone while Judith held Holofernes’s head aloft. Each detail of the bodies was carefully carved, the muscles tensed as if Judith might spring from her perch at any second. The folds of cloth on a maid’s death shroud were so delicate and lifelike they seemed to quiver in the wind.

  Unlike most of the orphans, Molly had been educated in some of the classics by her father. His useless dreams of rising above their poor lot, at least, had given her that.

  She stumbled over something soft.

  Looking down, she saw a body lying faceup upon the ground.

  And for a horrible minute, it was Kitty.

  Kitty, lying there bloated and broken, pretty face rotting in the dirt.

  Then a young man sat up, peeling himself from the snow. “Hello.”

  She jumped back, alarmed.

  “Sorry to frighten you.”

  He didn’t look sorry. A grin spread across his face as he brushed snow from his broad shoulders, maneuvering gracefully to his feet. There was something delicately feline about the way he moved.

  Lifting a lantern, he lit it, holding it up to her face. The night around them had bloomed to black.

  “Why were you on the ground?” said Molly. She tried to keep her voice steady.

  “Why are you covered in blood?” He ran the lantern over her body, its orange eye flickering.

  Molly tried to pull Ma’s coat higher over her ruined dress’s collar.

  “To answer your question,” said the boy, “it’s the best place to see stars.”

  She looked at the snowy sky. “There aren’t any.”

  “Exactly.” He sounded pleased.

  She studied him. His shirt and pants were nondescript, as if made for blending into shadows. He might have been a gardener, if gardeners worked at night. There was one bit of color. The left shoelace of his boot had been replaced with a red ribbon, which caught the lantern’s light.

  “Mother Superior said someone here sent for me,” Molly said.

  “Yes. Your aunt’s been expecting you.”

  Molly gave an ugly laugh. “Then perhaps my aunt would be good enough to let me in out of the snow.”

  The boy nodded. “Of course. Only there’s something she wants you to do first.”

  “What?” It was always something with people who had money. Nothing could ever be simple. They could have the world and beg for more.

  “Wait here.” Leaving her standing there, the boy disappeared into the house.

  Overhead, Molly saw the quick flip of a curtain upstairs and the outline of a face against the glow of a candle. Someone was watching from the window.

  She lifted her face to watch back.

  Whoever lived here wouldn’t get the benefit of her fear.

  Around her, the strange statues seemed suddenly closer, as if they’d moved an arm or a leg when no one was looking. What sort of a person kept such horrors at her house?

  The boy reappeared a moment later, a bundle under his arms.

  “Put these on.” He thrust a dress at her.

  Molly considered simply leaving, telling the boy where to shove the dress and letting her “aunt” pull it back out if she wanted it again.

  But against her better judgment, she found herself admiring the cloth. It looked suspiciously like silk, the indigo blue as rich as midnight. Better yet, beneath the dress she saw a pair of what looked to be nearly new leather boots.

  She glanced back up at the window, but the curtain was now closed.

  The boy continued to hold the clothes out to her, like a man with a bone tempting a stray.

  “Where am I to change?” She could always take the clothes and disappear. The damned fool was all but asking her to steal them.

  “Here’s fine.” His mouth lifted into a grin.

  She returned his smirk with an icy stare.

  He sighed. “In there.” He motioned behind her, and Molly turned to see that a large carriage had pulled, as silent as a shadow, up to the iron gate. A driver in a top hat was perched outside on its box seat, and both his attire and the horses were a perfectly matched inky black.

  She hesitated. “Why not in the house?”

  The boy shrugged. “I’m only following orders.”

  An aching throb in her nearly frozen feet decided for her. At least the carriage would be warm. Molly grabbed the clothes out of his hand. “Don’t you dare come in while I’m changing.”

  He shot her a wink. “Only if you ask.”

  She started down the drive toward the carriage, the snow clinging like powdered sugar to her feet as she tried to ignore the gauntlet of frozen stone bodies.

  “Wait,” a voice said.

  For a horrible second, she thought one of the statues had come to life, but then she turned and saw that it was the boy.

  He held up the lante
rn. “What’s your name? Your aunt never told me.”

  For the first time, she saw the other side of his face.

  A scar looped across the space where his left eye should have been.

  She looked swiftly away. “Molly. Molly Green.”

  “Well, Molly Green, I can’t promise much, but I can guarantee you this . . .”

  His mouth lifted into an unguarded smile that completely transformed his serious face into something almost handsome. “You are absolutely the prettiest thing I’ll be seeing tonight.”

  And with a grim nod, he left her standing alone in the snow as he disappeared into the house, unsure if she’d just met a gentleman or a thief.

  * * *

  The carriage’s interior was completely dark, save for a small flickering kerosene lantern on the wall. For several seconds, Molly let herself simply relish being out of the snow, sinking against the luxurious velvet seats. Pins and needles began in her toes as circulation resumed and the blood brought them back to life. She could smell the melting snow as it trickled down her scalp, the scent like a wet dog. She had never been inside anything so fine in her life. Even before the orphanage, the farmhouse she’d lived in with her parents had been rough and crudely cobbled together, as sparse as a pauper’s coffin. Molly ran her hand in wonder over the seat. Every inch of the carriage was trimmed in newly polished brass, velvet, and the finest burl wood.

  She slipped off her filthy orphan’s dress with a shiver, hissing as her palm brushed against the rough cotton. In the dark, her naked skin glowed against the lantern light. Holding up her pale arms, she thought of how they had looked against Kitty’s purpled corpse. How little there was to separate the living from the dead.

  Shivering, she pulled the silk over her head.

  Seconds later, she was dressed in the finest gown of her life. But, she realized belatedly, it was not one she’d ever want to steal. The skirts were as wide as the carriage door, and the gown hung off her, two sizes too big. The boots, at least, were a victory. They weren’t just leather but kidskin, and they melded to her feet like butter. There was no mirror, but Molly did the best she could to wipe away the dirt from her face and hands. By feel, she plaited her hair the way Kitty had shown her, taming her fiery red curls with a lick of spit. But even as she did it, she felt a wave of anger at having to skin herself like a plucked chicken before the woman inside would deign to see her.