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ONE
DEATH COMES SWIFTLY
WEST WASHINGTON MARKET
MEATPACKING DISTRICT, NEW YORK CITY
21 JANUARY 1889
A blast of frigid air greeted e door and stumbled onto the street, ht dribbled off its edge like fresh blood, tricking hter awakened deep within, but I quickly sed it down
“Miss Wadsworth?” The foot of dirt-speckled people elbowing their way down West Street I blinked, nearly having forgotten where I was and who I ith Almost three weeks in New York and it still didn’t seem real The footman wet his cracked lips, his voice strained “Your uncle requested you both be taken directly to the—”
“It will be our secret, Rhodes”
Without offering another word, I grippedinto dull black eyes as the blade finally ca the spinal cord at the neck with a wood-splintering thwa
ck The executioner—a sandy-haired man of around twenty years—worked the axe free and wiped its edge on the front of his bloodstained apron
For a briefhis brow, he reminded me of Uncle Jonathan after he’d carved open a corpse The oat’s body backward, neatly separating the head from its shoulders
I drew closer, curious that the aniined—it siaze fixed permanently toward the winter sky If I believed in an ever after, I ht hope it was in a better place One far from here
My attention drifted to the goat’s carcass It had been killed and skinned elsewhere, its exposed flesh awhere fat and connective tissue e to quietly recite the names of each muscle and tendon
I hadn’t inspected a cadaver in a month
“How appetizing” My cousin Liza finally caught up and looped her ar me out of the way as a man tossed a stuffed burlap sack across the sidewalk to a younger apprentice Now that I was paying closer attention, I noticed a fine layer of sawdust around the butcher’s feet It was a good , one I ell acquainted with thanks to time spent in Uncle’s laboratory and at the forensic academy I’d briefly attended in Ro open the dead
The butcher stopped hacking the goat apart long enough to leer at us He crassly slid his gaze over our bodies and offered a low, appreciative whistle “I can snap corsets open faster than bones” He held his knife up, his attention fixed on my chest “Interested in a demonstration, fancy lady? Say the word and I’ll show you what else I can do to such a fine figure”