The words hung in the cold, still air of the charnel house, colder and heavier than the iron door. Elara's confession wasn't just a revelation, it was a key turning in a lock, opening a door to a different kind of darkness than the one Alistair was used to. His was a darkness of his own making, born of love and desperation. Hers, it seemed, was a darkness someone had deliberately cast her into.
He just stared at her, the bottle of tonic in his hand forgotten. The image she painted was vile, so much more intimate and malicious than a random tragedy of disease and a medical mistake. A smiling man standing over a sickbed. It made his skin crawl.
"Your stepbrother," he repeated, the word tasting foreign. He tried to fit it into the narrative he'd constructed. A woman, sick with consumption, mistakenly buried alive. It was a horrible, straightforward accident. This new information twisted it into something else, something with intent.
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the dusty floor as if she could see the scene playing out there. "He managed my father's estate after he passed. My inheritance was held in trust until my twenty fifth birthday, or until I married with his approval." A dry, humorless cough escaped her. "The cough began a month after I refused to marry his business partner, a man three times my age with the eyes of a dead fish."
The pieces, sharp and ugly, began to click into place. It wasn't just a story. It was a motive.
"He told the doctor my heart had stopped," she whispered, her voice thin and frayed. "He was the only one with me. He signed the certificate. He ordered the coffin sealed immediately, citing the contagion. He was so… efficient."
Alistair felt the walls of his sanctuary, his prison, seem to press in closer. His problems had just multiplied exponentially. He wasn't just hiding a victim of a terrible mistake from the authorities. He was potentially hiding a woman from a murderer.
"For Clara," he had muttered as he dug. A mantra of love, however twisted.
What mantra had her stepbrother muttered as he sealed her fate? For money? For property?
The sheer, banality of the evil was staggering.
"He will be looking for you," Alistair said, the realization dawning with a new, more potent dread. "Not a grieving relative, but a criminal checking his work. If he hears a body is missing…"
"He will not stop until he finds it. Until he finds me," Elara finished, her voice hollow. She looked up at him, and the fear in her eyes was now edged with a razor sharp understanding of her own predicament. She had nowhere to go. The world above wanted her either buried or dead. His basement was the only place in London where she was, perversely, safe.
A strange, silent pact solidified in the gloom between them. They were no longer just a resurrection man and his accidental victim. They were two people standing against a common, unseen enemy. Her silence for his protection. His secrecy for her survival.
The weight of it was immense. Alistair ran a hand through his hair, his mind racing over the practicalities. They needed food. Water. Medicine for her cough, which was growing steadily worse, a rattling reminder of the very disease that was also killing his sister. The irony was a bitter pill.
"I need to go out," he said, the words feeling dangerous. "Proper supplies. Medicine. Food that isn't stale bread."
Elara's eyes widened in immediate alarm. "It's too dangerous."
"It's more dangerous to stay here without them. For both of us." He nodded toward her chest. "That cough needs more than a simple tonic. And you need strength to fight it." He didn't add that if she died down here, all of this would have been for nothing, and he would have a completely different, and much more damning, body to dispose of.
She looked like she wanted to argue, but another coughing fit seized her, this one deeper and more wrenching than the last. It bent her double, and when she finally caught her breath, she was trembling violently, her face pale and clammy. She simply nodded, defeated by the sheer physical proof of her need.
"Keep the door bolted," he instructed, grabbing his worn satchel. "Do not open it for anyone. Do not make a sound."
He paused at the foot of the stairs, looking back at her. She was just a small, huddled shape in the vast, terrible room, surrounded by the dead. She looked impossibly fragile. "I will be back as quickly as I can."
The world outside felt alien. The sunlight was too bright, the sounds of the city too loud and cheerful. Every person he passed felt like a threat. Was that man watching him too closely? Did that woman look at him with suspicion? He saw her stepbrother in every well dressed gentleman, imagining a smiling face hiding a black heart.
His first stop was the apothecary. He moved through the familiar aisles with a forced calm, gathering what he needed. Elecampane for the phlegm, licorice root to soothe the throat, willow bark for the fever. His orders were efficient, clinical. He was Dr. Finch again, treating a patient. It was a lie, but a comfortable, familiar one.
"Consumption?" the old apothecary asked, his eyebrows raised as he weighed the herbs.
"A stubborn case," Alistair replied, his voice even. "A relative. I am treating her at home." The lies came easily, each one layering on top of the last, building the wall around his secret life higher.
Next was food. Simple, sturdy things. A loaf of bread, some cheese, a few apples, a bottle of milk. Normal purchases. They felt like contraband in his bag.
He was turning onto the street that led to the charnel house, his head down, when a voice called out.
"Finch! Alistair Finch!"
His blood ran cold. He froze, his hand tightening on the strap of his satchel. Slowly, he turned.
It was only old Mr. Henderson, the tailor whose shop was two doors down from the apothecary. He was a kindly, gossiping man.
"Didn't expect to see you out and about," Mr. Henderson said, peering at him through spectacles. "How is your dear sister? We've missed you both."
The question, so normal, so innocent, felt like a physical blow. Clara. Upstairs, in her bed, drowning while he was down in the basement playing a dangerous game with another woman's life.
"She… she is holding on," Alistair managed to say, the guilt a sharp taste in his mouth. "Thank you for asking, Mr. Henderson."
"Give her our best," the old man said, smiling. "The missus will say a prayer."
Alistair nodded, muttering his thanks before quickly walking away, his heart hammering against his ribs. The confrontation with normalcy was more terrifying than any specter in the cemetery. It was a reminder of the life he was neglecting, the life he was risking everything for.
He practically ran the last few yards to the charnel house, slipping into the alley and fumbling for his key. He knocked on the iron door in their prearranged pattern, two quick raps, a pause, then a third.
A moment passed. Then he heard the heavy, scraping sound of the bolt being drawn back.
The door opened just a crack, revealing one hazel eye wide with fear. Seeing it was him, Elara opened it fully, and he slipped inside, quickly bolting it shut behind him. He leaned against it, breathing heavily, as if he'd been chased.
"You're back," she said, and he heard the unmistakable note of relief in her voice.
He looked at her. She was still wrapped in his coat, her hair a mess, but she had found a relatively clean cloth and wiped most of the grave dirt from her face. The simple act of cleaning up made her seem more present, more real. Less like a ghost he'd dug up and more like a person he was hiding.
"I'm back," he confirmed, dropping the satchel on the table. "I brought medicine. Proper medicine."
He set to work immediately, boiling water on the small furnace, grinding the herbs with a mortar and pestle. The familiar rituals calmed him. This was science. This was order. This he could control.
He made a strong tea from the elecampane and licorice, sweetening it with a bit of honey to mask the bitterness. He handed her the steaming cup.
"Drink it all. It will help."
She took it, her hands cradling the warmth. She took a tentative sip, then a deeper one. "Thank you," she said quietly.
He watched her drink, his mind still racing from the encounter outside, from the sheer insanity of their situation. He was a doctor, tending to a woman he'd almost dissected, hiding her from a man who'd tried to murder her, all while his own sister lay dying directly above them.
The world had narrowed to this stone room. Its rules were survival. Its currency was silence. And its only inhabitants were a man who played God and a woman who'd already met the devil.
And outside, somewhere in the city, a man was smiling, thinking his problem was safely buried.