Read Chapter 28: Dockside Midnight

The docks at midnight were a black mouth open to the river, and Edward walked straight into it.

Gas lamps guttered at intervals along the wharves, casting sickly pools of light that died before they touched the water. The air smelled of tar and rot and the low tide underneath. He kept his hands loose at his sides, his coat unbuttoned. If Graves wanted to see that he came unarmed, then Graves would see it. The knife at his own belt—a small, wicked thing Sam had once sold him for a story about a carving accident—stayed where it was, hidden, a lie he told himself about what he might do if it came to that.

He found the warehouse exactly where his letter had said it would be, a hulking silhouette against the river's greasy sheen. The door hung open. Inside, a single lantern burned.

Mary was tied to a post near the centre of the floor, her arms pulled behind her, rope biting into her wrists. A strip of cloth was wound across her mouth. Her eyes found him the moment he stepped through the door, and they were not afraid. They were furious.

"Edward." Edmund Graves spoke from the shadows beside her, stepping into the lantern light with a knife held loosely in his hand. He smiled, and the scar along his jaw caught the light like a question mark. "You came. I knew you would. It's what your characters always do."

Edward stopped at the edge of the light. "She has nothing to do with this. Let her go, and we settle it between us."

"Settle it?" Graves laughed, a thin, bright sound that didn't reach his eyes. "There's nothing to settle. We haven't started yet. That's the point." He moved closer to Mary, running the flat of the blade along her shoulder. She stiffened but didn't flinch. "You wrote me a villain, Edward. A man who kills because the letters told him to. But I read your letters more carefully than you did. The villain never survives. Even the clever ones. They always die at the end." He tilted his head. "So I'm not the villain. I'm the denial. I'm what happens when you take the monster out of the page and give him a hand to hold." He put his hand on Mary's throat. "You did this. You gave me a reason."

"Edmund—"

"Don't call me that." The voice snapped like a whip. "Edmund Graves is the clerk who files papers and goes home to his lodgings and dreams of nothing. You named me better than that. You named me. I am the thing you spent your nights writing about, and now you have to watch it happen." He pressed the knife against Mary's jaw. "But first, you're going to watch it happen to her. And you're going to know that every word you ever wrote about this city, about the blood in its streets, about how anyone could do this—you wrote it because you wanted it to be true. Because it made you feel real. I'm going to show you what real feels like."

Edward took a step forward. "You're wrong."

"Am I?" Graves's eyes glittered. "Then why did you come alone? Why didn't you bring your police inspector, your Abberline, your righteous hand of the law? Because you knew this was yours. Yours and mine. And I'm so glad you did."

He raised the knife.

Edward moved.

It wasn't a plan. It was a lunge of pure animal refusal, the kind of move a man makes when he has nothing left to defend but the idea that he is not the monster he wrote. He caught Graves's wrist with both hands, twisting, feeling the blade's edge bite into his palm as the man twisted against him. The pain was white and immediate, blood hot and slick between his fingers. Graves grunted and drove an elbow into Edward's ribs, and the air left him in a rush.

They went down together, rolling across the damp floor. The lantern tipped and guttered, flinging wild shadows across the walls. Mary made a muffled sound behind her gag, straining at her ropes.

Edward got his knee onto Graves's chest. For one breath, he had the advantage. Graves stared up at him, and there was no madness in his eyes at all. There was only the calm, cold recognition of a man who had finally found the scene he'd been rehearsing for.

"You see?" Graves whispered. "This is the part where you almost win."

He brought his head up sharply into Edward's nose. Cartilage cracked, and Edward reeled back, hands flying to his face. In that second, Graves twisted out from under him, staggering to his feet. The knife had been knocked from his hand, but he had it again by the time Edward's vision cleared, dripping with the blood from Edward's palm.

"Now," Graves said, breathing hard. "Where were we?"

He turned toward Mary.

Edward's hand found the knife at his own belt. The small, wicked one. Sam's knife. His fiction. His lie.

He thought about what happened when he tried to be the hero of his own story.

Then he got to his feet.