Free Where Serpents Sleep by C. S. Harris

other?”
     
     
    The bouncer wiped the back of one hand across his loose lips. “You bloody bastard—”
     
     
    Sebastian thrust the tip of his walking stick beneath the man’s chin, forcing him to tilt his head back at an awkward angle. “Do we understand each other?”
     
     
    “Aye, aye. Jist git that bloody stick away from me, will ye?”
     
     
    Sebastian dropped the tip of his walking stick to the knife lying on the wet cobbles and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the blade clattering into the darkness of the alley. “Pull steel on me again and you’re dead.”
     

 
    Chapter 12
     
     
    Sebastian pushed his way through darkened streets crowded with ragged beggars and smocked workmen Shurrying home to their suppers. The air was heavy with the scent of boiling cabbage and frying onions, and it occurred to him in passing that he hadn’t eaten dinner himself. Appetite, like the desire for sleep, had eluded him for so long that he merely noted the passing of time without any accompanying urge to seek sustenance.
     
     
    He was vaguely surprised to find himself involved, once again, in an investigation of murder. He’d survived the past eight months by tamping down all emotions—not just love and anger, but also curiosity and a desire for justice, even simple interest. He’d found lately that he could sometimes go as much as a day at a time without thinking about Kat, without remembering the scent that lingered on her pillow, without wanting her with an ache that left him ashamed and afraid.
     
     
    But there was a reason he’d deadened himself with alcohol and sleeplessness these past months. It was as if one emotion were linked to the other. Open up to one, and the others came flooding back, out of control. He thought about the way he’d welcomed his encounter with the ex-pugilist of Orchard Street, and the realization troubled him. Violence could be seductive. He’d seen too many men lose themselves in the heady embrace of death and destruction during war. He knew what it could do to a man. What it had almost done to him, once. What it could do again.
     
     
    He smelled the brewery now, the pungent scent of malt mixing with the ever-present odors of coal smoke and horse dung. Dyot Street ran just to the northwest of Covent Garden, in that part of London known as St. Giles. A wizened, black-clad woman with a fire in an old barrel was doing a good business selling roasted potatoes on a corner just opposite the Black Dragon. Sebastian paused to buy one as an excuse to linger for a moment, his gaze on the tavern across the street.
     
     
    It was a long, rambling place, built early in the last century with a second story that overhung the first. From the looks of things, its clientele was a mixture of local tradesmen and riffraff from the nearby rookeries. For a moment he considered returning to Brook Street to change into a less conspicuous form of dress, then decided against it.
     
     
    He became aware of a hollow-cheeked girl of eight or ten standing in the shelter of a nearby doorway, her thin hands clutching a ragged shawl about her shoulders, her brown eyes fixed longingly on the potato in his hands. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her.
     
     
    She hesitated a brief instant, then snatched the potato from him and took off, her heels kicking up the torn hem of her dress as she ran. Sebastian waited for an overloaded brewery wagon to rumble past, then crossed the street toward the Black Dragon.
     
     
    Halfway up the block he found a black-haired woman with a brazen smile and a low-necked, threadbare yellow dress who would have retreated down the nearest alley with him and done anything he asked of her for a few shillings. She gasped when he pressed a crown into her hand.
     
     
    “No,” he said when she would have led him into the beckoning darkness. “I’ve something else in mind.”
     
     
    Her dark eyes peered up at him with uneasy suspicion. She was probably no more than