Two children climbed out into the open from hidey-holes she’d used herself years earlier. One child was a girl, likely thirteen years old, with hair as black as night and eyes that trusted no one. The other child was a boy, eight at most, with sand-colored hair jutting out in all directions and an expression that said he saw more than he let on and knew more than he ought.

“This is Gemma,” Mr. Sorokin told them. “I’ve hidden her here before. You have no reason to fear her.”

Gemma kept mum. His word would hold more power with these urchins than hers ever would. Trust and distrust were opposite sides of the same coin, and it could be flipped without warning.

The children nodded. The boy laid on his stomach and opened what looked like the latest from Baz’s “Bodies of Light” series. The girl held Mr. King’s most recent offering, its peach cover giving it away.

Mr. Sorokin hooked his thumb toward a rough-cut table with a few rickety chairs around it. They both sat. Gemma loosened her grip on the chiv in her pocket, knowing she was safe. She’d only ever felt that with one other person, and he thought she was pitiful.

“What is it that you need, Gemma?”

“The front and back of it is, I need to die.”

Mr. Sorokin was not the sort to be discombobulated by much of anything. “I don’t kill people.”

“I ain’t needing to be dead literally. I just need certain people to think I am.”

His intelligent eyes narrowed on her. “Which people?”

She shrugged. “The government. The church. My . . . husband.”

“When did you get married?”

“Three years ago. I had a bit of time on me hands, thought, ‘Ah, toss it,’ and went and done it.”

He almost smiled. She didn’t remember him doing that often. “This husband of yours isn’t in your family trade, is he?”

Gemma shook her head. “He ain’t. And I ain’t anymore either.”

“There are a great many whispers just now about resurrectionists,” Mr. Sorokin said. “They’re awful busy, and not in the usual ways.”

“There ain’t nothing ‘usual’ about resurrection men. And nothing’s beneath them.” It was not a pun she’d intended to make, but she let it sit just the same.

“There’s a man who runs London’s underworld, and it is rumored he has resurrectionists on his side and is paying well to terrorize the city into bowing to his demands.”

“My uncles would enjoy terrorizing people. They’d enjoy making a pile of coins even more.”

“The rumors hold that they are thoroughly enjoying both.”

Of course her family was part of the campaign of horrors. The Kincaids were part of most every horrific scheme that took hold in London’s underbelly. They helped think up most of them.