Murder by Midnight

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A Treacherous Trade © Copyright Kerrigan Byrne A Deadly Affair © Copyright Carla Simpson A Brush With Death © Copyright Elizabeth Blake 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Published by Oliver Heber Books Contents The Business of Blood Kerrigan Byrne Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 About the Author A Deadly Affair Carla Simpson Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Epilogue About the Author A Brush With Death Elizabeth Blake 1. The Man in the Mirror 2. A Certain Lack of Redeeming Qualities 3. Things That Are Lost 4. Of Prophets and Roses 5. The Hands of Fate 6. A Zest for Life 7. Old Jacky 8. A Bed of Clouds 9. Pretty Little Things 10. Satire and The Macabre 11. Wooly Socks 12. Graveyards and Grapes 13. Carriage Rides and Rings 14. The Ripper Epilogue About the Author Thank you… The Business of Blood KERRIGAN BYRNE Chapter One LONDON, 1890 The arrangement of Frank Sawyer’s corpse was queer enough to lend me pause. He hung upside down in the common room, suspended from the rafter by one foot, the other bent behind him, his spindly legs forming a strange triangle. I’d seen too many bodies to recall the exact number but, in my experience, those hanging from a rope most often did so by their throats. In this case, there didn’t seem to be enough left of a throat to manage a proper hanging. “You should know better than to linger at a threshold, Fiona, lest a demon take you.” I whirled to face the voice behind me with my hand over my startled heart, thanking all the saints I could conjure that it was not Inspector Croft who’d caught me snooping at a murder scene before a body had been removed. Especially after he’d told me some time ago, in no uncertain terms, to not enter a structure until the evidence of a crime had been conducted away. And I hadn’t. Technically, the threshold was still out on the street. “Aidan, you startled me,” I reproached. “What are you doing here?” Whitechapel was a long way from Limerick, Ireland, where Aidan Fitzpatrick and I had been whelped and raised. It’d been an eternity since my elder brothers, Flynn and Finnegan, followed Aidan around like two identical twin shadows. And not because they’d fallen out with each other, but because neither Aidan nor I believed in ghosts. And chances were good that Finn and Flynn had conned St. Peter into letting them be angels, though they scarcely did anything in their tragically short lifetimes to deserve the designation. “I’m here for the same reason as you, I suspect. To clean up after death.” He looked past me into the common house, and his winsome smile died a slow death, taking with it the rogue I’d known before he’d donned the cassock. “I have to keep telling you, Fiona. Call me Father Fitzpatrick,” he reminded me with idle distraction. “Just so, Father Fitzpatrick.” I cringed at the taste the title left on my tongue—like bitter herbs and disappointed expectations. “And you can call me Miss Mahoney if we’re being proper folk.” One shouldn’t look at a priest the way I looked at Aidan. But surely God forgave me, because every other lady in his congregation did the same. He had the countenance and figure of a fallen angel, not to mention the voice of a seraph. I knew that he’d pledged his life—his heart—to God. But he’d promised it to me first upon a day and, saints preserve me, I felt downright proprietary about it sometimes. I supposed a vow of fidelity was easier to break to your best mate’s freckled and bespectacled little sister than to the Almighty. “I thought a man of the cloth wasn’t supposed to pay mind to superstitious pagan beliefs like thresholds and the in-between,” I chided. “Perhaps not, but we do believe in demons, and there are plenty to be found hereabouts.” All traces of good humor vanished, and we locked eyes for a solemn moment before his big, tentative hand settled on my shoulder. He knew what this place did to me. He understood the demons that awaited me here. I hated that he could identify my weakness. That he knew what it looked like because he’d seen it before. He’d witnessed me at my worst. I was no stranger to Father Aidan Fitzpatrick’s touch. There was a time that his hands thrilled me with carnal delight. They sent me to my own priest to confess when they’d found their illicit way beneath my bodice when we were young and, I’d thought, in love. Now, his touch was simply offered as a balm. A comfort. The only familiar warmth to be found in a cold, pitiless world. He scrutinized the gruesome