She went back to the alley after that, where a crowd of locals had taken up a post, their collective eyes poring over the remnants of the scene left behind within, which of course Grace couldn't make out from this distance, so she had to get closer and check it out.
They said nothing to her as she approached, and hadn't blocked off the alley, so it seemed she was free to enter it, but their eyes stayed on her and hers stayed focused forward — and all around the alleyway, for any clues she could find.
She was partway in when find in fact she did: scratchmarks, on some of the cobblestones below her, right around where the possibly-Ripper, possibly-copycat had been standing.
Kneeling, she held her fingers near the stones and saw what appeared to be something small and shiny in one of the marks. Something useful?, she thought to herself, drawing out a small pin and a handkerchief from her pocket and bag, so she could scratch up the shiny thing and examine it later.
Sat against the softer, lighter material of the handkerchief, the thing appeared to be a small metal shaving, which she felt could prove a very useful clue or material for some kind of tracking enchantment when the time came. She rolled them up and pocketed them as delicately as she could, and straightened up, taking in more of the crime scene from a further distance.
Whoever it was, she thought in her head, it was someone who was wearing springed heels after all. Or at least heels that were very sharp and blade-like.
"Were you attacked by the Ripper?" someone in the crowd asked.
Grace barely even glanced at them.
"No," she said. "From what I've heard, the Ripper is a myth." Myths don't cut you, her thoughts continued. Or break your bones.
"Of course he isn't," the reply said. "Who do you think kills the Miss Purity girls every year?"
Grace's head turned, and she glanced, straightening a bit. "What? What did you say?"
"The Ripper kills the Miss Purity girls every year. It's not something we talk about, but it's something we all know about."
"Who are the Miss Purity girls? Why does he kill them, specifically?"
The woman she was talking to — an older, heavyset woman in colorful clothing, including a green skirt and a multicolored, knit sweater — explained, "It's a beauty contest we've held here since forever. Don't you know? They line up all the young, pretty blonde girls and pick, well, the purest of them, I guess." The woman shrugged.
The rest of the crowd began to dissipate, possibly bored that Grace and the crime scene weren't as interesting as they had wanted them to be.
"Usually, the Ripper picks them all off eventually," she continued. "But, ah, we still hold the bloody thing. Most of the girls just adore their chance in the spotlight, even if they do know what's going to happen to them."
"Tradition is, tradition does," Grace remarked. "How does he get to them? Why does he choose them? Shouldn't the Town Watch have stopped this by now?"
"Dear, if you can answer those questions we've been trying to figure out all this time, you'll know more about Grimshaw than any of us," the woman said. "I'm Aurelia, by the way, most folks call me Miss Haggard. I run the Antique Emporium just up the way there, so if you ever have any antiquing needs while you're here, just give us a check-in, won't you?"
Grace nodded. "I'll keep that in mind. Thank you, Miss Haggard."
Aurelia turned to go, but Grace placed a hand on her arm to stop her.
"You don't...happen to have a relation to Aldridge Haggard, would you?" Grace asked. "The famous explorer?"
"Of course, dear," Aurelia replied with a twinkle in her eye. "He's my father."
The sun set, and Grace returned to her room; number 14 of the Crow's Roast Inn. If she was to find the Ripper, or at least protect herself from him while in town, she had magic to work and at least one, but probably three or four, spells to cast.
Accompanying her was Bertram Crawford himself, who had been in the room cleaning at the time she arrived back to it. "Now, what's all this?" he asked of her.
"I was attacked," she said, setting up the space for a tracking spell. "By the Spring-Heeled Ripper, just last night."
"So you're going to make marks all over my floor?" he complained.
"Yes," she said, drawing a chalk circle across the carpet around herself. "But also, no. You have dry cleaning, don't you?"
His gob was surely smacked.
"In any case, this is just for a tracking spell," she continued, taking the bits of metal she'd found before and gripping them in her palm. She closed her eyes, whispering, "Ripper, Ripper, hiding dark; skipper, skipper, trailing mark; metal lost is metal found; location now to thee is bound."
Bits of her energy flowed through her palm to the metal shavings, an outpouring of imperceptible spiritual static, filling the shavings with an energy that would ensure they'd feel a bit warmer or colder, depending on how close to the target they'd end up being.
"Very well," Bertram scoffed. "And how about when you catch up? The Town Watch'll have you if something happens to people here, you know."
Grace broke the circle, glanced at Bertram, and said, "Yes. I know."
The moon was out, and so was Grace.
The same could not be said for most others in Grimshaw, who generally seemed to lock themselves up tight behind their doors as soon as dark set in. Still, an energy flowed the streets, as though the air itself was licking its lips, as though the fog itself was leering at anyone misfortunate enough to be caught out in it at that time.
Grace could feel the moisture against her skin, water droplets prickling her sensitive nerves, and carried on, trusting the warmth of the metal in her palm as to how close she was or wasn't getting to the man who had attacked her the previous night.
Even the distant howl of what could only have been the area's native wolf population didn't quite deter her, although it did certainly add its due airs to the proceedings.
Following the metal shavings took her in, around, and all over several alleys before finally—
—a girl in trouble, possibly. From Grace's perspective, she looked young enough to be her daughter, but she was dressed in a tiered skirt and a red blouse over a ruffled white undershirt, and glancing her eyed all around the alley as if scanning for something.
Grace turned her eyes too, and saw it, on the top of a building nearby: the outlined form of someone in a leather bodysuit with metallic embellishments, including a distinctive metal mask, who apparently did not see Grace in return.
Appearing not to notice Grace, the someone jumped down to the alley and landed cushioned by the spring-based contraptions around his ankles. The girl screamed, backed away, and the Spring-Heeled Ripper advanced, clawed gloves outstretched.
"As fling is flung, my will be done, and send this Ripper flying!" Grace shouted, her hand targeted at the Ripper. The burst of energy collided with him directly, sending him flying off down the alley.
Grace advanced toward the girl, intending to ask if she was alright, but the girl ran back the direction from which Grace had come, vanishing into the foggy night.
"Perhaps a better idea," Grace muttered, before turning back to the Ripper, who was already recovering his stance.
"Didn't I mug you last night?" the Ripper asked, his mask only slightly muffling his voice.
"I wouldn't know," Grace said. "Are you the Ripper who keeps killing the Miss Purity girls?"
"I knew you were new to this town," he replied.
"How so?"
"Anyone else wouldn't bother to ask a question like that," the Ripper said. "In fact, they wouldn't have cast a spell like that on me either. But I don't mind; it shows me what you can do."
"And I know what you can do," Grace said. "Stop attacking girls at night."
"If I say yes, will you believe me?"
"If you say no, I won't leave you alone."
"Fair's fair," the Ripper said. "No."
Grace reached down for her wand holster this time, apparently intending to try for a more directly-focused spell, only for something rather large and furry to come flying at her from behind. The wand was knocked aside, and Grace fell to the cobble, the breath shunted out of her lungs. Panting breaths and warm paws motioned over her back, and she could barely recover to see it; when she did, she saw the wolf and reached instead for her knife, the same one she'd used on the all-shadow creature in the woods just a few nights prior1.
Before the wolf could react, Grace slashed the knife at it, blade colliding with furred flesh and shin, eliciting a mournful yelp from it. The wolf scratched at her, claws tearing at bits of her flesh, and Grace returned with her knife in kind, until she managed to pull herself away, her hand lifted up.
"Furred flesh, blurred rest, make this damp, wet alley your nest," Grace hissed, and the wolf whined out as the energy hit it.
The wolf — which, to be honest, now seemed more human in build than canine, standing as it was on its hind-legs with mostly-opposable fingers on its paws — spun in its place, then collapsed, having suddenly gtown very tired and lost consciousness as a result of Grace's sleeping spell.
Grace, still sat on the alley's cobbled stone, staring at the wolf, turned her gaze toward where the Ripper had been standing, but now no longer was. Apparently, at some point during her attack, the Ripper had simply retreated, his spring-heels carrying him elsewhere for now. She reached out to feel for the metal shavings, and at that point, realized she had dropped them and they were spread somewhere across the cobble just like her, removing her ability to track him quite so easily unless she could somehow relocate them or find something else that connected with him the same way.
The wolf turned out to be Clotilde Dollanganger2, a legacy worker at Grimshaw's Dollanganger Waxworks, as Grace found out once the moon set and the wolf transformed back into Clotilde's human form.
She didn't know that was going to happen, of course, and had actually just been examining the wolf's unconscious form when it happened. She had wanted to study the differences between the wolf and other, real wolves, and then was suddenly faced by a naked woman of around 25 or 27 years of age. The woman's hair was long, down to her back, very straight, and very white, and she had the sort of eyes where you knew she typically wore glasses and just wasn't wearing them at that moment.
Of course, she had been a hulking wolf-monster moments before, so that made sense.
Grace poked at the woman's shoulder until she woke up, the sleeping spell's energy and hold on her consciousness gradually fading.
Clotilde, whose name Grace did not yet know but would soon come to find out, came to and stirred, pushing herself up and into a sitting position.
"Hello," Grace said. "Do you know you were a wolf-monster just now?"
Clotilde glared at her. "Don't remind me."
"How...," Grace started, "does that happen, exactly?"
"Painfully," Clotilde said. "You don't have any clothes on you."
"No," Grace replied. "Just mine. But I can find some if you like."
"It's fine," Clotilde said, standing despite her nudity. "It's not exactly something Grimshaw hasn't seen before. I live near here, besides. Quick walk, and all that."
"Well," Grace said, nodding. "Good luck with that, then...?"
"Clotilde," she said. "I run the Waxworks. I'm not supposed to, but Priscilla is too old these days, so it's just my sister and I now, more or less. Good grief, why am I explaining this?"
"I have one of those faces," Grace said. "Your sister is...?"
"Millie," Clotilde said. "And nowhere to be found, even though I told her she'd need to help clean tonight. We have an opening soon, and you know these things have to be just so."
The fog drifted by on the street beyond the alley, from where Grace had come before.
"Anyway," Clotilde said, shrugging. "Apologies for the harm done. Usually, no one is out on the streets at this hour."
"You're sure about that?"
"No one I should care much about, anyway," Clotilde said, practically hissing. "I really should be gettimg back now. I'll see you, but hopefully not like this."
Grace nodded, watching her go, then turned back to where the Spring-Heeled Ripper had been. "I suppose this means I have more research to do," she said, and went back to the Crow's Roast for a night of sleep.
At the castle, which overlooked the town, Jasper Rathbone was sitting by the fire when Dorian Belgrave entered the study. Jasper barely flinched, but Dorian very slightly did.
"I thought you'd gone out," Dorian said, holding a hand to his chest.
"I did," Jasper said, awash in the green velvet of his favorite chair. "Now I'm back."
"How was it?"
"Fine," Jasper said. "Nothing to report this time."
"No new features for the dungeon?"
"No." Jasper glanced at the painting above the hearth, which depicted himself alongside Dorian in a room very much like the study they were in. "Did you know we have a werewolf in town?"
"I wasn't sure those could even exist," Dorian replied.
"Well, they do," Jasper said. "I fucked one."
Dorian choked back a response.
"It was nice, mostly," Jasper continued. "Quite passionate."
"And did you...?"
"Find something to eat?" Jasper asked. "No. I got interrupted."
"By the werewolf?"
"No, by a witch."
Dorian nodded slightly, acknowledging his words.
"She'll have to be dealt with, of course," Jasper said. "I'll alert the Town Watch. I think she's new here, and she deserves a fine welcome to make sure she won't be leaving."
When he was alone, Dorian Belgrave — the Count of Grimshaw, as he had been known for many years, with Baron Jasper Rathbone's help to ensure they stayed in the running — liked to visit a painter in the town below.
He normally spent his time locked away in Castle Gaunt, which overlooked the town from the top of the hill it had been built upon, of course, but the call of the painter's touch was often too much for Dorian to bear.
Galen Belmont, whose sister Amity was a recurring actress at the Peerless Playhouse with a side-job at the Scarlet Showroom, had been a painter for some time now. His brush mostly touched the cheeks of the girls at the Scarlet Showroom, including his own sister from time to time, but what he loved most of all was portraits worked on actual canvas with actual paint.
He had long, curly brown hair in thick waves, olive-ish skin, and eyes that seemed to bulge out like an insect's eyes, which Dorian found rather intriguing in a sort-of-ugly sort of way. He had also painted the portrait of Dorian and Jasper that was found over the hearth in the study at Castle Gaunt, as well as a few others of just Dorian from before that portrait had been finished, mostly as test runs and not as an excuse to continue seeing Dorian in such personal affairs, of course.
Galen rarely painted when Dorian was around these days. It was mostly an awful lot of embracing, and hand-holding, and rather intimate acts of closeness and passion with one another, usually followed by several cups of strong coffee and several cigarettes between the two of them.
They had just gotten done with their first few moments when they were visited at Galen's house by a knock on the door, which was soon revealed to be from Officer Stockard Trancing of the Town Watch. Officer Trancing was an older gentleman, at least as old as the Count and Baron, and had been on the Watch since around the time they had become Count and Baron, and had seen quite a few changes to the dynamics and goings-on of Grimshaw; so, it didn't surprise him to answer the door of a house that wasn't Count Belgrave's house to see Count Belgrave standing there instead of the owner.
Stockard acknowledged him, and said, "Count Belgrave. Where is—is the owner of this house home tonight?"
"Yes," Dorian replied. "Um, no. He's out. Or they are. I really wouldn't know. Inspection time, you see. Must check on all the pipes." He placed a hand on a random bit of door. "All the wires. And all the things like that. You know how this works."
Stockard looked onward, into the hallway behind Dorian. "As these things happen. Still, a patrol for the neighbors' sake is a patrol. One must watch one's back in times like these."
Dorian nodded. "Yes," he replied.
When Stockard left the two of them alone, Dorian returned to Galen's side in the main study room with an embrace, and a kiss for the top of his head.
"I think he was just checking on all the neighbors for some reason," Dorian told Galen. "Nothing about anything we're doing."
Galen, who was shirtless and holding a sponge and palette in his hands, nodded. "Wouldn't want it to get back to you-know-who, and all."
Dorian shook his head, and shrugged. "I doubt it will. But he'll be my problem if it does."
Galen glanced away from his painting, toward Dorian, who was now examining some candles on a shelf nearby. "Let's make sure it doesn't. It's play season; nothing like a baron's wrath to upset our ticket sales or performance ratings."
"It won't," Dorian said. "I swear." Dorian's gaze turned out the window, toward Castle Gaunt, on the hill overlooking town
Galen returned to his painting duties.
"He's my problem," Dorian said, to almost no one else except for himself, "and it's going to stay that way. Forever."
It was a few hours after his visit, when Dorian was on his way home, that the ghost of his former self visited him, finding him on the streets like it always did.
It wasn't actually him, specifically, but rather, the ethereal form of Ophelia Hopewell — a girl he met quite a few years before, who became deeply involved with him before her unfortunate coma and subsequent drowning incident.
He had offered to keep her spirit safe in a leaden grail where it wouldn't dissipate or risk being taken by the Alderghast at Soultide, but she wouldn't let him. "I'd never see you again," she had confessed to him once, "and then, how would I live with myself?"
That interaction was a long time ago, of course, but it stuck in Dorian's mind, even during his time with Galen and his long walks home to Castle Gaunt. Finally, it was during one of those walks that he heard the sound, felt the chill, and—
"Dorian?" It wasn't a voice so much as an echo, a spiritual vibration of otherworldly frequencies, calling upon him for a response.
He stopped. There was no one around him; he wasn't even in town anymore, he was on the side of the road on Castle Drive, with an uphill climb facing his future.
"Dorian?" The chill blew through him, deeper than the night air's breeze, and a concurrence of mist gradually manifested, though formless, though non-corporeal.
He turned from the road, concealing his face toward the fields and farmland. "Yes? What is it?"
"You went out, didn't you?" the echo of a now-silent voice asked.
"Yes," Dorian replied.
"And you saw him again?" the echo continued.
"Yes," Dorian replied.
The echo went silent, and the breeze touched through the wild grass. "And you're happy?"
Dorian glanced around him, his eyes addressing the mists at random. "Yes," he replied.
"Jasper isn't," the echo said. "Jasper will be missing you."
Dorian's expression was unreadable, like a blade of cold steel. "Yes."
"Be careful, Dorian," the echo said. "Get home soon."
Dorian took a step toward the fence, and turned toward the road. "Of course."
The mists coalesced, eager to stay, desperate to continue.
A thousand questions tore themselves apart before they could reach Dorian's mouth.
Though there was no one else around, whatever could have been could not, and both Dorian and the echo knew it.
At some point, it stopped being anything and started being mists, and mists alone, and Dorian continued on, up to the castle, toward Jasper and the rest of his life as Count.