Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy by Bec McMaster

she were only imagining those bronze eyes and dark hair, or whether it truly was a memory. "What if this poor girl has children at home, Jack? Or a husband waiting for her?"
    "You're thinking of your parents. You'll find them one day, Ingrid."
    She merely shrugged. The telegram burned a hole in her pocket. Hope couldn't burn bright forever, but if she couldn't find her own parents, then at least she could bring the dead girl home to hers. "I have to find the people who did this so I can help lay that poor woman to rest. And if that means working with Byrnes, then I can lay aside my pride for the moment."
    "Just be careful. If that woman was torn apart by some sort of animal, then you might be dealing with more than you can handle. You're not invincible, Ingrid, though you might be damned hard to kill."
    Ingrid paused to brush a kiss across his cheek. "I love you too. But you can be an old fusspot at times."
----
    B ack at the guild , Byrnes finally collapsed into his sheets after a long fruitless search through the archives. The only comparison between the cases was the use of Doeppler orbs to dispel the gas, and the fact that people had died. Once again, if the killer had been a blue blood in a blood frenzy, then they wouldn't have stopped. There would have been more bodies, more blood.
    Not a trail that vanished.
    His lead had shriveled into nothing.
    So what else did they have? What did the Begby Square disappearances have in common with the Venetian Gardens, besides the missing people?
    No signs of a struggle. That wasn't much use, and Ava was working on that. An unidentified body, ravaged by... something. No lead there. Not yet. His mind threw up an image of the flag that had been painted in blood.
    There'd been a black flag painted on the walls near Begby Square. The same letter there too, a “0.”
    He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen that black flag symbol before. The more he worried at it, like a dog with a bone, the more convinced he became.
    But where, damn it?
    He was just falling off to sleep when he finally realized where he'd seen it.
    Byrnes's eyes shot open. "Debney."

Five
    I T WAS THE early hours of the following morning before the door to Debney's bedroom opened and the young viscount staggered in, kicking the door shut with one boot even as he tried to remove his striped coat. And failed. Debney staggered, looking down as though somewhat perplexed by the way his elbow simply wouldn't bend out of the way.
    Bloody hell. He was soused.
    "A good night by the look of it, Debney," Byrnes said, stretching in the chair he'd been napping in. Every Nighthawk knew how to snatch a few winks of sleep here and there when they were on a case.
    Debney nearly jumped out of his pale skin, tripping over a pair of boots that had been left on the floor and knocking a tray of cologne off the top of his vanity. It bounced, luckily. "Blood and ashes, Caleb! Give a man a fit next time.... What are you doing skulking about in my bedchamber?" Sneering slightly, he used the tip of his boot to lift the baseboard quilt around the hem of his bed. "No murderers tucked under 'ere, eh?"
    "By the look of it, nothing but cobwebs and dust." Byrnes took a sniff. "Were you swimming in a vat of brandy?"
    Clearly the viscount had been participating in a rather dedicated spree of dissipation if he was coming home this late after the sun had risen, but Byrnes had smelled gin hovels in Whitechapel whose scent was less inclined to knock him off his feet.
    Debney sprawled back on the bed, lifting his heel. "'Ere. Help me get these off."
    Byrnes stood and took a slow circuit of the room, trying to breathe through his mouth. "I'm not your valet, Francis. Get them off yourself." Picking up one of the sprawled bottles of cologne, he ignored the young viscount and took an experimental sniff, then recoiled. How anybody could wear so many chemicals astounded him. You wouldn't be able to smell anything else.
    Slight improvement on Debney