Casually I bend and sniff an especially lush bunch of roses, and as I straighten, I glance sideways down the canal path, back the way we came.
I don’t see anyone following me. Every brownstone has a pair of lamps at its entrance, so the path is well-lit, and the trees are slender, not much good to hide behind.
“Devilry?” Maven has paused and she’s looking back at me. “Something wrong?”
“I’m fine.” I catch up to her, forcing a smile.
The fact that she waited for me warms my heart and gives me hope that perhaps she and I could reclaim the closeness we used to have, before Scriv joined the team. Although if I’m honest with myself, she was getting restless and pulling away from me before I even started looking for a forger.
My hope fades when she doesn’t smile. She keeps pace with me, but there’s no companionable linking of arms like we used to do when we walked side by side. Something is broken between us, and I’m not sure how to fix it. Either she has changed, or I have.
“You’re jumpy,” she says. “Always so anxious. It makes the rest of us nervous, too.”
Her comment hurts, because I’ve always thought I hid my anxiety well behind a façade of calm. But maybe as the Javelins have gotten to know me over the past few years, they’ve learned to see through my walls. It’s an unsettling thought.
“I just like to think ahead and be watchful,” I tell Maven.
She snorts a laugh. “Whatever you want to tell yourself. Personally, I think you need to find some way to relax. Maybe get laid.”
“I’m not good at finding people for a single night of pleasure. You know that. I’m either too invested or not interested at all.”
“What about that fellow from a few weeks ago? Harp’s friend, the one we met at the Puzzled Coin? He was handsome.”
“You think so?” I grimace. “He didn’t really appeal to me, especially after he introduced himself as ‘the future best fuck of my life.’”
Her eyes widen. “He said that?”
“Word for word.”
“What an asshole.”
“Indeed.”
“Maybe I should seek him out,” she says with a chuckle. “I don’t mind an asshole, especially if he’s good in bed. I could test him for you. See if his overconfidence has any basis in reality.”
“Men’s overconfidence is usually based on nothing.”
She chuckles, and I smile. There’s that hope again, sparking in my heart, igniting with barely any fuel.
Maybe this is just a rough patch with me and the Javelins. Maybe we can get through it and become stronger together.
We pass beneath Fifth Bridge and turn left immediately, following a long, narrow alley back to a forgotten blacksmith’s shop. The smithy was poorly placed for its target clientele, which is why it failed. So did the bakery that attempted to open here afterward, and the glass-blower’s workshop after that. Once the glassblower went out of business, no one wanted the space, so I was able to purchase it cheaply with the proceeds of one of my first big jobs.
We all have a key to the Hearth, but the others let me unlock the heavy door.
As I’m fitting the key into the lock, Flex says, “Why do we call it the Hearth? Shouldn’t a robbers’ lair have a darker name? Something dreadful and more intense?”
“Like what?” I raise an eyebrow.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Something like the Hollow or the Hole.”
“You want to call our refuge ‘the Hole’?”
Maven snorts, and Boulder guffaws outright.
“I put thought into the name, as I do everything,” I tell Flex. “The Hearth is a place where we can be safe, fed, and well-rested after the dangerous work we do. Yes, it’s a place for plotting and training, but I wanted the name to be something warm rather than threatening.”
Pushing the door open, I stand aside while the others enter. I keep a watchful eye on the alley, because even though I don’tsee anyone except my people, I have the strangest sense that I’m being observed. My mentor Skull, who taught me the finer points of surveillance, always told me to scan above and below, not just in lateral directions. “People always forget to look up,” he would say.
