“Mm-hmm. I learned typing in a place like this. We used to find them in the machines some mornings.” Mina shuddered at the memory.
“But you kept going.”
“It was what I could afford,” she said, hearing her voice get brittle and clipped. Even the cheap, dirty school she’d attended had taken a year of saving. “I didn’t have much choice, did I?”
Stephen leafed through a stack of papers. “Because you wanted to be a secretary?”
“I wanted to see more of the world, even if it was secondhand. I figured I might get a position with some old lady, type up her letters and all that.” Mina smiled, remembering nights of circling advertisements in theTimes. “Then I saw the Professor’s advert, and I thought a scholar would be even better.”
She put a few more papers aside. Either Ward and his correspondents were very vague, or the messages were in a code that she couldn’t make out. There were many discussions of meeting “at the usual place” or “where we talked last night,” but nothing more concrete. From the way that Stephen was rifling through documents and stuffing them back into the desk, he wasn’t finding anything, either.
Then, pulling papers from the last cubbyhole, Mina stopped and caught her breath.
She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with wealth or land, but even she knew what a property deed looked like. “Stephen,” she said, and he was instantly at her shoulder, his hair brushing against her face as he leaned forward to look.
“Anywhere you recognize?” he asked. “I’m not as familiar with the city these days.”
Mina frowned down at the address. “Not off the top of my head, no, but it looks like it’s down by the docks. Could be a warehouse.” She blinked. “Why would he need a warehouse?”
At first, Stephen didn’t answer, not until Mina looked up at him and he seemed to realize she wasn’t going to drop the question. “He might want room,” he said quietly, “and a place where most people couldn’t hear what happened inside. Creatures like he uses often have a price.” He drew a sudden low breath that was half a snarl.
“What is it?” Mina asked. Stephen’s teeth were very white even in the dim room, and they looked sharper than a normal man’s would, but she didn’t look away. She didn’t even feel the urge to do so.
“The creature that came to the house last time. I think it was human once.”
***
In a way, Mina was glad that they’d found the deed so late. It meant they could leave soon afterward. She’d known Ward could and had killed. Now she couldn’t escape the thought that what she knew about might be the smallest part of the blood on his hands. The building seemed very dark as they walked down the stairs, and very empty.
“Are you going to go and”—she cleared her throat, unsure what word she should use—“find him now?”
“Tomorrow, I’d think. Midday. The manes don’t have as much power then, and hopefully Ward won’t, either.”
“And the…other things?” Mina asked, remembering the gelid hand that had punched through the door.
“I don’t know. I’ve not seen anything like them before.”
She couldn’t go, of course. She was small, human, and neither a warrior nor a witch. She couldn’t reliably shoot anything more than a foot or two away from her. In a pitched battle, she’d do more harm than good.
“Will you take anyone?” she asked, her eyes on the back of Stephen’s neck.
“I can’t,” he said, “Not unless Colin’s arm heals sooner than any of us think. If I catch Ward off guard, it should go all right.” He began to say something else and then stopped, so suddenly that Mina nearly ran into his back.
“What is it?” she asked, whispering again.
In answer, Stephen pointed to the window above the door, too high for Mina to see. “There are men out there. Two of them. And from the way they’re talking, they’re not moving for a while.”
Thirty-seven
Every curse Stephen knew, in a variety of languages, went through his mind in a moment. Rather than utter any of them, he bit his tongue and motioned for Mina to go back up the stairs. He followed her. Every so often, he turned to make sure the door hadn’t opened, but it stayed shut. The men outside didn’t seem to have heard their footsteps.
On the second-floor landing, they stopped. Mina sat down on the first step, and Stephen sank down beside her.
“They don’t know we’re here,” he said, once he’d started to think the situation through. “They’d have come in if they did. Or Ward would have.” Ward might also have sent demons after them if he’d known, but Stephen didn’t want to say that aloud just now. He glanced at his pocket watch: quarter past midnight. “He must have them guard the place regularly, this late.”
“Or someone else might,” said Mina. “He’s not the only rich man who keeps a secret or two.”
Even in the darkness, Stephen could see her grin at him. She seemed in no danger of panic. Her voice was a little shaky, but that was all. In that respect, as in others, she was a very good companion to have in these circumstances—even if her presence did bring with it certain complications.
