“Granted, but you know him a good deal less.”
His eyebrows twitched up at that. He changed tack. “You did not seem surprised when I told you the artifact is missing.”
“Well, obviously something is amiss.” I waved at the ransacked room. “Let me be frank. There is no use in suspecting me. I had nothing to do with either disappearance, and my chief concerns are finding Mr. Stoke and the artifact.”
And getting my money, a practical voice in the back of my mind whispered.
A knock sounded on the main door. Both Mr. Wake and I went quiet, the ensuing silence so loud it rang in my ears. Or perhaps that was the lingering effects of explosions the night before.
There was a second knock, then a third. At last, the visitor departed and a shadow passed across the window.
As soon as they were gone Mr. Wake, pistol in hand, moved to tug the curtains closed.
A faux twilight rippled across the room, thickening the shadows and making my threads prickle. I resisted the urge to tug up my collar and brush at my temples, to check for traitorous threads.
“Did you discover nothing of use in your pillaging?” I inquired, gesturing again to the room.
Mr. Wake, half his face dimly illuminated now, gave me a wry look. “You could have the decency to be some what afraidof me, Miss Fleet. I’ve lain in wait for you for several hours, and I do have a gun.”
I held one hand into a sliver of light. There, it trembled slightly.
“Satisfied?” I asked. Without waiting for him to answer I went on. “I would make a better ally than victim, Mr. Wake.”
“Somehow, I believe you. However.” He raised the pistol again, and the thin congeniality we had mustered fell away. “Here’s the situation, Miss Fleet. We—you and I—serve someone, someone who has our loyalty. But yours is misplaced. I can only conclude that your Mr. Stoke has fled the city, with or without a very valuable artifact belonging to a very powerful man. I am left with nothing to show my employer except a secretary with the personality of an aged mule.”
As insulted as I was, my breathing was beginning to shallow, my head starting to cloud. All of a sudden, I recalled the tightness around Mr. Stoke’s eyes yesterday as he sent me home, as he spoke of getting out of the city.
What if I had misread him? What if that had not been sadness on his face, but guilt? And what if, as I had plotted to abandon him, he had already been on the path to abandoning me?
The whys—those I could not answer yet—but the sting of betrayal remained.
“I do not know what happened,” I said, sounding as troubled as I felt. “I assure you, I do not. But I will find it for you. Consider this… situation… only a small delay in delivery.”
Mr. Wake nodded slowly, considering my request. He settled his weight into his heels in easy confidence. “Very well. Meet me here this evening, and we will discuss what you’ve managed to uncover. I am sure I need not warn you about involving the police or higher authorities.”
I huffed. “They would hardly be helpful.”
“Indeed.” Mr. Wake looked amused, again. He pushed the brim of his hat back with the mouth of his pistol and smiled at me. “I will see you this evening. Good day, Miss Fleet.”
He departed without looking back. The door closed behind him, leaving me transfixed in the half light as I waitedfor his footsteps to fade and his shadow to pass the window, beyond the curtain.
That was when the shaking took over. It rushed down my limbs and through my belly like a winter chill, turning my guts to water.
I started for the bookcase, but my legs would not move. I bent forward, pressing my face into my hands and dragging air into my lungs. One breath. Two. Three.
I should run. I should ignore all of this and go into hiding. I could stow away on a ship, start again in another city, and buy my new identity in another few years. Lewis would forgive the setback, would he not?
But the thought of so much wasted time and effort was crushing. And if Pretoria was involved and Mr. Stoke endangered, I could not walk away, however much I wanted to. I would regret it forever.
I gathered myself. I locked the front door and closed the curtains fully. I did not bother to light a candle, taking the time to let my Entwined eyes adjust to a sepia world of shadow and texture as familiar to me as the light of the sun—the sight of the nocturnal classes of Entwined. I unfastened the top button of my collar so I felt a little less strangled. Then, flexing my hands, I drew a deep, steadying breath and rested one finger on the cold cup of coffee on Mr. Stoke’s desk.
Ottilie Fleet might be an over whelmed secretary, without family or friends in a city divided by prejudice and violence, but that identity was giving way. And the woman beneath, the elusive Entwined Adept soon to leave Harrow to build a life?
She had work to do.
A NOTEUPON: EVENTIDEMAGES
We continue our discussion of Entwined classes with a note upon one of the most rare and unsettling varieties—that of the Eventide, or Twilight, mage.
