“Vulcan,” she swore, slipping the unset key into her pocket and snapping up the lock.They were home too soon.She was out of time.She pocketed the lock, too, and snatched her gown off its hook.She was one leg into it as she peeked out the front window of the forge.Only one carriage out front.A black coach that seemed a part of the gathering dark, a harbinger of the coming night.
She didn’t recognize it.
She pulled the gown up her arms but didn’t tighten it.It stayed loosely in place as she left the forge and stood in the shadows between it and Nickleby House.
The coach shook.Then three hulking men stepped out and onto the lawn.They spoke amongst themselves, their voices too low to hear.
She crept forward.“Can I help you?”Her hands were still hot from the forge.Not hot enough to glow, but hot enough to hurt a man if necessary.And Martha, the housekeeper was likely in the kitchen.If she screamed, Martha would hear.
But surely these men weren’t here to hurt her.No reason for that.Still… worry crept along her pulse.They could be here for her father, her brothers.They could be men with grudges, angry that the Grants had risen in society after being exiled from alchemist circles.
The men’s attention snapped to her.One reached into his greatcoat pocket.
And pulled out a pistol.“Evening, miss.You’ll be coming with us if you don’t mind.”
Sybil’s blood froze.She found herself, inexplicably, giggling, hilarity born of terror.“I think, gentlemen, that I do indeed mind.”
“I’ll shoot.”
No more laughter.“Do your worst.”
She didn’t mean it.Not one bit.She’d been held hostage last summer, a knife to her neck, by her sister-in-law’s cousin—Apollo Chester, former Marquess of Fordham, irredeemable villain, and charmingly gorgeous when he wasn’t foxed or worse.He’d held her fast with bruising fingers, relieved a drop of blood from her pulse like a ruby.
It had not been enjoyable, and she had no desire to repeat the experience.
“Won’t get our money if we do our worst,” the man with the pistol said.“Hired to deliver you alive.”
Another of the men shoved his elbow into Pistol’s ribs.“We could shoot her arm.Make her docile as a lamb.”
“Yeah,” the third man said.“Still alive, like.But bleedin’.”
Oh God.
Sybil ran.And screamed.“Martha!”Her gown fell down one shoulder.Then the other.One foot tangled in the long skirts.She yanked, still running—more like pushing through a field of vines—but the other foot caught.Oh God.The men were so close.She let the gown fall.Free.Finally, thank Hestia,free.“Mar?—”
A hand wrapped around her mouth, silencing her, and big, beefy arms lifted her off the ground.
She kicked and threw her elbows, became a wild cat, hissing and scratching.But six arms were too much.Her gown was ripped and falling.Her body lifted and strangled.By the time, the coach swallowed her whole, her gown was gone entirely.Still she kicked, trying to bite the palm across her lips.
“Got the potion?”Pistol said.
Fumbling, then the hand on her face was moving, squeezing her cheeks, forcing her mouth open.
“No!”she gasped.
Too late.Cold liquid burned its way between her lips and down her gullet.She tried to spit it out, but the beefy palm closed over her once more.She was crying.She was thrashing.
Then she couldn’t thrash any more.Limbs too heavy.Eyelids, too.
Trying to resist the unrelenting waves of lethargy, and failing, Sybil drowned.
2
MACHINATIONS ARE MUCH PREFERABLE TO LABOR
The damn flame burned like a hot poker to a sensitive arse cheek.At least it didn’t brand his palm like one.Apollo Chester—simplyMr.Apollo Chester to his great mortification—kept his hand above the flickering candle flame, just touching, despite the stinging.
All around him in the great alchemist master’s London forge, teenage boys threw their entire arms into raging fires.And pulled them out again unscathed.
