I puff my chest a little. “I’d make a terrific cop.”
“I’m sure you would.” He smiles with his eyesandwith his mouth. “I was implying crime would escalate, because men would be begging for you to cuff them.”
Oh.Heat fills my face so suddenly that I want to peel off my wool turtleneck. But then I remember that he’s slick, and so his compliment—if that’s what that was—is simply a veiled attempt at getting what he wants. Plus, I’m not wearing anything underneath the chunky knit.
I level a glacial stare. “Give me a real reason to let you look through the archives, and maybe I’ll consider your request.”
The charming mask slips off his face, and I see the hardened boy who told me to make my own luck.
“Fine.” He digs through his pocket again, pulls out another folded paper, then drops it in my hands.
It’s a birth certificate. Which is weird. Who the heck carries around their birth certificate?
He points to the line bearing the name.Rémy Roland.
I frown. “I thought your name was Slate?”
“It is. I only just found out about the unfortunate other one.”
I wrench my neck back. “But I thought . . . I thought the Roland bloodline died out.”
“Is everything okay?” Adrien’s making his way back toward us, his strides slow but long, as though he’s trying to reach me quickly but without spooking Slate.
“It lives on.” Slate’s harsh tone reveals a nest of anger.
“What lives on?” Adrien asks.
“Slate . . . he’s . . . Rémy.” I lower my gaze back to the birth certificate. I’m not sure whether I could tell a fake from a real, but for some reason, I don’t think Slate’s lying about his lineage or the fact that he’s just found out.
I hand the paper over to Adrien, whose forehead grooves, then smooths. “Rainier mentioned he’d found you.” Something flickers in his expression as he returns the paper to Slate, who slots it back into the breast pocket of his coat. “And so he has.”
Slate’s mouth moves and then Adrien’s, but I’ve checked out, hurt Papa confided in Adrien but not in me.
Adrien touches the back of my hand, jerking me out of my bubble. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Peachy.”
He frowns.
Before he can comment on my mood, I spin around and all but bark at Slate, “Follow me.”
The guy has the nerve to answer, “To the ends of the earth.”
As our footsteps echo on the tiles, I toss him a blistering look. “Quit the charm. It won’t work on me, Rémy.”
“Slate. And is that a challenge?”
“No.”
“I like challenges.”
“It’snota challenge,” I mutter as I lead him toward the glass trapdoor and the subterranean floor beneath.
The gears of the clock take up almost all the space, but around it, Papa’s built a glassed-in archival room to preserve Brume’s oldest and most fragile books. Not all are about the town. There are some first editions Baudelaire, Hugo, and Rousseau. National treasures.
As I unlock the door with a swipe of my thumb on a digital keypad, I look behind me. Slate’s eyes are wide with wonder.
He goes to touch one of the enormous cogs when I stop him with a sharp, “Don’t.”
