Then Jules was at her side, pressing a linen bag into her arms.Zaria hadn’t even seen him dart back into the workshop. “Here are your things. I’ll see you later. Becareful.” At Elijah’s suspicious glance, he added, “About—er—overextending yourself.”
Zaria brushed the dirt from her dress with her free hand. “I’m always careful.”
Jules’s responding scoff echoed in the narrow street.
ZARIA
The moment Zaria heard the explosion, she knew it was time.
She hadn’t needed to use alchemology to make the shed collapse. All she’d required was an adequate amount of fuel, an oxidizer, and a metal casting to protect them both. It was far more rudimentary than anything Zaria was accustomed to creating, but a regular explosive would get the job done just as well.
The key was what had required the primateria. Truth be told, it wasn’t so much a key as it was a lock-picking tool. When inserted into the lock and turned, it would release a tiny amount of magic—not dissimilar to the way magic bullets were fired from an alchemological gun. This, Zaria hoped, ought to be enough to disintegrate the lock’s metal pins. She regretted that she hadn’t been able to test it on the workshop door, but with Elijah standing right outside, it hadn’t been possible. That was the thing about alchemology, though—she’dbeen able to picture exactly how itshouldwork, which lent her enough confidence to believe that it would.
If the sound and resulting smell were any indication, then Jules had triggered the explosion perfectly. The acrid stench of smoke and fuel had found its way into Zaria’s rooms through the window, and she smiled to herself. She still wasn’t feeling quite right after her earlier episode, but she was clearheaded enough to see this through.
She pressed her ear to the door. Hearing nothing, she dared to crack it open, squinting into the dark corridor. It was a couple of hours before dawn, which meant the manor was mostly vacant. NobodybutElijah—and, hopefully, Kane—would be available to investigate the source of the explosion. Indeed, Zaria couldn’t see anyone outside her rooms. She didn’t know how much time she had, but knew it wouldn’t be long. Grabbing her inventions, she crept in her stocking feet to the other end of the corridor, trying to ignore the shadows in her periphery. Tension coiled like a snake in the pit of her stomach as she approached Kane’s office door and grasped the handle.
It was… open.
That couldn’t be right. It didn’t make sense. Was Kanein there?
But no light emanated from beneath the door, and he certainly wouldn’t have ignored the commotion outside. No. It must have been a mistake.
Despite her misgivings, Zaria turned the handle. She felt as if her pulse were reverberating through her entire body. When she found the office empty, the reverberations became a fluttering that threatened to burst from her chest. She was in.
Kane’s office felt like an entirely different place in darkness. There was something ominous about the cabinet with its various curiosities. The taxidermied animals seemed to watch her with their beady,expressionless eyes. Most unnerving, however, was the strange, relentless sensation that Kane washeresomehow. Although that obviously wasn’t the case, his presence permeated the small room, as if he’d spent so much time in the office that part of him had decided to linger. Foreboding crept across Zaria’s skin like an itch, but she did her best to ignore it—she didn’t have time to feel anything, save determination.
She elected to look in the most logical places first, wrenching the desk drawers open with unsteady hands. The first one contained merely writing utensils and empty pipes. The second contained invoices, which piqued her interest. Upon shuffling through them, however, she realized that none contained any identifying information. Instead, a number was scrawled at the top of each invoice.
Frowning, Zaria flipped through the sheets of paper again. At first glance, the numbers seemed to have been assigned in ascending order, but every so often one would repeat several times or a much lower number would appear out of the blue. Sometimes they didn’t appear to be in any order at all. Was it a kind of code? Given Ward’s penchant for secrecy, it wouldn’t have surprised her.
“Wait a minute,” she muttered. Breath catching, she shoved the documents back into the drawer, then yanked another one open. She was grossly overcomplicating things. The numbers weren’t a code—not in the way she’d been thinking, anyway. Each number had to represent a customer. Someone Ward or Kane had taken money from. The repeating numbers must be people who’d paid them multiple times at once, and the lower numbers were repeat customers from weeks or months beforehand.
Which meant that somewhere in this office was a document indicating which client corresponded to which number.Thatwas more important than a ledger. If Zaria could get her hands on a listof every person the dark market kingpin had ever done business with, she would be going above and beyond what Vaughan had asked of her.
As she sorted through another stack of documents, though, her stomach soured. It was absurd to feel a shred of guilt after everything Kane had done, but she didn’t exactly relish the idea of watching another kingpin snatch power out from under his nose. Besides, who was to say Vaughan wouldn’t be worse than Kane? Worse than Ward, even? Zaria couldn’t see an outcome in which Kane lost authority of the dark market but retained control over Devil’s Acre. It would be different if she had no connection to the slum, but it was populated by her neighbors, acquaintances, and colleagues. She didn’t feel a particular fondness for any of them, but she certainly didn’t want to make their lives harder than they already were.
Then again, she needed to focus on what mattered: her own life and Jules’s. It would do no good to incur Vaughan’s wrath when her fears were merely hypothetical. All she needed to worry about right now was finding this goddamned—
Zaria froze, her mouth going dry. Were those footsteps she’d heard in the hall? She’d only been here a few moments, but it was possible Elijah had decided to come back inside rather than leave her door unguarded a moment longer. He wasn’t the type to stick his head into her rooms and ensure she was still asleep, but his presence would make gettingoutof here a problem.
Her ears buzzed as she strained to listen, but the footsteps seemed to have stopped. The only noise came from outside, where Elijah was undoubtedly still trying to determine the cause of the explosion.
Panic ebbing slightly, Zaria closed the last of the drawers with a frustrated sigh, then turned to examine the bookshelf. Hiding animportant logbook in plain sight sounded exactly like something Kane would do. She squinted through the dark, running a finger along the spines as she tried to make out the titles.
A creak sounded from the other side of the room. Her heart lurched into her mouth, and she turned, a silent scream tearing from her lungs as she was suddenly slammed against the bookcase. The force of her weight threw the shelving unit off-balance, several tomes hitting the ground with a resonant thud that Zaria barely heard. Because there werehandsfastened around her upper arms, grip unyielding, and she gasped for air as if they encircled her throat instead.
“Miss Mendoza.” Her name was a barely audible exhale. “Just what thefuckdo you think you’re doing in my office?”
It was Kane. The lines of his face were positively predatory, his lips twisted in a snarl, his hair in uncharacteristic disarray. When Zaria dared meet his eyes, she found his pupils blown wide, black almost entirely obscuring the hazel irises. He smelled of smoke and rain and exuded violence.
He didn’t sound surprised to find her here, Zaria noted distantly, struggling to think of an answer to his question. An explanation for her presence that didn’t have to do with Vaughan’s assignment. Her thoughts seemed to have stalled, though—Kane was standing too close, his grip on her arms too tight. The longer she looked into his furious, shadowed face, the more his features blurred together, transforming him into someone unrecognizable. Black spots dotted her vision.
Oh no. No, no,no. This could not be happening now. She still felt drained, and the nausea had reared its head a few times over the course of the evening, but she’d thought she was finally in the clear. She took deep breaths in and out through her nose, trying to calmher racing heart. Desperately willing the ceiling to stop tilting above her. She was in control. Her mind was more powerful than her body. She merely had to convince herself of that fact.
When her knees buckled, she knew it was no use.
A gasp escaped her as she crumpled against the bookcase, held up only by Kane’s relentless grip. He lurched forward, widening his stance, ensuring she didn’t hit the floor. A jolt of horror lanced through her. Her vision swam as she tried to get her legs back under her. All she could see was Kane’s chest. The way it lifted and fell in quick succession as he lowered her to sit, her back pressed against the bookshelves, legs out straight. Zaria shuttered her eyes, embarrassment and dread flooding her as Kane crouched at her side. Rage emanated from him like something physical.
