Though the mansion is still lit up like a jack-o’-lantern in the night, this part of the garden is dark. I squint, trying to see through the latticework of the hedge, but it’s impossible.
It could be more of the staff trying to get home.
Surely whatever danger is behind the alarm wouldn’t have made it all the way across town and to the mansion in that short amount of time.
I take a few tentative steps forward, then stop to listen.
There’s only silence now on the other side of the hedge.
I was probably hearing things.
Hands fisted in my dress, I pick up the pace. But as I pass the archway, two strong hands reach through and yank me back.
“I’ve got her,” a deep, husky voice says.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Scarecrow
It’s complete chaos.
People are rushing for the ballroom doors, but the hallway out is a bottleneck and people quickly stack up.
Looking for escape and finding none, they turn into feral animals practically gnawing at one another to get free.
Across the ballroom, Kansas is still scanning the crowd looking for me. When she doesn’t immediately spot me, she takes her red dress in hand and disappears through the open balcony doors.
I set down one of two glasses of ozrum on a nearby table, then swill back the second glass, the alcohol warming my throat.
The music has halted, the band gone. There is only the symphony of panic and terror now.
A chair is knocked over. A woman calls out for her partner. Someone trips and a string of lights flickers and goes dark.
I check my newly acquired pocket watch. Has it been several hours since Fink’s guard warned him about the Tinman’s arrival? I suspect it’s close enough.
Leaving the main exit behind, I follow in Kansas’s footsteps and exit through the balcony doors.
Down the steps, I spot her trailing behind several staff members, her dress clutched in hand. When the servants leaveher, she searches for a way in the dark and decides to follow the trail to the front of the house.
“Kansas,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me.
I quicken my steps, but I’m not quick enough.
Someone snatches her through an archway in the garden and she lets out a yelp.
“I’ve got her,” someone says. Not the Tinman. One of Fink’s guards.
“Help!” she calls.
I stumble through the archway. “Let her go.”
“Rook.” My temporary name is almost a sigh on her lips.
A man twice my size has her back held tightly against his chest. It’s the same guard Fink met at the guardhouse. I never caught his name but he looks like a Brutus or maybe a Belcher. He has two other guards with him, both of them big, burly men.
“Or what?” one of them asks.
I say nothing. They all laugh, thinking this must be confirmation that I am scared.
