My shoulders dropped.
But what did I expect? That was what happened when you locked your heart away.
A quiet scuffling sounded from the corner of the room. Then the bed shook, and a family of mice squeaked and jumped free of the mattress, racing out the door. I frowned, shifting so I was balancing on my toes. I could run or I could fight, depending on what happened next.
The bed trembled, and the frame groaned. The mattress let out a puff of dust and a rotting, woolly smell. It tickled my nose and stung my eyes.
“Aaaa-choo!”
“Gesundheit.”
I startled. A man had said that, and his voice had come from under the bed.
I crouched down and peered into the shadows beneath the rusted frame. Then the bed shuddered, shook violently, and—with a giant, dusty whoomph—lurched, hiccupped, and finally jerked to a wheezing silence.
I knew what this was.
I had a visitor.
The dust settled, and as another sneeze tickled my nose, a shadowy figured yanked himself out from under the bed.
49
The sconces’ dim white light weakly bounced against the cloud of dust and fell away. The bed was a rusted frame, the wool mattress a shapeless, rotten mess, and the floor beneath the bed was no longer stone. It was a formless void. A black, empty space, like a becalmed lake on a moonless night.
My nose itched. The dust was still thick enough that the shadowed man looked as if he were a ghost rising from the water, emerging from a thick gray fog.
Shadowed hands gripped the stone floor. A shadowed face. A man lifted himself out of darkness.
My first thought was, Finn! Followed quickly by the realization that if it were Finn, I’d likely be fighting for my life. Hadn’t he left a note saying he’d try to kill me again?
It was barely after sunrise, a full day since the Smiths had destroyed Hell Gate. Maybe . . .
I bit the inside of my cheek.
It wasn’t Finn. I would’ve recognized his voice.
My second thought was that I was finally going to meet the monster under the bed. I’d heard this was how he traveled. Considering Last was afraid of him, he had to be dangerous.
I inched toward the door, keeping myself turned toward the bed, with my hands out. I may not have a weapon, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t fight.
The man coughed. Banged his head on the metal bed frame. Swore and then finally yanked himself out from under the bed.
It wasn’t Finn. It wasn’t the monster under the bed. It was. . .
“Harry?”
The slipshot was covered in dust, ash, and black streaks. His clothing was singed, wrinkled, and half of one of his pant legs had burned off.
Slipshots weren’t what anyone would call attractive. Being born from murder and greed, they had twisted mouths, crooked noses, eyes that were too big, ears that were too small, and strangely fluid bodies that could slip into cracks and crevices a creature their size should never be able to fit into. I once saw a slipshot squeeze between two metal bars that were spaced only three inches apart, which led me to the conclusion their bones weren’t solid. Or maybe, like Rou, they could shift between solid, liquid, and vapor.
I don’t know. Slipshots are notoriously cagey about their makeup.
“Thought I recognized that sneeze,” Harry said, grinning as I relaxed my stance.
Slipshots didn’t mind murdering. In fact, it was one of their favorite things to do. But Harry was one of the older slipshots and had mellowed with age. But although he’d stopped indiscriminate killings, he hadn’t stopped stealing. I narrowed my eyes on the box in his hands. It was the size of a thick paperback and made from cherry wood. The last time I’d seen it, it’d been hidden beneath the floorboards, under my bed, in my bedroom at Hell Gate.
I never kept anything in life that I’d regret losing. I also never kept anything that would link me, without a doubt, to Finn. No pictures. No letters. No buttons. No jewelry. No receipts or expired subway cards or movie tickets. But in that box, I did have a dried daisy chain, a sliver of mica, and a pebble. With them was a scrap of the blanket I’d supposedly been wrapped in when I was brought to Hell Gate and the note telling Jagger my name. Rou had given them to me when I’d become a nine. There was also a ticket to the Broadway show Justice, Griff, and I went to years ago. The box also used to hold the button I’d stolen from the Bards, but I’d given that to Finn. Other than that, I’d hidden the objects of power I’d taken from the Bard mansion in it. The comb of discernment and the “take in event of emergency” vial.
