64

Brielle swims back to consciousness like she’s crawling through mud. The ache in her head is the worst she’s ever felt. The pain in her body isn’t far behind. When she opens her eyes, the light around her is so harsh and white that she lets out a groan.

Something moves beside her—a body wrapped in fabric, the fabric wrapped in smoke—and a familiar voice rasps, “Thought I’d lost you there for a while.” Calloused hands graze her face. The light behind her eyelids dims. Then the man who helped raise her gently lifts her head and buckles a strap behind her ears. “Figured you’d want these as soon as you woke,” Shaw says.

Brielle sighs under the weight of her goggles. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing,” Shaw says back.

She tries to open her eyes, but even with her lenses on, everything keeps spinning. She groans and winces her eyes shut again. “Where am I?”

For a moment, the detective doesn’t say anything at all. Then he finally whispers, “Home.”

And Brielle doesn’t have the energy to ask which home he means. The one she calls her own? The one where he took her in? Or the one she grew up in . . . the one she shared with Mom?

Maybe it doesn’t really matter in the end.

“Home,” she whispers.

“That’s right.” The detective clears his throat and fiddles with something papery. “So,” he says, dragging the word out, “there are a lot of questions that need answering. Are you ready to tell me what happened on that train?”

Brielle’s mind fills with the face of a boy with night-blue eyes. Her jaw aches from the ghostly grip of a metal hand. Her misty fingers clench inside her glove, and her insides swirl in a delirious sort of way, and soon it all collapses into a blazing point—a name that forces its way past her lips as if gravity itself were pulling it out of her. “Kemple,” she blurts out. “Where’s Kemple?”

Shaw clears his throat and says, “The boy? I was hoping you could tell me. There was a lot of blood left behind. And clear signs of a struggle. But our . . . friend is nowhere to be found.”

The detective’s words feel like claws digging into her skin. Like a pantry door creaking open all over again. Her throat tightens and her voice comes out in a whisper. “How much blood?”

“Enough to expect that he couldn’t have gotten far.”

Brielle tries not to picture Kemple bleeding out somewhere, his eyes squeezed shut, his body going limp, but the image slithers into her mind anyway, and a whimper escapes her lips. “We have to find him,” she mutters, forcing her eyes open. She blinks up at Shaw’s hazy silhouette and says, “He was more than just a monster. And Viola must’ve known it. We have to find him before . . . before it’s too late.”

Shaw lets out a weary sigh and paws at his messy hair. For a moment it looks like he’s about to give her an annoying lecture on loss and grief. Or worse: about love. But then he stuffs his notepad into his coat and gives her a slow nod. “Okay,” he says firmly. “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Brielle lets out a slow, shaky breath—just enough to take the edge off the storm raging inside her. Then she sits up with a jolt.

“Easy there,” Shaw says, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You still got some healing to do.”

But Brielle isn’t listening anymore. She’s already shoving his hand aside. Already getting to her feet.

She has a score to settle with a certain clockwork girl . . . and a monstrous boy to save.