Chapter Thirteen

Alive and tired.

Winter grazed wolf-gray fingers across the morning sky like a bad omen. In a matter of days, Rebel’s world had changed and she hardly recognized London as the one she grew up in. The only thing she did recognize was the half-decayed door to an abandoned carriage house she stood before, so covered with graffiti, posters from handbills and long-forgotten bands, one would never notice it was an entrance to a club. A thieves’ club.

The Freebooters.

The club itself was hidden among the less appetizing mews, converted into dwellings by vagabonds. There were other alleyways similar to this, hidden places, which had been abandoned and eventually forgotten, but Rebel knew this one like a second home.

It had been this very spot where she first encountered the fox, Jaxon. She had been a mere fourteen years old at the time, hungry, depressed, and pickpocketing for her medicine. Unfortunately, that night, she’d picked the wrong pocket. The man had caught Rebel. She remembered his bruising grip, his drunken breath, his insinuations, and how he said he would sell her to the highest bidder. Again and again. The way he slurred, “Smile for me” with his lips curled like some demon. When she’d struggled to get away, he’d attacked her.

She’d been one of the lucky ones.

With all the skills she’d absorbed through books and years of fending for herself, she fought back, her quick fingers grabbing the man’s gun from his holster, and she shot. The bullet had grazed his thigh, lower than her intention, but at least the coward had fled. Then she’d glanced up to see a young man crouched in the alley, laughing. Her hand quivered around the revolver and she had demanded, “Were you going to help me or watch?”

“Love, the coppers are on him.” The young man had tapped his phone and grinned, foxlike. “You were magical. Didn’t want to get between a girl putting a hole in a pimp.”

After that, she’d learn to keep a blade on her person at all times, and Jaxon had offered her a better way of thievery. Instead of picking pockets, she was picking locks. She’d found her calling: unlocking things that yearned to be opened. And with Jaxon’s astute teaching, she began stealing bigger items and came to wish upon a bigger goal. Though the rules of thievery meant never trusting anyone, she depended on Jaxon as one might a brother. A trust which had her now seeking his support with the most precious of things.

Rebel’s satchel grew heavy. “Keep your hair on,” she whispered to it. “We’re here.” She touched the vase inside and it warmed against her freezing fingers. “Jaxon’s never going to believe me about you. He needs to see it,” she’d told Anjeline, and they agreed she should withdraw into the vessel for now. London might have been a liberal place where about anything could be glimpsed on its streets, but Anjeline’s jinni-ness would’ve caused enough of a stir to tempt the attention of every magical eye in the city.

Behind a piece of the carriage house door, Rebel unhooked the latch showing the Freebooter’s symbol burned into the door: a circle with two arrows piercing through it. Signaling there was nothing worth stealing. They used the symbol to mislead other criminals. Thieves would scrawl secret signs on buildings to help fellow thieves know which homes or shops to target. The easy targets. The ones full of goodies.

Rebel liked tinkering with the symbols to drive others away. She might have been the Fingersmith, her morals might be slacked, but she disliked the thought of people’s homes being targets. A home she might have had in another life. Even if she’d stolen from those homes on occasion. She knew how much of a hypocrite it made her. But morals were a complicated thing, and it became the one way she kept her own darkness at bay.

The door creaked open and Rebel stepped into the vacant stable. It still stank of fowl and horses it had once housed. Its windows were boarded up, but a few pigeons perched themselves on the rafters. She passed the stalls and a rundown carriage, which had become a nest for rats, and made her way to the stairwell. To anyone else, it appeared to be an empty property, gray and unwanted. But this one housed life.

Something sharp touched Rebel’s spine and a voice said, “Oi? Password?”

Passwords. Thieves and cons loved them.

“Furuncle Ferret,” she answered.

The voice snickered. “Nope.”

“Excuse me?”

“Password’s changed.”

Rebel sighed. The beasties loved toying with her. “Pike, you know who I am. Remove the blade or I’ll pop you like a boil.”

With a grumble, the sharp object was withdrawn from her back.

She turned to the sight of Pike, swathed in black with a shock of brown hair atop his head. Three other figures resembling human-sized tarantulas moved about the ceiling rafters. One by one, they dropped to the floor, and the figures straightened up, becoming young thieves. One male, two females, and a Pike.

“Fingersmith.” Pike gave a roused grin. “Liberate anything for the club?”

“Nothing you could handle,” Rebel said. “Jaxon here?”

Pike pointed his dagger up at the stairs. “Training with his treasures.”

As Rebel followed the crew up the stairwell, the steps vibrated the closer they came to the top, due to the pounding music coming from the soundproofed main room of the house. Once Pike drew back the steel doors, voices mixed with beats reached her ears, and she entered the room to an endless wealth of mischief and a carnival of teenagers.

A metal furnace occupied the center room, puffing out warmth. Bunk beds lined the walls. Stolen rugs covered the rundown floorboards, where more young thieves lounged, playing music, draping themselves on stolen sofas, playing stolen games on an enormous television, while others were arranging boxes of “merchandise” for their business.

Once they noticed Rebel’s presence, some stiffened a little and curious eyes wavered, as her reputation preceded her. She had heard the hearsay and rumors often enough. The Fingersmith’s hands were part mechanical. The Fingersmith obtained her special touch from the devil. A single brush of her fingers could unlock a soul. Or the other rumor that changed each time it was repeated. At fourteen years old, she had shot a man. Even if it were true. Even if it were by blind luck, self-defense, and the pimp hadn’t died. It still gave cause to her reputation. To not meddle with the Fingersmith.

Pike led her farther toward the back, coming upon the training room. Thin mattresses padded the walls, and a ruckus of voices were within. Rebel leaned against the doorframe, watching. A few others had gathered, taking in the techniques as Jaxon sparred with Basil, one of the newest Freebooters. He was thick-necked, twice as tall as Jaxon, and didn’t possess a lick of talent.

Jaxon dodged a fist. “Come on, Biggey, put those massive shoulders into it.”

Another swing and miss. Hair fell into Jaxon’s russet eyes, forever filled with mischief. He was every inch the vulpine rumor claimed him to be, from the way he moved his limbs, to his symbolic jacket of many colors trimmed in foxtails. He had been in every dark corner of the city, every hideout, every club run by the biggest boss and lowliest goon, as his father used to be embroiled in the mafia.

Keeping his stance engaged, once more Basil swung. Jaxon sidestepped, swirling around the big boy, and gave him a slap to the back as if it were an invisible knife. “If this were real,” Jaxon said, “you’d be pushing up daisies right now.”

The group applauded.

Though Jaxon lived by a code, or so they liked to believe, this was his business: rescuing guttersnipes to educate them on the dos and don’ts of surviving. He was the information man, sniffing out things to steal and sending others to snatch it. Which translated into passing along lockpick tricks, running street cons and shell games, turning them into professional thieves. Stealing from the well-off for when their stomachs twisted in hunger. Protecting the boys from dealing, protecting the girls from being trafficked.

The Freebooter’s hideout was home to all manner of hodgepodge objects and orphans. The “lost children” of street kids. And Jaxon became the Pan to their Neverland.

Once the training room dispersed, Jaxon patted Basil on the shoulder. The boy glared, upset, but moved on to spar with a prettier Freebooter. Siblings came to offer Jaxon his usual items he required—Fani handing him a cup of tea and Fadil lit a cigarette for him.

“You know, those things will be having you pushing up daisies,” Rebel voiced.

A smile enveloped Jaxon’s face once he saw her. “Well, well. The Queen of Thieves has graced us with her presence,” he said. “Enjoy the show?”

She chuckled. “You’re like an awful mother hen to them.”

“The beasties see me as more of a savant.” Jaxon winked. With a cigarette in one hand and a teacup in the other, he ushered Rebel into his private office. Another out-of-place looking room occupied with posh furnishings, big-ticket electronics, and just about any object you could dream up. He leaned against his desk littered with pirated treasures. “So, where, pray tell, has the ever elusive Fingersmith been?”

“Trying to be ever elusive.” She let out a breath.

“Aren’t you a sight, love. You look worse than a drenched cat with emphysema.” He glanced over her bruised cheek and the bandage poking out of her torn jacket. “Did your fingers mysteriously find their way into something that bit back?”

“You could say that,” she said, worried over voicing what all she’d experienced. “Skinner hasn’t contacted you, has he?”

Jaxon shrugged, but his expression turned to displeasure. “He’s rung several times, but I’ve been busy the last few days. Had to make up for the loot a Fingersmith promised me.” He waved a hand in the air. “I thought we made a deal when you hawked that treasure?”

“Yeah, about that.” She withdrew the vase from her satchel, her grip gentle as not to disturb Anjeline within. “It’s not exactly an object for sale.”

Rebel told him everything. Told him how she’d wished her entire life, how fate had bestowed the vase into her hands, and then rushed through the last few days. Skinner’s dragons. Lycanthropes hunting her across Piccadilly Circus into the tunnels. Madame Gramone’s witchy ways. And now, how some Prince of the underneath had every foul creature tracking her for the Wishmaker.

At last, she spoke of Anjeline.

When Rebel did, she found her pulse racing, sensing the heat of the vase in her palm. “She’s a real, tangible jinni… She’s pure fire and light, bringing out the god-light of every color around you…” Rebel said, a little too dreamily, and remembered Anjeline could perceive everything outside the vessel’s confinement.

“Calm down, Shakespeare.” Jaxon cleared his throat, mulling everything over, and put out his cigarette. “Are you telling me someone finally trapped the untrappable Fingersmith?”

“Technically, no. As you can see, I’m free.” She glanced down at herself, not mentioning the wish that had saved her, hoping if she ignored it, the price wouldn’t come.

Jaxon eyed the vase in her hands. “Did Skinner witness this—Wishmaker?”

“Not exactly. He was too occupied trying to melt my face off.”

“And Gramone? Did she tail you?”

Rebel shook her head. He poured himself another cup of tea but didn’t seem disturbed. In fact, he appeared passive. She squinted at him, questions cramming against other questions. “Did you know whose apartment that belonged to before you got me involved?”

Up went one of his brows. “Your words sound awfully skeptical.”

“As skeptical as yours. Just wondering how you knew about the safe.”

“How else do I find my targets? Overheard it from a little birdie. Thieves don’t go around discussing how to purloin a…jinni.” His eyes rolled skyward and he chuckled. “‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’” It was an English proverb, meaning wishing was useless or even the lowliest vagabond would have everything they desired. Jaxon, the perpetual skeptic, wasn’t one to believe in magic or pin his faith on fate, not when untold kids had been kicked to the unforgiving streets.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

Jaxon ran a hand through his curls and brought the teacup to his lips. “It’s a lot to take in, love. Knitted dragons come to life, werewolves living in the Tube tunnels, witches managing an Institute, and such. You sure it’s not a sign of your pills playing with your head?”

She glared with dignity. “Don’t be rude. I know I don’t look well.”

The passiveness on his face faded, replaced by a curious light. “If it’s true, then let’s see a little magic.” He gestured to the vase. “Show me your Wishmaker.”

Rebel’s insides warmed. “She’ll take your breath away.”