Chapter Nineteen

He nudged her arm. “Calm down. Wolves aren’t going to ambush the Tube.”

“Says you,” Rebel whispered. “They hunted me through Piccadilly Circus.” Midnight had arrived on an ominous black cloud, as she elbowed her way down the Metro train and through the horde of people, feeling the warmth of the figure behind her.

“Then it’s a right thing I brought my vixen.” Jaxon patted his coat pocket, the sound of something within coming off as hard and metallic. His precious revolver. Thanks to his fox ways, they were once again magician-free.

Anjeline had been wrong. As Rebel knew she would be. Though Skinner’s behemoth had searched the Freebooter’s club high and low, Jaxon did what he was best at—he’d exploited their confusion, creating an elaborate story of how Rebel had betrayed him and carried off his loot, heading to Scotland, of all places. Skinner hadn’t questioned it, but left in a whirl to search hundreds of miles away. And, five hours later, they were smuggling into a populated train.

Rebel’s eyes remained wide and wild. Searching out anything appearing hairier than it should be. Thankfully, her pills kept her heart from beating out of her chest—or stopping altogether. Jaxon led them to the back, not bothering to explain wherever these secret traders he was taking them to resided. But she knew him well enough to know if he’d kept their identity secret, he was in good standing with them.

Farther down the train, people prattled on about the The Daily Mail. Most couldn’t be bothered to tear themselves away from their neck-breaking phones and glowing screens, but one sleepy boy on his mother’s shoulder stared at them, or rather, at the unusual female.

“He keeps staring.” Anjeline glared under her hoodie, her face half in shadows.

“Tends to happen when you’re fire incarnate,” Rebel said. “Told you to go feline.” The stare Anjeline gave her was a cross between a glare and a smirk. Hiding her face behind a hood was like hiding a sparkler behind a curtain. Even beneath the sickly Tube lights, the ends of her hair shimmered with heat.

Anjeline had refused to withdraw into the vase while in public or shape-shift into that Abyssinian cat, for it hurt her pride. Rebel knew she was trying to wear her down, which wasn’t supposed to work, especially on a Fingersmith who used all the tricks herself. But when she’d looked at Anjeline, the cuffs encircling her wrists and those doleful eyes, she’d relented. Keeping her promise. It was agonizing how easy Anjeline made her insides crumble. And now here she was, transporting a wish-granting jinni on the London Tube.

Worst idea ever.

But this new dynamic between them tipped whatever misgivings either had into unknown territory. It had been nearly midnight when Rebel blinked awake in the vase, absent of any threat, to the sensation of a humming in her chest’s core and a head of hair nuzzled beside her. As though she were in a dream world. The heat that had come off Anjeline was as tepid as the summer, setting her skin on fire, stretching against Rebel’s side with every wonderful curve and dip. For a while, she had watched as eyelids fluttered, Anjeline looking tousled, her hair in a gorgeous tangle. She reminded Rebel of an ancient painting. A face of soft desert curves that could soothe wounds and launch a thousand ships, a mouth that looked as if…

She kissed as easily as she breathed, a curious little part of her thought.

“Rebel?”

Anjeline caught her staring, and was now looking at her from under the hood with a devilish smirk. One eyebrow raised in amusement, seeming to know where her thoughts had drifted. “Just…thinking,” Rebel mumbled. If her imagination could’ve spoken at that moment, she would’ve probably been slapped.

While Jaxon casually flipped a coin between his fingers, a suited man shoved by him and between people to hoard a seat. A second later, Jaxon now had a wallet in his hands and a roguish grin on his lips. She stifled a laugh, but a fiery gaze caught the exchange.

“How do you judge?” Anjeline leaned closer, studying her. “Whose pocket to pick?”

Rebel tensed slightly. “We have a code. Rules.”

“Rules? That’s a word open to interpretation.”

She frowned, but noticed Anjeline’s gaze lacked its usual judgmental-ness. “Thieving’s survival,” she said. “Our moral code isn’t perfect, but at least we have one. No filching from the old, children, or the poor. Only those who can spare the loss.”

“Spare it.” Jaxon tutted. “Sometimes the fat cats who cause the poor to grow poorer need to learn the meaning of karma, and they learn it from me.”

Anjeline’s brow knitted together. “You believe they deserve to be stolen from?”

“Certainly.” Jaxon smiled sweetly. His pride a matter-of-fact.

Rebel shook her head. “Does anyone deserve anything? We survive. Birds eat ants. When they die, ants eat the bird. When you aren’t born with advantages, you do what you have to.” She chose thieving for more than one reason—it was a means by which she created balance, taking back the power that had been taken from her. A life she had no choice in.

Anjeline met her gaze. “But what’s a life if you’re just surviving it?” Her expression was one of complete understanding, knowing the horrid truth of what one must do.

Self-consciously, Rebel rubbed at her chest and remembered the shadows hardening Anjeline’s eyes just hours before, when she’d spoken of the past, her captor, and the many lives lost. How she looked like the universe weighed down her bones. Rebel was beginning to understand the burden of magic. Of wishes. She saw the invisible scars Anjeline wore, ones like her own, from fighting an endless battle. She wanted to show her the world, that there was happiness out there, not just the darkness permeating from others. From myself.

But she hoped Anjeline saw her in a different light now. Not as the Fingersmith. Not just a human, either. Her hand stayed within her satchel, needing to feel the vase the same way she needed to breathe, wondering if she could wish her heart anew, if she could free Anjeline, and if these people Jaxon claimed were able to help really could. The number of ifs was growing. And with her condition, tomorrow wasn’t a given.

The train came to another station.

As the doors gushed open bringing in cold air, more passengers bundled through, prodding inside and scrambling for a space. With each passing person, Rebel wondered if any held magic. Who knew of this world she’d been thrust into? Unease swept over her. Too many dangers. Too many strangers, filling the train with equal parts punch-drunk college kids, posh men and women, and those looking for one thing at this time of night. The train doors swished closed and a scent wafted around her nose.

She sniffed. “You smell that?”

“The Tube always smells like the bowels of London,” Jaxon said. He shook his head. “Smells like dog, or—”

“Lycans,” Anjeline hissed.

Panic spread as Rebel caught a glimpse of uniforms and a flash of crimson moving between the people. She jerked her head down and Anjeline clung to her arm in a hard grip. “The Night Guard,” she said, guiding Jaxon’s gaze to the twins.

“Well I’ll be. You’re having an exceptionally horrid week.” His eyes narrowed, observing the redheads from afar. Styria paraded her officer’s uniform, her sinuous features contrasting Vandal’s chiseled scowl and stalwart frame. A grin curled Jaxon’s mouth, looking positively foxlike. “I do fancy me a redhead or two.”

“Less fantasizing. More hiding.” Rebel slipped a hand in her pocket, grasping the bone hilt of her switchblade, and nudged Anjeline farther behind Jaxon. He puffed out his coat, blocking them from the twin’s view.

Step by agonizing step, Styria and Vandal searched through the train, slowly heading in their exact direction. Identical faces contorted wolfishly, snuffling out a scent. No doubt Rebel’s. Anjeline mumbled a curse. The mass of packed bodies pinned them in the corner, nowhere to exit but past the lycanthropes. The twins’ eyes roamed over each passenger, drawing closer and closer, till eventually they would land on a jinni.

“Anjeline,” she said. “I know I promised to never ask, but get in the vase.”

Pulling the hoodie farther down, Anjeline shook her head. “You think me vanishing in a cloud of smoke won’t draw attention? If those hellhounds want me, they’ll have to rip me from your side.”

Rebel faltered a little, her chest filling with a peculiar succor, and held tight to Anjeline’s hand, as if any moment she might drift away. And when Anjeline squeezed back, her stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with the threat.

“Calm down, loves. Don’t need silver to repel a beast.” Jaxon pulled something from his coat, but it wasn’t a revolver. He flipped the top of a metal toothpick holder and pinched between his fingers a flower stem crowned with spikes of blue petals in the form of a cylindrical helmet. Rebel knew what it was. She’d read about the wolf repellent. “Devil’s helmet, the queen of poisons,” he said, and his eyes twinkled at Anjeline. “We just need a pair of magical lips to blow it at the target.”

Bewilderment swept over Rebel and Anjeline at his sudden possession of it, but neither had time to question him as the twins were nearly upon them. Anjeline nodded. Her magic might be limited without a wish, but perhaps she could as least guide a flower. She leaned in, squeezed her lips together, and blew. An invisible force shrouded the aconite blossom and fluttered the pollen into the air. Petals swirled above, catching in a breeze, passing overtop human heads toward their goal.

Just when lycanthrope eyes were drifting toward them—a second before they would likely zero in on the Wishmaker—the twins stopped in their tracks.

As though hit with a current of wind, Styria and Vandal began blinking uncontrollably. Their features twisted between predator and human. The color of their irises flashed from amber to gray. They stumbled backward into the middle of the train, grabbing at their faces, and a sudden expulsion of air shot from their noses. Passengers gaped at them.

The train jerked and slowed to another stop.

Before anyone could move, Styria and Vandal growled and propelled through passengers, shouldering their way to claw at the windows. Once the doors hissed open, they tumbled out, and in a blink of an eye, were gone.

Rebel released the breath she’d been holding for dear life, and the furious grip on her arm lessened. Anjeline looked curiously at Jaxon, but if she were surprised, she didn’t show it. “You carry wolfsbane?” she asked.

“Where on earth did you get it?” Rebel stared at him in slight betrayal.

“Told you I have my ways.” With a single, gloved finger, Jaxon clicked his toothpick holder shut. “While you two were snuggling, I was preparing.”

He had the nerve to wink at Rebel and she glowered, more out of bravado for not thinking of it herself. She wondered if there weren’t many other things he was concealing from her. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Jaxon pursed his lips before letting out a dramatic sigh. “For one, our club simply won’t do for your protection.”

“These traders you’re taking us to have someplace safer?”

“Someplace near the river.” He nodded, smiling. At last, the train came to their stop: Tower Gateway. But as the doors dinged opened, his grin faded. “Down the rabbit hole.”