Though Jin had flipped the OPEN! sign to CLOSED on Spindrift with a heavy heart, reassuring himself that they would only remain closed until they retrieved the ledger, not a single member of the crew had a moment’s rest as Arthie delegated tasks in the lead-up to the Athereum’s Festival of Night.
Today he was getting those handwriting samples for Flick. He hopped out of a hansom cab in Admiral Grove, tipping his hat as the horse trundled away. He glanced at the address Matteo had given him a few days ago. The trees swayed in greeting, the hush hush of their leaves flinging him back years and years. He straightened the lapels of his coat and double-checked the laces on his shoes, swallowing to make sure the buttons of his shirt were all up. As if Admiral Grove was still his home, and not the grave of a child long gone.
When Jin was a little boy and Arthie was a little girl, she taught him the secret to survival. It wasn’t food or a warm place to huddle every night. It wasn’t coin or clean water.
It was preoccupation. He couldn’t cry for his parents if he was busy running for his life. He couldn’t panic if his hands were busy swiping coin.
There were days when Jin thought Arthie had engrossed herself so deeply into their new life that she’d forgotten the one she had before it. It was why she never spoke of it. It was why there was no sorrow in her eyes, nor fear. Only anger, bright and vengeful as a fire, boiling hotter than Spindrift tea.
Movement up ahead caught his eye. Flick was waiting on one of the many benches placed beneath the street’s arching trees. Were those … pants she was wearing under her calf-length dress? Well, well, Felicity, what a surprise. He was fairly certain those were Arthie’s pants, but the outfit was far more suited to their impending task than her lavender one from the other day, even if the lovely moss green was still too bright. Any more vibrant, and he would have feared arsenic poisoning just from being near her. A twill, mid-length coat in a soft brown completed the ensemble.
Jin was like her, once. Oblivious, innocent, shoes shined by someone else, clothes pressed before he woke, never a concern for the roof above his head. He had no grievances about what he’d become, but he missed what he had been.
Perhaps missed was the wrong word, because that meant he was ready to up and leave Arthie and Spindrift and everything else behind at first chance, when he wasn’t.
He had changed, and that was what he wasn’t proud of. He’d allowed the streets to rip a young boy apart and put something else together in his stead. The same happened to anyone who was displaced, to Chester, to Reni, to Arthie, but change, for Arthie Casimir, was a finely tailored suit that fit all her edges well. She sought it out.
Flick didn’t.
And though she wasn’t his to force back into a mold she might have outgrown, he wouldn’t allow his world to be the reason why she felt she needed to break free of it.
He stopped.
A flame danced from a brass lighter in her hand, growing like a beast threatening to jump down his throat.
“Hello, Jin,” she said, and his heart did something funny, but maybe that was because she pocketed the lighter as she spoke.
“Felicity,” he replied, dipping his chin. She started to correct him before he peered at her through the curls shrouding most of her face. “Why are you hiding?”
“This is Admiral Grove.” She ducked deeper into her coat. “What if I’m spotted?”
Because people like them didn’t blend in with the tone of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the texture of their hair, or the lilt of their tongues. We’re meant to stand out, Arthie would say, but Jin would be lying if he said he didn’t sometimes wish for anonymity.
“Sitting still will ensure that, you know,” Jin replied, gesturing with a hand. “After you, m’lady.”
“Have you heard from your snitchers?” she asked, and the hope in her voice made it hard to hold her gaze. “Has my mother come to check on me?”
Jin started walking. He didn’t want to lie, but he had heard from their snitchers, and Felicity Linden’s mother had not, in fact, checked on her. She hadn’t even sent a footman. Flick shot him a look, surprising him with the flint in her gaze, and marched ahead in the direction of the Thorne sisters’ house.
“I asked you a question,” she said eventually, keeping to the white-bricked wall beside them. She was careful, despite her guile, and Jin felt she knew, deep down, that her mother might not have even thought of her. But admitting something was far more difficult than knowing it.
She tilted her head again. “Did my mother say something … distasteful?”
Jin sighed. If only, love, he thought to himself.
He double-checked the address for the umpteenth time just to give himself something to do. Flick watched him.
Lie, he told himself, but when he opened his mouth, the fib wouldn’t form. Irritation took hold instead. Irritation at Arthie for dragging Flick into their mess. Irritation at Lady Linden for abandoning her daughter.
“Jin, answer my—”
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t, and because he couldn’t use his words, he closed the distance between them. Flick took a step back, and then another, until he had her caged between him and the wall. She smelled of sunlight and wildflowers, underlined by her soap, a peachy scent that was as sweet as his pastries. Jin had to stop himself from leaning in and burying his nose in her hair. He tossed his umbrella to his other hand, wishing he could take her back home and tuck her into her quilts and slippers and the care of maids.
“I know what you’re doing,” she whispered.
“Oh?” he asked. “And what is that?”
Only a tiny sound answered from the back of her throat, half whimper, half growl.
“You were given a job, Felicity,” he said. “A job you agreed to undertake, and when we work, we don’t let distractions come between us.”
He bent closer, just in time to catch her gaze sweep across his lips like a touch. His pulse jumped. Her breath tangled with his, rough and surprised and as shocked as her hooded eyes of deep, dark gold that glittered like black diamonds.
“You—” Jin knew he was damned when he had to clear his own throat. “You understand me?”
“I understand,” she whispered, and he should not have followed the bow of her lips shaping the words. He should not have let his eyes wander over the gentle curve of her cheek, the lush coils of her lashes, the anticipation clinging to the air between them.
He ground out a breath and straightened. “Now come. Criminal activities await.”
Then he rapped his umbrella on the pavement and walked away.
“Such a pretty house,” Flick said, when they stopped before a handsome dwelling with more stories than were necessary and a pitched roof. The awning rippled in the breeze, rosebuds swaying in the trim garden.
A hopeless laugh slipped out of him. “So insouciant.”
“I beg your pardon! Doesn’t that mean I’m childish?”
“You’re a toff, Felicity,” Jin said. “Didn’t you learn your words?”
She ducked her head. “I prefer the art of them. The way they’re written.”
“The … art of handwriting,” Jin said.
Flick nodded. “The way we can deduce a thousand things about the person who wrote a word just by studying the way they wrote it. The way they dot their i’s or cross their t’s, the way their script might loop or slant. Were they angry? In love? Harried or at leisure? Frivolous or perhaps conceited, and so their rhetoric was better ignored than heeded? Words themselves can’t always unfold a person the way their writing can.”
It was the most romantic way of looking at the world, which meant it fit Flick and her pastel hues and fierce curls just right.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
Jin hadn’t even realized he was staring. Get yourself together, man. And why was he having a hard time finding what to say when he usually had no trouble stringing together exactly what a woman wanted to hear?
Flick was suddenly shy. “Let’s just—” She stopped and gestured to the house.
“Right,” Jin said quickly, nearly tripping as he turned around.
Most of the windows were closed, their curtains drawn. Only a single one on the second floor was propped open. Why couldn’t it have been the balcony doors, just several yards away? Jin ignored the drainpipe in favor of the frills that jutted in enough places that the house was a fancy ladder itself.
“Hitch your skirts, love,” Jin said, gripping what he could.
Flick didn’t reply. Jin reached for another handhold and then the next, relaxing his toes on a windowsill before he looked down. Flick hadn’t even moved. She was standing by the house, watching his ascent with uncertainty.
Her face scrunched in confusion, and she said, quite sweetly, “But why hitch your skirts when you can open a door?”
Jin screwed his jaw shut. He hadn’t seen the door. Because you always overthink, Arthie commented in his head. “Didn’t know you could pick a lock.”
“Oh, I can’t,” Flick admitted. “It was open, actually.”
Jin sucked in a slow breath. “Were you going to wait until I got to the top?”
She tilted her head. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
He sighed and dropped to the damp grass, then followed her inside the house. It was cool and almost sterile, if not for the fresh planks of cedar stacked on the counter of an unlit kitchen. Barely a kitchen, really, for it was devoid of food, and Jin didn’t think the crystal glasses lining the shelves were used for juice. Light cut through the curtains and fell across Flick, illuminating a single eye in a shade of deep gold that reminded him of a sunlit meadow with sunflowers wide and wild.
“Jin?”
Right. The mission at hand. This was already going splendidly.
“Anything of use will be on the upper floors,” he murmured, creeping out of the kitchen. He held out his umbrella to stop her from parading onward. “Careful.”
She pushed past him. “Matteo said the house is empty.”
“Still—”
Flick froze on the second-floor landing then whirled to him with wide eyes.
Jin didn’t think. He bounded up the stairs three at a time and shoved her into the nearest open room with him, ignoring her surprised yelp. The sisters supposedly worked at the local bank until nightfall. Jin glanced at the draped window where the sun was pressed against the heavy fabric. It was barely noon.
Matteo had lied.
Which meant anything he’d told them about the Athereum could be a lie too. Jin was going to sharpen a stake and sharpen it some more and then finish the job he’d begun when he’d shot him. He pressed a finger to his lips and peered around the doorjamb until he heard what Flick had.
Well.
Measured sounds slipped out of the bedroom at the end of the hall. Jin relaxed his hold. He snuck a peek at Flick and immediately regretted it when a moan slithered beneath the closed door.
“Aren’t we going to see?” Flick asked, eyes wide.
“To—” Jin stopped and faced her fully. “Oh-ho, Felicity. What have we here? A voyeur?”
“A what? No!” Flick said, too mortified to bristle at his use of her full name. “Why would you say that? Whoever that is could be hurt!”
Ah. He reconsidered her. Despite her days on the streets, with a mother like Lady Linden, Flick was even more sheltered than a typical girl of high society.
“No one’s in pain besides me. Let’s go.”
Flick didn’t move, the vexing girl. “What do you mean?”
“They’re in a bedroom, love. What do you think vampires do to pass the time?” he asked pointedly.
She paused, and he knew the right answer had dawned upon her by the way her skin flushed like the sky before sunset and her gaze settled to the ground.
“Oh. I didn’t—I didn’t know it sounded like that,” she murmured to herself.
Jin found himself unable to leave her be. “Well?”
“I didn’t know what they did to pass the time!” she sputtered. “Take up knitting!”
“Oh, they’re knitting all right. And you really need to dress more appropriately for jobs like these. You could have been seen. You stand out like a flag.”
Flick gasped. “Better a flag than to dress like someone’s dead.”
Jin laughed. He scanned the hall and found the glass doors of an office. Empty house or not, he was going to get her those samples. At the door, he dug out a lockpick and gently worked it in until Flick bumped his arm and it struck with a tink that rang as loud as a blast.
“I may be irresistible, love, but I’m also claustrophobic,” he whispered. She shuffled a few steps back, and Jin listened as the pins fell beneath his ministrations, the lock finally giving way with a pleasurable click.
“Not through yet,” he murmured, tugging his gloves off with his teeth. He withdrew a tiny case out of his pocket and swiped at the gel with his finger, rubbing it down the hinges and coating the metal nice and slick. Flick stared. Jin had to bite his cheek against a thought.
He pulled open the quiet doors with a flourish. A heavy oak desk sat in the center of the ample office littered with papers and files. There were pens scattered among open books, and a monocle dangled off a lamp. A cart similar to Matteo’s was off to the side with a decanter full of blood.
“Grab yourself a drink and get to work,” Jin instructed.
“Very funny,” Flick whispered.
She tiptoed around, her hand hovering over the desk, reaching but touching nothing, a shadow of fascination on her face.
“In your own time,” he added.
Flick scowled. “I can’t work with you standing over me.”
“Would you prefer I sat down?”
She flung open the curtains with a tiny growl then, realizing they could be spotted, closed them back up. Jin watched as she pulled out her supplies, focus slipping into the crease of her brow and the planes of her face. She layered a graphite sheet and then a slip of paper under a diary page, slowly tracing over it with a pen.
Jin released a breath and dug out a clove rock. It was only after it struck his teeth and settled on his tongue that he heard it.
Footsteps. Someone was coming down the hall.
He scoured the room for a place to hide, but these were vampires. His pulse was erratic, his heart like a horse gone wild. Hiding wouldn’t help. He added Matteo’s name to the growing list of people he’d enact vengeance upon when he was dead, right there beneath Arthie’s.
“Do you trust me?” Jin asked. He flicked a look at the window and mentally mapped the perimeter of the house.
Flick’s laugh was like brittle glass. “Not entirely.”
“Good girl. Grab a few samples and, at my command, run to the next room and jump from the balcony. It’s time for plan C.”
She stopped gathering her things. “What? We’re on the second floor! What’s plan B?”
Jin shrugged. “Just not fond of the letter. Jump, Felicity.”
With that, Jin straightened the lapels of his jacket, smoothed back his hair, and strolled into the hall.