With Jin against her side, Flick cut across Alms Place and spotted Matteo Andoni’s manicured lawn and kiss-red door at last. If this job had been so woeful, she could only imagine what breaking into the Athereum would look like. Before a couple crossing the street could get a good look at Jin, she worked the gate open and the two of them hobbled up the walk.
He was bleeding all over the cobblestones, all over her shoes, and all over his clothes. How much blood did a body have? She dumped him unceremoniously on the grass near the house’s side porch.
“Oh goodness, I am so sorry,” she rushed to say when he winced. With a wounded look, he eased himself back against the bricks and pulled up the end of his shirt. It was soaked through, the blood nearly black.
“It looks worse than it is,” Jin said, half to himself.
That didn’t stop her insides from churning weakly. There was a sheen along his brow despite the chill, and Flick startled when he laughed.
“Do you find this amusing?” she asked incredulously, shoving her hand into her pocket. A bird chirped in the jeweled trees, the harmony cut by her erratic pulse.
Jin peeled back his undershirt with a hiss, and Flick averted her gaze, hearing her maid’s and her mother’s voices chastising in her head.
“On the contrary,” Jin said, “just passing time until you help me stop the bleeding.”
She looked about helplessly and remembered Abe’s General Store two streets up. Abe would have something. Bandages, gauze, tape to hold it all in place. Flick didn’t know much about fixing up wounds. She was dusty and spent, her perfectly good gown tattered and grass-stained. She could feel dirt on her cheeks, her curls as wild as the streets they’d run through. She didn’t have money on her either, but the old man liked a good conversation.
“I’ll get something from the store.”
“There’s no time to toddle around, Felicity,” he rasped. “Undress me.”
Flick’s jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon.”
“Please,” Jin tried again tiredly. “Help me rip up my shirt so that I may staunch my bleeding. Is this Matteo’s house?”
Mustering as much self-encouragement as she could, Flick dropped beside him, rethought her life ten thousand times, and then reached for his shirt.
He smiled weakly. “I knew you couldn’t resist.”
She huffed but said nothing, too concerned with the blood darkening the grass. Too diffident about touching him. Undressing him. One by one, she worked the buttons free to expose the undershirt beneath.
“I need scissors,” she said, after attempting to rip it. She couldn’t remove it without making him move too much and risk losing more blood.
“And I need a raspberry streusel drizzled in dark chocolate,” Jin remarked, “but since we have neither, Felicity, use your teeth.”
“Teeth? Oh, right.”
But that meant getting impossibly close to him. The alternative is letting him die, Flick chastised herself. She lowered herself to the clean edge of his shirt. She wasn’t sure what compelled her to hold his gaze while she did it. She heard the unsteady draw of his breath. Felt the heat of his skin graze her cheek. She gripped the fabric between her teeth, and tore.
His gaze bled black as he watched her. Shining. Delirious. This silence was going to make her explode.
“Why did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?” He shifted with another sigh that she felt down to the tips of her toes.
“Take the bullet.” Flick straightened the edge of his shirt. It was easier to rip now, and she carefully tore off a strip long enough to cinch around him and set it aside. She shook as she peeled back the soaked end of his undershirt and cleaned away as much as she could with gentle hands. The creases of her fingers were stained in red, and she had to force a few steady breaths as her insides churned. Is it only the blood?
“It barely grazed me,” Jin said.
“You could have easily escaped through the balcony with me. You could have easily swerved away when they fired,” she said, barely listening to him. She was rambling now, and she didn’t know how to stop.
He was bleeding because of her. He had tried buying time because of her. She had accepted this job for her mother, and she had been prepared to do anything for her mother’s forgiveness. She never thought anyone would do anything for her.
But Jin had nearly died for her.
“I’ve seen you and Arthie and your ridiculous jobs, but today you seemed to have left your brain in whatever empty teapot you could find at Spindrift before you sauntered over to Admiral Grove, didn’t you? You were careless, and witless, and—”
He was staring at her. His gaze fell to her mouth, then to her throat when she swallowed heavily. It was too cold for the sweat on her brow. She wrapped the fabric around him and was suddenly acutely aware of his body heat and the rise and fall of his chest. She had never been so close to a boy before. A thousand nerve endings exploded when she knotted it tight to staunch the bleeding as best as she could and her fingers brushed his skin. His muscles constricted at her touch, all lean and taut lines. What had you expected? He spent his nights keeping vampires in line, his days commanding the streets by Arthie’s side.
Jin arched his back, leaning close. “Go on,” he murmured sleepily. “Don’t stop now, love.”
“Reckless,” she finished quietly. Hummingbirds fluttered against her rib cage. She wondered how delicious and warm it might be to splay her fingers over his broad chest. Did it matter? She planned to betray him.
Jin, who had nearly died to save her. Jin, who believed in her when no one else did. It had seemed so simple when she was locked in her bedroom: She would do whatever it took to regain her mother’s approval. But if Flick convinced a maid to let her into Lady Linden’s office now—please, just this once—and then convinced her mother that here is the Ram’s missing ledger or even here is what the Casimirs have planned, where would she stop?
Her mother would go to the press, and Arthie and Jin would lose more than Spindrift. Lady Linden could leave their names out of the story. She could pull some strings the way she had with Flick and the signet ring scandal.
“You did good today, Felicity,” Jin said quietly, interrupting her thoughts. He was watching her with a gaze too perceptive, too raw, and she wondered if he saw her turmoil and indecision.
A door slammed. Flick straightened.
“Please do continue.” Matteo Andoni stood in the shadows of his side porch, watching them with a grin. His ivory skin was offset by the dark topcoat he’d pulled over a half-unbuttoned white shirt and black trousers. Decency was still not in his vocabulary. For the amount of exposed male skin Flick had seen this past week, one would have thought she’d gotten married.
Before Flick could gasp, Jin vaulted to his feet. He shot up the stairs and shoved Matteo against the brick wall of his manor.
“You lied, Andoni,” Jin rasped, teetering from the pain.
His voice was lethal. All Casimir. For a moment, Matteo only squinted down at him, stunned and confused.
“I don’t recall doing any such thing,” he replied calmly. When he spoke, Flick caught flashes of white in his mouth that she hadn’t noticed before.
“You said the Thorne sisters worked at the bank,” Jin hissed, scrunching Matteo’s shirt in his fist, and Flick was certain it was to keep from falling as much as it was in anger.
Matteo’s nostrils flared, his eyes darkening and falling to slits. He seemed at war with himself, fighting against something. He was slowly beginning to appear less like a painter and more like a … hunter.
“I did,” he replied, the tenor of his voice dropping a notch. His chest heaved, and he sounded almost breathless when he said, “It would be wise to let go of me now, Jin.”
“I don’t think I will.” Jin laughed, even as his blood fell onto the wooden slats in heavy drops. “I’ll let you guess at where they were today, vampire.”
Jin’s blood. Fangs. Those were what had lengthened in Matteo’s mouth.
Flick knew the moment they were in danger: Matteo relaxed. His restraint disappeared. Then he hooked a leg behind Jin’s and dropped him, pinning him to the porch with his weight. The vampire moved with liquid grace, a carefree sort of sprightliness. Flick could only watch as he ran a finger along Jin’s cheek. No, not a finger, a claw.
“At home,” Matteo answered softly in a voice that sent shivers through Flick’s core. She could have sworn Jin’s gaze glazed with the lure of the vampire’s voice. “Where most people usually are.”
They were in terrible, terrible danger. A vampire like Matteo wouldn’t go around using his lure on a human. Not unless he was giving in to his more animalistic impulses. Any moment now, Jin was bound to be his midday snack.
Flick looked about helplessly before she picked up Jin’s umbrella. What could she do? Whack him over the head with it? If Matteo had lost control, they were both in danger. Flee, came a voice in her head. No, she told herself. Not after Jin had risked his life for her.
A shadow fell over her.
“Don’t make me cut you out of this deal.”
Arthie. She was framed against the sun, her hair a halo, Laith behind her. She was dusty and beat, the hard press of her mouth warning them that her patience had worn down to a thread. Flick opened her mouth to alert her that Matteo might not be thinking all too clearly, but this was Arthie. She surely knew that much already.
The quiet was the sort where Flick could have heard a pin fall.
At last, Matteo opened his mouth.
“Oh, how I missed you, darling,” he said, but there was nothing light about the words. No tease, all bite. An edge that was half warning, half plea. Arthie held her ground. Matteo turned his head toward her, and Flick knew the moment their eyes locked because it drained the air from the world, cementing them in time.
It was an eternity in which her heart felt submerged in syrup, each beat as slow as its drip, each blink of her eyes as if she were underwater.
At last, Matteo released Jin’s bloody shirt. Jin fell back against the porch, heaving breath after breath while Matteo’s throat worked in a series of calming swallows. Jin, who had been running on anger and nothing else, crawled to the wall.
Arthie looked at the scene like she wanted to set fire to them all. She didn’t seem to care that Jin was bleeding on Matteo Andoni’s porch.
“He lied,” Jin gritted out, dropping his head back against the bricks.
“No, he didn’t,” Arthie said with barely restrained calm. “Andoni, get out of my sight and find someone else to drink.”
“With pleasure,” Matteo said almost gratefully.
She looked at Jin. “If you had paid attention, you wouldn’t be making an embarrassment of yourself right now.”
“What do you mean?” Flick wasn’t fond of the warble in her voice, but Matteo was only straightening his sleeves and yawning, not a fang in sight now. “The bank closes at seven bells every day.”
Laith stepped to Arthie’s side, and they almost looked like allies then. No, not allies, equals. She was either beginning to trust him or beginning to learn her way around him. Knowing what Flick did about Arthie, it was likely the latter.
“Except when it’s closed,” Laith said. “It’s a holiday.”