Jin had planned his outfit for the Athereum job days ago. His jacket was finely spun velvet in the deepest green he could find. It would seem colorless to anyone who was tasteless, fashionable to anyone who mattered. He had even dabbed on cologne, more so to find comfort in the blend of bergamot and cashmere, but still.
The heist was tonight. There was a chance he might die, but there was also the utmost certainty that he would do so in style.
He set his umbrella against the sideboard with a heavy sigh, already feeling like he was missing a limb, a little part of his childhood that made him him.
He wasn’t excited to call in that favor, to see Rose Ashby and be reminded yet again of how he’d killed for her. He could lie and steal and coax without hesitation, break bones and shatter jaws as quickly as a shot, but killing was killing, and Jin wasn’t fond of it.
The Ashbys were a family of vampires, and not by choice—as most vampire families tended to be—but by actual kinship. Once the patriarch of the family had turned, Jin guessed he couldn’t bear the thought of his spouse and children aging without him, and so he turned them one by one, waiting until each child reached the age he wanted to preserve.
To some, it was romantic—a family forever united. To Jin, it was heinous. It was one thing to be born without the privilege of money and standing, it was another to live without the power to make a decision for oneself. To have control forcefully taken from one’s hands, to understand the true meaning of helplessness.
Rose Ashby was nothing like her father. She was kind and real, a rarity in a world made up of superficial and materialistic people. When she’d come to Jin two years ago, asking him to make sure her still-human, critically ill brother never left the hospital a vampire, he couldn’t say no—not when there were fates worse than death.
So no, he wasn’t excited about the reminder of what he’d done, but if there was any way to get into the Athereum as a blood companion and bypass the vetting process, it was with Rose Ashby.
She was the closest thing to vampire royalty.
It was a little past eight when he left his room in Spindrift and went downstairs to where Laith and Arthie were running through the plans one last time. Flick was in one of the booths by the window. Her gown was as pretty as a garden at dawn. It was a warm shade of cream, like well-made milk tea. A heavy smattering of flowers were embroidered along the hem, gradually fading up to a laced bodice that cupped her every curve in a way that made Jin jealous, ending with a delicate collar around her throat. She tilted her head and peered at him as if she were compiling his chapters into a book and something didn’t tally. As if he were broken, and only she could see it.
But Jin was the one who fixed things. He knew what was broken, and it sure wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. Nope.
Moonlight pooled in Flick’s hair, tracing each ringlet like the hand of an earnest lover, gradually drifting to outline her profile in dusky silver. She looked at the stars as if they were home, and he wished, impossibly, that he could take her to them.
“Oh, hello,” she said when he neared. “I, er, like your glasses.”
Jin couldn’t stop a boyish smile. “Why thank you, Felicity.”
Flick nodded, barely holding his gaze. “Also your tattoos. Why—what are they?”
His smile turned into a grin. “Going to ask all the questions now, are we?”
She ducked adorably into the collar of her dress, and then that damned lighter was in her hand again. She slowed her movements but didn’t tuck it away.
“I’ve seen your arm,” she said softly. “I can tell you’re not fond of fire.”
Jin gritted his teeth.
“But it’s okay.” She looked up at him. “It really is.”
Jin latched on to the rise and fall of her voice, the measured sounds of her breaths.
She watched him for a moment and finally capped the little thing. “It’s funny, I think, how a flame has the opposite effect on me. It calms me. Sometimes I think even vampires hunt for the flame. For the light. It’s what we need to live, undead or otherwise, isn’t it? I know it marked a terrible part of your life, Jin, but that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it.”
“Perhaps,” Jin said.
“For certain,” she said, and the belief in her voice soothed him.
Jin released a slow breath. “It’s a heron.”
Her brow pinched in confusion.
“My tattoo,” he said, tugging his collar away so she could get a better look at it. “It’s a heron. When I was a child, I had a stubborn tuft of hair right at the back here that would never stay down, and my mother joked that I looked like a black heron they’d seen on one of their voyages. My father would always call me Little Heron after that.”
“Do you still miss them?” Flick said.
“Every day,” Jin said quietly, and saw the notch between her brows. “You’re the same. You miss your mother.”
That notch deepened. “I thought I did.”
Spindrift’s doors swung open in a jangle of bells, and a figure stepped inside with a satisfied sigh, wiping something dark from his chin.
Chester darted forward. “We’re closed! Bugger off!”
But Jin knew that swagger, even if he didn’t recognize the rest of the man.
“Matteo?” Arthie asked.
Flick rose to her feet. “Bang up the elephant, I almost didn’t recognize you!”
“I do clean up nice, don’t I?” Matteo asked, his lips curling a crooked grin at Arthie. “Don’t stare, darling.”
He hadn’t cleaned up, he had changed. His hair was as bright as Chester’s now, bound loosely at the base of his skull. A pair of gold-framed specs sat on the bridge of his nose, his signature half-open ruffled white shirt now as dark as sin and matched by his trousers.
Laith crossed his arms. “Can the two of you focus? Yalla.”
Flick lifted a hand to her mouth, chagrined. For once, Jin agreed with the high captain.
But Arthie would never admit to staring. “Your drawings had better be right.”
Matteo hmmed. “This will work. Trust a little.”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t trust anyone. Jin sometimes wondered if she even trusted him.
“The auction begins at ten,” she said, striding for the door. “We reconvene at three-quarters past. Laith, you are not bringing that kitten with you.”
“Oh, I am,” he replied. “After me, she’s the stealthiest in our crew.”
Jin studied Arthie. She was off. Her eyes looked almost hollow, something wild and hungry lurking in the umber.
“Our ten-minute window begins once I take down the dormer guard. And no, Matteo, he won’t die. I’ll be knocking him out. Flick then needs to enter the archive room and get everyone in. Laith follows. Matteo brings up the rear, distracting the entrance crowd so Laith can scale the wall and apprehend the guard before he wakes up and sounds the alarm for being knocked out. Then he and I will search for the ledger while Jin and Flick keep the auction going.”
“Are we clear?” Jin asked.
Nods went around.
“Listen for the bells,” Arthie reminded.
“And don’t die,” Jin joked.
“That’s the one thing I haven’t mastered,” Matteo said with a dramatic sigh.
When Matteo and Flick turned for the door, Arthie pulled Calibore from her waist. Jin watched as it shifted into a sharp-edged hairpin, that strange magic unsettling him even now. She flipped it over in her hands and held Laith’s gaze for a fraction of a second too long before she secured it through her hair.
Laith knew. She had told him. A thread of uncertainty snaked through Jin. It was not jealousy, but fear. Worry. And, finally, apprehension.
Because Arthie never revealed a secret unless she had a bigger one waiting right behind it. She saw Jin watching her.
“Ready?” she asked him.
“No,” he answered honestly, swallowing his many questions because now wasn’t the time.
“Perfect.” Arthie smiled, and it shouldn’t have made it easier for Jin to breathe, but it did. She stepped out into the night. “It’s teatime, scoundrels.”