Flick was almost surprised when she made it into the marker archives intact. She was grateful that Arthie had knocked the dormer guard out. She couldn’t fathom trying to slip under both his and Eleanor Thorne’s noses undetected.
The clock was ticking; Laith still needed to apprehend the guard before he woke up, and she had little time to waste. The room was more bare-bones than the vampire’s fancy gown had suggested it would be. There was a wide ebony desk and chair in its center, then a comfy armchair and a sideboard by the door atop which sat a brass scale, polished from daily use.
“Now,” Flick said, tugging the silk gloves off her hands, “where is that log?”
An indignant meow responded, spooking her half to death. It was Laith’s kitten.
“Oh, hello there, little one.” Flick didn’t know how she had snuck in after her, but she wasn’t about to shoo away company.
And she had found the log.
It was on the desk, opened to a page with rows of numbers just as Matteo had described. What he had failed to mention was the reason why the vampire didn’t bother locking the door behind her each time she left her room.
The log itself was locked. It lay beneath a glass case whose latch connected to a series of levers that ran all the way to the brass scale on the sideboard. It was indeed used daily: Every time Eleanor accessed the log, she balanced the scale to unlock the glass box. She didn’t have to do a thing to lock it either—just grab the weights on her way out. The scale was still wobbling from her recent quick exit.
“No time to panic,” Flick told herself. The sideboard was too far from the desk for her to press down on the scale with one hand until the case unlocked while entering the numbers with the other. She searched the room for something she could use to balance it. The weights had to be with Eleanor. They were every bit a key, for there was no chance of someone finding the exact weight quickly enough to tamper with the log. And whenever Eleanor anticipated being gone for longer, she simply had to lock the door behind her.
It was smart. Flick thought Jin would appreciate it.
She plucked up the pen holder beside a fountain pen in a delicate stand and set it on the scale. It barely tipped.
The kitten meowed. Aha! Flick snatched her up and set her in the pan, which promptly fell with a clang. Too heavy.
Think, Flick. The weights had to be a reasonable load to be carried around. Something easy enough to slip into the indecently small pockets of a woman’s gown. Something as small as … a lighter.
Holding the kitten in one arm, Flick fished the lighter out of her pocket and set it in the pan. It was worth more than its weight in brass, more than the liquid gas inside its chamber, more than the wheel that kept it working. It was the love her mother once had for her. And it was enough.
It had to be.
The seals exhaled, unlocking the glass case with a sigh. Flick flipped over a single luxuriously thick page, fountain pen in hand, then froze at a sound. Laith’s kitten looked up at her with a curious tilt of her head.
And then the door swung open.
Flick grabbed her lighter off the scale and dove under the desk. She held her breath. The vampire stilled in that terrifying way, motionless and statuesque.
Don’t breathe, don’t breathe.
But there was one advantage to Laith’s kitten having followed her. She bounced away from where she’d been swatting at the throw tossed over the side of an armchair. The vampire relaxed, the sequins of her dress catching the low light when she crouched and crooned at the kitten.
Flick held very, very still.
If she so much as turned her head, Flick was—no. She was not going to let herself think that far.
“Duty calls, little one,” the vampire said, and rummaged through the sideboard. She emerged with something smooth and flat—to repair the chute, Flick realized—and disappeared back outside.
Flick had seconds. She hurried out from under the desk and slammed her lighter back on the pan, barely waiting for the seals to release before she pried open the glass, snatched up a pen, and started scribbling the first identifier into the log.
3–9–3–4–2–2–0. Her hand shook, forcing her to round out the curve of the nine more than once. Done.
“One down,” Flick murmured, moving on to the next one. 3–9–3–4–2–2–1.
The silence broke with a rattle—markers. If markers were being sent through, the chute had been repaired. Jin’s distraction had come to an end.
“Come now, Flick,” she spurred herself on. 3–9–3–4—she stopped, narrowly saving herself when ink swelled from the fountain pen’s tip—2–2–2.
Flick dropped the pen with a flourish. Wait. She picked it back up and jammed it into its stand, grabbing the tin beside it to dust sand over the wet ink and nearly inhaling it in her rush to blow it off. She tidied up the space until Laith’s kitten rubbed against her ankle. Flick picked her up and hurried for the door.
Her lighter.
She rushed back to the sideboard and shoved it in her pocket. Then she ran, hair falling over her face. She certainly looked the part of a lost girl when she flung the door open and came face-to-face with the cruelly beautiful Eleanor Thorne.
Flick took a few steps back.
“My deepest apologies, miss,” she blustered with a smile that felt more like a grimace. “I thought this was the lavatory.”