Flick tugged on a lavender beret in front of her bedroom window with a happy sigh. There was no other way to regard such a view—from the fetching houses to the swaying trees dappled in jeweled hues, it was a sight no forger could ever replicate.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held a parasol or felt sun-warmed cobblestones beneath her shoes, but oh, she was being dramatic. It had only been forty-three days since her crime had confined her to the Linden Estate here in Admiral Grove, not a lifetime.
Her maid entered with a light knock. Miss Felicity is under house arrest, she had whispered to the other staff when it happened because no proper Ettenian lady could be arrested. Flick often let her curls fall over her ears to make them think she couldn’t hear their gossip.
The woman next door is a vampire. She was not—she had just given birth a month ago, which vampires could not do.
Miss Felicity is Lady Linden’s illegitimate child. Flick was not—she really had been adopted.
Miss Felicity committed a heinous act. Forgery! Now that was true, though Flick wouldn’t call what she’d done heinous by any means.
“Morning, Miss Felicity,” said her maid, dismayed that Flick had dressed herself again.
“A very delightful morning indeed,” Flick replied, tucking away her lighter. It was a gift from her mother for her tenth birthday, brass and delicate but capable of so much more if only one took the time to light it.
Like you, her mother had said then, skirts wide and bright as her golden hair. My little spark.
The maids thought her strange for not being glum, but this predicament was her own fault. Her mother had every right to be angry, and any sorrow that stirred beneath Flick’s contentment was of the devil. She had forged enough to know how to forge happiness.
“How is my mother?” she asked.
The maid looked away, same as she had for the previous forty-three days. “Well, m’lady.”
Well meant her mother was still pretending Flick didn’t exist. It was only a ring, came the petulant thought.
There was a time when Flick and her mother were close. They had meals and fittings for the latest gowns together because Flick’s mother took great care in her appearance. They would pick out furnishings for the estate and take evening walks in the garden. Lady Linden had always wanted to know what it was like to have a child, she used to tell Flick.
She had experienced and accomplished almost everything else, including founding the East Jeevant Company, before she’d adopted Flick as a young girl. But as the Ram colonized country after country, business improved more and more, and eventually when Flick was eleven the EJC swept Lady Linden away.
She spent longer hours in her office than with her daughter, and when she did come home, she was distant and almost bored by anything Flick said. Like a child with a new toy, it seemed as if her excitement at having a daughter had been replaced by the excitement of a bustling business.
In time, Flick found herself searching for something to fill that void. For when one loved as much as Felicity Linden did, it was difficult to not be loved in return. It didn’t matter that Flick had the best governesses, seamstresses, private tutors, and a full year of finishing school. She tried painting, she tried embroidery, she even tried her hand in the kitchen, to no avail.
The forging started innocently enough. When her maid urgently needed a doctor and their housekeeper refused to let her go without Lady Linden’s approval—which was impossible to get since she was never home—Flick tossed and turned the entire night until the idea came to her. After all, Flick had grown up mimicking the upper class around her, so mimicking was what she did best.
By daylight, her maid had a letter written in Flick’s mother’s scrawl. The footman’s young son had a note in the housekeeper’s handwriting a few days after that. She told no one, yet word began to spread. Soon people were trying to make appointments, and the housekeeper became suspicious. It was her maid’s idea to set up shop in an abandoned warehouse near the prestigious tearoom known as Spindrift.
Flick had replicated identification cards, prescriptions, and even bank records, discovering that many members of high society were simply frauds in top hats. The signet ring was supposed to be another forge for yet another awkward nobleman with his head ducked low. Flick had been careful, but signet rings were used to seal letters and approvals, and held as much power as the ones who wore them. And unfortunately, unlike bank records, they were almost impossible to misplace. In hindsight, she should never have agreed to the job; the ring belonged to a high-ranking official, and the nobleman drank his tongue loose at parties.
He outed the secret himself.
A nobleman swindling a high-ranking official was newsworthy on its own, but throw a forger who happened to be a lady into the mix and the reporters went wild. The scandal made the front page of every newspaper in White Roaring, and it was only because her mother pulled a string or two that Flick’s name wasn’t printed. Still, the whispers carried loudly enough, and Lady Linden cared about her image over all else.
She had to. She was a woman in a man’s world, where every slight was a sledgehammer, and her daughter had gone and made things difficult. Now Flick would do anything to return to what they’d had. A busy mother was far better than one who was angry with her.
But Flick had no way to undo what she’d done and earn her mother’s forgiveness. It wasn’t as if she could reach out to the papers and ask them to run articles lauding her mother on the front page. It wasn’t as if she could give them a story worth printing when she was trapped in here.
“Perhaps I can speak to her,” Flick suggested. “For reparations’ sake?”
“Miss Felic—”
A horse’s whinny cut her maid short, followed by the yank of a carriage brake out on the street. Flick rushed to the window and pressed her hands into the sill. Several carriages were halted on the wide street in front of the Linden Estate. They were draped in black, the silver sigil of the Ram filigreed front and center.
“Out of the way!”
“By order of the Horned Guard!”
The maid gasped. Flick’s hand flew to her throat as men leaped out, uniformed and stern. Sweat dampened her palms. This was exactly the display Flick had meant to avoid.
Her mother would be furious.
Her gaze fell to one of the guards pushing a pair of tinted spectacles up the bridge of his nose. She thought she recognized his gait and the surety that none of the men on this side of White Roaring possessed—but that couldn’t be who she thought it was. How silly of her to think she could recognize someone just by his walk and the crooked tilt of his mouth.
“Oh, whatever will we do?” her maid sobbed, yanking Flick back to the matter at hand.
The Horned Guard was here. Here. At her house. Panic began to set in. Flick dipped her hand into her pocket, pressing her fingers around the square of her lighter. Downstairs, the door flung open. A buzz of noise rose, and Flick heard the butler’s thin voice sounding aghast before a guard’s proclamation rang out:
“—for the arrest of Lady Felicity Linden!”
Her spirits plummeted like the heavy hem of a terrible gown. Her maid began to cry.
“Come now,” Flick said gently, wondering if she shouldn’t be the one being consoled. “It’s not as if they’re here to kill me. I’ll be all right. Mother will get me out.”
Her maid looked up, and Flick thought her dubious expression was a little unfair. Lady Linden could call in a favor, like she had done with the papers. Flick would be in there but one night. Two at most. Right? She didn’t know how arrests worked. It wasn’t something anyone had taught her in between lessons about needlework and penmanship and how to keep house. Goodness, she was being arrested.
Flick flung her bedroom door open. The hall looked hazy, distant. You’re in shock, she told herself. Her feet were moving, the stairs diminishing one by one. She searched the faces of the guards for the one she thought she had seen. She really had imagined him. Why would he be here anyway? He wasn’t a guard, he was on the opposite side of the law.
She heard hurried footsteps and glanced behind her, expecting to see her mother with an anguished gaze, the stern lines on her face looking suddenly soft. Flick always thought her mother had remarkable eyes, a shade of blue like the sea beneath the sun. But it was only Flick’s maid with her gloves. She was carrying a bag over her shoulder.
“I packed you some clothes and necessities, Miss Felicity,” the girl said, handing the bag to a servant.
Clothes were the last thing on Flick’s mind. She peeked at the second-floor office, but her mother’s door was still closed. She might not even be home.
It didn’t matter. Flick was eighteen years of age. She didn’t need an escort. She wouldn’t allow her mother to further embarrass herself on account of her daughter’s misdeeds.
It is for the best, Flick thought to herself numbly. That was what her mother would say. Flick had done wrong, and this was only right.
A stern-faced captain led her through the front door. Chin up, she told herself. She was leaving. This was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? She stepped outside for the first time in forty-three days. The sun warmed her skin, and the cobblestones were pleasant beneath her feet.
The captain stopped in front of one of the carriages. “In you go, miss.”
A servant tucked her bag of belongings inside, and a footman dropped a platform for her, then headed for another carriage before she could reach for his hand to steady her step.
She looked back at the estate, at the fawn-colored bricks, and the white-shuttered windows, and the roof that matched the pristine walnut floors inside. Her home, her prison. I’m sorry, Mother. Come for me. Let me make things right.
“Watch your head there, love.”
Flick froze at the voice that came from inside the carriage, but then the footman was slamming the door behind her, causing her to lose her balance and fall straight into … a lap? Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she saw the face above her. It was him.
Flick knew that voice from the nights when he would stop at her warehouse and drop those hands on her table, something clever in his eyes, which were as dark as the delicate tattoos winding up the side of his neck.
“I’m used to women throwing themselves at me, but really, there’s a time and place,” he said. A current zapped right through her. His peaked hat was pulled low and he wore tinted specs over his eyes, but she recognized his mouth. It was the kind that was hard to forget and equally hard to stop thinking about.
“Jin?”
His lips curved. “Hello, Felicity. I’ve missed you.”
Flick knew they had turned out of Admiral Grove when Jin reached across her to part the curtains over the carriage window. His elbow brushed her chest just enough to make her breath shudder. A tiny sound escaped her throat. Goodness. She needed to distract herself.
Outside. Yes. Outside, the Old Roaring Tower rose like a skeleton imposing over everything in its vicinity. The bricks were a sandy brown and stacked into something ornate that surrounded a round clockface. Massive, sapphire-blue hands ticked away, each minute passing like a sentence. Painted glass tiled the arching windows, reflecting sunlight as prettily as the balcony’s gilded railing.
The Athereum was beside it. Its many windows were dark, and shadows pooled between the five fluted columns set atop sculpted plinths. Flick shivered at the words carved into the architrave: mortui vivos docent. The dead teach the living.
Jin leaned back, a whiff of bergamot, tea, and the sea lingering in his wake.
“Flick,” she said. She always was correcting him, and it had become a half-hearted attempt at this point. “My name is Flick.”
“Right, and I’m Jefferson the third,” he replied haughtily, pulling off his specs.
Flick growled, but something about the way he said her real name made her breath catch. She crossed her arms. “I know you’re a lot more versed in criminal than I am, but you’re looking especially suspicious right now. Where are you taking me?”
This carriage wasn’t en route to the Horned Guard’s headquarters, not when a Casimir was inside of it.
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” he asked, dropping his voice. “You’re under arrest because you’ve been a bad, bad girl.”
She felt heat rise to her cheeks. And then she just about erupted on the spot when he started unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’ll have to put in a little more work to see me undressed, love,” he said with a low laugh, peeling off the Horned Guard uniform and revealing a pair of black suspenders over a snug shirt. Had he no decency?
He reached under the seat and pulled out a black umbrella and a sleek jacket, then yanked on a lever between his end of the seat and the door. With an awful sound like something was breaking, the carriage ground to a halt. Shouts echoed outside. Flick heard one of the guards ushering the others to carry on.
Jin gave her a grin. “We’re going on an adventure, you and me.”
“You’ve got a job for me, don’t you?” Flick asked. “If I’m not in my prison cell—”
“So smart and so eager to be in prison,” Jin drawled. “Never put it past a Casimir to make something out of nothing. You will have a cell with bars and a bed and food, and a guard who will attest to your presence. You simply won’t be in it.”
And the cost, Flick knew, was this job that he mentioned but hadn’t elaborated upon. Her pulse fluttered like wings, heart racing in anticipation. “And when my mother comes to visit me, what then? She’s going to get me out, you know.”
Jin had the same expression of pity and discomfort she had seen on her maid, and Flick knew he was going to say something she didn’t want to hear.
“By the time mummy fills out the paperwork and strolls through the halls with her parasol, we’ll have whisked you in and locked you up,” he said, surprising her, and her heart swelled at his words.
“How?” she asked, but she knew he had his ways. This was Jin; lethal smiles, artful hands, and one criminal voice.
He threw open the carriage door and held out his hand, and Flick wondered if her mother would be even angrier if she could see her now. Had he ruined her life even further? As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “If it makes you feel any better, you were going to be arrested next week. Arthie and I pulled some strings to make it happen today, and then we pulled a few more to borrow you for a bit.”
Flick tamped down her relief. She couldn’t deny her gratitude for the freedom—albeit very likely temporary—the Casimirs had given her, but she was still wary. Especially if Arthie was involved.
She took Jin’s hand. The leather of his gloves was warm in the satin of hers. Goodness, she could scarcely breathe.
“Borrow me for what?” she asked, voice tight.
“Forging, of course. If you want the job, it’s yours. If you don’t, well”—he tossed the Horned Guard hat into the carriage and shook his hair loose while the sun glossed each inky strand—“it’s yours anyway.”
Jin pulled her into the morning crowd of Stoker Lane, throwing her sack of possessions over his shoulder. The gray-uniformed guard driving the carriage peered at them, a little uneasy.
“Mr. Jim—”
“Oh, Ollie, I look more like a Jin, don’t I?” he asked, then angled closer to Flick to murmur, “It’s as simple as names go, unlike, I don’t know, Sir Archibald Cornelius. What will it take to get some respect around here, eh? A group of us getting together and singing about self-love and butter?”
He spoke so fast Flick could barely follow.
The guard looked apologetic. “I only wanted to say that my captain will ask why I took a different route, and—”
“How is your sister, by the way?” Jin asked, like the two of them were old friends. The guard’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he didn’t seem as concerned about his captain anymore. “I hear she was selected as a tutor at that school. What’s it called again? Ashton, or some such.”
Flick had worked with the Casimirs; they liked to learn everything they could about the people they ran with, and the way Jin said Ashton sounded like he knew the actual name of the school, but was fumbling on purpose.
“Uh, no. Adley, actually,” the guard corrected. “It’s the Adley Academy for Boys. A large school, way up on—”
“Right, right,” Jin said. “That’s a true win, and certainly cause for celebration, innit? Tell her to swing by Spindrift. We’ll give her a treat.”
The guard seemed to have forgotten his concern altogether. “That wouldn’t really be—”
“On the house,” Jin added with a smile that made Flick forget her last thought, and she wasn’t even the recipient of it.
A man shouted from the carriage that was stalled behind them, and the guard named Ollie appeared overwhelmed.
“I had better move,” he said, thoroughly flustered now. “But that’s—that’s very kind of you. I’ll be sure to let her know. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Jin said with a nod. He started to turn away. “It was nice seeing you today, Ollie. Always a pleasure.”
Before the guard could say anything more, Jin started walking, his umbrella rapping along the cobblestones. Flick didn’t know what to do besides keep up. When she looked back at the guard, he was spurring the horses away and tipping his hat at her as if he’d never seen her in his life.
“He—how did you do that?” Flick asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Felicity,” he said, but when he turned to give her a grin before she was swept into a hubbub of overskirts and tailcoats, it was obvious he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Flick had practiced her forgery for three years in an abandoned warehouse, but she’d only met the Casimirs several months ago, when Arthie needed a letter forged in the handwriting of one of Ettenia’s many officials.
Arthie must have been content with the work, for she and Jin came often after that. She was never friendly or talkative, but Flick got to see Jin, and she enjoyed the jobs they gave her. To the Casimirs, what she did wasn’t shameful or vile. It was work. A talent, even.
A crime, her mother’s voice insisted. Her mother ruled the EJC the way the Ram ruled Ettenia. She dealt with right and wrong all day, when her men acted out of order in the colonies, when they stole from the inventory they were sent to sell. Mother knew all.
Eventually, Jin started coming alone. He would linger, making sure Flick hadn’t forgotten anything. She never did, of course, and it made her wonder if he liked spending time with her as much as she liked spending time with him. She would study him in those moments, when she wasn’t bent over her table, as he read over her work several times and bid her goodbye. Farewell, Felicity, or, Try not to miss me too much.
She always did. Flick had never been very bold when it came to making conversation with Jin Casimir. Every woman and her sister knew of him, so how would Flick stand a chance?
Something pulled at her skirts now, and Flick looked down to find a young boy with a tattered cap and grease on his cheeks.
“What’s got you, then?” she asked.
“Please, miss!” he said, a quiver to his bottom lip. “Spare a coin, miss. The Lovelyn Foundry docked my pay.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” Flick started digging in her pocket, but Jin leaned over and stopped her with a hand to the arm. It was barely a sweep of his glove over her sleeve, but heat shot through her, every nerve ending zapping with a current.
“Let me tell you a secret, eh?” he said to the boy.
The boy’s eyes lit up. He was rolling a wrapped toffee between his fingers.
Jin pointed with his umbrella. “See that alley over there? There’s a woman standing in front of a door with a bag full of treasures. Tell her gobsmacked is the answer to the riddle.”
“Gobsmacked?” the boy asked.
Jin nodded. “Say the word, and you’ll get a gift out of it. Got it?”
“Got it!” the boy yelled, and took off down the street.
“You—” Flick started. Lied. She was certain he had lied, but he spoke with such candor that even Flick had a hard time not believing him. “He believed you!”
“It’s a skill, love,” Jin said, straightening.
“But you lied to him. That was positively churlish. You’ve ruined his day!” she reprimanded, and Jin tossed something at her. It was the boy’s toffee. “Jin! You stole that from him!”
“Sticky fingers, sorry,” he said, not looking the least bit sorry.
“You—you’re—”
He lifted his brows. “Superbly striking or savagely clever? That boy was a crook. He filches for a smaller gang.”
“That was a child,” she protested, swallowing her frustration when he sighed. “And I—I don’t forge anymore.”
The words burst out of her, surprising them both.
Jin’s forehead scrunched. “But you’re good at it.”
The raw honesty in his voice struck her. She was good at it. Flick had been searching all her life—for what, she didn’t know. She thought she’d found it when she began forging and people sought her out, but now, as she clutched her beret against a gust of wind, she thought perhaps that wasn’t true.
They stopped at the intersection. Her old warehouse was two streets down. Spindrift would be just a little farther ahead, right where the slums of the city began with buildings tumbling one after the other.
“Why would you stop?” Jin asked, pulling her back to the present.
“Because—” Flick trailed off, unsure, until the weight of his scrutiny pried the lid off of her frustration. “Because it’s illicit. It’s wrong.”
She couldn’t expect him to understand, but Jin was only half listening. He was watching a passenger in the window of a passing carriage, giving the older man’s dark hair and monolid eyes more than a shallow glance. He looked old enough to have been Jin’s father. On rare evenings when Flick would summon the courage to ask Jin questions, she’d once learned that his parents were gone. Not dead, he had said with some uncertainty.
She was a fool for thinking he couldn’t understand.
“It might be all those things, Felicity, but I can make it worth your while,” he said in a voice that made her shiver, presenting her with a lilac ribbon. They were two paces from a woman selling hair adornments. She didn’t think he’d even glanced in the direction of the stall.
Then he gestured to the top of Stoker Lane, to Spindrift, home of the Casimirs.
He said nothing of the job or how he would make it worth her while, and yet she followed him, her steps slowing as she neared the deep red building. She gaped at the smooth curve of the lettering on the frosted glass of Spindrift’s double doors, the kinds of flourishes she’d once excelled in creating before her penmanship dragged her down a different path.
She’d been here once before, during the day, when her mother had finally allowed it. She could still remember the taste of the extraordinary tea, the reason Spindrift drew crowds from around the city.
It was easy to assume Spindrift belonged in the better part of the capital. It carried itself that way. The tearoom was bright and alluring, the filth of the streets obscured by the cluster of fancy carriages and folk dressed to the nines, top hats gleaming and dresses heavy with embroidery. As if this were a lord’s estate and his prestigious ball. As if it wasn’t slotted in the midst of foundries and pleasure houses and slumping homes. As if it didn’t serve blood to the undead.
Ignorance had always been a defining feature of the privileged.
“What if I’m seen and someone tells my mother I’m here?” Flick asked.
Jin had the same expression as he did earlier. “We employ a lot of snitchers, Felicity, but none of them report to Lady Linden.”
The doors to Spindrift swept open in a jangle of bells, and a dark-skinned boy in a tailcoat and black gloves dipped a bow.
“Reni, my boy!” Jin called, saluting him. He passed Flick’s bag to a young girl and spread his arms in welcome as he turned a full circle and sauntered inside.
“My lady,” the boy named Reni greeted.
“Thank you, young sir,” she replied, before fascination took hold at the scene before her: Spindrift, in motion.
There was harmony in the way the Casimir crew handled the floor, one jotting down orders as another glided by with polished trays. She inhaled deeply. The smell was rich and robust, fresh and malty. The wainscot walls topped by dark wallpaper lent a cozy air to clinking crockery and tittering patrons, biscuits crisp between teeth, sugar dropping like magic in pools of tea as deep as the night. It was a melody of sounds complementing a visual feast.
Jin’s gaze cut to her. “It’s been a while since you’ve visited, eh?”
She flushed under his scrutiny. He remembered her visit from three years ago. She hadn’t thought he’d even noticed her amid the sea of customers on Spindrift’s busy floor.
Flick cleared her throat when he pulled off his coat in the middle of the room. It was suddenly very difficult to breathe, but no one else seemed to notice his bawdiness as he slung the jacket over his shoulder.
“Enjoy it while you can.” He winked as if his words had nothing to do with Spindrift, and then he sauntered away before she could say anything more. Flick stifled a cough as a heavy perfume wafted off a pair of ladies with haughty expressions who had just entered the tearoom.
Reni eyed them, whispering to a younger boy who was scribbling something furiously into a notepad stuffed every which way. Somehow, Flick didn’t think they were orders for refreshments.
To the public, Arthie Casimir dealt in tea. To those who paid enough attention, she dealt in blood too. But Flick had read every letter and document she had forged for the girl and knew the truth: Arthie Casimir dealt in secrets.
Secrets.
That was it. That was how Flick would earn her mother’s forgiveness. She didn’t know anything about the job yet or what Arthie and Jin needed from her, but they were bound to give her something.
She needed to repair her mother’s image, and nothing was better than a good word in the press. Flick could give her the very same front page she had disgraced her with, and it would all be thanks to Arthie Casimir. Flick would simply need to hear them through and then go back and tell her mother of it. And if what Arthie needed Flick for wasn’t worthy of the front page, she’d dig around their collections and see.
Maybe. Flick didn’t know if they had collections. She didn’t even know if anything could be as scandalous as Lady Linden’s daughter being a forger, but she would try.
That was when Flick saw her.
Arthie stood with her hands on the railing of the second-floor balcony, surveying her domain with eyes that might have once been warm, the light long devoured by calculation. She wore trousers and a suit jacket as if they weren’t made for men, lace-up shoes instead of button boots, a waistcoat instead of a bodice, and a pistol in lieu of a parasol, bright at her hip like a knight’s sword.
Arthie Casimir was a maestro commanding the room. A queen at her throne. The hangman at the gallows.
Above all, she was Flick’s last chance at redemption.
But when Arthie’s eyes fell on her, Flick didn’t feel so certain. Arthie’s hair was a halo, but her expression made Flick feel as if she were tiptoeing on knives.
“Welcome, miss.”
Flick pulled herself away from Arthie’s gaze to find a girl in a ruched bodice gown with raven hair and a red mouth. She was beautiful in a way that came from being a melody of sharp contrasts.
“Let me lead you to your table.”
“Oh, I’m not here for leisure,” Flick said.
The girl was demure. “The house insists you join us for elevensies.”
Flick snuck a glance up, where Arthie watched and waited. It felt like a test somehow, and when the girl started through the maze of tables, Flick hurried after her to the vacant seat. She perched in the chair and did her best to smile at the gentleman eyeing her over the day’s paper from the next table.
“Royal or supreme?” the girl asked. “I like to suggest orange pekoe if you’re fond of adding milk and sugar, but it could take a smidge.”
Flick reached for her lighter, gripping the comforting weight before she set her hands on the polished wood of the table. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’ll take what you think I’d like best, please.”
With a nod, the girl bounced away and returned with a full spread that Flick’s mother wouldn’t even offer her closest associates. Steam curled from an ivory teapot, and biscuits fanned along the curve of the plates. Toothpicks speared a pair of sandwiches layered with butter and sliced strawberries atop fresh preserves. The sugar bowl and creamer were rimmed in silver and boasted patterns too detailed to discern without leaning in. Before Flick could drool at the display, the girl set a cup on a saucer and poured her a stream of tea as if the act were an art.
Flick scanned the balcony and floor. Arthie had vanished, and Jin was nowhere to be seen.
“Cream?”
Flick beamed. “Yes, please. I do love myself a good dollop.”
“Here you are, the Royal Rouge.” When the girl stepped back, Flick lifted her cup for a sip. Flavor burst along her tongue, warming her with its earthy undertones. It tasted of rose petals and sweet caramel, reminding her of the cake bites her mother’s ships would bring from Jeevant Gar.
“This is downright delightful,” Flick declared. It was smooth and sweet, with something that she couldn’t quite place even when she let it linger, something mysterious and ardent. It was everything Flick wanted to be.
The girl gave her a look and Flick knew she was overdoing it. High society tittered over her personality every chance they got because they didn’t understand that the little things were meant to be appreciated too.
She set the cup down. A card was tucked beneath the saucer, making her pulse pitter-patter at her neck. Inside was an address written in an impatient, slanting scrawl.
337 Alms Place.