SHIRONNE FELT HER CHEEKS heating, no matter that it was so cold around her. They were all going to be annoyed with her. “Um . . . Mr. Lee’s coming.”
“What?” Tabita had been studying the gate, determining how to open the latch.
“Mikael’s coming to take me back to the Fortress. He’s angry.” She kept her voice low, trying to keep the relief out of it.
“And how do you know that?” Eli’s previously contained anxiety suddenly focused on her.
Shironne stepped back, coming up against the stone wall. She wrapped her arms more tightly about herself but didn’t answer.
“Because she always knows where he is,” Gabriel answered calmly, sparing her the required denials. “She can find him anywhere in the city.”
Eli’s mind ticked away like angry clockwork. “Can he find you as well?”
“There are some things the elders have forbidden me to talk about,” Shironne told him softly. Eli was worried about being caught, as if their names in that sentry log wouldn’t condemn them already.
“What does that mean?” Tabita asked coolly, her mind still focused on the gate. “Clarify.”
“No wonder he wouldn’t tell me,” Eli snapped then, the truth unfolding in his thoughts as he worked out the nature of their relationship. “I . . .”
“Eli, can you see that?” Tabita asked.
Eli’s attention abruptly flew away.
“There under the bench,” Tabita added. “Can you make that out?”
“Looks like a coat,” he said. “Can you get this open?”
“It’s locked,” she protested.
“Gabe, help me over.”
Shironne listened while Gabriel helped boost Eli over the stone portion of the fence, his boots scrabbling for purchase. After a moment, she heard his feet land in gravel. His boots crunched away, and then returned.
“It’s her jacket,” he said from the other side of the gate. His anger twisted with fear in his mind now, fear for Maria.
Tabita pushed Maria’s cold jacket into Shironne’s arms. Shironne held it against her chest as they held a whispered discussion as to how Eli should get back over the fence—apparently, they still didn’t know how to unlock the gate.
“I . . . I think there’s a hidden door,” Shironne said, pointing. “Off to that side? Sorry, Eli.”
With an audible groan, Eli strode off, gravel crunching underfoot.
Shironne caught a faint, familiar scent. She moved the jacket around in her gloved hands, trying to find the spot she smelled. “There’s blood on the jacket.”
“Are you sure?” Tabita asked.
“Is it fresh?” Gabriel asked at the same time.
Shironne pulled off her right glove and stuffed it in a pocket, and then turned the coat about in her hands again. That was a sleeve in her hand, with a splattering of blood across it, a narrow line of droplets. She touched her fingers to them. “Yes. Within the last few hours. It’s hers.”
Gabriel came and stood close to her, blocking the wind. “Can you find her?” he asked in an urgent whisper. He took the jacket from her hands. “Can you do that, like you do for him?”
She’d found others before. She could locate her mother or her sisters easily, or Mikael. She’d once led Mikael to a murderer, following the man’s mind across the city. All of those people, though—she had touched their minds, and had a good feel for them. She had only the touch of Maria’s hand as it grazed her cheek.
“Can you?” Gabriel asked again.
“She doesn’t know,” Mikael said in a breathless voice.
Shironne turned and took a halting step toward him, then remembered that she shouldn’t go to him. She would give anything right now . . .
Instead he came to her and wrapped his arms around her, warm and reassuring in the cold. She laid her head against his overcoat, clutching close the familiar smell of him, that hint of lemon. He rested his chin atop her head, his mind protesting the foolishness of her walking beyond the Fortress walls.
Don’t you remember, he thought at her, there are people who would pay to have you? I don’t want you out here alone.
She pulled away slightly. She hadn’t understood why he’d been angry at her for doing this. “I forgot,” she whispered.
“If I have to chase you all the way to Pedrossa,” he told her, “I’m going to be very tired and annoyed when I get there.”
“You’ll probably smell bad, too, idiot. Yes, it stinks, but can I have the coat?”
She turned when he directed her to, and he slid his own coat over her arms, still warm and a little humid from his jog down into the city. She turned again and he pulled up the hood, laying his bare hands against her cheeks to warm them. He’d handed the smelly coat off to Gabriel, she realized, removing his own to give to her. He stayed there for a moment, his hands against her face, warming her skin.
He wanted to kiss her, she knew, but that would break his rule. He’d promised Deborah he wouldn’t cross that line. He suspected that once he started kissing her, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, and that she would give in, unable to separate pleasing him and pleasing herself.
Shironne listened to his thoughts rattling through his contact with her, sending a pang of yearning through her. He was right—she probably would give in. She would just have to trust him not to overpower her senses.
“I’ll try,” he said aloud, with a touch of reluctance in his tone. His warm hands slid away from her skin. His attention turned to the others standing in the alleyway. “You should all go back to the Fortress,” he said sternly.
“We have to find her, Mr. Lee,” Gabriel said. “Shironne says there’s blood on her jacket.”
“Shironne and I will find her,” Mikael answered. “Go home. You’re going to be in enough trouble as it is.”
“Then we’d do best to stick together, Mikael.” Eli’s voice came from behind them in the alleyway. He must have found that hidden door. “Or do you propose to separate us and increase our risk?”
Mikael sighed. “Eli . . .”
“The safest thing is for us to stay together,” Eli persisted.
“That’s why four of you came down here after nightfall? To be safe? What exactly happened with this girl? Who are you looking for?”
“Don’t you know?” Eli asked. “You should know if she knows.”
Mikael didn’t answer, caught by the same constraints that bound her. The rules didn’t allow him to explain the lopsided tendency of their binding.
“We’re wasting time.” Shironne shook her head. “Mr. Lee, we’re talking about Maria, Eli’s foster sister. She’s in our yeargroup and she’s been sneaking out for some time. She didn’t return tonight and we got worried.”
“For some time?” Mikael repeated. “What does that mean? How long has this been going on? What did your sponsors do about it?”
“They don’t know,” Eli admitted.
“You didn’t tell them?” Mikael’s incredulity soared through her senses, making Shironne want to giggle. Then his mind caught something out of her thoughts—he knew, then, that Eli had been putting it off—and his surprise turned to fury. “Damnation, Eli,” he snapped, “you should have taken this to them a long time ago.”
“We wanted to handle it ourselves,” Gabriel protested.
“And look where we are,” Mikael snapped. “Your sponsors are there to help you, Eli. They aren’t the enemy.”
Shironne felt Eli’s temper flaring in response.
“Well, you never had to worry, did you, being the Master’s grandson?” Eli’s voice sounded derisive, a rarity for him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Mikael stood very still behind her, anger completely fading from her sense of him. He seemed more amazed at Eli’s outburst than offended.
“Elias, apologize!” Gabriel’s stern voice surprised her, coming loud and clear in the alleyway, where they’d all been speaking in hushed tones. “Now.”
Silence ensued for a moment. Shironne could sense Eli’s chagrin as he realized his bad behavior.
“I’m sorry, Mikael,” Eli said then. “I . . .”
Shironne could feel Eli’s famed control slipping. Mikael’s mind suddenly devised an explanation for Eli’s outburst.
“Your father will forgive you, Eli,” Mikael said softly. “He’ll understand.”
“No,” Eli whispered, “he’ll never forgive this.”
Shironne felt a snowflake touch her cheek, damp and icy with a touch of smoke on it. Another followed.
“If you don’t learn anything from this,” Mikael added, “that’s what he won’t forgive, Eli.”
Eli radiated pain for a moment, making Shironne want to cry, but then he carefully imposed order on his stricken thoughts. “We have to find her.”