A Tempest of Tea, page 14
A groan rose behind her.
“He’s waking up,” Arthie called.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I had time for tea,” Laith snarked. The first latch clicked open. He turned to the second.
The man huffed, and Arthie turned to find him sitting up. He shook his head and blinked at his surroundings before he fully came to.
And stared straight at her.
Laith shoved the window open as the man rolled onto his feet.
“Jump, Arthie,” Laith shouted.
She tucked the marker into her pocket and braced herself. The ground shook. The man was charging toward her. She ran. Jumped. Her eyes locked with Laith’s for the barest of moments before fingers closed around the heel of her shoe, breaking her momentum. She wasn’t going to make it. When will you acknowledge that you’re in way over your head? Why was the window so far out of reach? Reach, Arthie.
Her fingers brushed the ledge.
Her fist closed around air—before a warm hand engulfed hers.
Arthie opened her eyes.
She was dangling yards above the debris piled in the alley—she wasn’t a heap of bones on the ground.
“I’ve got you,” Laith rasped.
He moved to secure her with his other hand, but she gripped the ledge and pulled herself up to the dusty wood beside him. She huffed, trying to pretend away the panic that flared in his eyes when she’d lost her footing. Laith rushed to close the window and growled.
“I can’t close it. The latches are jammed,” he said. “We need to move. We’re four floors from the ground.”
Their assailant was struggling to brace his own footing in the office window.
“He’ll be across soon enough,” Laith said.
Arthie dusted off her clothes on shaky legs. The warehouse had been long abandoned. It was oddly built. Each of the four levels were more balcony than full floor, though there were no railings to keep anyone from toppling, rickety and rotted stairwells connecting each one. Far below on the ground floor, tatty tables were arranged in rows, moth-eaten manuals spread beside hammers and screws the length of her hand. Giant barrels lined the left wall.
“The stairwells are all shot,” Arthie said.
Laith gagged. “That smell.”
Arthie was well acquainted with the rotten, smoky stench. Sulfur and charcoal. Gunpowder. Sure enough, one of the barrels was broken, and a pile of gray-black powder was strewn beneath it. It was everywhere, dusting the floorboards, trailing the corners of the upper story where they were now.
Chains swayed eerily, most suspended from the ceiling, some dangling from under crates stacked along the upper floor.
“Wait,” Arthie said. Laith turned back, and she struggled to meet his eyes. “This makes us even.”
He chuckled darkly. “For now.”
“Forever,” she deadpanned.
“We’ll see about that.” He glanced at the window before gesturing to a broken stairwell. It looked like a mouth that had been punched in and was now missing teeth. “Follow me, I can lead us down.”
He tucked his kitten into his robes, letting her paws and head stick out, and leaped across, glancing back every ten seconds as if Arthie was a child. She started after him and nearly lost her footing again when the man jumped over in a cloud of dust, disturbing the wood beneath them.
Arthie whirled to face him. He swayed, gripping the back of his head with one hand before he pulled out a knife, swinging it artlessly at his side. Arthie pulled out Calibore, shifting it into a knife of her own before the man could see.
He lunged first, nicking her shoulder. “Give me the marker.”
“This was my best seersucker,” she growled. The man swung again and she evaded, cuffing his chin and catching the sickening bite of his tongue. She slipped and righted herself, nearly tumbling from the narrow shelf of space.
She was backed into a corner. No. Trapped. Never again.
The chains suspended from the ceiling drifted to her side, feet away, enticing her with an idea. It wasn’t too long, falling just to the level of the floor beneath them, but it would allow her to get away from the man. Don’t even dare, came Jin’s voice in her head. If she missed, she would be a pile of bones on the first floor. The wood beneath her shook again as the man trundled toward her. Waiting here was by no means safer.
Arthie jumped, legs kicking air until she grabbed one of the chains, rust in the links snaring her fingers. The musty air rushed through her limbs when she propelled herself forward—
Her arc was cut short, jarring her teeth. Her attacker was gripping the chain in his hand like she weighed nothing.
“Are you trying to prove a point?” she yelled as he started pulling her up. She scanned her surroundings, but the third floor was worse for wear. The stairs were shattered and there was very little ground to stand on, and that was saying something, considering the rest of the more intact floors. She vaulted to the next chain and shimmied up, swinging onto a plank jutting out of the fourth floor. She tasted dust, no, the gunpowder.
It gave her an idea.
“Get out of here, saint,” Arthie shouted. She couldn’t see him, but knew he was waiting for her somewhere.
“Are you s—” Laith began to shout back.
“Don’t finish that question,” she snarled.
The man laughed at her. “Give me the marker and you can go home to your mother, girl.”
“You’ll have to send me to the sea, then,” Arthie replied, shuffling her feet and gathering as much of the gunpowder together as she could. She jumped to another plank.
He vaulted toward her, landing a few feet away.
She slammed her leg down. The wood snapped, splinters falling to the clutter below. The man’s eyes met hers, a flash of fear in the depths of his because any moment now they were both going to join the broken remains beneath them, or possibly fall all the way to the ground floor, breaking both their necks.
Arthie darted along the narrow ledge. There was no stairwell at the end, no chain to rappel down from. Only a large window coated in soot.
The boulder of a man thundered after her. All this for an expired marker.
“Come and get me,” Arthie said. She plucked a match from her pocket and struck it on the bricks of the wall as she ran, tossing the tiny flame into the trail of gunpowder behind her.
The match fell with a hiss and the gunpowder caught fire, the hiss growing into a roar as it struck the pile she’d collected, quickly growing, swallowing everything around it. The wooden board beneath it crumbled, careening to the ground below.
To the shattered barrel of gunpowder.
The man’s eyes flared in realization. He flung back, rappelling down one of the chains. And Arthie leaped, crashing through the window and hurtling through the air as shards of glass exploded into the evening light.
18
FLICK
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.
