A Tempest of Tea, page 20
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.”
33
JIN
Jin heaved a sigh of relief when Flick exited the archive room with a charming smile and a minute to spare. He didn’t have to worry about her anymore, but he was still worried about Arthie. When he was certain Eleanor Thorne wasn’t about to reemerge again, he left the cover of the alcove and joined Flick by the accent wall, her sweet sunshine scent soothing his nerves almost immediately. It took everything in him not to pull her into his arms.
The chutes rattled with the markers hurtling through, and then Laith was inside, stalling near the alcove beneath the dormer where the guard’s toxin-induced catnap would begin wearing off at any moment.
Matteo needed to hurry up with that distraction.
A voice rose from the doors. At last, Jin thought, nearly forgetting the painter was in disguise when a blond man in tinted specs began insulting the vampire beside him in Matteo’s voice.
“Nice suit, old boy. Does it come in men’s sizes?”
Ouch. It was no wonder Matteo saw no need for violence. His jibes were brutal enough. Jin gave Laith a nod.
Laith flexed his limbs and began his ascent to the mezzanine, but everyone was looking at Matteo, too riveted by his audacity to notice a hooded human crawling up the wall.
When Matteo had made the suggestion back in Spindrift, none of them had believed an argument over style could distract anyone, but Jin stood corrected. There was good sense and then there was affluence.
“Who are you? Do you know whom you’re speaking to?” the other vampire hissed at Matteo.
Jin was only half listening. He was watching Laith. They had seconds before the guard woke. Seconds before he sounded the alarm.
“I do indeed,” Matteo intoned solemnly, leaning toward the other vampire. “Someone who left his fashion sense in the grave.”
There was a scuffle of shoes out on the steps and raised voices. And then Laith was finally out of sight and everything was quiet.
Jin waited. Flick made a sound.
“Do you think he’s all right?” she asked, eyes locked on the shadows of the mezzanine.
“Done and dusted, love,” Jin said, guiding her deeper into the Athereum. The room would be a lot louder if Laith hadn’t reached the guard in time. “Time for phase two.”
34
ARTHIE
The bouncer had Arthie’s elbow in a viselike grip. He led her to the Athereum’s prison, where the vampire standing guard sneered at her. What was with all the sneering? He threw open the gate with far too much excitement and locked it behind her and the bouncer, leaving the two of them alone. The room was sterile with a set of empty cells and another reinforced door at the end.
Arthie jerked free before the bouncer could continue the ploy and throw her in one of them.
In every discussion of her plans with the others, Arthie always faced pushback on one particular part of it: the bit where she got caught. It was dangerous and risky, and Jin tried talking her out of it more than once.
But Matteo had warned them that getting into this secure area was impossible without possessing a key or being imprisoned, so she had no choice, really.
“Was that really necessary, Theo?” she snapped.
Especially when she realized she knew one of the two Athereum bouncers.
The bouncer looked chagrined. It was a look she recognized from his brief stint as a Spindrift employee, during which he’d accidentally thrown out the wrong patrons multiple times. She should have realized he would still be difficult to work with, but it wasn’t as if she had another option.
“You said make it believable!” Theo said, perplexed.
Arthie sighed, feeling bruised all over. “Believable, Theo, not kill me. Now let me through.”
“But you promised you’d pay—”
“How would it have looked if I’d carried a bag full of duvin in here, eh?” Arthie asked. “Exactly. Go see Felix tomorrow, and you’ll have your pay.”
He thought about what she said then nodded once and let her through the second door.
Arthie straightened her coat and then her hair, carefully closing the door behind her. The corridor was long and empty, thrumming with the din of the festivities on the other side. Arthie reached the bend, where the Athereum’s vault was fit snug into the corner, a massive structure of brass with an elaborate lock she wished she could crack simply for the fun of it.
If Arthie were looking to hide an important document, that was the last place she would store it, because it would be the first place anyone looked. Eventually, the corridor branched into the hall of offices. The second entrance to the locked corridors was at the end of it. A seating area spread out to her left, a glass wall to her right, where she caught a glimpse of the society in motion.
And a figure waiting for her on the other side of the door.
Arthie turned the lock and opened it. Moths fluttered in her chest.
“Hello, darling,” Matteo said, tipping a fluted glass at her. Even disguised, he looked every bit … himself. The way he walked, the way he smiled. The way that damned dimple taunted from his cheek. “How are you finding the Athereum?”
“Every night, when the foundries go dark and the patrols get lax, men shed their shirts, wrap gauze around their fists, and throw sweaty punches in a ring,” Arthie replied, dropping her hands on the back of a chair. She pursed her lips in thought for a second. “This feels about the same.”
Matteo laughed, and the sound made her wholly aware of herself. “You never fail to surprise me, and yet you behave exactly as I expect.”
He looked at her as if she was something special, something more than a criminal with a gun, something more than a monster with a timer running out.
He swept his tongue across his lower lip, and she mimicked the movement across her own. He swished the blood in his flute, stirring up the scent of it with a soft sigh. Her head swam. His gaze missed nothing.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked, watching her every motion.
“Of course I am.” She clenched her jaw. It was the stress getting to her. Yes, they’d forged coins, thwarted sisters, and gotten into the Athereum without losing their heads, but the Ram’s ledger was still out there. Spindrift still hung in the balance.
“You know what you have to do,” she said.
“I do,” he said with a nod, and she turned to leave. “So. Penn Arundel, hmm?”
She turned back, suddenly acutely aware of everything around her. The brush of air on the nape of her neck, the footsteps on the polished wood floors, the hum of a violin somewhere in the Athereum.
Please, please, please.
Matteo swayed in front of her. Her limbs felt leaden, her head light. She had known what she was getting into, but she’d still chosen to do it. For her tearoom.
“You and I have much in common,” he said almost gently.
Arthie bit out a laugh. “How would you know?”
“Penn is, well, he was the only one who was there for me when I first turned,” Matteo said. “He’s told me a lot about you.”
Arthie regarded him, trying to decipher how much was a lot and it made her realize: She cared what Matteo thought of her. It was a scary epiphany she did not wish to dwell on.
“That means—wait. He’s whom you wanted to get in here to see,” Arthie said.
Matteo nodded, barely surprised she had figured him out. “When I learned he hadn’t been seen outside the Athereum for weeks, I knew something was wrong. He might be head of the place, but there’s very few vampires here that he can trust. I never thought I’d get the chance to possibly see him again, but I knew that if anything had happened to him, he would have wanted you to know.”
The concern in his voice struck a chord inside her.
“That’s why you were racking up a tab at Spindrift,” she said as his plan slowly fell into place in her mind. “That’s why you wanted me to come to your house.”
He laughed softly. “You are extremely difficult to arrange a meeting with, Arthie.”
“But you didn’t tell me,” Arthie said, refusing to believe him.
He looked contrite. “Can you blame me? You were quite intense that first night and then you showed up with the Horned Guard in tow the second time. Anywho, what matters is that you’re here now.”
“Here,” Arthie repeated.
“Here,” Matteo agreed, “at the crossroads of your past and your future.”
35
JIN
The corridor wound artfully before spilling into the massive main hall where the auction was to take place. Rows of lacquered chairs lined the room, many already occupied by vampires. Jin plucked one of the bidder numbers from the table and found himself a seat. Beside him, Flick did the same, Laith’s kitten snug in the crook of her arm.
The room was filling up. Vampires had come from all across Ettenia. Many of them, to Jin’s surprise, seemed to be immigrants who had retained elements of their home cultures. There were vampires in form-fitting qipaos and others in wide-sleeved agbadas. He caught sight of the flowing folds of Hanfu, the regal skirts of an anarkali, and saris in sapphire, emerald, and onyx, each one beaded more heavily than the last.
On the stage up ahead, the auctioneer’s assistant propped open a stand while a vampire with silver hair and skin the same shade as Arthie’s swaggered down the aisle, a cravat knotted at his throat. He was carrying something large and rectangular and draped in beige.
Look for whoever brings in the auction piece, Matteo had instructed. That’s the pocket you’ll want to pick for the key.
Sir Silver Hair was their man.
The assistant straightened at the sight of him. “Sidharth, what took you so long?”
“Apologies,” he drawled. “I was unaware you’d finally learned how to read a clock.”
The assistant fumed but took the parcel from him and set it on the stand with care, unveiling the object beneath an angled light. Sidharth gave it a wistful look as if it were his, but Jin had stolen and studied enough art to recognize its artist.
Matteo Andoni.
His work had a distinctness to it, an urgency that didn’t quite match the vampire himself—or any vampire for that matter. Time held no meaning for them when their limbs worked eternally. Perhaps that was where the Athereum saw the value in Matteo’s work: that reminder of time passing, that longing, even if they’d never admit to it. Everyone yearned for what they couldn’t have.
This particular piece featured a single stroke of shadow, obscure enough to be anything but defined enough to be a woman. She stood in a blurred street, lamps scattered like souls, her head tilted toward a full moon as if she were a wolf calling for her love. There was something hollow about the piece, haunting and lonely.
“Until later.” Sidharth inclined his head with a flourish. When he lifted his hand for a wave, Jin saw the keys Matteo had promised would be there.
There were three of them, made of brass. Jin barely caught a glimpse before Sidharth slipped them into his right pocket and turned to leave. Jin turned too, leaning closer to Flick, who looked at him as if he’d lost his head when he emptied a pocket of keys into her lap.
“Jin!” she exclaimed as he shuffled through a mess of silver and gold until he found three brass keys that he slid onto a ring. “Oh, this is marvelous. Wherever did you find all this?”
“Under my pillow, love,” he answered. He’d meant for the words to be innocent, but her breath caught, and he curled a crooked grin. “You’d be surprised what all can be found on my bed.”
Truth be told, he had been picking pockets since he’d stepped into the Athereum in preparation for this. In that time, he’d learned it was a lot harder to pull off a believable sneer when one was missing the keys to their own house.
“I—” Flick looked up sharply. The auctioneer’s assistant tapped his gavel on the podium, and the thrum of voices turned down a notch. “Oh.”
Jin followed her line of sight to a new vampire taking the place of the assistant.
Every inch of him demanded attention, from the length of his dark hair to the aristocratic planes of his face. He was a mix of races, that much Jin could tell. Not quite Ettenian, not quite foreign, and he looked vaguely familiar.
He surveyed the room and bent to murmur in his assistant’s ear.
“Keep an eye out,” Jin told Flick, and hurried after Sidharth, who was lingering at the entrance as a flock of vampires in dark gowns and netted hats filed inside, hands at their throats and fangs bared beneath bayonet smiles. Making a fool of himself in front of a lady wasn’t in his nature, but the job was the job.
One hand in his pocket, Jin stumbled on the rug with an oof, pitching himself at Sidharth. He slammed into an unexpected wall of muscle and hooked a finger around the vampire’s suspender to shift his focus as Jin swapped the keys and righted himself.
“Someone’s had a little too much to drink,” Sidharth said, none the wiser as he observed Jin through hooded eyes.
He made to catch his hand, but Jin released him and pulled back with a tsk. “Sorry there, I’m already spoken for.”
Flick’s face popped into Jin’s head at the words before he plunged into the crowd of vampires, slipping through a cloud of perfume and jeweled skirts. If he somehow found himself in possession of a pearl-studded silver barrette and a carved jade fountain pen when he finally made it to the empty foyer, it wasn’t his fault.
* * *
After getting the keys to Laith, Jin made his way back to the auction hall. He wasn’t certain whose bidder number he snatched on his way back in, but he sent them a silent apology as he drove up the price of the auction again and again and again.
“Four thousand duvin,” the dark-haired vampire called from behind the podium, “once more from the gentleman in the back.”
That once more sounded belligerent. Beside him, Flick’s paddle went up with excruciating hesitance. Was she worried she’d truly have to pay?
“Five thousand,” he announced. Jin saw the crimson in his eyes, betraying his age.
“Andoni’s work isn’t even worth half that,” someone murmured.
“I daresay I agree,” murmured another.
“Appreciation of the arts is an acquired skill,” Jin said, insulted on Matteo’s behalf.
“I wholly agree,” Flick echoed, prompting others to pick sides.
Another gentleman lifted his paddle, followed by a lady with a cane. The vampire behind the podium called out the next figure.
“Nine thousand duvin,” the vampire announced. “Have we any others?”
He began a spiel about the piece and the cause it supported. Jin’s paddle went up and then a slew of vampires followed, paddles rising and falling.
A figure started down the aisle, and Jin narrowed his eyes. Matteo. The vampire at the podium paused too, scrutinizing him as if he knew him but couldn’t quite see past the disguise. What was he doing?
“Jin?” Flick dragged out his name.
“I see him,” Jin murmured.
Matteo climbed up the front of the stage, eliciting murmurs from the crowd and wrenching the auction to a halt. He leaned close and whispered in the dark-haired vampire’s ear, and Jin was filled with a sense of foreboding too late to act upon it.
Then the dark-haired vampire set down his gavel and looked straight at Jin.
Damn it all.
“Time for plan C,” Jin said. He didn’t understand. The man was stepping away from the podium, moving toward them. What had Matteo told him?
“What’s plan C?” Flick asked nervously.
Jin looked down at the vampire beside him. “Have you ever been hit with an auction paddle?”
“I beg your pardon?” the vampire sounded flabbergasted.
“No?” Jin asked, and slammed his paddle across the vampire’s face. “You’re welcome.”
The vampire shot to his feet, swinging his paddle with such force, Jin barely had time to duck before it slammed into the head of the vampire beside him. The woman leaped up.
