Just as Jin knew that was the extent of what he’d get out of the courier.
“Good man.” Jin circled behind Coll, slicing a knife through the ropes binding his wrists. “Much obliged.”
Jin picked up his things from the dusty table he’d dragged over to their interrogation area. Coll wasn’t the first one he’d bound to a chair in his search for his parents. And there were no limits to what he would do to find them. When Jin was dying and Matteo had come asking if he wanted to be turned, Arthie following swiftly after to complete the deed, Jin had only agreedbecauseof his parents.
And Arthie. Because she needs me, said a voice. He buried it deep.
Coll looked up at him. “What about my foot?”
“What about it?” Jin asked. “You’ve got another, haven’t you? And I’m getting hungry now, so I suggest you leave.”
Coll stood on trembling legs with a muffled cry. He took a single, hobbling step and turned back to Jin. “I—”
Jin bared his fangs.
It was the cure Coll needed. He sprinted with the vigor of a manhalf his age and with two working legs, huffing out the door without a backward glance.
And then Jin was alone.
“Now what, sister?” he asked in the silence.
Arthie didn’t reply.
He sighed. He almost wished, just then, that she would outsmart him as she always did and step through the doors with that devilish glint in her eyes. He ran his tongue along the points of his fangs, and a thought he’d been avoiding snuck through the noise in his head once more: What did Flick think of him? She had been raised with a strong dislike for vampires. She was the daughter of the womanweaponizingvampires.
No. That was unfair to Flick. It was why she’d chosen a name of her own. To be her own person, to draw some semblance of a divide between herself and her mother. Jin didn’t think she’d fully realized why herself. If his mother was both head of the criminal EJC and monarch of the colonizing monstrosity otherwise known as home, he’d probably do the same.
Flick!That was it. She was the one he needed. Flick had been tasked with protecting the Ram’s ledger that night. If there was any way to find out which city the silver was being sent to and where his parents were being kept, it was there. There was always the chance the Ram might have moved them, but if Coll could sleuth and find what he needed, Jin could do the same. He might not know what Flick thought of him, but there was only one way to find out.
He slid his tinted specs over his eyes and popped his collar, opening up his umbrella as he stepped out into the evening fog. He kept his head low, ignoring the mobs.
“To the Athereum!” people were yelling.
“Join our cause, lad,” someone shouted at him.
Jin pretended not to hear. Someone who should not be in possession of a machete was waving it around, and Jin narrowly avoided a slice through his sleeve. Beside him, a woman pumped a wooden stake in the air. Jin kept his mouth closed and his fangs out of view, surprised by a sudden rupture of fear in his veins.
He could die for no fault of his own. He could die because of a description of what he was. He could die because of someone’s misplaced anger, because they believed a lie, and it was a harrowing thought indeed.
3FLICK
In a tea shop not far from the scorched remains of the Casimirs’ once-prestigious establishment, Flick sat in the shadows with a terrible cup of tea and a purring kitten, ever watchful.
She read the invitation once more, running her fingers over the gold edges. Days ago, against her better judgment, she had followed a carriage that was dropping off a neat and glamorous card at each house on Admiral Grove, nearly running straight into a throng of Horned Guard gathered at the end of the street. And criminal that she now was, she stole one.
A Tribute to the Written Word, the card announced.Join us in honoring our fallen heroes and celebrating a vicennial of our monarch.
It was just over a week from now, at Ettenia’s palace north of here. She’d read of vicennial celebrations in history books, an event where long-standing monarchs reminded the rich and the powerful of how great they were and why they ought to remain in power.
She scoffed at the timing. Her mother had been busy in the scant days since the massacre. She was already making her next move, stirring her citizens while planning to honor the fallen members of the press thatshehad killed.
Flick sighed and tried another sip of her tea.Blech.Tea-flavored water was what it was.
The shop was equally drab, void of life in a way Spindrift hadnever been. She drummed her fingers on the side of the teacup, watching the liquid ripple like fear had across White Roaring, leaving it rife with tension in a way Ettenia’s bustling capital never had been in her lifetime. Some hurried to wherever they needed to be, voices hushed, children clutched close. Others were pumping fists into the sky, waving wooden stakes, shouting at the top of their lungs. She couldn’t decide which was worse: the angry mobs, the increase in Horned Guard, or the Ram’s black-clad men.
Everything was terrible.
Flick wanted to tell those people her mother didn’t care that they were hurting and mourning. She didn’t care for their safety any more than Flick thought the vampires were out to attack them.
