Whimpering, she latched on to the scratchy woolen coat. She strained for a name, for a face to accompany the voice, but the calloused fingers pried her loose before she could remember. She was back with the pink pinafore and blooming lilacs.
Then the white-paned window, and laughter, and ducks.
Then the darkness.
The terrible, enfolding darkness—where she was entirely alone.
He should have gotten there faster. He should have run when he heard the scream.
Another shiver wracked through Tom, despite the warm morning sun cutting through the fog. His steps slowed outside the rubble-stone blacksmith shop with its iron-barred windows and jettied first floor.
He couldn’t go in.
He couldn’t go anywhere.
What do I do?Meade, the blacksmith, must have already started the fire before his daily walk to Kingfisher’s Tavern. Heat poured out of the wide, open entrance doors, pulling at Tom with a force he couldn’t resist.
Inside the workroom, he sagged into a chair by the forge. He had to think. He just needed to sit here, breathe, make sense of all the jumbled pieces flailing in his brain.
Meg was gone.
Disappeared.
No.
He shook his head and stood again, wiped his face, choked in the familiar smell of hot steel and soot. All night long, he’d combed the village like a madman. He’d banged on doors. He’d awakened the groom at the livery stable, then the servant boy at the nearby coaching inn.
No one had spotted an injured girl, nineteen years of age with hair the color of nutmeg.
No one had seen anything.
Fury sizzled inside him, like the blue-orange flames in the brick forge. He groped for something. Anything. Metal tongs—and he sent them clattering into the opposite wall.
“Do that again, and I’ll be beatin’ it o’er your head.” Meade filled the workroom threshold. His puffy, red-tinted skin already gleamed with sweat, and corded muscles strained beneath his rolled-up shirt. His eyes hardened. “Looks like someone already did.”
Tom dragged his sleeve across his mouth. He tasted blood, ashes, terror.
“I heard.” Meade grabbed his cowhide apron from the peg. His movements were stiff, measured, as if he weren’t certain what to do or say. “Down at the tavern. Blabber of the fishermen.”
“Mr. Foxcroft didn’t come out.” The words nearly stuck in Tom’s throat. “He should have had time.”
A nod.
“He was hurt.”
Another nod.
“Someone stole Meg.”
Meade pumped the bellows. Fire whooshed, sparks snapped, and when he finally glanced up, his features blazed a shade redder. “Turn around.”
“I have to go—”
“I said turn, boy.” Meade seized Tom by the arm, forced him around. He said nothing about the burnt holes in the linen of Tom’s back. Or the endless cuts. Or the oozing, swelling blisters. “Sit down.”
“I have to look for her.”
“Sit down.”
