Chapter 40
‘You owe me,’ Ezra declared. Tobias glowered at him, his lips a thin line beneath the moustache, which only made Ezra’s gloating smile grow. ‘I won. Pay up.’
Tobias tossed a handful of money onto the table.
‘I will count that,’ Ezra told him, sliding the coins towards himself.
‘You can count, can you?’ Tobias muttered.
‘And sing as well. Want to hear a few bars?’ Ezra laughed at the look of horror on Tobias’ face. Beside him, Jem was smiling. The club was closing; as Hernan showed the last patrons the door, the burly redhead paused, his hand hovering over the lock. He peered out into the darkened street.
‘You slide the bolt, Hernan,’ Ezra teased. ‘In case you’ve forgotten how to lock a door.’
Rather than a scathing reply, Hernan’s ruddy face pulled into a frown. ‘They haven’t come back yet.’
‘Who?’ Jem asked as he collected the cards and returned them to the deck.
‘Your sister,’ Hernan answered. ‘She left with some man. I’d seen him before. He was one of the ones you brought back here.’ At their blank looks, Hernan rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not fucking stupid.’ He nodded at Ezra. ‘Your redhead went with them.’
Ezra shook his head. ‘Analise is upstairs in bed. And that is where I’m going. So, if you gentlemen will excuse me—’
‘She left with Lira,’ Hernan cut in firmly, coming over. ‘An hour ago, at least.’
‘Describe the man who was with them,’ Jem demanded, hands freezing on the cards.
As Hernan talked, Ezra realised the bouncer was describing John, but instead of feeling relieved, something cold slithered over him. He glanced towards the stairs.
‘She’s not up there,’ Hernan said.
‘Neither of them is stupid,’ Jem declared. ‘But—’
‘Something isn’t right,’ Ezra mumbled. Every beat of his heart was strangely slowed, his blood pulsing with … magic, he realised. Analise’s magic. It pulled at his insides. Frowning, Ezra rubbed his chest as Tobias raised his eyebrows. ‘Once upon a time, you trusted my instincts, Tobias.’
That was enough for Jem. He stood, grabbing his coat from the back of the chair and sliding it on. Without a word, he strode towards Maddog’s office, returning with three pistols. Wordlessly, he handed them over.
Maddog hurried out, worry etched in every line of his face. ‘Your sister ... I promised your parents.’
Jem turned to look at him, face tight. ‘I’ll find her,’ he vowed, then marched towards the door. Ezra and Tobias hurried after him; it wasn’t until they were outside and hurrying down the street that Ezra realised Hernan was with them.
The concern on his face made Ezra shut his mouth. He knew nothing about Hernan, only that he’d worked for Maddog since he was a boy. Hernan was older than Ezra and suddenly, it made a strange sort of sense. Maddog, and therefore Lira, were family to him.
At the corner of Blackcoln Road, Jem stopped suddenly. The fingers he pressed to his temples were trembling. ‘Alright. We don’t know where they are, so I think we should—’
‘No,’ Ezra said sharply. ‘We don’t split up.’
‘Ezra…’ Tobias began.
‘This way,’ Ezra mumbled, and broke into a run.
He couldn’t explain what he was feeling, or how he knew where to go.
It was like there was a compass inside him, pulling him around corners and down dark fog-slicked streets.
He was a block away from the Canem Club and tearing down Blackcoln Road when the others caught up to him.
Ezra didn’t slow down, turning a corner so quickly his feet skidded on the pavement.
‘Ezra, wait,’ Jem called.
Ezra dodged a pair of drunks stumbling along. He raced to the other side of the street, heart pounding. He could hear the others behind him, feet slapping the pavement, as they passed the lodging house Analise had roomed at.
‘Stop fucking running!’ Tobias shouted.
Ezra allowed the others to catch up to him.
‘How are we going to find them?’ Jem asked. His voice was brittle, his taciturn expression nowhere to be seen. ‘They could be anywhere in the Credges by now.’
Ezra had vowed he wouldn’t do this again, and apart from finding Analise for the fucking Devil, or for Father Blackwood, or Jem, or the Order, or whoever else wanted her, he hadn’t gone back on the promise he made himself, the one he’d silently made Agnes.
But now, he threw all those promises aside.
‘We’ll find them because I’m going to track Analise,’ he declared.
‘Ezra—’ Tobias began.
‘Shut up and let me do my job,’ Ezra cut in viciously. Tobias fell silent. No one mentioned the slip of the tongue, but Ezra needed to think of it like that. He needed to turn the clock back, depersonalise it, or else his panic, his fear, would overwhelm him.
For now, he was once again Ezra Ives, infamous witch-hound of the Unseen, and he was tracking a death witch through London’s dark, fog-slicked streets.
Two streets over, they found Lira, staring at the night sky.
The pavement beneath her was a slick of blood.
Jem dropped to his knees, pulling his sister into his arms, but they were too late.
Lira was dead. The air left Ezra’s lungs and for a moment, his heart paused, then surged again so quickly it was painful.
Lira was pale, the front of her shirt soaked and her palms scarlet, like she’d tried to stop the bleeding herself.
No one spoke. Ezra didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think about anything other than Analise.
For a moment, it was her he saw, lying on the pavement in a pool of her own blood.
Then it was Agnes, and all the others. He blinked, sucking in a sharp breath as he realised something else—Analise would never have left Lira to die like this.
Jem screamed, making them all jump, and the pain in his voice ripped into Ezra like a knife, so sharp his eyes pricked with tears. He crouched beside Jem, reaching out to touch Lira’s hand. She was cold—she died alone on a dirty street in the Devil’s Credges.
Shock slipped away, replaced quickly by burning anger. Tobias knelt beside Jem, whose face was caught somewhere between despair and rage. ‘I should have … I should …’ he muttered, his voice breaking. Tobias murmured something to him.
‘Jem,’ Ezra whispered. His friend looked up. ‘Jem, I—’
‘I’ll kill him,’ Jem seethed. Ezra had never heard someone sound so viciously resolute. He exchanged a glance with Tobias, a silent communication that said they needed to move, now.
‘I’ll rip him to pieces with my bare hands,’ Jem went on. His grip on his sister’s body tightened.
‘Jem,’ Tobias said softly. He closed his hand over Jem’s shoulder. ‘Ezra and I will deal with him. Take Lira back to the club.’ He paused, looking up at Hernan, whose face was blank with shock. ‘We’ll deal with this, I promise,’ Tobias said again, then pressed his lips to Jem’s forehead.
The devastation on Jem’s face ripped Ezra’s guts out.
His friend was always so stoic, so strong and serious.
Now, to see him with his shoulders slumped and his skin as pale as milk, his dead sister cradled in his arms …
Ezra wasn’t sure what to say. Whatever words he could offer wouldn’t change anything. They wouldn’t bring Lira back.
This changed everything. Slowly, Ezra stood, casting his eyes around, waiting, but he wasn’t sure for what.
A clue. Anything that might indicate which way John had taken Analise.
As his eyes snagged on a building down the street, he saw it: a glimmer of gold mist, clinging desperately to the brickwork.
He looked down at Jem, his words caught somewhere in the back of his throat.
Jem’s whole body shook as he took a deep breath and met Ezra’s eyes. ‘Find Analise,’ he whispered, ‘and come back—all of you.’
Ezra took off down the street, not waiting to see if Tobias was following him.
Analise’s magic led them around one corner, then another, before it stopped again, and he realised what she’d done—left a trail for him to follow.
He tried to shut out the smells and sounds of the city and concentrate.
The magic she left inside pulled at him, like it wanted to burst from his chest, and he saw a faint smear of gold on the corner of a building—as if she dragged her hand along it.
Her trail led them away from the slum of the Devil’s Credges and Ezra found himself back in his old neighbourhood.
Tobias, silent, followed him along the street, the neat houses of the middle-class looking down at them as they passed.
No curtains twitched behind windows. No one called out.
This part of London was tucked up in its comfortable bed.
Ezra followed a speck of gold mist around another corner and stopped as the trail went cold.