Chapter Thirty
With a tremendous boom, the head of Qavox came crashing through the wall, shattering the stones.
He drew in a mighty breath, then expelled it in a jet of white flame at the Red Wizard, who caught fire instantly.
In seconds all that was left was a pile of ash.
Then the dragon turned his head and blew a gentler stream of flame that licked and danced around the nightmarish red encasing her father.
She watched in wonder as the ruby faded from his face.
“Father!” Amsonia cried, hastening to his side.
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
“You’re just in time for the soiree, Your Grace!” purred Maggie, French accent made notable by its absence. She threw back her head and laughed throatily, and Dex felt the back of his own head explode as something very hard and very solid made a meaningful connection with his skull.
As he fell to his knees, his head bounced in a violent circle, showing him the rest of the room. Miss Flanagan, leaning on the bed to his left, a cross-eyed look of confusion covering her face. Two large bodies just behind him emerging from the shadows of the alcove.
“Burt? Or is it Figgleston?” he inquired, when the stars stopped imploding behind his eyes long enough to let him speak.
“Figgleston,” grunted the one roughly dragging him back to his feet and restraining him with meaty arms. “That’s Burt.” Burt was crossing the room toward Ana.
“And you’ve met my sister, Carol,” Maggie simpered. “There! We’ve all been introduced. We’re delighted you could join us. Aren’t we, dear? We’re going to have such fun.” She ran the tip of her knife along the front of Ana’s dress and winked at her.
Cold dread seized Dex and he struggled against his captor, partially breaking free before receiving another staggering blow to his solar plexus that knocked the wind from his sails.
“Maggie!” slurred Miss Flanagan. “Put that knife away. You said you weren’t goin’ to hurt ’er, remember?”
“Oh, I remember, sister mine. I remember quite a lot of things. I remember all the years of hard work and sacrifice it took to set my business up, the men I had to satisfy, the palms I had to grease with my hard-earned coin. I remember having a full house at the brothel, a line of gents in the parlor waiting to meet my birds. I remember money fairly pouring in. Do you know what happens to a bawdy house that suddenly loses five of its most precious wares? Dead of night, very sudden? It has a strange effect on morale, it turns out. The other girls start misbehaving. Don’t do as they’re told, find other work.
And the clientele—well, it hears rumors about a certain duke putting his seal of disapproval on the place, and business dries right up. ”
Dex, finally finding his breath again, saw Ana’s eyes fly wide. She gazed at him approvingly, smiling, despite the knife pressed to her throat.
He’d made her proud. The glow of it was enough to restore his reserves of strength. He’d bide his time. Find precisely the right moment to escape Figgleston and take out Burt and Maggie. He didn’t think Carol Flanagan would be much of a threat. She appeared to be half in cups.
She wove to her feet, one hand holding a bottle loosely at her side.
“But that weren’t all ’is fault, were it?
And it certainly wasn’t ’ers,” she said, gesturing at Ana.
“And we won’t miss it much, once we get him to pay us the ransom.
All is business, sister, and business is all! Isn’t that what you always say?”
“You idiot, there will be no ransom!” said Maggie angrily, waving a hand at the whole scene.
“We can’t let them go after this! His High and Mighty will never let this die, look at him.
He’s besotted by his tiny little Ana. So we’ll let him watch Burt and Figgleston take away his future, like he took away mine. Then we’ll kill him, too.”
Ana’s face went parchment white as Burt grabbed her roughly by the arm, to stop her sudden squirming. Dex stared into her eyes, willing her to be calm, to conserve her energy for what lay ahead.
“But—but the money!” wailed Miss Flanagan.
“You said I’d be swimming in champagne and riches, enough to leave this rubbish cart behind for good!
’at’s why I told you about the necklace and told you about her father’s ring so you could have a copy made.
What kind of money can we get outta killing ’im? You said we’d be rich!”
“So?” Maggie tapped her feet impatiently, waiting for her inebriated sister to catch up. “I say a lot of things. Just like I remember a lot of things. Like his lordship here lying to my face, stealing my belongings, ruining my hard-earned business.”
Dex turned his head slightly to look at Ana again.
She was flushed and intent. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes narrowed—but he knew with innate certainty that she wasn’t frightened.
She was listening, she was thinking. She was scheming.
The glorious machinery of her nimble intellect was whirring, he could almost hear it. He held his breath.
Ana raised her head. “It’s really too unfortunate you’ve antagonized my husband so badly,” she proclaimed, dramatically.
“He’ll never give you the jewels from the family vault, like we discussed before I came.
A reward it was to be, for reuniting me with Papa.
The diamond diadem fit for a queen. That was to be your reward. ”
“A diadomd—diamem—jewels!” breathed Carol Flanagan, beginning to mist over as she imagined the sight. She refocused on her sister. “Maggie! Cain’t we just let bygones be bygones?”
“Bygone! But it was by his hand that it’s all gone, sister. There’s no solution to that. All my hard work, vanished.”
“My hard work, too, and I ain’t complained,” returned her sister. “Bedded my share o’ strangers, worked my poor fingers to the bone running that boarding ’ouse, all’s so I could send you more girls, while you swanned around a parlor eating bonbons and rubbing elbows with the nobs!”
“Worked your fingers to the bones,” spat Maggie. “Drank your bony ass into a stupor, more like! Chirping the whole time about how ‘respectable’ you were, how proud you were of yourself. A whore, just like the girls you sold me.”
“A wh-whore,” Carol sputtered, her face turning vermilion. “You name your own sister a whore. ’Ow do you like that?”
Dex saw an opening to heap more fuel on the fire.
“There would have been such a handsome reward for you, Miss Flanagan, knowing how steadfastly you worked toward providing those young women with respectable lodging and guidance. I could have overlooked everything else. Why, you gave my Ana a home when nobody else would have her. Surely that’s worth a healthy fortune in gold? ”
“Gold! Maggie.” Carol wheeled on her sister. “Let them go! Do y’hear? Do the right thing for once in your goddamned life!”
“You imbecile!” Maggie shouted, her eyes widened in a frightening glare. “If your brain wasn’t so pickled in booze, you’d hear how stupid the words coming out of your slatternly mouth actually are. I raised you up with me out of the muck. I gave you everything you have! And I’ll ruin you, too!”
“Ruin me? I’ll ruin you!” shrieked Carol, raising the bottle over her head, ready to advance on Maggie, who was backing away with her knife outstretched.
Ana met Dex’s intense gaze for the briefest of seconds and gave a brief nod. Now was the moment. Burt and Figgleston were staring raptly at the screaming sisters, engrossed in their fighting.
Now, Ana mouthed.
As he wrenched his torso out of Figgleston’s beefy grasp and brought his elbow up and back in pursuit of the man’s jaw, he saw Ana’s arm raise, lightning fast, something slim and cylindrical clutched within it. The pencil connected with Burt’s eye. He went down with a yell. Figgleston followed.
Dex supplemented his initial blow with some well-aimed kicks to the kidneys, then vaulted over the body to aid Ana in subduing Burt, who was swinging his head around blindly, the pencil stub still sticking out of his eye, blood spurting from the wound.
As Dex and Ana conquered the hired muscle, Carol thudded headfirst into Maggie’s chest, driving her forcefully back, slamming her against the windowsill.
The rickety frame of the window was no match for the weight of the two feuding Flanagans.
With a thwack and the sudden crystalline crack of shattering glass, the sisters crashed through, Maggie on bottom.
The violet marabou of her robe billowed around them both, fluttering in the night air, as they disappeared from Dex’s sight, flying down to the street below.
Dex tied Figgleston’s and Burt’s hands together with his neckcloth, while Ana grabbed the knife with shaking fingers, so they couldn’t use it to free themselves.
“She stabbed me, that witch,” Burt moaned. “I can’t see anything.”
“Told you we should never ’ave taken this job. Those sisters are Bedlamites, they are,” Figgleston said, wincing from the beating Dex had administered.
“You’ll live,” Dex said. “More’s the pity. Don’t try to look through your good eye. Keep them both closed.” He tore a length of cloth from a shirt hanging in the wardrobe and wrapped it around the pencil.
“Ow!” Burt roared. “Wot you doing?”
“Saving you,” Dex said. “You don’t want anyone but a physician to dislodge that pencil. We’ll call for one.”
Ana leaned out the window, mindful of the broken glass.
“They both survived,” she reported. “Their fall was broken by a passing flower vendor’s cart.
Carol landed on top of her sister and is already standing up with the help of bystanders.
Maggie is . . . well, she’s alive, it appears, but still hasn’t been able to stand. ”
“And you?” Dex asked, dread gripping his throat. “Are you injured?”
“Less so than you, I’d say.” She walked toward him and touched the bruise rising on his cheek.
“Nothing new,” he growled, though it did hurt like hell and there were probably a few cracked ribs as well.
“Come,” he said, holding out his hand. Ana placed her small hand inside of his. “Let’s go home.”
In the distance, a constable’s whistle sounded.