THIRTEEN #2
Aly looked down at the grey-brown cobblestones beneath her feet.
For a copper, Calum wasn’t a bad sort. In the dark close, she could almost forget he was a copper.
He treated her with a kindness she wasn’t used to, but she knew enough to know such kindness could be a trap, a way of reeling her in until she was so far in she couldn’t escape.
The thought made her ribcage contract around her heart.
She wanted his kindness to be genuine, wanted it with a longing deep in her bones.
“Not much,” she said with a shrug, shoving those thoughts aside. “They all came from around this part of town, all struggling to survive. All the kind of people your sort don’t usually bother with when they go missing.”
Calum looked down, wetting his lips. Aly expected shock and denial, but all he said was, “But Gibson cared, didn’t he?”
“He cared enough to ask around, anyway, which is more than can be said for most toffs,” Aly said, her hands tightening in her pockets. “Which doesn’t make sense. He was well off, he was a politician—why would he care about a few missing people from the slums?”
Calum shrugged. “Not everyone who’s well off is too selfish to care.”
Aly cast him a withering look. “I grew up among people like that. Trust me, the ones who aren’t are rarer than a lying fae.”
“You did? I just assumed . . .”
Aly leant her head against the wall, tilting it to meet his eyes.
He looked surprised, but not disdainful.
In her experience, having been well off and becoming poor garnered more distaste than having been born into poverty.
“No, my mum’s a doctor. She booted me out when I was sixteen.
” Aly closed her eyes against the pain that constricted her chest, the memory of that last screaming match undimmed by the years since.
“Didn’t take long for my so-called friends to start pretending I didn’t exist, too.
” At first, they’d been helpful, when she was a brewster’s apprentice in good clothes who just needed a friend to cover the cost of a meal out on occasion to help her stretch her money till payday.
But the longer it dragged on and the poorer she got, the more they avoided her, as though being poor was a contagious disease they’d catch if they so much as acknowledged her on the street.
She’d run into one of them a year or so ago, at a dinner party Grant had been invited to—as Grant, the owner of a successful brewing business, not the Wulver, the owner of a successful salching market, of course.
Mirin had made gushing remarks about how well Aly looked and how pleased she was to see her again, as though she hadn’t crossed bridges to avoid Aly when she saw her in the street for years now.
Calum was staring at her, his lips parted slightly. She expected him to say how she must have done something awful to deserve it, but again he surprised her. “I’m sorry. She shouldn’t have done that. None of them should have.”
Aly turned her head away. She didn’t need sympathy from a copper. “Anyway, maybe you should take a look at his actions in the burgh council. Anything to do with poverty or illegal activity might be relevant.”
“And people who aren’t members of guilds, perhaps?”
Aly lifted her eyes to him. “How did you know?”
Calum rubbed a hand over his hair. He kept it short, which was rare in Mossburgh; most people’s hair fell to at least shoulder length, and longer was fashionable.
Aly found herself wondering if it was to show off that strange white streak.
“I’ve been looking into a few missing people myself.
None of them were members of guilds. One of them had been, but she lost her apprenticeship a couple of months ago.
The detective superintendent believes that they all just left town in search of better opportunities, but I don’t think so.
They were all reported missing by a flatmate or friend, the kind of people you’d think they’d have told if they were headed to Kinairgid or the countryside. ”
“Do you think it could be connected to what Gibson’s asking about?” People went missing all the time, after all, and most of them were never found, their bodies devoured at the bottom of a canal.
“Might be a dead end, but I have the contact details for the friend of one of the missing people.”
“Only one? You said they were all reported missing by friends and flatmates.”
“They were, but most of them went missing a few months ago, and none of them are at the same address anymore.” That tracked with them being salchs.
“This last one, Flora Hamilton, only went missing just before Samhain.” He frowned.
“I could use your help, actually, speaking to her friend, the one who made the report.”
Aly blinked. “My help?”
“She won’t speak to me. Because I’m a copper, and the constable who took her report was somewhat less than thorough.”
“Shocker,” Aly muttered. She’d meant it to be too quiet for Calum to hear, but she saw the corners of his mouth flick up in amusement. The sight chased away the chill in her bones and warmed her to the core. “I’ll speak to her,” she said at normal volume.
“Thank you,” Calum said quietly. “I appreciate it.”
He looked so earnest it made Aly’s heart ache. He cared about finding these missing salchs—though she doubted he knew they were salchs—and that scared her. A copper who was in it for himself she could understand and predict. A copper who cared, who believed in what he did—that was dangerous.