Chapter Twenty-Eight
Closed.
The sign may as well have said something else. It may as well have said exactly what she feared.
Dead.
But hope could sometimes be a brutal thing, gripping tight even when it was in the best interest of the mind to let go. It didn’t let Alora go now, its claws digging as deep as a witch’s fingers. She rattled the latch with all her strength. It didn’t give; it was locked. She ran to the back.
Mugwort Alley was the least popular place in Enver. Its location next to Renwick Forest made it not only dangerous, or so they were led to believe, but also overshadowed. The canopy blocked the sun by early afternoon. It was a place for dark things. Quite a convenient location for Urchins.
The wagon was there. The mule was not. Alora hurried to the back door and once again pushed against the latch. It didn’t budge.
If it weren’t for the ice built up inside her, the sick-sweat coating her skin, she would have thought he was only out.
He did that, she knew. After all, she’d come upon him once after an afternoon gathering of bones.
She’d come upon him in the nursery buying up Forget-Me-Nots.
But somehow, she knew he was doing none of those things.
She slumped against his door, sinking until her bottom met the stoop.
She’d done this once before, sat like this, but when she’d awoken, he’d been there, his hands coming around her to lift her up.
She didn’t think that would happen this time.
She didn’t know how any tears could be left inside her, but there were.
Her shoulders heaved against her cries, her head buried in her knees.
Voices came from the street. She ignored them. But when they sounded nearer, on that colorless, narrow lane between buildings, she couldn’t any longer and scrambled to stand. Her sobs caught and quieted.
A moment later, four men appeared around the corner.
From the safety of her enchanted coat, Alora focused on each in turn, not recognizing any of them—until she reached the last and gasped aloud.
The sound drew attention. She pressed her lips closed as four pairs of eyes turned toward her general direction.
Four bodies grew rigid as they waited. They assessed for a threat, she thought, which was understandable, considering they must all be Urchins.
She stared the hardest at the crooked-nosed man, his light mustache and blue eyes revealing him as the Urchin who had driven her only that morning.
The one who had been knocked unconscious within Opulence’s grounds.
He looked no worse for wear. They must have healed the bump he surely should have sprouted on his forehead.
“What’s the matter with that butterfly?” said one.
Oh no! Fly away! Alora panicked and shrugged, and the creature obeyed, lifting from her shoulder.
When nothing else shifted or made any further noise, they resumed their conversation. Slowly at first, and then more confident. One produced a key from his pocket and opened the door. They were going inside.
The door was left wide, and Alora wasted no thought in hurrying in after the last. She moved to a corner out of the way when the final Urchin turned and closed them in. A screeching announced the deadbolt had slid home.
“Tell us the rest of it then, Salvoy. What happened after you saw the second wolf?”
It was apparent the young Urchin enjoyed the attention he was receiving over that terrible moment as he smiled hugely, his mustache rising at the corners.
“Well,” he said, “I looked over at the girl, and she was all in hysterics, crying and shouting, and I thought: This is the last person I’d want to be eaten by wolves with.
So I beat the horses into the fastest gallop imaginable, hoping to outrun them. ”
The four men left the backroom in a single file, making for the main room of the shop.
Alora followed them in a rage, wishing beyond anything that she could reveal herself as that hysterical girl and rip the bedraggled caterpillar from Mr. Salvoy’s thin upper lip.
She imagined it would come off all at once—how satisfying.
Rather than continuing past the counter, the Urchins turned and headed up the stairs.
“I heard the guard was already dead by the time you reached the gate. How did you manage past it?”
“I heard the lever is still being repaired. Did you run it over?”
“I was there after it happened. There was a branch broken across it.”
“No,” said Salvoy, and for the first time, Alora heard the uncertainty in his voice.
She wondered if the others did. If they guessed that the Urchin embellished for his own sake.
“No, I didn’t run it over. It’s true a branch fell at the exact moment we would have smashed into the gate.
It happened to land upon the lever, which was obviously a stroke of good luck. ”
Finally, a bit of truth from him. The door atop the stairs swung in, and the Urchins moved through it.
“Do you think it was her? Can she control the wind? It’s been unchecked over the grounds ever since, and the captain must have thought she was worth some trouble to send you with her rather than a guard.”
Another laughed. “Worth so much that he blackened the eye of that skin-burning prat over her too.”
“Did he, really? I hadn’t heard that one yet. What’s gotten into him?”
Salvoy snorted. “More like how long has she been letting him get into her?”
Alora’s fist clenched so hard, she thought surely her nails had punctured the skin of her palms. She should have punched him when she’d had the chance, there in that wagon.
“Easy. Don’t go there, Salvoy.” The oldest Urchin frowned at him before striking a match. The lamp lit a moment later.
Alora stilled on the threshold. She absorbed the room with new eyes. The black-curtained windows. The lack of fireplace. The twin chairs, the end tables, and the sofa. That sofa.
She’d been here before. She’d lain on that couch. The cushion the Urchin captain had propped her foot upon sat crooked at its corner. This was the room above Potions and Peculiarities. A secret meeting place for Urchins.
She held her hand out to the doorframe to steady herself.
The same Urchin as before ordered the rest about, “Get dressed. We’ve work to do.”
Together, the four of them moved to the wall. The closets were hidden in the panels, and Alora could only stare blankly as one by one they were pushed open. Black coats. Black boots. Black masks. Black gloves.
“It’s a terrible shame about Ezra. He was one of the best. I can’t think of how he would have been overcome unless there were many of them.”
Ezra, Alora thought. Was this the Urchin captain’s true name? Bash’s true name?
“There were. Eight in total, I think, including the two turned to stone.”
Alora swung her attention toward the rasping voice. It wasn’t the captain’s voice, but the rough quality was the same. The Urchin was dressed, all but for his gloves, which he donned now. His mouth was masked and hidden from her.
“Do we know how that could have happened? How the beasts were petrified?” The oldest Urchin spoke again, except now his voice was changed, too: the same rasping quality as the last. A mask also covered the lower portion of his face.
One by one, all four donned their garb, and one by one, their true voices fell away.
The masks are enchanted.
The captain hadn’t pitched his voice to purposefully frighten her. The mask had done that for him. She shook her head at her folly. At the secrets she still uncovered.
“If anyone knows, they’re keeping quiet about it.” This Urchin reached back into the shadows, and when his arm retracted, Alora gaped at what she saw held in his hand.
The baton was smooth and thick, the wood dark.
It was a replica of what she’d found tucked away on the shelf that day Bash brewed a potion to assist her memory.
An object that the Potions and Peculiarities proprietor deemed the most dangerous item in his shop.
For all her struggles in her focus lately, she could still picture him clearly.
The way the soft light of the lantern had skipped across the hollows and settled instead on the angular cut of his jaw and cheekbones.
How it’d lit his eyes a forest green as he’d threatened to send her out to the mule.
How he’d baited her into sharing her dream…
The core of her had warmed with want even as he’d admonished and teased her, and she should have known.
They had always affected her the same.
Only she could have sworn the Urchin captain’s eyes were black. She must have been mistaken.
The tide of her grief receded enough that Alora began to fit pieces together. Of every interaction she’d had with both Bash, the shopkeeper, and Ezra, the captain.
Water helps, said the captain. Bash handing her a glass.
The dark head she’d briefly seen staring into the fire while at dinner with Timothy Lofte. The Urchin finding her in the street that night.
“I don’t even know you”, she’d said.
“Yes, you do.”
He’d played her well enough, she thought. What with calling the owner of the shop an idiot. Of pretending he’d no idea who William was. But the bones, the flowers. Were they all ingredients then? Was Bash behind the creation of the memory oil? Had his father trusted him with the process?
So many answers she wished for and could never ask.
Just like that, the tide returned, and Alora fell against the wall beneath the pain of it. She hardly heard the Urchins’ continued conversation. Not until one of them began to speak of what they planned for next.
“Here are the names. I’ve written down the addresses on the backs.” It must have been the oldest of them yet. Alora could recognize the slight difference to his voice now that she’d heard it transform from one to the next. He handed out the small cards.
“Merridon never writes them in case they would be dropped.”
“Well, considering Salvoy set himself against the wrong man last week, forgive me for doing one thing different than the captain would.”
“Fuck. I didn’t—”
Another Urchin clapped his hand on the younger’s shoulder, effectively silencing him. “It’s happened before. Just don’t let it happen again.”
Alora could hear the disdainful scoff even through the mask, and then Salvoy said, “Ellie Turkens?” He turned over the card. “I’ve been here before, I think. Isn’t this an old woman?”
Alora froze, her entire body doused in fear. She didn’t dare move, or breathe, or even think.
“Does it matter? Get it done.”