Chapter 2 #2
‘I’ll go with her.’ I’m already rising from the armchair. The thought of Dolly going on assignment alone in this city, that he would send her out there to follow a mark without someone with her … it’s intolerable.
‘Excellent,’ he says, a smile playing across his mouth, the kind of smile that never reaches his eyes. ‘Banks is driving. Dolly has all the details. And, Sophia?’
‘Yes?’
I look back at him, my heart beating once, twice, the thump almost deafening in my ears as the silence stretches out between us. ‘You know I’ll always protect you.’
‘You call this protecting me?’ I bite out, temper flaring to the surface as I hold up my left hand in a fist so the bracelet catches the light between us. ‘Because if this is what you call it, you and I interpret that word very differently.’
He tuts, slowly shaking his head. ‘I do. It’s for your own safety.’
Once, I believed the scant illusions I can wield would save me.
That I could practise and wield an illusion to make the Collector believe I was still in the antiques shop, and the mark on his map would believe it too, so I wouldn’t be trapped in this life.
So I wouldn’t have to go on his assignments ever again.
But at fourteen, my theory was proven wrong.
That was the first time I tried running away and I only got as far as the woodland past the outskirts of the city.
It earned me my fifth visit to the vault and the true weight of the contract I signed became devastatingly apparent.
As I travelled further, the bracelet grew heavier, a literal weight pulling me back to the city, and the Collector.
By the time he found me, my wrist was bruised and bloody from my attempts to claw it off.
The vault cooled the wild inside me for a time, hollowed me out until I truly believed there was no end in sight.
It nearly broke me. But not quite. I kept wielding, kept trying to spark more than this ember of illusion I hold and kept looking for ways to earn my freedom, or steal it.
‘I’m not a child anymore,’ I hiss at him. ‘I no longer need your version of protection .’
I hate him. I don’t say it, but I think it.
I feel it in every chamber of my pounding heart.
I hate what I am, that I’m bound to him, that I’m his creature, his ghost. I hate the confines of my inescapable existence.
And I hate that he was going to send Dolly out alone, that he’s so easily manipulated me into going with her.
He may not use the vault anymore, but he can still take away my power, my control over my life in other ways. Subtler ways.
‘Get in, get out, don’t get caught,’ he commands and I turn on my heel, not bothering to reply.
But even as I walk past that map on his wall, I know they’re there, every reminder of his ruthless nature.
All the marks gathered over time, crowding in the watery crooks and bends of the Serpentine.
The marks he followed, the people he was interested in. The ones who are no longer alive.
I walk out of there and do not pause or draw breath before I’m standing outside the antiques shop in the growing twilight. Sagging against the wall next to Dolly, I run trembling fingers down my blouse then hook my hair behind my right ear.
‘Darling girl, why do you fight him?’ Dolly says, smoke scented with cherries pluming in a cloud around me as she puffs on the end of her old-fashioned cigarette holder.
She regards me and my restlessness, reaching out a hand to my cheek, her face so full of love I can barely stand it.
‘It only upsets you. You know it’s just the job. ’
I sigh, leaning in to her touch. She would sit outside the vault when he dragged me in there, her thin voice through the thick metal door my only thread to life.
And now I’m too old to shove in the vault as a punishment, she pleads with me to accept this life, for my own sake.
‘What if I want more, Dol? Something different to this.’
Her hand freezes, drawing away. ‘There is only this for us, Sophia. Only this life.’
I know not to push it, even with Dolly. The Collector dug his claws into her a long, long time ago, and she’s in this line of work for life. ‘I’m coming with you on this one, Dol.’
She nods, stubbing out her cigarette on the wall. ‘He told me an hour ago.’
Of course he did. The cold, calculating bastard knew I’d choose going with Dolly instead of letting her face an assignment alone.
And now I’ll have no time to mentally prepare for the entrance exam or practise wielding.
Banks – our driver – pulls up. Dolly folds herself into the back seat and I slide in after her, and I know I’ve been set up for this.
But the Crucible isn’t until midnight. I still have time.
I’ll be there; I just have to make this quick.
Even if my uncle suspects I have a plan, an escape route, he has no proof.
And I’m determined not to let him keep me bound to him forever.
‘Dolly, Miss DeWinter,’ Banks says from the driver seat, cap pulled low to meet his bushy grey eyebrows.
‘Banks, how many times …’ I sigh and Dolly titters.
‘He can’t help it, can you? Ever the gentleman,’ Dolly says to him softly, before turning to me. ‘Cards tomorrow night?’
I swallow and nod, not daring to meet her eyes.
Every week end without fail, Banks, Dolly and I play cards at the small kitchen table upstairs.
The same creased pack, the same games: Brig and Twist, Brag, Pokerface.
It’s a staple of my life, sometimes the only joy in endless weeks of hunting down marks and training with the Collector.
Banks’s eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror as he navigates a turn, sweeping us onto Crown Street.
‘I love our card game nights. You know that, Dol.’
Dolly hums to herself, reaching into her handbag for a battered paperback, a romance novel. She flicks the cover, smiling at me. ‘They’re about to kiss, I can feel it. Best moment in the book, every time.’
‘Tell me what’s happened so far,’ I say faintly and sit back as she talks about the book, about the romance, as Banks chuckles indulgently from the front seat. I let it wash over me, this moment when it’s just the three of us, fixing it in my mind. My final goodbye to them both.
Banks drops us two streets away from the address the Collector gave Dolly.
I try to avoid this side of the city that hugs the south-east of the river.
There are too many cases of missing people, of girls who strayed into the web of compact alleyways looking to turn some fast coin on their backs and never found their way out.
It’s dank and dark, a strange musty smell permeating the air, like they don’t get enough sunlight down here.
If I look up, I can only see a slice of dusty sky.
That’s the only light we’ll get tonight.
Dolly is all hunched over, limping along in her peacock robe.
‘Hip playing up again?’ I ask.
‘It’s the damp. Burrows right down to the marrow,’ she says, pausing for a moment. She goes to lean against a building and thinks the better of it. ‘This place isn’t fit for the rats.’
‘Let’s just get in and out,’ I mutter, checking behind us. ‘You play decoy.’
She snorts. ‘Like I’m too old to handle an extraction? I’m not retired yet, my girl, bad hip or no.’
‘All the same …’ I say softly, sniffing the foul air. ‘I’d rather you had a nice, long retirement.’
I think back to the first assignment we went on.
I was eight and my switchblade weighed heavy in the hidden pocket of my dress.
Dolly and I sitting in a box at the opera, my hair all curled and glossy, and I preened in my new dress, pink as candyfloss.
Everything was perfect, the caramels in twists of paper that melted in my mouth, the grand stage, the warbling songs, the way the audience clapped, spread before me like a rippling ocean.
I could have lived forever in that opera box, in my new pink dress, in that girl’s existence I briefly inhabited, almost believing that Dolly was my grandmother, that she had taken me there on an outing as a treat.
But I wasn’t that girl, that wasn’t my life, and when Dolly guided my hand to my first mark in the intermission, the needle scratched, the blood welled in the vial and we hurried out of that beautiful place before the final act.
That’s when it sank in, what my life really was.
A lie. A pretence. I was a ghost in a pretty dress.
And when my uncle took the vial of blood, he gripped my chin so hard it hurt, eyes boring into mine, and told me I had done well.
But it didn’t feel that way. It felt like something, or someone, had died.
The realisation that my life isn’t my own has slowly sunk in ever since that day.
Sometimes I wonder if Dolly feels the same, her time working for the Collector far surpassing my own, or whether she gave up long ago and found peace in acceptance.
I picture how she’ll feel when she discovers I’m gone tonight, with no real goodbye.
My heart aches at the thought, but still, I have to try.
I have to believe deep down that Dolly will understand.
As we close in on the building our mark is in, Dolly takes a deep breath and then hesitates, looking like she wants to say something to me, but also desperately does not. ‘Sophia, I need to tell you something after this. Something that maybe I should have told you long ago.’
My eyes meet hers, all sincere and slightly weepy at the corners, the way old eyes get when they’ve seen too much of this world.
I pat her hand, the powder-soft crinkle of her skin slipping under my fingers, fragile as tissue.
It’s clear that whatever it is she has to say, this isn’t the time or place.
‘I’ve got something to tell you too. After this – after we’ve got the mark.’