Chapter 13 Zaria
ZARIA
Zaria didn’t sleep well that night.
By all accounts, she should have drifted into unconsciousness at once.
Those first moments of reclining on the thick feather mattress had her reevaluating everything she thought she knew about comfort.
But the hours slid past as she stared blankly into the swaths of fabric above her, every detail in the canopy camouflaged by darkness.
The air was too still. Too quiet. She missed Jules’s even breaths at her side and the buzz of voices in the street outside the cracked window.
She didn’t know how to arrange her limbs on such a soft surface.
Her body felt too warm, stray hairs from her long braid sticking to her neck where it rested against the pillow.
Then there was the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about Kane’s admission.
Someone else was meddling at the Exhibition—an alchemologist, by all accounts—and if she and Kane couldn’t figure out who, they would take the fall for it.
Fletcher and Jules as well. They had all been seen by the inspector’s son.
Hell, Zaria had shot him. He hadn’t been harmed, of course, but she doubted that afforded her any goodwill in his eyes.
If she’d known who he was, and the role his father held with the Metropolitan Police…
Perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference.
She’d done what she’d needed to do, and it was too late for regrets.
How had the situation turned so perilous so quickly?
As if Vaughan’s task and Kane’s constant proximity weren’t enough, now she had to worry about being arrested.
She’d agreed to accompany Kane to the Crystal Palace tomorrow to take a closer look at the device, but Zaria feared he was relying too heavily on her expertise.
There were a thousand things she still didn’t know about alchemology.
It was a constantly evolving study. There was always much to be learned about magic, its limitations and its uses.
At least while she was here, she was safe from Vaughan.
Her best hope of finding that ledger, Zaria thought as she slammed a fist into her pillow, was to regain Kane’s trust. The best way to do that was to assist in his schemes whenever he requested it—the hard part was trying not to argue with him.
The more he trusted her, the more he might let her be around his work, and then perhaps he would inadvertently reveal the ledger’s location.
Eventually, Zaria managed to doze on and off, waking for a final time in what she guessed was the hour before dawn.
Low voices sounded outside her door, and she tensed before recognizing one of them as Elijah.
Suddenly wide-awake, she slipped out of bed and over to the door, pressing an ear to the keyhole.
She wasn’t fast enough to catch whatever the first person said, but Elijah’s subsequent groan resounded through the hall.
“Very well. I’ll be right there.”
Zaria pressed a hand to her mouth. Her guard was about to leave, however briefly.
A glance at the clock in the corner of her bedroom told her it was just after five in the morning—too early for most people to be awake, and dark enough yet that she wouldn’t be easily identified if she crossed paths with anyone.
If she could only slip down the hall to Kane’s office, perhaps she would be able to start her search for the ledger.
Outside the door, Elijah seemed to be fighting some internal battle. He kept sighing, shifting his weight so that the old hardwood floor creaked. Finally, he swore under his breath, and his rapid footsteps faded quickly.
Heart hammering at the base of her throat, Zaria opened her door with painstaking care, dreading the creak of hinges.
Once she had an opening wide enough to slip through, she tiptoed down the empty hall to Kane’s office.
She held her breath, cognizant that Elijah could return at any moment, and gave the office door a light shove.
It was locked. Of course it was. Had she really thought Kane would leave his things accessible to anyone in the manor? And yet her tired brain, focused on making the most of Elijah’s brief absence, had disregarded the possibility. How foolish.
Equal parts dejected and furious with herself, she turned to head back to her rooms, freezing when she heard the rapid thud of footsteps on the nearby stairs.
There was no way for her to reach the other end of the hall without passing the stairwell.
Zaria’s heart rate spiked as she glanced around in panic, searching for a hiding place where she knew there was none.
Rather than risk being found so close to Kane’s office, she hurried to position herself in front of the nearest window, hoping for some measure of plausible deniability when Elijah inevitably caught her wandering.
But the man who appeared at the top of the stairs wasn’t Elijah. He was older, larger, more weathered. One of his hands was heavily bandaged, and his eyes narrowed as he took in Zaria.
“So it’s true,” he grunted. “Durante let a girl join.”
A second man appeared behind the first before Zaria could answer. This one was younger and leaner, with an off-center nose that looked to have been broken at some point. He stood silently behind the first man’s shoulder, leering in a way that was decidedly unpleasant.
“Indeed,” Zaria said, glancing back and forth between them.
Fletcher had warned her to be wary of the rest of the crew, and Kane had made a passing remark about not having the time to ensure she didn’t get herself killed.
Still, she’d found it hard to imagine anyone would dare harm her, given that Kane himself had brought her on board.
Until now.
The larger man’s tight smile was more threatening than pleasant.
“Ward was a good kingpin, you know. Harsh, perhaps, but sensible. He knew things were done a certain way for a reason. Durante, though? The boy’s a loose cannon.
He’ll run this operation into the fucking ground.
” The man flexed his bandaged hand with a grimace.
“Not to mention nobody’ll take us seriously if they know he’s hiring women. ”
Zaria straightened, abruptly more infuriated than afraid. “And yet a woman can fire a gun as surely as any man. Seems to me you should be concerned I might prove more useful than you.” She indicated his injury. “You fuck up a job, or did Durante do that to you himself ?”
“Cleland.” His younger companion spoke for the first time as the man reached into his jacket.
Zaria took a step back as Cleland hesitated, her heart thundering in her chest. Would he dare draw a gun in here, right outside Kane’s office?
Would he fire it? She knew it wasn’t unusual for crew members to get into fights, or even to try and kill one another.
She shouldn’t have goaded him. Once again, however, frustration had driven her to speak without thinking.
“You’re right,” Cleland said, too softly. “Wouldn’t want to wake anyone up, would we?” He withdrew his hand and reached instead for his waistband, pulling out a knife. It was small, easily concealable, but sharp. The blade glinted in the thin stream of moonlight from the nearby window.
Zaria froze. In her haste to leave before Elijah returned, she hadn’t brought a weapon, though she doubted it would’ve mattered.
She didn’t have much of a chance against one large knife-wielding man, let alone two.
Not without some kind of alchemological help.
She took another futile step back. Her path to the stairwell was blocked.
The window behind her was far too high to be an option, if she could even have gotten it open.
“Really?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as she glanced between the two men. “What’s the plan, then? Stab me to death and leave my body for the kingpin to find?”
Cleland gave a throaty chuckle. “I don’t want you dead, girl. I simply thought you might require a little coercion.”
“You won’t be coercing me into anything,” Zaria snapped. “I’d die before I’d let you touch me.”
“We’ll see about that.” He stepped closer, narrowing the space between them, and Zaria braced herself to fight. She ignored the voice in her head that reminded her it wouldn’t matter—this fight was already lost.
But Cleland never came any closer. A gunshot exploded in the near distance, making all three of them start.
Both men’s eyes flicked to the window. That brief moment of distraction was enough.
Zaria kicked Cleland hard in the groin before darting past him, nearly tripping over herself as she made for the stairwell.
He let out a wheezing grunt, doubling over in pain, but the younger man was quick to react.
He whirled to grab Zaria’s arm as she reached the top step, attempting to yank her back.
She scrabbled for the railing with her free hand, holding tight.
A brief tug-of-war ensued. In a panicked, last-ditch effort, Zaria leaned forward and dug her teeth into the man’s arm as hard as she could.
He yelped, grip slackening. It was enough.
She pulled herself free and barreled down the stairs, her steps too loud as she hurried for the front door.
The house was dauntingly unfamiliar in the dark, the entryway cavernous, a frozen beam of moonlight breaching the window to illuminate a strip of wooden floor.
Zaria followed it, heart pounding in the back of her throat, desperately hoping she didn’t encounter anyone else.
She knew the crew members tended to retreat to the barracks to sleep—assuming they didn’t have a home of their own—but it was always possible Cleland and his companion weren’t the only ones here.