THIRTEEN
“You sure you don’t want to come in with me?” Aly asked, with an innocent smile.
A muscle pulsed in Calum’s jaw. Aly’s cheeks heated and she looked away. It would be so easy to make a game out of riling him—if he weren’t a copper and she weren’t a crime lord’s deputy. “No, thank you. I’ll wait here.”
They were in a close near the Caoineag’s salching market. Calum had brought more pies when they’d met up; Aly could still smell the buttery pastry on her fingertips as she flicked her plait over her shoulder. “Have you got any cash on you?”
Calum raised his eyebrows. “Why?” She wasn’t sure when she’d started thinking of him as Calum instead of Erskine.
It was probably to do with the pies, and she knew that was dangerous and foolish, taking the food to mean anything more than that he was bribing her for information, but the soft, liquid sounds of his forename suited him.
She shrugged, pushing that thought aside. “Information isn’t free. It’s either money or magic, and I hope you’re not expecting me to roll up my sleeves.”
Calum’s eyes widened. “Of course not.” He dug in his sporran. “I’ve got a shilling and three bodles.” His skin was warm against hers when he poured the coins into her outstretched palm. She curled her fingers around the money, dropping it into the pocket of her frock coat.
“Ta,” she said, walking to the end of the alley. “I’ll be back within half an hour.”
“How do I know you’re not just absconding with my money?”
Aly patted her belly. “I’ll keep coming back as long as you keep bringing me pies.”
In the dim streetlight, Aly could just make out the corner of Calum’s mouth twitching up. Her stomach fluttered and, without meaning to, she found herself smiling in return.
She reached the door of the salching market and knocked.
It was a nondescript building, with no light escaping the small casement windows on either side of her.
The door swung open—and almost immediately began to swing shut.
Aly shoved her foot between the door and doorframe, wincing as the heavy oak slammed into the side of her foot.
A face appeared in the doorway, a broad-shouldered blond man.
A knot in Aly’s insides loosened. She hadn’t told Calum, but she wasn’t exactly welcome to most at the Caoineag’s market.
Cameron, however, was close friends with Leslie, so he might hear Aly out.
“Are you fae-touched? What part of ‘barred for life’ do you struggle with?” Cameron asked.
Aly dug in her pocket, feeling for the shilling. She pulled it out and showed it to him. “Is this enough to get me in?”
Cameron took the shilling, his callused hand dwarfing Aly’s, and opened the door wider. “She’ll kill you if she finds out you’ve been here.”
Aly shrugged, stepping inside. “Not if the Wulver finds me first.”
“You’re playing with fire, lassie.” Cameron closed the door behind her.
“Did you hear about that dead burgess?” Aly asked, looking around.
She was in something of a vestibule, a glass-paned door between her and a rug-lined corridor that stretched deeper into the building.
Amongst other things, the Caoineag offered those in her employ a measure of dignity, with salchs given private rooms off that corridor rather than a single open space like Grant favoured out of nothing more than stinginess.
“The one found down your way?” Cameron said. “Aye.”
“Word is he used to come here. And then, the night he was offed, he was buying from Grant instead.”
Cameron leant against the door, crossing his arms. It was warm, and he wore only a linen sark, the thin fabric straining over his shoulders. “What fool would go from here to Grant?”
“A fool who was barred for life from here?” That wasn’t exactly what had happened in her case, but it was close enough.
Cameron chuckled. “Fair dues. He wasn’t barred, though. Asked lots of questions, mind, about those missing folk, but he wasn’t barred.”
The hair rose on the back of Aly’s neck. “The missing salchs?”
“Aye, the very same.” Cameron ran a hand through his sandy hair, making it stick up on end.
“And the dead burgess was asking about them?” Why would a burgess care about a few missing criminals? It wasn’t as though his supply was going to be cut off. There were plenty more people desperate enough to provide what he sought.
“Aye.”
Aly let out a shaking breath. “Did he discover anything? Like who might be behind it?”
“If he did, he didn’t share it with me.”
Aly rolled that over in her head. Perhaps that was what he’d been doing at Grant’s market.
If he was trying to find who was responsible for the disappearances—and presumably deaths—of salchs, he might have tried visiting other salching markets to see if they were the culprit.
If the new salchmonger thought he was getting close, they could have killed him before he discovered them.
Unfortunately, that left her no closer to learning whom the new salchmonger was—or who had killed Gibson.
“Have you heard anything about a new salching market?” she asked. “I think that’s what’s happening to the salchs. They’re lured there, maybe with the promise of better pay, but whoever’s responsible doesn’t pay enough attention to their safety and they’re dying.”
Cameron cocked his head. “I haven’t heard anything, but that would track with what I’ve seen. Do you think your dead burgess might have found it?”
Aly opened her mouth to reply, but was abruptly cut off.
“What is she doing here?” The new voice was shrill, nearing a shriek.
Aly jumped, spinning round to find the Caoineag coming towards her, her blonde hair escaping its crown plait and falling in tendrils around her face.
“Shit.” She reached for the door handle, squeezing past Cameron, but she wasn’t quick enough.
The Caoineag’s fingers curled round her shoulder, flinging her against the wall so hard her teeth rattled.
“How dare you come here,” she snarled, her forearm pressing against Aly’s throat. Aly struggled, panic rising in her gorge as her breath was cut off. Her heart fluttered in her throat. “After everything you’ve done, you have the guts to come round here to, what, kill another of my patrons?”
Aly tried to shake her head, but she was pinned too tightly, her vision going black under the pressure from the Caoineag’s arm. “What?” she croaked. “I don’t—”
The other woman loosened her hold, just enough for Aly to breathe. “What are you talking about?” Surely the Caoineag, for all she loathed Aly, didn’t think she had killed Gibson.
“Like you don’t know.”
Aly stared at her, at her freckled skin tinted pale gold in the candlelight, her mouth twisted with rage.
The Caoineag hated her, Aly knew that, and had done ever since she’d learnt Aly worked for Grant.
Things had exploded rather spectacularly between the two crime lords, who had never been on the best of terms with one another.
The Caoineag had accused Grant of placing a plant in her operations while Grant had accused the Caoineag of stealing from him—and all because Aly had been desperate for a bit of money and decided that selling magic through the Caoineag was the least dangerous course of action available to her.
Aly understood well why the Caoineag hated her, but it was one thing to hate someone, another to accuse them of abduction and murder.
“I didn’t kill that burgess. The police released me without charge. ”
The Caoineag’s green eyes narrowed behind her gold-rimmed spectacles. “Aye, and we all trust the police round here to get the right person. Did the Wulver put you up to it?”
“The Wulver?” Aly’s jaw dropped. “What has he got to do with anything?”
The Caoineag released Aly to yank the door open, then grabbed her shoulder and shoved her through. “Why don’t you ask him?” She slammed the door, leaving Aly alone in the street.
Aly was still trembling as she crossed a bridge and rounded the corner into the alley where Calum awaited her.
Grant had no reason to kill Gibson. He was blackmailing another burgess, and blackmail required its victims to be alive.
Yet she couldn’t shake the look of utter conviction in the Caoineag’s eyes.
Grant hadn’t killed Gibson, but she hated Grant and Aly enough to believe that Aly had done so on Grant’s orders, and that was somehow worse.
“That was quick,” Calum said, watching her approach.
Aly clenched her hands into fists in her pockets, trying to stop them trembling. “I didn’t want to leave you alone too long.” She tried to keep her voice light. “It’s a rough part of town, and you’re a delicate copper not used to being here.”
Calum looked at her, raising an eyebrow. He was easily a head taller and had several stone on her. She knew which one of them she would pick as a target—if neither of them had been deputy to the city’s most feared crime lord, anyway.
“So, what did you find out?” he asked, as she deposited his remaining coins back in his palm.
Aly leant against the wall next to him, drawing her shoulders to her ears as the cool, damp stone sent a chill through her.
She chewed on her lower lip as she sorted through what she’d learnt.
She couldn’t say anything about Grant, not without revealing her own relationship with him, and Calum was certain to arrest her if he learnt she’d done far worse than earn money outwith a licenced guild.
Nor was she convinced that telling him Gibson had been investigating missing salchs was a good idea just yet.
Perhaps that was just cowardice on her part, a fear that Calum would dismiss them as unimportant losses.
She jerked her head in the direction of the entrance to the alley. “The doorman remembers Gibson. He said that Gibson had been asking questions about missing people.”
Calum’s reaction was immediate—and rather endearing. His eyes lit with excitement, his next words coming in a breathy rush. “What missing people? Do you know anything else about them?”