Chapter Seven
As a rule, Arden did not use his invisibility to invade anyone’s privacy.
It was something his father had impressed upon him mere moments after his gift had manifested when he was only six years old during a game of hide-and-seek at Ryskamp House with a handful of other Luster children.
That first bout of invisibility lasted only five seconds at the most, when Wendell Fitch had lifted the dining table’s cloth to find nothing at all, only for Arden to reappear before he’d managed to drop it again.
He hadn’t meant to do it, he’d explained to his father after Wendell ran to inform him of Arden’s trick, calling him a cheater. His father hadn’t been angry with him, though, instead taking Arden into his office and sitting down behind his great carved mahogany desk.
There are a good many upsides to a power like ours, my boy, he’d said, leaning back in his chair and surveying Arden with twinkling twilight-blue eyes the same shade as his own. But Ryskamps act with honor in all things, magic chief among them.
Arden very much doubted his father would consider it honorable behavior to don his invisibility now in order to follow the woman who was not Arabella Strickland through the gilded and glamorous lobby of the Abalone Hotel, keeping a close-but-not-too-close distance as she paused to make small talk with the doorman, then the concierge, then the elevator operator.
Following a young woman into her hotel room was the very pinnacle of dishonorable behavior, but since he’d already blackmailed and bribed that same woman mere moments ago, Arden pushed his father’s voice aside before doing just that, though he alerted her to his presence when he caught the door she tried to close, unwittingly, in his face.
She let out a sharp exhale as she spun around, her eyes settling on him so precisely he suddenly worried she could see straight through his invisibility.
“You go too far,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes.
Arden dropped his invisibility and met her furious gaze without flinching as he calmly closed the door properly behind him.
“And yet, not nearly as far as I am willing to go,” he replied. “But I’ll begin by making my offer to your associates directly.”
She glanced behind her, where a hallway led from the entryway toward a sitting room. When she looked back at him, Arden thought he caught a flash of fear in her expression.
“My associates are not the sort of people you’re accustomed to doing business with,” she said quietly. “They are not gentlemen.”
Something prickled at the back of Arden’s neck, and he glanced down the hallway as well. He’d already guessed that she was working for someone else—were these men controlling her in some way? Forcing her to run these cons?
“Are you afraid of them?” he asked.
She looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “No, of course not, but you should be. Leave, now, before—”
“Mavis?” a voice called down the hallway, low and deep and undoubtedly male. “Did you bring coffee?”
Mavis.
The woman closed her eyes with a grimace, which was all the confirmation Arden needed that the name was hers. Her true name.
Mavis watched as Arden’s mouth curved into a slow smile, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away from his lips as they tested out the shape of those five letters, drawing it out.
“Mavis.”
How was it that the low, polished edges of his voice could shape her plain name and make it sound like a soft sigh in a dark room?
She’d thought—hoped—it would be disappointing after all her imaginings, but it wasn’t.
Her curiosity about how he would say her name might have been quelled, but it didn’t keep her from wanting to hear him say it again.
Mavis opened her mouth, but her retort fell away when he inclined his head.
“It suits you.” His dark-blue eyes swept over her, and Mavis had to concentrate very hard on keeping her voice level when she replied.
“If you say so,” she said, as if she didn’t care what he thought—of her name or of her.
She shouldn’t. There were bigger problems at hand.
Are you afraid of them? Arden had asked, and Mavis was honest when she’d said no, but it wasn’t the entire truth.
She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Rafe and Leif would never hurt her, but Arden wasn’t guaranteed the same protection, and while neither brother had ever enjoyed violence, they’d still been forged on the streets of the Low City, where it was, more often than not, the cleanest way to solve a problem.
And Arden Ryskamp, standing in their hotel suite, dangling his madcap plan and two million solas in front of them, was a problem.
“Leave,” she ordered again, hearing how, even to her own ears, the word sounded more like a plea than a demand.
But the only movement from Arden in response was a tightening of his jaw—a tic Mavis recognized even after five years as a sign that he was readying to do something foolish and brave.
“No.” That single word from him landed like an anchor in Mavis’s stomach. “If my straits are dire enough to ask you for help, do you really expect me to be frightened off by a couple of thugs?”
Mavis straightened, looking him over. She knew that she could sooner drain the Icaring Sea than force him out the door before he got what he came for. She also knew Rafe and Leif would never agree to working with him, no matter what price he offered.
Not that they would have to work with him—Arden didn’t require Oriana Mayles’s financial information, nor was there a larger plot that needed outlining, necessitating multiple roles, financial investment, and contracts. He needed what Mavis alone could provide—guidance on wooing someone quickly.
Regardless, Mavis, Rafe, and Leif were a team. Even if Mavis wanted to help Arden, she would surely be outvoted. Which was just as well, because helping Arden was a foolish idea.
Two million solas.
The number, the sheer unimaginable vastness of it, whispered through Mavis, and the faces of the urchins flashed in her mind—their hollowed-out eyes and impish smiles and naive hope.
“Mavis?” Leif, this time, his voice more mild.
Mavis ran through her options—there were few of them, none good—and came to a decision. She met Arden’s gaze and gave a brief, decisive nod.
“Stay quiet and follow my lead,” she told him.
Arden blinked, surprise flickering over his face. All too soon it disappeared, replaced by skepticism. “That’s a bold ask, all things considered.”
Mavis opened her mouth to reply, but the sound of two sets of footsteps echoing down the hall told her she didn’t have time for another argument. “Consider it practice if your plan has any hope of working,” she hissed before turning to face Rafe and Leif as they appeared in the entryway.
A shift happened—so fast Mavis doubted Arden noticed it—the instant Rafe and Leif realized she wasn’t alone.
It was fascinating to watch how the brothers’ open faces and relaxed demeanors changed, how they went from trusted friends who Mavis had never thought to fear, to dangerous men, alert, on edge, and bracing for a fight.
Back in Strall, they’d worn those masks more often than not, but this was the closest Mavis had ever come to being on the receiving end of it.
To his credit, Arden didn’t cower at the sight of them. She was close enough to feel him tense, the air around them shift, but he stood straight, met their gaze, and even attempted a smile.
“Hello,” he said calmly—the very opposite of following her lead, Mavis thought, swallowing her annoyance. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Not officially, at least. I presume I shouldn’t call you Stuart?”
Rafe looked at Arden the same way Mavis had once seen him stare at a rat that had stolen a loaf of bread he’d scrimped and saved for as a child before he’d managed to take a bite.
“No” was all Rafe gave him before turning his attention to Mavis, though his eyes didn’t soften at all. “I thought you said you’d handled this.”
A flush worked up Mavis’s neck. “I did. But things have become more . . . complicated.”
“There is one way to clean up any complications,” Leif pointed out, his soft voice doing little to mask the threat in those words.
Mavis glared at him. “We are not murderers. I thought better of you than to suggest it.”
“I wasn’t suggesting it.” Leif cast his brother a look. “But we were all thinking it.”
“I wasn’t,” Mavis said, though she knew what Leif meant.
Rafe had been thinking it. He’d spent long enough working as Minstead’s right hand to have seen how that man handled problems, and there was no denying it was an effective method, if a ghoulish one.
She understood that Leif had said it so Rafe wouldn’t have to, protecting his brother just as Rafe so often protected him.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Arden interjected, still ignoring her instruction to follow her lead. “I’m offering you two million solas, not calling the police.”
Mavis closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if that were enough to block out the sheer volume of Arden Ryskamp’s idiotic confidence.
This was precisely why she’d told him to follow her lead and, more importantly, to stay quiet.
Because while Mavis was sure Arden thought leading with the offer of two million solas was the smart way to get Rafe and Leif’s attention, Mavis knew even that grand sum was drowned out by the implicit threat of calling the police.
“Which he won’t be doing, regardless of whether or not we take him up on his offer,” Mavis added, shooting Arden a glare that seemed not to faze him.
It was one thing to try to blackmail her, but if he tried it with the Hartweiller brothers, it very well might be the last thing he ever did.
She turned back to look at them, softening her voice.
“But two million solas—think of what that might mean.”