2 #2
Her sense of direction is right this time, and after another thirty minutes of walking, we arrive at a door adorned with a brass handle and golden paint along the lining.
No windows or signs.
It looks entirely private.
But that’s not unusual for these sorts of jewellers. Collectors, to some, like Grandmother Ethel who has a fixation with collecting the crowns of dead monarchs.
Serena knocks, and her illusioned hand is liver-spotted and bruised in the faint streetlight.
Our illusions are of older women.
I lean against the brick wall, waiting, and it reminds me of ringing the servant bell in my bedchamber at Elcott, those annoying few minutes of waiting for Abigail to respond.
But there is no bell, no servants, and no Abigail.
It’s only me and Serena on a cold, dark street, and her knuckles rapping over and over on the old door.
It’s incessant.
She does not let up.
Her knuckles must be as sore as my face, my ribs, my back, by the time a tired voice croaks from the other side of the door—
“Who is it?”
Serena fishes her hand into her pocket, then tugs out a ruby-encrusted necklace. “A friend who comes bearing gifts.”
The necklace is one of our more extravagant pieces. She holds it up—and it takes me a moment to realise there’s a peephole hidden in the brass adornment on the door.
“It’s an emergency,” she adds. “And that makes this worth your while.”
Silence is the answer—but only for a few seconds before the rattle and clang of locks.
The door creaks open just a couple of inches.
I look at the dark gap and only see shadows.
Another pause, then the door opens all the way and Serena wastes no time at all before she brushes by me.
I scuttle in after her, into dense shadows.
The door shuts behind me.
The thud of the lock jolts me, and I whip around in the dark. But still, I’m blinded.
Hope this isn’t a serial killer by night, jeweller by day.
Something brushes by me, and my skin prickles.
I cringe back into what feels like a wall and listen to the footsteps that lead the way through the shadows.
Then a switch is flicked, loud in the silence, and a faint orange glow presses against the dark.
I squint against the new birth of light.
But I see that I’m in a narrow corridor—one that ends with another door that looks more vault-like than anything.
I chase Serena’s heels to the metal, barred door, closer to the man who hasn’t tended to his stubble in a few days, and whose eyes are puffy and bloodshot—so I know we pulled him out of his sleep.
He must live here.
But that should mean there’s another door somewhere in this corridor. It must be hidden, because, as I look over my shoulder, I only see the walls and the entrance.
The groan of metal strikes down the hallway, and it wrenches my gaze back.
The man pushes against a solid bar stroked across the door—and then reaches into the room on the other side and flicks a light switch.
He leads the way inside, and the moment my sight adjusts, I smile at the luxury of it all.
Glass casings encircle elegant chaises and armchairs that I’m sure have been snatched right out of a French palace; the walls are decorated with prized display pieces, from the Monet in a golden frame and the three Stradivarius violins, over to the wall lined with actual pieces from the Amber Room.
But I falter.
Hesitation strikes me, and my eyes widen at the beauty, the rarity, of the Rembrandt painting that takes up a whole wall of its own.
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Painted in 1633, lost in 1990. Never seen again—or so I thought.
A faint scoff catches in my throat.
Then I look up at the glittering lights above me.
The glass chandelier is obviously Italian in style, with glass flowers of blue and red weaved throughout it, and it won’t surprise me if this is a genuine piece and not replica.
The golden chandeliers on either side of the grander piece are more Amelia’s style—something she would have picked out for the renovation she put Thornbury Park through.
My bubble of admiration is burst when Serena huffs beside me, like she’s spoken and I haven’t heard her.
I only get the chance to look at her before she’s tugging the bag strap off my shoulder.
Neither one of us has thawed apparently. But I’m stubbornly holding onto the take that only I have the right to be so pissed.
The glare I rinse over her isn’t kind as she turns her back on me and stalks over to the sleek mahogany desk—a desk that looks as though it was snatched right out of the seventeenth century.
There, the man is shuffling papers and putting them away in a drawer, his puffy eyes even more bloodshot in the light.
The desk doesn’t have a plate on it to say what it is, where it’s from, what makes it special—but this whole boutique is like that.
It’s a matter of ‘if you know, you know, and if you don’t, the purchase is not for you.’
Grandmother Ethel would know.
One of her beloved pieces is Bram Stoker’s writing desk.
The man jimmies the stubborn drawer shut. The whitish blonde of his hair glistens under the light as he lifts his tired stare to Serena.
He offers, “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I answer before Serena can answer for us.
I’ve been surviving off poverty coffee, and I need something luxurious.
“We are in a hurry,” Serena says, sharp, and throws a look over her shoulder at me.
I force a tight smile back at her. “Then I’ll drink it in a hurry.”
The man hesitates for only a heartbeat before he makes his way to the coffee machine in the corner—a real coffee machine with a milk steamer and everything.
Something warm spreads through my chest, like the luxury and peace all around me is luring me back in.
I wish I was stronger than what I am, stronger than cracking after a few days of travel and stale motels and bad coffee. But all of this just makes me miss home.
Serena starts organising the pieces on a linen cloth draped over the desk.
I leave that business to her.
Not like I would know what to do. How to barter. What I should accept for an offer.
I don’t know how much any piece of mine is supposed to fetch. If jewellers pay eighty percent, seventy, fifty, twenty—how would I know?
How would Serena know?
I just take my coffee when it’s handed to me, and the man smiles, which weathers his face another decade.
He downs his own coffee in one fluid gulp, then joins Serena at the desk.
I sit on the chaise in the middle of the room.
A catalogue rests on the gorgeous gold-legged coffee table, very Louis XI—and it might be. Maybe stolen right out of history, like I suspect most of these pieces have been.
I pick through the catalogue, page after page of antiques up for auction next month.
Again, I think of Grandmother Ethel, and how much she would love this. Maybe she already has it in her calendar to attend the auction.
The rumble of conversation, of negotiation, is my background music.
I drape myself over the chaise, flicking through the pages, and sipping my coffee until the glass is empty.
An hour later, I’m halfway asleep when Serena says my name.
I blink, startled, and look over at the desk.
She’s standing now, the man is gone, and she tosses my backpack at me.
It strikes my middle—and a lot lighter than when it was pulling down on my shoulder.
I loop a strap around my shoulder, then kick my legs off the chaise. “Where is he?”
“Gone to his safe, I imagine.”
“It’s done?”
Tired, she nods, and those circles around her eyes that aren’t really hers look a shade darker. “One hundred and sixty-five thousand, cash.”
I sit up a bit stiffer. “Is that a good deal?” My illusioned face creases. “For everything we gave him?”
It doesn’t feel like it.
That’s less than two months of my allowance. And I overspend even that.
Serena’s face is that of an older woman. A woman we saw at an airport a few days ago, with blotchy red cheeks and permed grey hair. An ordinary krum who blends into the background.
That unfamiliar face turns to me, pinched. “It will have to be enough. We need to dump everything in one place in one deal.”
A sigh slumps me. “One hundred and sixty-five,” I echo the words back to her, as though I can make better sense of such a small amount.
I sneeze that kind of money.
“It’s done.” Serena’s firmness bristles me.
I lift a dark look to her as she turns her back on me and runs her hands down her face.
I make to check my watch. But it isn’t on my wrist because I added it in with the jewels.
I drop my hand to my lap. “What time is it?”
Serena fishes out her burner phone from the back pocket of her jeans. The phone is a little black brick with a small green screen.
It might be older than I am.
She tossed her personal phone into the sea when the boat rocked beneath us.
“It’s almost three AM.”
I let a stretch rise through me, lifting my arms above my head. “We should get something to eat after this. Is there anywhere open at this time?”
“Doubtful. It’s not a nocturnal city.” Still staring at the time on her phone, her mind works. It works slow and sluggish, but enough that she decides, “There will be a filling station nearby.”
“A what?”
“A filling station. For cars.” She looks back at me, and the expression on her unfamiliar face is blatantly judgemental. “They have petrol to put in the cars…”
Before I can ask what that has to do with my hunger, because I don’t drink petrol, the door at the back of the showroom opens, and the man carries in three large, beige envelopes.
Together, they count the cash.
And then they count again.
And the whole time he just thinks he’s doing business with two wealthy, older women who turned up at his door in the middle of the night.
Strange, sure.
Suspicious, not enough for him to turn us away.
But soon, our trail will be followed to this showroom.
I don’t know what that means for him or our jewels that we sell him, if our families will buy them all back, or simply take them.
Suppose it depends on how valued this man is to the Videralli—and, considering the stolen pieces around us, I’m assuming he is very valued.
I leave it behind, because it’s not my concern.
I follow Serena out into the night.