Chapter 12
Vulcan’s manor looks exactly as you’d expect from a man who would name himself after a bird and collect “muses” for himself.
It’s the most conspicuous house on the street, and even though it’s currently abandoned, it still gives off an air of superiority.
The gloomy, fake sort that would require several layers of paint to hide what’s underneath.
The muses informed me of a place in the backyard garden where Vulcan used to hide the key, in case he ever found himself locked out during a time when he was in between footmen (I got the sense from the muses that the job was difficult to fill, as those who occupied that job tended to die mysteriously).
When I questioned how they knew about the key, they replied Vulcan saw no harm in them knowing where the key was, since they were never allowed outside.
It’s night now, and the wrought-iron gates around Vulcan’s backyard are locked.
I did plenty of climbing in Neverland, and before that, spent a few years as a slave to a circus master, filling in for the tightrope walker and trapeze artists when they were injured.
Climbing a gate isn’t something I’m worried about.
Perhaps the Nomad was right to send me on this mission after all.
Though I’d never admit it to him.
I scale the gate with ease, then haul myself over, my feet hardly making a sound as they hit the soft ground on the other side.
For as much effort as Vulcan put into his postmortem hit list, it seems he did very little by way of estate planning.
Vulcan has only been dead a few weeks, yet the yard is already looking unkempt.
It seems that Vulcan’s flora preferences were limited to invasive species.
Inside the foremost overgrown bush is a marble gnome, which is much too muddied for such an expensive material. Then again, I’ve never owned marble, so I wouldn’t know what’s an appropriate use and what is not.
I tip the gnome’s chipped hat, and inside, just like the muses said, is a key, wrought iron like the gate. Let’s just hope it works on the back door. I’d rather not have to explain myself to anyone who might see me if I end up having to enter through the front.
Just as planned, the key slides into the back door’s lock, and I slip through the opening.
It almost feels too easy, and I find my paranoid mind racing, searching for an explanation.
This was the Nomad’s plan, after all. Perhaps it’s some trick, just part of the game he’s playing.
Luring me into trusting him before he kills me.
I stop mid-hallway and rest my back against the wallpaper, my heart pounding.
I’ve broken into a very dangerous man’s home.
It’s just adrenaline pulsing through my veins, making me paranoid.
That’s all this is. It’s ridiculous to think the Nomad would catch me, let me go again, only to ensnare me once more.
I search the house, scanning for anything that might give me a clue as to where Vulcan hid his muses’ magic.
I come upon the living room first, but it seems an unlikely place to hide something so valuable.
The room itself is disheveled, presumably from when Nolan Astor killed not only Vulcan but several of his bodyguards.
There’s still blood staining the peony-patterned carpet, though there are no bodies to be found.
From the looks of it, I’m not the first to visit. The only evidence of anything valuable ever gracing this room is the indentations left behind on the velvet cushions in the display cases.
I can only hope that wherever Vulcan hid his muses’ magic, it was somewhere the thieves wouldn’t have found it.
I survey the rest of the rooms, finding nothing that heightens my suspicion. I even search the bookcases for secret passageways, and though I find one in the living room, it leads only to a chamber full of beds and canopies.
The room seems untouched, but as I rummage through it, I find nothing there either, except for a bed with a plaque at the base that has me pausing.
Tink.
The engraving reminds me of the one time my parents took me to a traveling zoo. I shudder, thinking of what would’ve befallen me had Vulcan caught me that night.
Men like Vulcan are the reason I’m forced to work with the Nomad, the reason I can’t survive as a faerie without my voice.
Maybe I could’ve made it in this world if it were one or the other—if I were a faerie, my dust coveted, but I had a voice to talk myself out of dangerous situations.
Or if I’d lost my voice, but had no faerie wings, no blood to be let.
As it is, both disadvantages work together and against me. I need to rid myself of at least one if I plan on surviving long outside a cage.
I follow the secret passageway back down to the main room, then begin to scan the upstairs. There, Vulcan’s rooms are scraped bare of almost everything. Finally, I reach a hall lined with paintings untouched by robbers.
According to the muses, Vulcan considered himself an artist.
What they didn’t mention was that art is subjective.
As I survey the pieces, the question that’s had my mind itching since I entered this hall finds itself answered already. There’s a reason no one bothered to take these.
Vulcan might have considered himself an artist, but it’s clear he was only one in his own mind. These reek of the type of paintings that some scholar will “discover” two hundred years from now and read into the scribbles as if they were some intentional form of genius.
It might just be my untrained eye, but I doubt it.
If the painting of the waterfall I probably could have done myself when I was five wasn’t convincing enough, the blank canvas in the center of the room would be.
If I could laugh, I’d need to stifle it. Only an aristocrat could hang up a blank canvas and call it art.
I bet his guests even told him what a genius he was. Money will do that—buy compliments.
I’m on my way out when a voice sounds from behind me. “I wasn’t aware thieves could be so pretty.”
I whirl around to find a man twice my size blocking the doorway. He’s clean-shaven, with slicked-back brown hair and cunning eyes. Judging by his dark leathers and hood, I take it I’m not the only thief in this room. If those weren’t enough, the leather gloves would be a dead giveaway.
I wait for him to step toward me so I can maneuver around him and out the door, but he’s smarter than that and stays put, blocking any chance of escape.
I glance around, but he quickly says, “No windows in here. The idiot had to maintain his paintings.” He says paintings with the same level of derision I might.
His eyes flick over me with curiosity. “Who sent you?”
I pause for a moment. After examining my options, I determine I only have one.
I grab the notepad and quill from my cloak, the ones the Nomad lent me in case of a situation like this. I think for a moment, then begin to write.
“What, you don’t speak?” says the man.
Beauty demands silence, I write, then hold the note up for him to see.
His eyes pick up on it quickly enough. “You’re one of those appraisers, aren’t you? Sent to value Vulcan’s handiwork? Which Guild are you from?”
Before I have to answer, he says, as if he should have realized this, “The Silent Sisters. Of course.”
Well, that’s as beneficial a conclusion as I could’ve come up with myself. I try to hide my satisfaction, but I can’t afford to be too pleased. I’m not in the clear yet.
“I’m hired out by the bank,” he explains. And though he maintains eye contact with me, shows no tell that would normally convince me he’s lying, there’s something about the way his satchel bulges that tells me otherwise.
I make a point not to stare at it, only examine it in my periphery. It’s to my advantage if he thinks I believe him. Still, I can’t seem too easily convinced. Better if he feels the need to convince me.
Is that why the artifacts downstairs are stolen? I write, knowing full well he wasn’t the one who took them.
“The bank hired me to replace the last guy. I heard he has no fingers left.”
I make a face I hope communicates that the thief got what he deserved.
“So what do you think?” the man asks suddenly, stepping aside and leaving an opening toward the door. His posture relaxes now that he thinks I’m not here to steal anything.
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s referring to. “Like this one?” he says, nodding toward the vacant canvas.
I walk toward it, hands behind my back in that pretentious way people do when examining art, tilting my head slightly as I try to come up with something to say while also taking inventory of my new companion.
He might be a thief, but I think he’s telling the truth about being a hired hand—just not by the bank. Meaning, he’s the type to smash and grab, but not the type to research. At least, that’s what I’m hoping for.
I stare at the painting before us, if one could even call it that, trying to come up with something to say. The only thing of value about it is the frame, which now that I look more closely, is glass rather than crystal. Which explains why no one has stolen it either.
I grab my quill and spout nonsense onto the page.
The vacancy of the painting—I find it fascinating, don’t you? The simplicity with which Vulcan was able to capture the emptiness of life.
To my relief, the man appears not to care about a word I’ve written. “So what’s it worth?”
I write down a number that seems worth smashing and grabbing, but not too good to be true, and flash it in his direction.
“All these like that?” he asks casually.
I shake my head and write, No. This is the only one worth anything.
“What do the Silent Sisters do with this information?”
We’ve been hired out by a client who wishes to know this painting’s value, I write.
“And what does this client want with his painting?”
It’s not our job to ask questions.
“Mine neither,” he says. “So I suppose that’s why you’re here in the middle of the night. To maintain said secrecy?”