Page 1 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
PROLOGUE
Something was amiss.
Jade Ferris blinked her eyes open, wide and still in the dark of night.
It wasn't noise that had awakened her, but rather some strange energy to the air. Something odd was snapping and swirling in the early-autumn chill that filled her bedroom.
It took a moment for her senses to return to the waking world, her skin prickling with gooseflesh as her eyes focused and her ears cleared.
Even as the grog wore off, she could feel the wrongness of the atmosphere, a new variable suspended throughout the house, interrupting the routine hours of a place that had not changed at all in twenty years. She could hear her own heartbeat. She imagined she could hear the breathing of the house itself, shallow and uncertain at this unexpected disruption.
Then, there was a bit of noise, after all. Muffled, yes, nearly inaudible, but noise all the same. Noise in the night.
For a moment, Jade stayed frozen, her blankets settled over her body like a suit of armor, protecting her from the dark and unknown. For a moment, she was a child again, and knew in her heart that if she stayed perfectly still, the monsters could not get her.
Another thump from the hall and the hiss of a whispered rebuke broke whatever fearful spell had taken grip of her. She sat upright, sheets clenched between her fingers, and squinted at the dull brass clock on her nightstand, mercifully legible in the dim shafts of moonlight that made their way through her threadbare curtains.
3:33, it read.
Far too late for noises.
Or was it too early?
She squeezed her eyes shut and stifled the urge to yawn, a deep, bone-creaking yawn appropriate for this quagmire time between night and morning. She could not risk yawning. Could not make any noise whatsoever.
Anyone sensible knew that these hours were not a time for civilized people to be about. Which meant just beyond the scratched and chipped barrier of her bedroom door, someone terribly uncivilized was up to something terribly uncouth. She tightened her lips, throwing her legs over the side of her bed and using the tips of her toes to search the cool wooden floor for her slippers, scrunching them along until they found their target and sank into the well-worn wool, one foot at a time.
She pushed her weight to the floor, not anticipating how slowly her limbs were waking opposite her higher functions. Her legs almost buckled, sending her arm flying out to grasp something solid, something to help her steady herself.
Her hand met the book she'd been reading before bed, an unwieldy and dry treatise volume that had very effectively lulled her to sleep for some days now. It shifted under her palm, giving way to the table beneath it with a sigh of old leather bindings sliding into open air.
There was no hope of stopping it. She watched helplessly as time slowed, the book twirling once in the dark to unfurl its uneven pages. It slapped the floor on its spine, its pages splayed open, with all the force of a deadly thunderclap.
She clenched her teeth, her heart now firmly lodged in her throat. The rustling in the hallway had stopped just as abruptly as the book had fallen. Whatever was happening, she had now involved herself in it, and might as well brace for whatever was to come.
Of all the things she might have imagined, she could not have been more startled by reality—a light tapping on her bedroom door, and a tentative female voice whispering, "Jade?"
That was not her mother. Her mother would not be up at this hour. And it was not one of the guards, who were all decidedly deeper voiced, by merit of being male. No one else should be here.
This was a stranger. A stranger who knew her name.
The knob began to turn before Jade Ferris could decide what action to take next, and so she stood where she was, one hand braced against a bedside table that, if necessary, could be flung at an attacker for at least a moment of distraction. If someone had come to do her ill, she did not intend to go down quietly.
Not this time.
Braced as she was for enemies unknown, she found herself stunned that the first thing she saw was the flicker of a flame above a candle. The intruder had brought light? Stranger still, the intruder was a woman. She stepped into the room wearing the type of fond smile one might expect from a favorite aunt rather than a burglar.
"We did not mean to wake you just yet," the woman said in hushed tones, setting her candle down and clasping her hands in front of her. She was in middle age, similar to Jade's mother, with laugh lines around her eyes and an accent that sounded French. She was wearing clothes meant for riding a horse for a great distance, which only added to Jade's confusion.
"Well, you did," Jade shot back, aware even as she spoke of how silly a response that was.
The woman's lips twisted in what appeared to be amusement. "You are your father's daughter," she said with a nod of approval. "Please sit, so we might talk for a moment. I'm afraid time is rather limited tonight."
Jade did not respond, choosing instead to allow her hand to relax from its grip on the little table at her bedside. Mentally, she wondered why this night would have more or less time than any other night. She waited for the woman to settle on the corner of her bed before she took a seat herself, far enough away so that she still might react if nefarious intent was made known.
"My name is Pauline," the woman said, gazing into Jade's face as though it were a work of art to be studied.
"Pauline," Jade repeated, images flashing in her mind of the strange visit they had just had, speaking of her mother's friends from...before. "Pauline Olivier?" she pressed, her brow furrowing as the other woman's smile grew. "Did the others send you? Mr. Cooper and Gigi Dempierre?"
