Page 6 of The Ordeals
She nods briefly, eyes darkening like ink, like she knows already, like she can sense the goodbye I haven’t the heart to utter. ‘After we’ve got the mark.’
I sweep my gaze over the grimy building we’ve now reached, unremarkable in this too tight alleyway. The door is firmly closed but every so often, I’m sure I catch the slightest hint of movement, a flutter behind the drawn curtains.
‘We can’t go in round the back,’ I say quietly. ‘These houses all have yards backing on to the row behind. It’ll have to be this door.’
I hear the gentle scraping sound of Dolly drawing a knife. She’s always seemed so strong, so fierce, untouchable. But now, knife in hand, she looks out of place. Frail and vulnerable, every inch of her eighty years.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ I say to her, dragging my gaze back to the house, this assignment. ‘You should wait in the car with Banks. I don’t want you getting hurt, or—’
‘Nonsense,’ she says, tutting. ‘Lead on, my girl.’
‘Dol—’
‘I said …’ She lowers her voice. ‘Lead. On.’ Then she regards mewith a quirk of a smile, saying our words, and I can’t say no to her. ‘I will if you will.’
I push down on the door handle, then step into the dark beyond.
Inside the townhouse, I listen for any creak of floorboards. This house feels watchful and all too silent. There’s a reason I like carrying out the Collector’s assignments in crowded places. I’m forgettable in a crowd. Almost invisible. But here, there’s nowhere to hide. And possibly nowhere to run to if this mark turns on us. All I need is a drop of their blood so the Collector can put them on his map, and follow them. But getting that blood in the tight confines of a house like this …
‘No separating,’ I say softly to Dolly, pointing to the parlour door, then the stairs. ‘If this goes to shit, get a hobble on.’
‘Cheeky,’ she mouths back and I split a grin in the gloaming.
I nudge the parlour door open with the toe of my boot and find the room empty. The only sign of inhabitancy is a quill pen with ink on the nib lying haphazardly on a dusty desk, a splatter of black ink as though it has just been dropped, and a letter, half written in a language I can’t read. It looks Allowayan, the territory to the east of here, beyond the borders of our territory, Kellend, beyond even Theine, Alloway is where magic is outlawed and wielders are cast out, or executed. A sense of wrongness prickles within me.
‘I don’t think we should be here, Dol.’
‘No,’ she says, turning to me. ‘I don’t think so either.’
Dolly smudges a finger through the ink blots, narrowing her eyes on the letter. ‘Maybe our mark was maintaining her correspondence before we came to call.’
Shivery cold brushes the back of my neck like a caress, and I take a deep breath.
‘Can you smell that? It’s all through this alleyway, but somehow stronger in here. Like copper—’
‘It’s blood,’ she says quietly. ‘Heated blood that’s cooled off.’
I swallow down the lump stuck in my throat. ‘We should bail, tell the Collector we couldn’t—’
A man’s feral shriek rents the room, cutting me off.
‘Was that …’
Dolly’s head snaps to the hallway. ‘It came from upstairs.’
I pull out my switchblade and move to the hallway. The silence is deafening and, as I place my foot on the first step of the staircase, the sound of my own heartbeat is a throbbing scream in my ears. ‘Dol, watch my back and cut anything that moves.’
On the upstairs landing we pass a door, open a crack. Dust layers everything, like this room hasn’t been touched in months. Perhaps years. Yet the rocking chair within is moving, swinging back and forth. Back and forth.
Fuck this.
I turn to Dolly and mouth, ‘We’re going.’
She nods, hobbling for the staircase and I cast a last look at the two shut doors. There’s not a single sound from either, but I know someone, orsomethingis intensely aware of our presence in this house.
Dolly reaches the hallway as I’m halfway down the staircase. ‘Banks will have waited around the corner. Can’t get the motor car down these—’
She gasps, stumbling back from the door to the parlour and all I see is shadow, then blood. It happens so fast I barely register she’s been hurt before her fragile body slams into the wall. She blinks once, that gorgeous silk robe hanging loose from one shoulder as she garbles incoherently.
