“I’m trying,” she said, tightening her grip on the stone.
At that, the phantom Kell’s face contorted, shifting rapidly from vacant to aware to angry. It was as if he knew what was happening. His eyes flicked from Lila’s face to her hand and back to her face. And then he lunged. He moved so fast, an instant, a blink, and he was upon her. The stone tumbled from Lila’s grip as the Kell that wasn’t Kell slammed her back against the wall. His mouth opened to speak, but before he could, his hands dissolved—he dissolved—suddenly back into smoke, and then into nothing, and Lila found herself face-to-face with the Kell that was Kell, his bloody hand raised to the place where the illusion had been, his command—As Anasae—still echoing through the room.
Lila swayed on her feet and caught herself on the chest of drawers, her brief possession of the stone clearly taking its toll, the way it had on Kell. She managed to drag in a single shaky breath before he closed his bleeding hand around her throat.
“Where is my knife?” he growled.
“Top drawer,” she said, gasping.
Kell nodded but didn’t let her go. Instead, he grabbed her wrist and pinned it back to the wall beside her head.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, but Kell didn’t answer. He focused on the wood, and it began to crack and warp, peeling away and growing up around her wrist. Lila struggled, but in an instant it was done. When Kell let go, the wall did not. He retrieved the stone from the floor as Lila twisted and fought against the makeshift bind.
“What the bloody hell…?” She tried to pull free of the wooden cuff as Kell forced himself to pocket the stone. “You’ve ruined the wall. How am I supposed to pay for this? How am I supposed to explain this?”
Kell went to the drawer. There he found most of the contents of his pockets—thankfully she’d only raided the black coat he’d been wearing—and his knife.
“You can’t leave me here like this,” she muttered.
Kell refilled his pockets and ran a thumb over the familiar letters on his blade before returning it to the holster against his forearm. And then he heard the sound of metal sliding free of leather behind him as Lila fetched another dagger from a sheath at her back.
“I wouldn’t throw that if I were you,” he said, crossing to the window.
“Why’s that?” she growled.
“Because,” he said, sliding up the glass. “You’re going to need it to saw yourself free.”
And with that Kell stepped up onto the sill, and through.
It was a longer drop than he had hoped for, but he landed in a crouch, the air in the alley rushing up to ease his fall. The window had seemed the safest route, since Kell wasn’t actually sure where in Grey London he was, or even what kind of house he’d been kept in. From the street, he realized it was not a house at all, but a tavern, and when he rounded the corner, he saw the sign swaying in the evening air. It swung from shadow into lamplight and then back to shadow, but Kell knew at a glimpse what it said.
THE STONE’S THROW.
He shouldn’t have been surprised to see it—all roads seemed to lead here—but it still threw him. What are the odds? he thought, even though he knew that the thing about magic was that it bent the odds. But still.
Kell had a strange feeling about the girl, but he pushed it aside.
She didn’t matter. He had the stone.
Now he just had to figure out what to do about it.
IV
It took Lila the better part of an hour to hack, slash, and saw herself free. By the time the wood finally gave way under her knife, the blade’s edge was irreparably dulled, a portion of the wall was destroyed, and she was desperately in need of a stiff drink. Her coins had not multiplied, but savings be damned: tonight she needed the drink.
She rubbed the pain out of her wrist, tossed the dulled knife onto the bed, and fetched her second, still-sharp dagger from the floor, where she had dropped it. A steady stream of oaths crossed her lips as she wiped Kell’s blood from the blade, and a steady stream of questions filled her head as she sheathed it, but she pushed them all down and dug her revolver out of the drawer, slotting it into its holster—if she’d had it on her at the time, she’d have blown a hole in Kell’s head.