It was a terrifying and exhilarating thought. For the first time in her life, Arista had a say in her future. Her future might be clouded with uncertainty at the moment, but it was true nonetheless. The only thing missing was Nic.
Blackened wood crunched and snapped beneath her feet as she made her way over the pile of debris. Wild had been right. Not much remained at all. The fire had burned the building almost to the ground. Gritty soot coated everything. It smeared across her skin in black slashes.
The rubble would have been picked over as soon as it was cool enough to touch. Arista could hear the scratching of the creatures who were still salvaging inside the pile of burnt wood.
Her room should be just ahead, on the other side of the chimney. The fire had burned hottest there, where it had started. There wasn’t much left, and there was nothing she could recognize, except the barest hint of where the walls used to be. The straw mattress had been there, in the corner, and under it she had hidden things only a child would find valuable. A cornhusk doll Nic had made for her. The sketch on her wall. Gone. Everything was gone.
Her gaze slowly moved to the spot where she had last seen Bones. The Watch must have removed the body, but Arista still couldn’t resist the urge to dig the toe of her boot under a pile of boards and lift them up. As illogical as it seemed, she half expected Bones to come charging through the rubble and finish what he’d started. Her bruised ribs throbbed.
Arista kicked at the pile of burned boards. They fell apart into a mess of black dust and lumps of charcoal. What she wanted was buried deeper, where no one knew to look. Even she didn’t know the exact location.
Nic said that Bones had hidden it under a floorboard near the stove. If that had been pilfered, she might as well give up, rather than tear apart the entire house. It took several long minutes to make her way to the middle of the house. The chimney, almost entirely intact, rose up like a signpost. With only the stray light from a lone, unbroken streetlamp to illuminate the ruins, Arista had to pick her way slowly toward it.
A dark shape grew distinct from the rest of the blackness as she crept closer. The old potbelly stove still stood, but something else was different. She knew what it was almost immediately. The space in front of the stove had been neatly cleared, and the floorboards were torn up. Arista stuck her hand in the hole, roughly the size of her head, and found nothing. The letters, the money—it was all gone.
She sat down with a bump, not caring about the soot that was rubbing off onto her borrowed clothes. The noose of having to work with Wild tightened around her neck. Images of the fire flashed through her head. Bones had been more furious than Arista had ever seen before. He’d shouted that something had gone missing.
The secrets. The money. It had to have been Nic.
Nic took it all—and then left Arista to deal with the aftermath?
He wouldn’t do that to her. But she had the bruises on her body to prove that he had. No, something had gone wrong. Nic would never have left her to face Bones’s wrath alone. Not after he’d spent years protecting her from that terrible man.
Arista stood slowly and looked toward the waterfront, where a sliver of light was making its way over the horizon. Nic was out there, waiting until it was safe to contact her. She had to believe that—because the alternative was too horrifying to consider. He had everything, and he was hiding somewhere, waiting until it was safe to look for her.
She had to let him know she was waiting—give him some sign. With the toe of her boot, she scuffed an A into the soot, then turned back toward the maze of alleyways. A thick fog was rolling in from across from the river, and a chill settled over her skin, seeping into the threadbare cloth and making it uncomfortably damp. The sun would be up very soon. Already, a soft yellow pushed its way through the hazy pall. A cold waft of air blew over her, and she shivered. It felt almost as if Bones were still searching for his letters and money from some ghostly plane. She didn’t truly believe in such things—the streets had ground common sense into her—but when it came to Bones, no amount of horror was out of the question.
She picked her way back through the rubble as quickly as she could, the hairs on her neck standing up. She allowed herself one quick glance over her shoulder, but there were no ghosts. An eerie stillness filled the dawn. There were no sounds of children; no dogs barking; no sellers hawking their wares. An ominous feeling hung in the air. Arista started to run as soon as she was free from the burned-out row house.
Sprinting now, she wove her way through the narrow passages, making the automatic twists and turns that would lead her to Covent Garden.
Even blocks away, she felt like she was being watched.