‘So I did.’ She tucks the boy’s keepsake back into the trousers before handing them over. His complaints spent, he begins to dress.
‘Where are we going?’ He takes the mug she has handed him. Although she’s been wisely wary of electric light, she has risked a plug-in kettle that screeches like a trapped rabbit when it boils.
‘Not we, Tick.’ She fills a second mug, stirring in a spoonful of powder. Curious, I leap to the tabletop and sniff, recoiling at the bitterness of the brown grains swirling. ‘I’m going to talk to Diamond Jim.’ She smiles at my discomfort and strokes my back. ‘Present my evidence.’
‘Your evidence?’ The boy is fully awake.
‘Don’t you worry.’ She raises her mug, hiding the grin that has widened as the boy mouthed the unfamiliar word. ‘I have an errand for you, if you don’t mind.’
He shrugs. This, after all, is what he does.
‘I know he startled you, but I want you to find Jonah Silver for me.’ She has clearly thought this out. ‘He’s down on his luck, Tick, but he’s a good man. I want you to tell him he can stay here, with us. I may have work for him, even. He doesn’t have to—’ She pauses. This part isn’t clear – at least, its presentation to the boy. ‘He doesn’t have to work for anyone he doesn’t want to.’
The boy’s brow knits, confused by the double negative perhaps. ‘That bum? But you can’t trust him.’
‘Why?’ She leans in, suddenly serious. ‘What do you know, Tick?’
‘He didn’t like the old man.’
The girl shakes her head, her confusion apparent.
‘He wouldn’t recommend him, he said.’
‘But that—’ She pauses, pained. ‘No, we did good work for him. He thanked me.’
Another shrug. ‘That’s not what Diamond Jim said. I heard him talking to his boys.’
She ponders this as she drinks, but says no more as she takes the mugs down the hall. While she’s gone, I watch the boy, who has more in common with a magpie than he does with the girl who has taken him in. The brass weight, for example: it is useless out of context. A shiny, small thing, but it means something to him. He takes it out of his pants and looks at it, rolling it around in his hands, even as his eyes dart around, seeking other small items to pocket. He watches me, too. Sees how my eyes narrow as he rifles through the papers Care has piled so neatly. He picks up a pen and I stand, stretching. My arched back makes him pause, and in that moment, she returns, mugs in hand.
‘Let’s get moving,’ she says, stacking the mugs on a shelf.
‘What about him?’ The boy nods toward me. I am sitting, my front paws together, as demure as a debutante now that he has put the pen down.
‘You’re right,’ she responds. For a moment, I am concerned. I turn, ready to jump off the windowsill. Ready to make a dash for the door. But she only reaches past me to open the window. The air outside is damp and cool, rich with infor-mation. She shivers and draws back but I stick my nose outside, reading the air. ‘You see? He can come and go now.’
The boy mutters. I do not believe this is what he intended, but I have other concerns to occupy me now. I have heard their plans, and so I do not wait, and as Care ushers the boy toward the front door I make my own descent – window to ledge to the alley below. The night’s shelter has done me good. I leap and land with a grace I’d not remembered, and my satisfaction is deeper than vanity. I am on a hunt, and I cannot afford to fail.
TWENTY-EIGHT
My goal is simple: I seek to understand what happened to me. How I came to be in that culvert as the rainwater rushed into flood. This is not an idle question, nor one I can easily answer with carelessness or age. I have observed myself, as I do others. I prefer high places to low, dry to damp. And I do not trust easily, when I trust at all. How, then, I came to near drowning in a roadside ditch, I do not understand. Nor what those two goons – the thugs who haunt the girl’s life – and their sinister colleague have to do with my near demise.