All at once the air went out of her lungs. Her eyes opened as her chest constricted in a desperate attempt to breathe.
“Ah, so I was right,” a rasping voice crowed. “You are awake.”
Esta’s vision struggled to adjust to the sudden brightness, and when it did, she saw that the light in the room wasn’t coming from a lamp, but from a person holding a dancing flame in the palm of her hands.
“That’s enough, Werner,” the woman said, nodding to the boy standing next to her. He glared at Esta, but a moment later she could breathe again.
“You’re maybe wondering where you are?” the woman said with a sly, satisfied smile. She was small and surprisingly willowy, considering the rasping tenor of her voice. With her coppery hair and fair skin, she might have once been pretty, but now she only looked worn. The boy was about Esta’s own age with a squint-eyed glare and a smirk on his face.
Esta didn’t particularly care where she was, because she wasn’t going to be there for very long. She focused on the seconds that ticked by, but her head felt wobbly and unclear, and when she tried to slow time, she felt a splitting pain behind her eyes. She couldn’t keep the panicked gasp from escaping her throat when time slipped out of her grasp, eluding her.
“That would be the opium,” the woman said as Esta tried to pull herself back up against the wall. “We couldn’t have you leaving us too soon, could we now? You’ll find it impossible to call on your affinity so long as the poppy remains in your blood, so it’s best you resign yourself to being our guest for a while longer. Until we decide what your fate will be.”
“Please,” Esta said, forcing herself to make her voice small. She noticed the sticky sweetness hanging in the air now, the fuzziness in her head.
“You’ve caused me quite the problem, girl,” the woman cut in, her voice barely above a whispering growl. “The man you laid low is Mr. Murphy, and he happens to be one of Mr. Corey’s best customers and one of the most powerful men in the city. There’s few daft enough to cross him as you did. He’ll not rest until he finds the girl who broke his ugly gob, and he’ll not be satisfied until he pays someone back in kind. That someone isn’t going to be me. He’s a right nasty one. The type to enjoy every second of your pain, if you understand what I’m saying?”
Esta made no move, but the woman gave a wan smile nevertheless.
“Ah. You do understand, then.” The smile fell from the woman’s face, and her eyes went cold. “So you’ll understand that you don’t have much time before Mr. Corey turns you over to him. Unless you give me a good reason not to, of course.”
Esta schooled her expression to give nothing away. Not a blink to tell the woman that the idea of being at the large man’s mercy was more than repulsive. Not a twitch to give away the panic of not being able to call on her magic.
“You think you’re so brave? That you can protect yourself from the likes of him?” the woman scoffed. “Here, let me show you. . . .” The fire in her outstretched hand grew, danced, as she brought the flame up closer to her face and pulled down the high collar of her dress with her other hand. Beneath the lace, her skin was scarred in a gnarled mass.
Esta couldn’t stop from wincing.
“I was pretty once, like you. You go on with your determined eyes and stiff spine, but the strongest spine will snap easily with a boot pressing down on it. Murphy has eyes everywhere in this city. Magic or no, you’d not last two days without help or protection.”
“You can give me protection from Murphy?”
The woman nodded. “If you can make it worth my while. You’ve caused a right mess for Mr. Corey, and his messes always become mine. I hate messes, girl, so if you’re not worth more than the problem you’ve caused, I’ll hand you over to Mr. Murphy wrapped in lace and tied with a bow of the finest silk. ?And I won’t think twice about whether you ever see daylight again.”
Esta started to protest, but the woman raised her hand. There was no sign of burns or scarring from where she had held the fire, and Esta’s skin tingled again from the magic that seemed to saturate the air in the room.
“However . . . Murphy isn’t one of us. And I’d just as soon he go hang than get one bit of pleasure he hasn’t rightly paid me for. If you prove to be a smart girl, perhaps I know of someone who could protect you . . . so long as you remain useful, that is.” The woman stepped closer. “Tell me, why did you come to be in my ballroom when you clearly weren’t looking for the company of a man?”
“I came to find Bridget Malone.”
The woman didn’t react, save for a small muscle that ticked near her eye. She studied Esta a little longer, and then she exchanged a glance with Werner, who gave a subtle shrug.
“Bridget Malone, you say?” the woman asked. Her voice, if it was possible, had gone even rougher.
“I was told that she finds places for people with certain . . . abilities,” Esta said, never once breaking the stare with the woman. “People like us.”
“And what abilities do you claim?”
Esta tried to focus again. The cloud of opium was already starting to dissipate, and its power over her was starting to wane. “I’m a thief,” she said simply, sticking as close to the truth as was possible.
“A thief??” Even through the rasp of the woman’s voice, Esta could hear her doubt. “There’s already enough of those in the city to fill all the cells in the Tombs thrice over. Why would anyone have use of another?”
“Because I’m the best of them. I can steal a diamond, an elephant, or anything in between. No one can stop me”—Esta leaned forward as though sharing a secret—“because no one can see me.”
Werner laughed, but the woman simply watched Esta, searching her face for some signs of the lie.
The woman’s mouth made a pinched shape of disbelief. “You can prove this?”
Esta took a breath, closed her eyes, and in the split second it took for Werner and the woman to exchange another, more doubtful glance, Esta had pulled time to a stop, crossed the room, and plucked the brooch from the neckline of the woman’s dress. Before the woman’s suspicious eyes returned to where Esta had been sitting, she was gone.
When Werner came barreling through the door, the woman wide-eyed behind him, Esta was waiting, leaning against the wall outside the room with a bored look on her face. Using her affinity through the remaining haze of the opium had all but drained her. She couldn’t have done anything more to escape if she had wanted to, even if ?Werner hadn’t immediately gone on the attack.