“Evelyn, no!”
Sebastian’s sensation shocked me like a splash of cold water. He grabbed me from behind and reached out, his tight grip digging into my arm. The crowd around us screamed as I pulled the trigger and watched a useless hole appear in the side of the carriage, one foot to the right of Captain Goode’s heart. Then I fell to the ground, the gun was twisted out of my hand, and the room was in chaos.
Most likely because Sebastian was standing above me, his beard and mustache torn off in the struggle, the gun he ripped from me fully visible in his hand, in a room full of people who’d already watched him attack the Queen once.
“He’s here! It’s Sebastian Braddock!” a voice cried.
“Stop him! He’s tryna’ shoot the Queen!”
I grabbed the gun from him and tried to reason with them. “No! It was me, not him!”
No one was listening. And there wasn’t time nor space to run. The crowd converged quickly upon us, a sea of elbows, knees, fists, striking Sebastian and me all over. We landed hard and couldn’t get back up. Legs knocked us off balance. Arms dragged us down. The weight of bodies kept us from moving. I tried to scream but someone was pressing on my chest. I reached out for support, for Sebastian, for anything to find my bearings.
A gunshot went off. And then another. Gasps and cries and strange clunking sounds came from above me, and finally I could breathe again.
Clunk.
“My apologies!”
Clunk.
“Sorry! You punched me first.”
Clunk.
“And you looked like you were going to punch me. Ah, there you are. Hold on tight.”
Mr. Kent was there, grabbing my hand with his ordinary one and Sebastian with his metal one, shouting for Emily’s assistance. Immediately, he rose into the air, lifting Sebastian and me along with him. I felt a weight on my leg, someone from the crowd latching onto me, trying to drag me down, and then there was a loud rip and they fell away with the bottom part of my coat. We floated up to the ceiling, and I could see the astonished and terrified faces staring up at us.
“Stop them! They’re the ones!”
“Monsters!”
“He’s not the one who attacked the Queen!” Mr. Kent shouted back. “He just looks exactly like him. It’s complicate—ow! For God’s sake, he stabbed me in the ankle! Who stabs a man in the ankle?”
A window broke apart, and a hole opened up wide enough for us to float outside, two stories above the street. Gazes and fingers and shouts were aimed up at us before our trio was dropped on the crowded roof of a neighboring building. More onlookers shifted their attention from the abbey to us. More kindling on the verge of being ignited.
“We need … to meet … the others,” Mr. Kent gasped as I helped him up. He winced as he took his first step. “Dammit! The ankle is now my fourth-least favorite place to be stabbed!”
“It’s Braddock!” a man shouted from the building we had left. “The villain is escaping!”
And that was enough to set the crowd ablaze. One man sprang forward, then another, and in one surreal second, the rest of the roof was charging at us in service of the Queen.
“I’m not going to say go on without me,” Mr. Kent said as we stumbled backward. “I’d honestly prefer we all just died together.”
“I’d rather make us even,” Sebastian said, then he picked up Mr. Kent in his arms and began to run, trusting me to stay close.
“Wait, no, I’ve decided I would prefer to die,” Mr. Kent argued, looking extremely baffled as to how he came to be carried in Sebastian’s arms.
“We can sort it out after,” I yelled, keeping my hand on Sebastian’s back, pushing him forward.
We hurried across the roof with every last bit of energy we had left, our breaths heavy and our footsteps heavier. Behind us, the shouting intensified, and the growing rumble of pursuers shook my bones. We flew by smoky chimneys and stone balustrades and hopped over roof hatches and skylights. The city skyline ahead of us melted into the smog and seemed to stretch out forever, but it was clear to see we were quickly running out of roof.
The balustrade ahead of us broke down, and I saw Miss Chen and Emily waiting on an empty roof across the street.
“Keep going, keep going,” I told Sebastian and myself as we neared the edge. I sucked in a breath and forced myself forward, no matter how much my stomach turned. The last time I’d tried this alone, it did not go well, but I lifted my skirts as we reached the ledge and prayed and leaped. The street and the carriages and the horses and the crowd hummed below me. My stomach dropped for one horrible moment, and then Emily was there to catch us and carry us the rest of the way.
“Thank you, Emily,” I said, squeezing her hand when I touched the ground.
“It’s better not to jump off buildings,” she said seriously.
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Also better not to shoot in the direction of queens,” Sebastian added, not bothering to hide the edge in his voice.
“I had a clear shot,” I snapped.
“And we had a clear plan,” he replied, looking very sulky as Mr. Kent lolled in his arms, trying valiantly to look as though this was a normal and commonplace pose for him.
I returned my hand to Sebastian’s back. He seemed to bristle at my touch, but with Mr. Kent in his arms, neither of us had a choice. Emily floated us from rooftop to rooftop in silence as we made our way southwest, watching the streets get a little calmer the farther away we got from the assassination attempt.
When we were far enough away, Miss Chen broke open a hatch that dropped us into a thankfully empty stairwell landing outside a barrister’s office. We stumbled down to the ground floor, opening the door to a small lane, where Miss Chen left us while she went to fetch a carriage. Sebastian finally set Mr. Kent down so he could lean against a building for support.
Sebastian pulled a handkerchief out of his coat and held it over his face, as if the smog or the stench of the streets was bothering him. But as his eyes watched every person that passed us on the street, fearing another frenzied mob, the permanence of what happened started to really sink in.
The Belgrave Ball could have been covered up as a poisoning. Only a few witnesses saw our fight on the train. But there was no going back from this. Thousands of people saw the illusions and hundreds more saw our escape. Captain Goode had once warned us of the dangers of our powers going public, and now he’d gone and revealed them himself in such an indisputable display.
A carriage finally rattled to a stop in front of us and Miss Chen threw open the door, but I barely felt any relief from our escape. It was only a matter of time before word of the powers would spread. It was only a matter of time before people would know what happened today.
And it was only a matter of time before Sebastian Braddock would be the most hated man in the city.
Chapter Seven
IT TOOK APPROXIMATELY eighteen hours for the city to go completely mad.
By the next morning, the more opportunistic businessmen were on the streets hawking charms that supposedly kept you safe from Sebastian Braddock’s “demonic energies.” A gossipy fashion column announced that black cloaks were the newest daring style for men. Newspapers splashed exclusive interviews with the city’s hero, Captain Goode, who reassured the public that there were people using their extraordinary talents for good (of course, he included himself in this number) and they outnumbered the ones who had darker intentions. But he warned the public to watch for those with our specific powers—the one who killed with a touch, the one who extracted your deepest secrets with a question, the one who only healed other villains.
Which, of course, led to droves of people coming forward to say that they, too, had powers.