Page 23 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

FLICK

Flick clutched the hat Arthie had given her to lend her some protection from prying eyes as tightly as if it was her rampant heart.

She was alone. As the stolen EJC ship drifted away, a gaping emptiness stretched inside of her.

Naronic , the ship was named, painted in ivory along its dark bow.

Several of the letters weren’t straight, the kerning slightly off, and Flick couldn’t look at them for long without turning antsy.

Better that than sad , she thought. When she had first begun working with the Casimirs, she’d never anticipated missing one so terribly to the point where it hurt to breathe.

Sad and afraid . She had waved Sidharth off when he wanted to leave before the ship disappeared from sight, and now she was beginning to regret it.

The threat of her mother’s men surged again without the Casimirs’ presence to dull it, along with Arthie’s warning to Chester and the boys about the missing humans.

Would the Ram kidnap her? It wasn’t as though her men knew Flick was her daughter.

Willard Otis handed her an address. “Meet me at ten bells tomorrow. That’s when my runner will bring around any new paperwork.”

Delightful , Flick didn’t say, taking the card from him.

He glanced at her dubiously one last time, his eyes brightening a fraction in what Flick feared was recognition.

She whirled away, and after a moment’s pause, she heard him step into his carriage.

Flick exhaled as his tawny horses trotted him away into the midday traffic, and then the dockworkers were rolling up the ropes that had cordoned off the pier.

“Want us to follow him?” Chester asked. “Make sure he stays quiet?”

“Arthie already took care of that,” Reni chided.

“Get back to the Athereum,” Flick said.

Felix frowned. “But—”

“Nope,” Flick said. “I’ve got work to do, and don’t tell me Arthie didn’t give you a list of tasks to do yourselves.”

“She’s right,” Reni murmured, guiding the younger boys away. “Be careful, miss.”

“I will,” Flick said with a nod, watching them weave through the square and into the street in the direction of the Athereum.

And then she was alone.

She sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want their company, but she was like Arthie and Jin and Matteo—recognizable. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for them getting caught.

She couldn’t stay here forever, tucked into the shadows of the port offices, but she wasn’t particularly keen to venture back into the open either.

Horned Guard were everywhere, their uniforms in every shade between white and black to indicate rank.

Flick wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she had little Opal with her at least, but she’d left the kitten in the safety of her room back at the Athereum.

Flick tightened her hand around the satchel by her side and glanced back toward the expanse of the sea, as if Jin and the others might have already returned. “Now what?”

Now you sit and recollect every feature of my face that you adore, and why , Jin said in her head, most matter-of-factly.

Of course he’d say such a thing. Goodness, he had just left and she was already having make-believe conversations with him.

The ledger weighed heavily beside her. The tribute was inching closer. She had work to do.

The Athereum was much too far away—she didn’t want to risk such a long trek with so many guards present and so few crowds to blend into.

She pulled her knit cap tight over her hair, ignoring the errant curls that tickled her neck, and stepped from the shadows, hurrying past the graveyard and through the thick of White Roaring until she found the shady grove near the portside of White Roaring Square where she would sometimes sit to collect her thoughts.

Her heart pounded, muffling everything else.

Despite the trees shedding leaves and turning bare throughout the capital, this grove was lush, foliage teeming beneath her feet, branches swaying with the breeze. It looked as untouched as the days when she would run to its shelter to get away from her mother.

A different time, a different Flick.

Now she had a mission. Making sure she was alone and out of sight, she pulled out the ledger from her satchel to thumb through what she’d tabbed that could potentially give them an upper hand for the tribute. If such a thing as an upper hand was possible. Arthie says it is . That had to be enough.

But Arthie didn’t know Flick’s mother. Arthie didn’t know how ruthless Lady Linden could truly be.

Flick closed her eyes for the briefest of moments.

She couldn’t dwell on that. She couldn’t allow herself to spiral.

If her mother truly was that terrifying, Flick needed to do what she could to give them that upper hand. To make sure they won this time.

For good.

She could scout out the site of the tribute, but Arthie had told her not to.

Flick would focus on other tasks first, like the personalized invitations she needed to send.

She had a list of names that she was almost excited to contact, for they weren’t fond of Lady Linden, but they would be most eager to be a guest of the Ram’s.

They didn’t yet know there was no difference between the two people.

Their scorn was just what the crew needed to help ruin the Ram’s image. But Flick was quick when it came to forging letters in her mother’s hand. It could wait for now.

She opened the ledger with a sigh. She’d read much of the book already, but her earlier sleuthing had been for clues on Ceylan and the Siwangs, not the tribute and the Ram’s plans outside of the weaponized vampires.

Home wafted through the pages as she turned them, that unique smell that could only spawn from a culmination of other scents, from the soil used in their indoor plants to her mother’s perfume.

Flick ran her fingers over a page, feeling the imprint of her mother’s words, wishing she didn’t feel a spike in her heart at the sight of them.

The others were sailing off to an island. Deciphering a book and forging documents were the least Flick could do.