Page 30 of A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2)

FLICK

Flick did her best to keep silent and listen well, but the scratchy, thick cloth over her head made it near impossible to hear the men and potentially track where they were taking her.

It almost felt as though she was walking in circles, heading in one direction before moving in the other.

She laughed at herself—quietly, of course.

Who was she trying to trick, acting as though she knew the streets?

Who did she think she was? Arthie? Jin? Chester?

The Linden girl , the men called her. She didn’t dare dip her hand into her pocket, but she pressed her wrist against it, the ridges of the brass knuckles reassuring her. They hadn’t thought to search her, or perhaps they expected little of Lady Linden’s sheltered adopted daughter.

Flick needed to use that to her benefit.

The men slowed and the one holding her released her, only to pat her down. Flick held her breath, hoping he would dismiss her brass knuckles for a fancy part of her coat. He paused at her pocket, then patted it again.

“What, you think she can fit the ledger in there?” one of the other men asked.

He snorted. “You’re right.”

Flick exhaled when he stood up with a grunt, and she struggled to keep her breathing neutral when he dragged her by the arm again.

She stumbled and nearly tripped on the threshold of a doorway.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes since she was caught.

Where was she? One of the posh and ornate offices that looked like houses?

The palace? No, it was neither of those places.

Wherever she was, it was large, judging by the echoes, with a bone-chilling cold. Like a tomb.

She was yanked down several more turns before she was pushed through a doorway and shoved in a chair. At least they didn’t bind me to it. No sooner had the thought occurred than someone came back over and bound her wrists behind her. Voices rose, ricocheted; a door clicked closed.

And then it was quiet.

She strained against the ropes, but they were thick and chafing.

The binding didn’t budge. Her breathing echoed in what felt to be a fairly empty room, and she had a sudden, startling thought: If something happened to her, if she died , no one would know.

No one would know where to find her body, or what had happened.

Stay calm , Jin had told her. We’re more doomed to fail when we’re in a panic.

It was strange, she supposed, to go from a life where death was something far out of reach, not as imminent as an exquisite new gown or a walk through the gardens, to this. Death had never weighed at the forefront of her mind before the Casimirs.

The door opened and closed again, and Flick cinched her thoughts, willing her mind to quiet and her pulse the same. A single pair of footsteps rang dully along what sounded like hollow floorboards, more like a storeroom than an estate or anyplace fancy.

Flick gasped when the hood was ripped from her head without warning.

As her eyes slowly adjusted to her new surroundings, she noticed that she was wrong: She hadn’t been alone in the room. There were two black-clad men near her. Had they been hoping she would talk to herself? Rat herself out somehow and make their lives easier?

Focus .

Her mind wasn’t racing because of the men; it was racing because of the third presence. That single pair of footsteps that had entered, a pair as familiar as her own name.

Lady Linden. The Ram.

Flick met her mother’s eyes, those blue eyes she thought so remarkable. The rest of her features were hidden by the gilded mask of the Ram.

The last time Flick saw her, it was at the Athereum’s meeting hall. She’d watched her mother sweep into the room, and then her men follow. She didn’t flinch as they murdered those people.

Flick hated the fear that flooded her. She wasn’t in any more danger than when she was apprehended, so why did she fear her mother?

Maybe because I’ve lived with that fear my whole life .

That stopped now.

Flick chewed on the inside of her cheek. She felt, suddenly, like a bottle of fizzy water that had been shaken up and the cap popped off, everything roiling and roaring and eager to lash out.

Hello, Mother , she wanted her to say. Take off that mask; you’re fooling no one.

Flick bit her tongue and swallowed her words, thorns and all. But why? Those were the actions of the old Flick. This one had learned she owed her mother nothing. This one had learned from Arthie Casimir to keep secrets close until it was time to exploit them.

“What do you want?” Flick asked. The room was fairly small, void of furnishings except for Flick’s chair in the middle of it and a single chest in the corner. The walls were gray, the floorboards wide, unlacquered planks.

Flick didn’t have a clue as to where she was.

Her mother’s eye twitched. Strange, she’d never had an eye twitch before. Was she bothered by her daughter being apprehended? Flick almost cracked a laugh. No. Her mother was content enough to lock up her daughter in her own house.

She held out Flick’s satchel, turned it upside down, and emptied its contents onto the floor. Flick’s supplies, from her pens to her notebooks and even her map, tumbled to the ground. The Ram bent down and picked up Flick’s notes on the mystery building.

Damn it all, Flick.

“Where is my ledger?” the Ram asked. Her voice sounded different through her mask, rougher and more modulated.

She could pass for a woman or a man. How much effort did she have to put into being the monster that she was?

And Flick had thought Spindrift had their hands full transforming from tearoom to bloodhouse every night.

Her eye hadn’t twitched because of how Flick had been treated. But because of how Flick had acted: her gall, her continued escape from the Ram’s forces, her possession of what was the Ram’s.

The Ram didn’t care a lick about Flick.

“First you misplace your ledger, then you misplace your foes. What’s next? Your mask?” Flick said, barely holding back a smirk. This time, she let the words bubble out of her. “You’ve become awfully irresponsible lately, Mother.”

The air siphoned out of the room. The men blinked in confusion, looking between themselves and then at the Ram, and ultimately at Flick.

As though what she said was impossible to believe.

The Ram clucked her tongue. It was the same sound she would make when Flick had done something wrong and she was left to clean it up. Look at what you’ve made me do , it said.

She turned, and before Flick could fully comprehend what was happening, two loud pops ricocheted in the room. The men fell. They did not move. They did not breathe.

Gunshots. Her mother—her mother had killed the men.

For a moment, the Ram stood still. Flick was frozen. A croak escaped her lips. As if her mind wanted to scream, but her heart knew better than to be shocked.

The Ram tilted her head, clearly wishing she could somehow make Flick forget who she was. Or, she was contemplating her death. Flick wouldn’t put it past her. Flick stared at the dead men until they began to quiver in her vision, until her entire body began to shake.

“Don’t do that again,” the Ram said as simply as though Flick had left food on her plate, and the Ram had been forced to go through the trouble of cleaning it up.

Flick refused to let her see how much the men’s deaths had affected her. She willed her rushing thoughts to settle, her limbs to ease, her clenched teeth to relax.

My mother just killed two men.

“I recognized you the moment you walked into the room that night,” Flick said. “And I want to say I didn’t recognize the woman who murdered those people, but I—I can’t.” She sniffed, looking at the men. “Have you no heart?”

The Ram took off her mask, and a pang shot through Flick’s chest.

She was back home again, vying for her mother’s attention, eager for every meal they shared, every walk they had through the gardens, every outing for jewels or ribbons or purses.

You have a new home now , she reminded herself. It might not always share the same walls, but it did have the same faces: Jin, Arthie, Matteo, and the entirety of the crew.

She straightened her spine.

“I will ask you again, where is the ledger?” the Ram asked, making no effort to answer Flick’s question.

Making no effort to mask her apathy toward the men lying dead on either side of her.

She held up Flick’s notes. “I know you have it because you’ve barely bothered to hide the fact that you’ve gone through it.

Tell me, Felicity, were you trying to find this place? ”

This place?

It was a place, but how had Flick gotten the coordinates incorrect? She’d matched up the map precisely, stood at the crossroads her mother had drawn in her ledger, but she’d seen nothing. Had the Ram changed locations? Was Jin right, and the ledger was rubbish now?

Goodness, they’d sailed across the sea .

“You know you could have just asked me,” the Ram said, dropping Flick’s notes. She knocked on the door twice. Hard. It opened right away, two men entering without preamble to drag the dead bodies away, leaving a trail of blood behind them.

They didn’t flinch; they didn’t pause. They knew they were expendable. And Flick couldn’t decide if her being brought here was a good thing.

Say something. Don’t let her get you afraid. “It’s nice to see you too.”

“Oh, do not act as though the distance between us isn’t due to your own reckless actions,” her mother replied. How easily she spoke after having just killed two men. She had even tucked her pistol away as if it was a pencil she’d pulled free to jot down a quick note.

Was she referring to when Flick broke into a vampire’s mansion? When she helped infiltrate the Athereum? When Spindrift had gone up in flames? Or when she’d stood in the midst of a massacre of her mother’s own making?