Chapter 3 — What He Would Not Take

"I was outside the gates," I said. "Delivering a repaired permit. Tessa was waiting for me to come home."

Adrian didn't answer.

I shut the register before I could tear the page out.

"Keep the light on it. I need every code."

He held the lamp while I finished copying. We left the volumes in order and walked past the watchman, who asked whether the leak was serious.

"It will be," I told him.

Back at Rook House, I worked until dawn. Adrian brought maps and answered practical questions. Once, he began to say my name.

"Unless you've found where she is, don't."

He set another map beside me.

Before sleeping, I called Celia and sent Gideon's messenger with a sealed copy of my protection. I told her we might need a place for Tessa.

"The back room will be ready," she said.

I pressed the receiver against my forehead after she hung up.

It wasn't until the third evening that the codes made sense.

"They're tides," I said.

Adrian leaned over the desk.

"These aren't warehouse numbers. They're old berth schedules. See how the sequence repeats?"

He opened a yellowed harbor chart. "Before the freight railway, transfers followed the water."

I placed my notes beside it. Three codes aligned with the east basin. Tessa's pointed to a bonded transfer station behind the abandoned salt exchange.

Adrian straightened. "Gideon can bring a squad."

"And they'll see a squad coming."

I took a blank inspection form from my bag.

"One inspector," I said. "One driver. An ordinary delivery cart."

We studied the station's old service plan. A laundry passage opened onto the lane behind it. Adrian marked where Gideon would wait with the cart.

"If the front entrance closes, this is our exit."

I copied the route until I could see it with my eyes shut.

The station smelled of wet rope and boiled linen.

A human clerk examined my forged inspection order through a wire grille. Behind him, an electric bell marked the hour.

"We weren't expecting anyone."

"That's generally how inspections work."

He hesitated over the seal.

I placed my pencil against the box marked ENTRY REFUSED.

He unlocked the gate.

Adrian remained beside a handcart in the loading passage, his cap low. I followed the clerk past two locked rooms and a washroom with its door propped open.

"The supervisor has the records," he said. "Wait here."

As soon as he turned the corner, I stepped into the washroom.

A woman crouched beside a laundry basket, working a bent strip of metal beneath a window latch.

Her hair had been cut to her jaw. There were pale scars along the inside of her elbow.

I knew the small white mark above her eyebrow. I'd put it there with a wooden horse when I was five.

"Tessa."

She turned.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Then she crossed the room and caught my face between her hands.

"No," she whispered. "They didn't get you too."

"I came for you."

Her fingers pressed into my cheeks as though she had to check there was bone beneath them.

I held her wrists. Warm. Alive.

"Mara?"

I nodded, and she pulled me against her so hard my teeth struck her shoulder.

There should have been time to cry.

The bell rang again.

Tessa went rigid.

"That's early."

She released me and looked down the corridor.

"They change guards at ten. I blocked the washroom drain so they'd send me to clean it. I was going through the window."

"I've got another way."

"There's a man in the next room. He can't walk without help."

"We'll take him."

"And the others—"

Boots sounded beyond the grille.

Adrian appeared at the washroom door.

Tessa recoiled.

"He's with me," I said, though her fear made the words difficult.

Adrian looked past us. "How many?"

"One here. The rest were moved downstairs at another station. I don't know the address."

He nodded and crossed to the locked room.

"Stop!" the clerk shouted.

Adrian drove his shoulder into the door. Wood split. He emerged supporting a thin man in a gray work shirt.

A vampire guard rounded the corner, drawing a narrow silver blade.

I shoved Tessa into the laundry passage.

The guard lunged toward us.

Adrian turned, taking the strike across his left side. His breath broke into a sound I felt in my own ribs.

He caught the guard's wrist, slammed it against the wall, and kicked the fallen knife beneath a cabinet.

"Mara. Go."

I took the injured prisoner's arm. Tessa supported his other side while Adrian forced the guard backward.

At the laundry exit, a chain held the door half shut.

I reached through the gap, found the slide bolt from the plan, and lifted it. The loose chain dropped with it.

Cold air rushed in.

Gideon was waiting.

We got the prisoner onto the cart. I turned back as Adrian staggered into the lane, one hand pressed beneath his coat.

I put his arm over my shoulders.

"Don't argue," I said.

"Hadn't intended to."

He was heavy. Tessa came to his other side, and together we helped him onto the cart.

Gideon drove before the station doors opened.

At Celia's clinic, we entered through the rear courtyard. She took one look at us and sent Tessa and the other survivor into the prepared room.

Adrian sat on an examination table. Blood had soaked his shirt.

"Silver," Celia said, cutting the fabric away. "This won't close quickly."

His gaze caught on the bandage around my finger. Then he looked away.

I unfastened my cuff.

"Would blood help?"

"Mara. Put your sleeve down."

"You got hurt because—"

"You're frightened. Your sister is in the next room. You don't owe me this."

He kept his hands flat on the table.

Celia opened a refrigerated cabinet. "I have donated stock. Paid for and freely given. He'll recover without you making decisions tonight."

I lowered my sleeve, suddenly close to tears.

"Stay where I can see you," Adrian said quietly. "If you want to."

I stayed until Celia had dressed the wound.

Then Tessa called my name.

She sat beneath a blanket, picking stitches from her shirt hem. A folded strip of paper emerged from the seam.

"I wrote down the names. Work shifts. Transfer days. They kept changing the numbers, so I copied those too."

She put it in my hands.

At the bottom, a new instruction moved the remaining workers beneath the harbor on the Blood Moon.

Above it, every transfer carried the same authorization: R-72.

"The Rook emergency series," Celia said from the doorway. "From the Briar Street closure."

I looked back at Adrian.

He had heard her.

"Whose order?" I asked.

His eyes met mine.

"Mine."