Page 14 of The Toymaker's Son

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A shaft of silvery light filtered through the gap in the door, the only light in my tiny space. Dust danced in the light, freer than I’d ever been. I twirled my fingers through it, making it swirl and shine like glitter. The hot thudding from a dozen bruises faded as I made the dust dance.

Footfalls sounded on the boards outside the cupboard.

I pulled my hand back, hugged my knees to my chest, and silently begged her not to—

Tape screeched, and inch by inch, the light faded until there was no light at all, just the sound of my own breaths and the sharp crack of her heeled boots on the floor.

“Hush, Valentine,” a voice in my head said. “It will all be over soon—”

I gasped awake, jerked back as though struck, and almost fell from my chair. The desk, its mess of papers, the quill and ink, the books, and the empty bottle of laudanum—all of it was alien, from another world, another time. Fear clenched my heart. Where was I? I whirled from the chair onto my feet and kept moving across the room. A room I’d rented at the Lost Penny Inn. Not under the stairs. I wasn’t there. Not anymore. That house was gone, and so were the people who were supposed to love me.

I dropped to the edge of the bed and buried my face in my hands.Breathe. Just a dream, a memory, and those could no longer hurt me. I dragged a hand down my face and stared at the room and my work strewn about the desk.

I was not the boy under the stairs, not anymore.

I was Investigator Valentine Anzio, here to solve the murder of Jacapo.

Gods, it had been a long time since such dreams had plagued me.

A shudder freed the dregs of the dream from my mind. I got to my feet and paced the room. Snow buffeted the small window and smoked its glass, diffusing the streetlight’s glow. My heart slowed, and my thoughts calmed now that I knew who and where I was. I dropped into the window seat and cracked the sash window open an inch, enough to let in a blast of cold air. Papers rustled on my desk. The toy bird I’d retrieved from the graveyard toppled off the side and clunked onto the rug.

I wedged myself on the window seat, letting the cold air wash over me until goose bumps dappled my skin and my teeth chattered. Ineededto be cold, to be present in the now, to know this was real.

That voice…

Hush, Valentine.

I’d called her Hush, because when she came, she always said the same words.

The woman in the dark, in my head.

She came whenever I was alone. And I knew, from my own studies of the mind, she wasn’t real. Hush was a concoction of fear and trauma, an imaginary person I’d summoned to protect my sanity. But she’d been real to me when I’d had nobody to cling to in the darkness.

Tears wet my face, and as I swept them away, a figure outside caught my eye. A man stood beneath the streetlamp across the street, looking up at my window.

I wiped condensation from the window. Snow swirled, obscuring my view. Devere?

I shoved from the window, threw on my coat, dashed down the inn’s stairs, flung open the door, and staggered onto the sidewalk. Snowflakes melted on my face and fluttered in front of my eyes. The street was empty. No carriages, no signs of life. Nobody stood beneath the streetlamp. But I had seen him… hadn’t I?

I pulled my coat closed and turned left. He had to be here. I’d seen him. He was real. Or perhaps he’d been a shadow cast by the tree behind, or a patch of condensation on the window…

No. I knew what I’d seen. I wasn’t losing my mind.

A figure down the street, turning the corner.There he is. “Hey!”

I broke into a run. My boots slipped on slushy snow. He turned left, out of sight.

I’d demand answers. He had them, I knew he did, but he was holding them back like currency. The corner came up fast. I slowed but caught a patch of ice, and as I tried to take the corner, I felt myself falling, saw the world tip, and reached helplessly for a lamppost.

A horse’s screech and a man’s urgent bark landed like a physical blow. “Look out!”

ChapterEight

“No, do not move,”Thomas Rochefort said. Concerned lines upset his handsome face. A bell rang, and another person joined us in a room that was far too lavish to be mine, the bed far too big and luxurious to belong to me.

I tried to sit up, but a stranger put his hand on me. “Rest now,” the man said. “You took quite a knock to the head.”

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