Page 3 of The City of Stardust

“She’s my niece, too. I care,” Gabriel says, hard. “Besides, it’s not just about the money. How do you think I heard the rumours about Marianne? About Violet?” He raises an eyebrow. “I’m not too proud to do what must be done. Are you?”

Ambrose takes another deep breath, and this time it’s a little easier. For Violet’s sake, he has to get it together. Slowly, he begins to sift through the possibilities with a methodical logic, forcing the panic into the recesses of his mind.

“We could send her away,” he says, thinking aloud. “Somewhere out of sight. You have contacts—you could take her.” Even though he hates to imagine it.

“It’s far too late for that,” Gabriel says darkly. “Tell me: who would you trust with Violet? Which of my ‘contacts’ would risk their lives for us?” He raises a wry eyebrow. “Hell, would you trust me?”

Ambrose falls silent. There’s no good answer to that question.

“We would buy months at best, little brother. And we need more than that.”

Again with thelittle brother. It’s been a long time since Ambrose has felt young enough, naïve enough to be condescended to.

“Violet deserves alife,” he says. “Marianne would have wanted—”

“Marianne fucked off and left her child here,” Gabriel snaps. “I really don’t care what she wanted.”

“She didn’t have a choice. She wentforViolet. You know this.”

“Do I?” He glowers. “When someone looks like they’re running, that’s because they’re running. And leaving us to clear up her goddamn mess. As usual.”

Ambrose bites back a retort. Where Gabriel is concerned, Marianne is like a bruise, searing with pain at the slightest pressure.

“So that means…” He can’t bring himself to sayhername, as though by saying it, he’ll summon the force from which he’s protected Violet for so long. “When will she get here?”

Gabriel shakes his head, his mouth a hard, thin line. “Sooner rather than later, I think.”

Ambrose thinks it over. There must be a solution he’s not grasping clearly. But his thoughts, usually organised like clockwork, fail him. His head swims with thoughts of Violet, of the long, dark shadow stretched over the Everlys. He needs more time to think. He just needs—time.

“We’ll invite her,” he says suddenly. “We’ll make a deal. You said we needed more time. So… we buy more time. For next steps, a plan. Anything.”

For Marianne, he adds silently.

He waits for Gabriel to shoot him down. But instead Gabriel rubs the back of his wrist, nodding slowly as he comes to grips with the idea.

“She’ll ask about Marianne,” he warns.

“I know.”

Gabriel adjusts his leather jacket, fiddling with something inside the pockets. “And I can’t stay—I’m already late for a meeting with the Vernes. You’ll have to do the talking for both of us.”

“I know that, too.”

After Gabriel leaves, Ambrose slumps on to the desk, his heart sinking at the sudden enormity of what he has to do. Never mind what the hell he’s supposed to tell his inquisitive niece. She’s forever asking questions, but it’s been a long time since he’s had any easy answers.

He stays up into the small hours of the morning writing letters, scrubbing down the dusty kitchen countertops, washing all the sheets he’s suddenly found time for—anything to take his mind from what will happen next.

Inside the old wardrobe at the back of the library, Violet Everly clutches her book tightly, her mouth pressed against her jumper to hide the sound of her startled breathing.

CHAPTER

Two

VIOLET EVERLY IStwelve years old, and dreaming of other worlds.

This usually involves climbing into the old wardrobe at the back of the library, and shutting the door in a whirl of cedar and dust. There she sits, with a thin torch between her teeth and a fat book spread across her lap, its thick and creamy pages layered in old-fashioned type and rich with glossy sentences. Every one of them whispering adventure.

The worlds spring up behind her eyelids: cities of gold and silver filigree buildings; lands of intertwining waterways with bright boats sculling through the water; a forest of witches, their skin shades of eggshell blue all the way to deepest twilight, constellations twinkling across their shoulders. All of this a siren song that she can’t quite shake.

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