The Lost Girl (26 page)

5
Safe

I
t’s late when we arrive in London. The sun is long gone and false yellow light spills out into the roads. We get immediately into a taxi. Sean gives the driver the name of a street. I dig my nails into my palms to get rid of some of my tension and only half listen as the driver makes Sean aware of his views on the traffic, the government, and the weather. It’s not a long drive, and soon we’re getting out again and paying and thanking the driver and then he’s gone in a puff of fumes.

“It’s this way,” says Sean. “I didn’t want to tell him exactly where we were going, so we have to walk a bit.”

I’m exhausted, but I haven’t forgotten that Matthew
could
have been in Manchester watching us, and I say, “Take us the wrong way first and cut back after a while. Just to make sure no one follows us there.”

Sean seems impressed that such caution occurred to me. I give him a dirty look and follow him down the street. I don’t really think we’re being watched right now. There is no one in sight, and even the seekers would leave
some
trace of their presence. Still. I want to step carefully. Especially in the Weavers’ city.

Eventually we make our way to a large cobbled square that looks like it would be busy during the day. There’s a fountain in the middle, an ornate thing where people drop pennies and make a wish. My footsteps have slowed to a trudge and I can barely move anymore. Sean isn’t much better.

“In here.” He tugs my arm, leading me down a narrow, dark alley. It seems like the ideal place for someone to be mugged.

Halfway down the alley, Sean stops and wiggles the doorknob of a door on his left. It turns. He glances around to make sure there is nobody in sight and pushes open the door. He steps aside to let me in first, then follows me in and shuts the door behind us. I hear the sound of a lock turning. I can only assume Sean’s phone call involved him asking someone to leave the side door unlocked for us. I don’t like that someone else knows where Sean is tonight, but I let it go.

Sean takes me through the dark theater without difficulty. He’s obviously been here plenty of times. I concentrate on picking out the smells of paint and new carpet and try not to think about things in Sean’s life I know nothing about, like theaters and friends, and how he will soon have to leave those things behind.

He stops at the rear of the theater, behind the stage, and reaches for a poker propped against a nearby radiator. He raises the poker above his head and hooks it onto something in the ceiling. It’s a door to the loft. He drops the door and lowers a ladder. We climb up and pull the door shut behind us. The loft is clean and quite full and smells like freshly laundered clothes. It must be where they store costumes and equipment.

Sean flicks a switch, and bright gold light spills out of a single bulb hanging from the low roof. It fills the loft with color. Blinded, I blink at him.

“We should black that out,” I say when I can see again. I point to the single window at the far end of the loft. “Someone might see the light and wonder who’s up here this late.”

“Good idea.” Sean drops his bag next to mine. “Look in these trunks. There might be cloth you can use. I’ll go check the props for mattresses and sheets and lug them over here.”

I open the nearest trunk, releasing a fresh wave of that clean-clothes smell. I sift through the costumes and material carefully. I move on to the next trunk. In the third, I find rolls of black velvet. I unroll the material, find some pins, and steal a piece of black cardboard from the props section.

I cover up the window and clamber across the loft to help Sean. We drag two mattresses into the space we have appropriated for ourselves, and Sean goes to fetch pillows. I check the trunks again and find clean sheets and quilts.

Immediately I want to drop down onto my mattress and go straight to sleep. I resist the urge and smile up at Sean.

“We’re lucky.”

“Nah,” says Sean, grinning back. “There are bedroom scenes in this play. I knew they’d have bedding. I’d better write a note and pin it to one of the trunks,” he adds, and pulls a face. “‘Dear Mrs. Brown. Sorry if we left a mess behind. We probably had to leave in a hurry. We’re on the run, see. Bit of an emergency. Yours penitently, S. J. Franklyn.’
Yeah, she’ll love that.”

Laughing for what feels like the first time in days, I pull my nightshirt out of my bag. “I could burn these clothes, I’ve been in them so long,” I say.

“There are showers right below us. Attached to the dressing rooms. Tempted?”

“You’ve just made my day.”

“Come on, I’ll show you where they are.”

I add a towel, hairbrush, shampoo, soap, and clean underwear to a pile with my nightshirt, and follow him down the ladder again.

When I’m finished, I climb back up. Sean must have finished showering already, because his hair is wet and there’s still water drying on his forehead. He’s sprawled on his mattress like he tried to wait for me but couldn’t stay awake. I throw his quilt over him and curl up on my own makeshift bed. I am asleep in seconds, and for once I don’t dream of anything at all.

“Eva, wake up.” Sean is speaking above me. Beyond him I can hear birds and distant voices. The cobbled square out front? The theater below us? Probably both. “Eva, come on, wake up. We have a problem.”

Even that can’t jolt me awake. My muscles feel sore and warm and sleepy. I squeeze my eyes open. I look at my watch. It’s almost noon. I could probably sleep some more, but Sean is now crouched next to me and his eyes are very green and very impatient.

His words finally get through to me. I sit bolt upright, my heart sinking all the way to my toes. “What do you mean? What problem? Have they found us?”

“No, nothing like that,” he says, handing me a hot chicken wrap in blue paper. “Eat that. I’ve been up about an hour. I slipped out and got us some breakfast. I also went online at a shop. I didn’t want to turn my phone on, but I wanted to look up your deposit box, find the address on a map, the nearest tube station, that kind of thing.”

“And?” I feel calmer now that I know we’re safe. I bite into my wrap. It’s delicious.

“It’s gone. The place where they stored your stuff, I mean. They went bankrupt and closed last year.”

I stop eating. “All that stuff is lost?” I ask in dismay.

“It shouldn’t be,” says Sean. “They’d have called everyone who stored stuff with them before they closed. Erik would have emptied the box and moved the contents somewhere else. But there’s no way to know where—”

“—without asking him,” I finish. I bite my lip. “And the Weavers will be expecting us to try reaching him or Mina Ma.”

“Hence the problem.”

I eat my wrap slowly. Sean paces the loft and I frown, trying to think, but my brain still feels half asleep.

“What about Ophelia? She might know where Erik moved the deposit box. If she’s been living in London this past year, he probably had to ask her to move it for him.”

Sean glances at me. “They’re going to be keeping an eye on her, too.”

“True. Except she’s Adrian’s
daughter
. He trusts her. You know what Ophelia’s like. She used to get so upset when Mina Ma said harsh things about the Loom. She believes in Adrian. Loves him. He must know that.” I rub sleep out of my eyes. “But he doesn’t know that, in spite of everything, Ophelia never told tales about me. She always stuck by me.”

“True.”

“And if the Loom’s not tracking her, they won’t know if we call.”

“I don’t know,” says Sean, considering. “I still don’t think they’d ignore her altogether.” His brow knots unhappily. He can’t think of an alternative. “Fine. She may be our best bet. We’ll make the call from a pay phone a safe distance away, just in case.”

“You’d better do the talking.” I am quite sure I’ll burst into tears the moment I hear Ophelia’s voice. I want to talk to her so badly. To all of them.

Sean stops pacing and nods. He has a look on his face that tells me he’s made up his mind. “I think that would be better anyway. It means you can stay here.”

“But—”

“It’s safer, Eva.” I can’t argue with that. “We agreed I’d go empty the deposit box on my own anyway. I’ll call her, find out where it is, and go deal with that. When I’m back we can figure out what to do next.”

I don’t like it, but I have to acknowledge it makes far more sense than my going with him. I’m the one who broke free; I’m the one they want to find most. I can’t go running around London without care. Until we’re well away from this city, I have to lie low.

I get up and wrap my arms around myself. I don’t think it’s cold in here, but I shiver. “Sean, be careful.”

He opens the trapdoor and pauses by the ladder. He smiles. “I’m not you,” he points out. “Of course I’ll be careful.”

After he leaves, I get dressed. I make my way cautiously out of the loft to use the bathroom and wash up. I can hear voices, sounds echoing through the theater, but the dressing rooms seem quite deserted. I hurry, glancing edgily behind me every couple of seconds to make sure no one is coming, jumping at every sound. I fill our empty drink bottles with water and steal a few biscuits from a tray in the dressing room for good measure. No sense leaving the loft more than absolutely necessary.

I take my towel, toothbrush, and the bottles back up and close the trapdoor. Sean can’t have been gone more than half an hour. I occupy myself by tidying up the loft, nibbling biscuits and flicking through one of the books I’d packed. When I find I can’t concentrate, I try instead to think of where we could go next.

I check my watch compulsively, but the passage of each moment is agonizingly slow. Sitting here and waiting is unbearable.

Restless, I turn off the light and carefully pull aside a section of the covering on the window. I look into the street and the square far below. It’s busy, as I’d guessed, bustling with stalls and people. Farther away, I can see bits of a gleaming river between the rooftops and church spires across the city. I open the window a crack and breathe in the open air. It smells warm and summery, like wet grass and onions and barbecues, but it doesn’t warm me up. My hands are ice cold.

He’s been gone almost two hours. I abandon the window, covering it back up, and flip the light on once more. Desperate for something to do, I press my ear to the trapdoor and make sure all seems quiet below. Then I sneak down again to refill the bottles.

Only this time the dressing room isn’t empty. There is a man standing by the wall, studying a poster, almost like he was waiting for me.

He turns around. I catch a glimpse of silvery chain mail before terror obliterates everything but the gleam in his eyes.

“Matthew,” I croak.

“I prefer
Sir
Matthew,” says the Weaver, with a smile like a hungry tiger.

6
Puppets

I
want to run away, but some force holds me fast. I reach for something, anything, to steady me, and my hand closes over the door frame. My fingers bite down so hard my knuckles turn white.

“So what now, Matthew?” I ask, biting back a whine of panic. “You ask me to come quietly and I say you can go to hell?”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course you refuse to be reasonable. Have you never considered giving in gracefully?”

“I’ll give in gracefully when the time’s right. But until then, I’m not going gently into any good night, thank you very much.”

“You needn’t take that tone with me,” says Matthew, smothering a yawn. “Effusive thanks will do nicely.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know if you have bothered to look around, dearest Eva,” he drawls. “If you had, you’d have noticed that I am alone. If I
had
intended to take you to the Loom, I would have brought Theseus or Lennox. Seekers. Powerless I am not, but I have no desire to wrinkle this new shirt in a brawl with you. It therefore stands to reason that I am
not
here to capture you.”

This makes very little sense to me. I swallow, trying to moisten my dry mouth. “How did you find me?”

“I,” says Matthew, “know everything. Have we not discussed that at length?”

“Were you in Manchester yesterday?”

He smiles but ignores the question. “I rather think it would be prudent to move this little chat somewhere more, ah,
discreet
.”

I don’t like admitting it, but he has a point. I show him the way up to the loft, stamping down on my terror, trying to think. A few minutes ago I wanted nothing more than for Sean to be back. Now I hope he stays out awhile longer. I can’t let Matthew get hold of him too.

Once we’re upstairs, I keep my eyes fixed on Matthew, the way you might watch a snake for sudden movements.

“Why?” I ask. “Why
didn’t
you bring a seeker?”

“They’re busy,” says Matthew blithely, “and I rather thought everything would turn
so
tedious and predictable if I did. If you return to the Loom now, you will go to trial and tragically perish. And
I
will have no new material for my definitive encyclopedia on echo behavior. You asked me for help once,” he adds. “And I told you to find your own way out. Which you have done. More or less. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure you would have the nerve to run. I’m impressed. It’s been so entertaining that I am most intrigued to see what you do next.”

I stare at him in disbelief. Hope blossoms in my toes and begins to creep upward. I try to read his expression, but it’s impossible.

“How would the other Weavers feel about you not taking me back?”

“I daresay they wouldn’t be surprised,” muses Matthew. “They’ve long since given up trying to predict my actions or understand my motivations.”

I don’t take my eyes off him. He found me and he’s letting me go. I can’t quite accept it. This is a Weaver.
Matthew
. It can’t be this easy.

“I don’t trust you,” I say. “You’re not doing this to be kind.”

“I have never had a reputation for kindness,” Sir Matthew reflects, “and I am only heroic if it suits me.”

I ignore that. “What do you want from me? Do you want me to be grateful? Thank you on my knees? You’re only doing this so you can entertain yourself watching me squirm. I’m a puppet and you want to pull the strings. I’m only safe from you as long as you find this amusing. The moment you get bored, you’ll send seekers after me.” I shake my head. “Soon I’ll be far away. I don’t care if you come after me or not. I ran away to survive. To win my life back. Not to let you mess about with it. I won’t be played with. And I’m not going to thank you.”

Matthew gives me a long, hard look. I see amusement, but something else, too, something I can’t put my finger on.

“You
should
thank me, you impossible little brat,” he says at last, pointing a finger to the tip of my nose. “If I don’t play my games, how long do you imagine you can outlast the seekers on your own?”

“I’m not on my own—”

I stop, biting my tongue in chagrin. But Matthew doesn’t look like this is news to him. “And by that I suppose you mean Jonathan’s son?” He shrugs dismissively. “He hardly counts anymore. I don’t expect you will ever see him again.”

My blood freezes. My voice is hardly more than a whisper.

“What does that mean?”

“A little birdie’s been chattering,” says Matthew, examining his fingernails. “A
girl
birdie. I did mention the seekers were busy, didn’t I? The little birdie told Adrian that you would be going to a bank in the city to empty a certain deposit box. This was, oh, an hour ago. Naturally the seekers made haste to get there and wait for you.”

I’m going to be sick. “Ophelia? She
told
Adrian?” A bitter taste fills my mouth. I’ve loved her most of my life. I always knew, we all knew, that she was loyal to the Loom. But she kept my secrets from them despite that. I didn’t think that would change. I
trusted
her.

“Of course she told him.”

“Sean.” I choke on his name.
I
told him to call her. This is my fault. “God. They’ll find Sean. But—but it’s
me
they want. They—they will leave him alone, won’t they? They won’t hurt him or take him away?”

“What a sweet, innocent thought.” Matthew casts his eyes skyward. “And totally incorrect. He broke our laws too. If I were you, I’d write him off and get the devil out of here. Flee with your life like you so grandly wanted.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Going to go after him, are you? You don’t even know where he is.”

“I can call Erik and ask him about the bank. Thanks to Ophelia, I don’t have to be careful about contacting him anymore. It’s too late for that now.”

“You are being absurd.”

I scramble for my shoes. “I have to find Sean before your seekers do. I might be in time. Get out of the way!”

“No.” Matthew puts his foot down on my boots. I try to pull them out from under him, but he is immovable. I straighten up, ready to hit him, and he gives me a cold, dry look. “You will not be in time. I have no doubt they’ve found him already. If you go out there, you will also be captured, and as I have already told you,
that
does not suit me one bit. Do be sensible for a change.
His
capture does not mean death.
Yours
will. Tedious. Predictable. Remember?”

“Move!”

“And this is what he would want, is it?” he drawls, refusing to budge. “He’d
like
it if you went out and threw yourself into the jaws of the waiting beast? He’d be happy, would he?”

It’s the last thing Sean would want. He will never forgive me if I am captured because of this. But he’s out there and if there’s still a
chance
I can help him—

“I can go barefoot, you know,” I hiss through my teeth.

I see him move, but I am standing too close to him. I can’t get out of the way in time. His hand closes over my throat.

I gasp. Oxygen vanishes from my lungs. My hands claw frantically at his, but everything goes dim and dark at the edges. Then it’s all gone.