Chapter 19: The Trap in the Bookbinder's

Langston let me out of the house at ten on Monday night, through the kitchen, with a footman's overcoat over my dress.

He did not say good luck.

He put me in a hack at the corner and paid the driver and stood in the rain until we turned.

The bookbinder's shop on Pearl Street was dark when I reached it.

I went up the outside stair, and the back door opened before I knocked.

Tobias pulled me in and shut it.

He looked at my face by the one shielded candle and said nothing.

Then he kissed my forehead, hard.

"They're coming at eleven," he said. "Langston's note was right."

"Where is everyone?"

"The loft."

We climbed the ladder.

In the dark under the skylight there were three people sitting on bales of sheepskin and not talking.

Nan was nearest, with the quilt over her shoulders and the pistol in her lap, the muzzle turned to the floor.

Next to her sat a thin man in a bowler hat with a notebook on his knee.

"Plain Dealer," Tobias said, very low. "He's here for the story."

"I'm here for a story," said the thin man. "I've been promised two. Don't make me regret the rain."

The third was the inspector.

I knew him by his shoulders, which had filled my stairwell a week ago.

"Miss Severance," he said. "You told me you had left your father's house of your own will."

"I had."

"And now you're sitting in a loft with a girl and a pistol."

"Yes."

"Good," said the inspector. "I dislike being lied to by respectable people, and you did not lie."

Nobody laughed.

We waited.

I sat on a roll of paper beside Tobias, with my shoulder against his, and felt him breathing.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Chose the Girl Who Tried to Kill Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.