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“Hey.”
Laughter bubbled from inside, mocking me.
I slammed a fist against the wood, rattling the knocker. “Hey!” Damn them. I had to know if Devere was here, or Russo. Anyone who could tell me where Devere had gone. Anyone who could help. “Devere!” I pounded on the door. “Russo! Are you in there? Come out, you coward! I know what you did! I know this was you!”
The door stayed closed.
I staggered from the steps and eyed the windows. The drapes had been drawn. A brick would soon solve that.
The door opened, and Russo glared. “Go back to the inn. You’re making a fool of yourself, Valentine.”
“Where is he!” I rushed forward, sprang up the steps, and almost got my hands around his throat, but others swooped in, hauling me off, and threw me backward. My shoes slipped on the snow and I went down hard, landing in filthy slush.
Russo folded his arms. “Perhaps yourfriendwas in that fire after all?”
Devere hadn’t been. He couldn’t have been. I’d left him in my room. “He wasn’t.”
“And how do you know?”
If I told them Devere had been in my room at the inn, I’d be signing a death warrant for myself, like the one they’d pinned to Devere. Part of me didn’t care, but I also needed to be smarter than this. Devere wasn’t here, or Russo would have gloated about it.
I climbed to my feet and brushed clumps of wet snow from my trousers. “You set that fire.”
“Where’s your proof?” He sauntered down the steps and met me on the street. He wanted me to strike him. He’d gladly throw me in jail for it. “Aren’t you all about evidence, Valentine?” His smirk ticked. “It’s your word against mine. I think it’s time you moved along, or I might look again at your involvement in Rochefort’s murder.”
Now was not the place to stand off against Russo. I couldn’t win this round. I needed to be clever to come back stronger. Before I did anything, I had to find Devere.
I tugged my clothes back into place and scanned all the faces watching on, committing them to memory. Allies of Russo were no friends of mine.
I’d made it a few yards away when Russo called out, “Perhaps he ran away, like you did fifteen years ago?”
I kept on walking. The rows of houses funneled me deeper into the dark, until I came upon the ruins of a burned-out house collapsed among its neighbors, like the missing tooth in a smile.
My feet had carried me home.
I’d resisted coming back, consciously avoided it. Now there it was, reduced to broken timbers and mounds of scorched bricks so like Devere’s store, only my house had been gone long enough for weeds to grow inside its hollow remains.
“This fucking town is cursed.” Or I was.
I strode on, pushed through the graveyard’s iron gate, making the hinges squeal, and ventured into the quiet among the snow-covered graves, until I reached the weeping angel. Devere wasn’t here. I hadn’t expected him to be. But I had nowhere else to look, only the place where we’d knelt in the grass.
He’d been my first kiss.
And now he was gone.
Some part of me knew he wouldn’t be back, like I knew the beetle wouldn’t buzz again without him here. It was all connected, wasn’t it? Devere, the toys, the store, Jacapo’s death, a kiss from a lifetime ago. Tick-tock, the clockwork mechanism was in motion, just like Devere had said, but I was too close to see the hands turning.
I slumped against the angel gravestone.
He’d told me his store was his life, his heart and soul. Now it was gone, and so was he. Snuffed out of the world as though I’d dreamed him up, just like I’d dreamed up Hush to save my battered mind.
But Hushhadbeen a dream. Devere’s kiss had been real, and the hurt in my heart was real.
Men did not vanish into thin air. He had to be somewhere. There had to be traces. I’d find them, and find him.
“You don’t get to run away from this, from us.”
And neither did I. Not this time.
