The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(8)

“Come back at First Toll,” the Collector said. “We’ll find a nice place to hang you up by the Door.”

It took every ounce of restraint I had left to keep my expression calm. This was the part where I was supposed to say, Yes, Reaper, and bow, but he was lucky that I hadn’t smashed his glasses into his face with my fist.

As if he could smell my defiance, he pulled me closer. His glasses fell out of the lamplight, revealing a deep frown.

“Scrub that look from your face,” he said. “Remember that I’ll handle your collections in the future.”

The future, I thought.

Luckily, I didn’t have a future.

The light bulb flashed with a sudden surge of power, then burst. Glass shards rained down over the desk, forcing the man to release me as hot glass scored his hands. Some of his paperwork caught fire, and he frantically patted out the flames with hands full of shards.

“Yes, Reaper,” I said, bowing deeply so he wouldn’t see my smirk as he sputtered about “bloody light bulbs, I knew we should have kept the gas lamps.”

Then I turned and rushed off to the West Catacombs.

I threw open the door to 857 West, locked it, and stopped time for the world outside of my room in the widest radius I could manage. That would envelop the West Catacombs, at least, stopping any Reapers from breaking down our door before I could slip out again. That is, unless a High Reaper came looking for us and sensed the time turn, but it would at least buy me a few minutes to prepare.

Up in the loft, Neven’s hand hung between the banister bars. I smacked it, jolting him both out of the time freeze and out of sleep.

“Why’d you do that?” his sleep-crackled voice said from above.

One greenish-purple eye glowed from between the slats, the other hidden behind white blond hair and pillows. Neven couldn’t sleep in the dark, so he’d left all the candles burning in the corners of our studio and from the precariously suspended candelabra overhead.

I waved my hand and every candle in the room doubled in brightness, switching from a romantic orange glow to sterile white. Neven made a strangled noise, but I was already tearing through the trunk at the foot of my bed, digging for some sort of bag to take with me. When I found nothing of use, I pulled out the drawers of my wardrobe and turned them over, sending broken quills and origami stars spilling across the floorboards.

Our room was a stark cage of bricks, chilled from both the clay and the deep earth around it. Neven slept in the loft surrounded by sparkling cogs and gears and bits of glass from little machines that he’d disassembled. I occupied the lower half of the room, my mattress surrounded by a small fortress of stolen books in eleven languages. I’d taken an interest in botany lately and had gathered some of the most beautiful and poisonous flowers I could find in London: hemlock, foxglove, and wolfsbane. I’d dried them and strung them up on the wooden slats of Neven’s loft, because Reapers were drawn to Death, and my plants were both very deadly and very dead.

I brushed aside the withered petals and ducked into my alcove, then dumped out the plants that I’d stuffed into a brown leather bag.

Neven hung his head over the edge of the loft, squinting down at me.

“Why are you redecorating at five in the morning?” he said. “And the time lock? Ren—”

“I have to leave,” I said, tearing through my wardrobe for something besides a glittering silver cloak that might keep me warm. I could steal a disguise off some unfortunate Londoner, but I’d need to go out in public first and sparkling silver cloaks weren’t exactly in fashion. I tried to focus on packing rather than answer Neven’s question, because all the words I wanted to say felt rotten in my mouth and, maybe, if I didn’t speak, none of it would be true.

“I heard Last Toll,” Neven said, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand and sliding his legs through the slats. “It’s too late to go out.”

“I made a mistake,” I said.

Something in my tone must have alerted Neven to the gravity of the situation, because he straightened and fumbled for his glasses, knocking down gears from the loft. He blinked down at me, his eyes magnified behind his glasses making him look a bit like a dragonfly, then rushed down the ladder.

“Your hair,” he said, frowning.

My hand shot up to grab what was left of my braid. I’d almost forgotten about it in my panic, since my hood had concealed it, but the reminder made my eyes burn with something close to tears. Part of my braid still barely hung on, while the rest had been cut to my collarbone. I stormed past Neven and yanked open a desk drawer, then another, then another, sending cogs and buttons flying. I grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to contort myself to finish the job.

“Ren, stop,” he said, taking my wrist and sliding the scissors from my fingers before I could jab them into my shoulder blades.

“I want it off,” I said, holding my hand out for the scissors.

A million questions spun behind his violet eyes, but he didn’t voice any of them. “Turn around,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

“You’ve never cut hair,” I said.

“And you can’t see the back of your head.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, turning around.

I hated the sound of scissors slicing through my hair again and tried not to picture myself held down in the snow, but luckily Neven finished quickly.