He throws a soiled handkerchief into the bleach water, and we watch it turn as white as snow. Like magic. “Ten years of my life,” he says. “Just disappeared because I got careless one day. So learn this first and learn it well: dirty work always requires the cleanest hands.”
We spend the next week on locks. Door locks. Safe locks. Skeleton keys, hairpins, hex wrenches. Some locks take movements as small and fine as threading a needle. Others are heavy and blunt. He teaches me to turn my wrist, to apply just the right amount of torque until I hear the faint click of the pin. How to gauge entry points of houses and wrench open coffins. Which shovels to use for hard clay and which to use for loam.
“You’re quick,” he grunts after a particularly grueling day. His affirmation awakens an insatiable sort of hunger in me. I hadn’t lied. I’ve always been good with my hands, and I take to Phineas’s skills as naturally as claiming my birthright.
What’s funny is that after a lifetime spent trying to strengthen my legs, I slip back into my old limp. People would rather avert their eyes than look at a cripple. So I shuffle on and off to my advantage, so that no one ever gets a good look at my face.
And to think that before this I’d always thought that not being seen was a bad thing.
The first woman I rob owns underwear that is silky and cold in the drawer. Behind it, predictably, is her jewelry case. Holding gold rings, a garnet brooch, an antique watch.
For once, my courage doesn’t desert me. It flows through me in a rush of beating heart and nerves. But I bang my shin against the coffee table on the way out and find myself wishing for a smear of Night Vision. It is the first time I’ve thought of Sterling in ages.
The Variants. The Variants. My bag of loot hits against my leg in a rhythm as I walk home in the shadows. The memory of the Variants remains a nettle in my side. It had been my thistle, after all. Juliet had asked me for the birdseed, and I had given it to her without question, right out of my own stash. But no one seemed to remember that when the three of them were together, handing out the bread and warming in Sterling’s adoration. I should have been up there with them.
Without me and my thistle, it’s possible the Variants never would have existed.
The sun is rising by the time I reach home. Phineas calls me to the porch. I dump the contents of my bag onto the table for him to sift through. He grins at me with teeth that are growing ever more gray.
“Good,” he proclaims, pawing over the loot.
A surge of pure euphoria hits me then. That I’ve done it. Pulled off my first job.
Phineas observes me with the hint of amusement. “Proud of yourself?”
“I’m good at it.”
Phineas lights a cigar. “You come by that honestly. It’s in our marrow.”
His next words come out in smoke. “I miss that feeling. It’s practically coming out of your skin. Wish I could bottle it.” He knocks the ash from the cigar tip.
I have the flicker of an idea then. But it is still dim.
The Variants. Bottled. Euphoria.
Then Phineas erupts into a coughing fit so violent he has to stub out his cigar. When he hacks into his hand, the sound is unmistakably wet. He looks down. Tries to hide it.
But he isn’t quick enough. At the sight of the unmistakable rust that is left on his palm, the flicker of my idea falters and fades away.
Chapter Seventeen
I turn my room upside down. Run my fingers across every surface and nook in the bureau drawers, sift through the sheets, check the drains. I consider asking for an unsanctioned use of Mind’s Eye to check my memory, but I don’t need it. I can see myself unhooking the clasp and coiling the chain as I always do, placing the necklace on my nightstand so that it doesn’t wrap around my neck while I sleep.
I know, even as I strip the cases from the pillows one last time, that Mother’s necklace isn’t here.
A chill works its way down my spine like fingers playing a piano.
Someone came in and took it. While I was sleeping.
I throw on a crumpled wool dress that I’d left lying on my floor and fling open my door.
Miles. Of course. It had to have been Miles.
I head for the back garden, where he’s spent the last week playing with a model airplane he built with Dr. Cliffton. But now he stands beside the garden’s western stone wall, the airplane overturned in the grass, with one wing crooked, like a broken arm. He is cupping something in his hand, and a silvery thread of hope shoots through my veins.
But when he turns, it is only the remnants of flower petals. He is pulling out delicate clusters of pink and white turtlehead blossoms and beheading them from their stems. They are Mrs. Cliffton’s favorites.
“Miles.” Hope is hammering in my chest. I won’t even be mad at him—?not that mad—?if he has it. Though I’ve only had it for a few weeks, I’ve grown used to the weight of it against my skin, and I feel strangely off kilter without it. As I walk toward him, my head starts to throb.
