Sterling adjusted his glasses and flicked through his papers. “The money will be given to charity,” he read.
My palms dampened. Charity was noble. Charity saved lives. But I was drowning myself. I could barely afford rent. and was three months behind already. One more half-paid month could mean one less key in my pocket.
I needed it. I hated needing it.
I placed the paper down, slowly, like it might catch fire if I moved too fast. My hand hovered above it for a beat too long. Sterling began packing his case, unaware of the storm swirling inside me.
“I believe we’re on the same page now,” he said. “Your grandmother expects your immediate arrival. I’ve taken the liberty of making travel arrangements on your behalf.”
My head jerked up.
“I didn’t agree to anything,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. He looked at me kindly. Almost pitifully.
“You need the money, don’t you?”
His gaze flicked down to the red-and-white striped apron hanging from my frame. He didn’t need my answer. The apron said enough. So did the smell of this place, soaked into my sleeves, into my skin.
“The car will arrive for you two days from now,” he said, adjusting the grey scarf around his neck. “Don’t worry about the chauffeur finding your address. Everything is taken care of.”
And there it was.
The chill. Not from the slow death of November clawing at the door, but from him. From the ease with which he said it. The certainty. They knew where I lived. They knew my name. My schedule. My worth, measured in inherited numbers.
A thin layer of sweat broke out across the back of my neck.
Sterling turned for the exit, his hat in his hand, casting long shadows beneath the low ceiling light. The pub had thinned while we spoke. Drunken men spilled into the cold while others curled into booths. I had no idea how much time had passed. I was just glad Tony didn’t notice.
“Wait,” I said, the word catching like broken glass in my throat. He paused. “Why now?”
My mum died over three months ago. The funeral was small, with no family beyond me. A cheap headstone. Wilted lilies. Silence so dense I thought it might bury me too. If this is real, if she has family, why hadn’t they come?
“That’s not my place nor story to tell.”
I swallowed hard, one last question pushing through my lips. “What’s the catch?”
He smiled faintly. “There’s no catch, Miss. Merely harmless family affairs.”
CHAPTER THREE
ELODIE
The kettle’s whistle split the quiet of Anhe Fei’s flat, shrill and urgent as steam ghosted through the dim air. It smelled like a memory. Dry herbs, incense, the faint trace of salt and iron. My mum’s scent used to linger like that, in old scarves and worn bedsheets, until the grief swallowed it.
“What else does it say?” she asked, pouring the boiled water over tea leaves with the same steady grace she did everything else before settling at the round kitchen table with the weight of someone who already knew the answer.
I wasn’t sure how she knew something had happened. But when I returned home from the Drunken Lion’s Pub, half an hour ago, there was a note pinned to my crooked front door.
Our old neighbour had long since earned the right to summon me with so little. She’d taught me martial arts beside my mum, cooked for us after long hospital days, and hovered like a storm cloud with a soft heart, making sure I would wake up every day.
So I wasn’t surprised to find her awake as dawn approached. She always woke while the moon still ruled the sky, as if daylight itself was something she didn’t entirely trust.
When I stepped over her threshold, under the once gilded number six, she insisted that I tell her about that grandmother of mine. That’s when I realized I was too stunned by the sheer thought and amount of inheritance to even question the other, just as important, aspects of the encounter. For example, Lilian Thornbury.
My eyes moved again down the article I was reading. It was one of the few I could find on the Thornbury family and their estate, Thornhill.
“The Thornbury family is one of the most prominent dynasties in Europe, dating back to the early 18th century,” I read aloud. “They have considerable economic influence and remain among the closest families to the Crown to this day.”
Anhe Fei hummed, setting down her tarot deck. She had numerous tarot decks scattered around her flat. There were ones adorned in every colour of the rainbow, strange ones with fairies and unicorns, and others with creatures that haunted my childhood nightmares.
