Page 14 of Four Promises to Love

“I lured him to a private place so I could pluck his feathers,” she said tightly.

“Pluck boots.” Simon smiled.

When he proudly pointed at the footwear he wore night and day, Finn couldn’t bring herself to regret stealing Lord Owen’s boots. Simon had been growing like a weed and needed new shoes badly. The fashionable boots, cut from buttery brown leather and nearly new, had been too fine to pass up. They were too big for Simon, but he loved them so much he wore extra socks to make them fit.

“We’ve a problem then, don’t we?” Caleb studied his fingernails. “You picked a mark who happens to live in the manor we need to search.”

Finn scowled. “How was I supposed to predict this would happen? Back then, we didn’t know about Chuddums or Bottoms House. Carver hadn’t fully sunk his claws into Iris. I cannot control everything⁠—”

“You seem to have trouble controlling anything, Finn.”

The barb stung. Worse than that, it released a trickle of fear—that she was failing to do her part. That she was unworthy of the task and her place in the gang.

“I will fix this,” she insisted. “All is not lost.”

“But if he knows you swindled him once,” Nell said, “how will you get him to believe that you are a medium?”

“I will think of a way,” Finn said confidently.

Cogs were already turning in her head. Schemes were her specialty.

“I have a way,” Tansy said in her singsong voice.

“No.”

Everyone said it together, even Caleb. Tansy was sweet and fiercely loyal. She could also be a bit maniacal.

“We follow the original plan,” Finn said firmly. “The letter Carver gave us says to look for the treasure in ‘this place that can sink no lower than its name.’ It must mean Bottoms House—what’s lower than the bottom, after all?”

“Stupid riddles,” Caleb said in disgust.

Finn smiled because she was good at riddles. Yet her smugness faded quickly: her talent was responsible, in part, for landing them in this mess. Carver had taken Iris hostage to motivate Finn and the Hawks to get him what he wanted.

“As Madame Seraphina, I will get us inside the manor,” she said. “Then we will use the sessions to search the place. Once we find the treasure, we exchange it for Iris. No one gets hurt.”

“No hurting,” Simon agreed.

Finn looked around the table, meeting everyone’s gaze. “We are agreed on the plan?”

Everyone nodded—including Caleb, albeit with reluctance.

Time to end the meeting in the traditional manner.

“We’re Hawks,” Finn stated. “Are we hunted?”

“No,” the group chorused.

“Do we hunt?”

“Yes.”

“How do we survive?”

“Together as one.”

“No Hawk flies alone,” Finn concluded.

As her family whooped, she felt a prick of unease…because she was about to do exactly that.