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“An elephant?” the boy breathed.
Harte ignored the pang of guilt he felt and leaned in a little to sink the hook. “I think I might manage to conjure one up, if I had the room for it.” He paused, pretending to think. “We would need to get outside, but I don’t know the way.…”
“I do!” The boy took Harte’s hand and began tugging him out into a corridor that was little more than a dirt-packed tunnel lined with dry goods and supplies. There was no real light there, except the daylight that spilled from the open doorway at the top of a steep set of steps.
At the foot of the steps, Harte had to pause to catch his breath. If he’d been denying his situation before, the fact that he felt winded and tired from walking such a short distance forced him to realize the truth. He was sick. He could have happily climbed back onto that filthy makeshift pallet and rested, but he knew implicitly that this was his one chance at freedom.
Sammie put his finger to his mouth to quiet Harte, who hadn’t said a word since they’d stepped out of the storage room.
“Is your father up there?” Harte whispered, straining his ears for some sign of what might be waiting for him above as he gathered his strength. His whole body felt hot and cold at the same time, and his muscles ached.
The boy nodded, and his expression was suddenly shadowed. “In his shop.” His small, feathery brows drew together in an expression of worry. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. He’ll be angry when he finds out. Especially about the”—Sammie paused, clearly still nervous—“about the magic.”
“He never has to know,” Harte told the boy solemnly. “If you don’t tell him, neither will I.” He made a cross over his heart and held up a hand in an oath.
The boy looked doubtful, but interest seemed to win over caution.
At the top of the steps, Harte found himself in a short hallway that connected the store at the front of the building to the exit at the rear. Sammie motioned that Harte should follow him toward the back of the building, where the exit waited. Harte started to follow, but voices from the store drew his attention.
Hearing his father’s voice made Harte pause, but when his father began to laugh, it flipped a switch of sorts. Before Harte even realized what he was doing, his feet were carrying him toward the storefront and the source of his father’s voice. The boy tried to tug Harte back, whispering urgently that it was the wrong direction, but Harte wasn’t listening. He didn’t bother with stealth. He simply stepped into the main room of the store like he owned it.
Immediately, Harte was surrounded by the scent of dry goods and dust. The walls were lined with wooden shelves that held glass jars filled with flour and sugar. One wall was taken up by a large cabinet that held a variety of tools and bolts of fabric.
This was no doubt his father’s store, and from the look of things—the gleaming glass and wood in the shop, the shelves stocked with all manner of expensive inventory—the old man had a well-established business. A thriving business. This realization only stoked the fire of Harte’s anger that much more. He felt like he was looking through a haze, though the blurring of his vision might also have been from the fever. Even with his entire body aching, he took another brazen step into the shop, daring the two men at the counter to ignore his presence.
At first Samuel Lowe didn’t realize that he and his customer were no longer alone. He was weighing out some dark sugar on a large scale, and it was only when the customer he was helping lifted his gaze toward the rear of the shop that his father looked as well. When he saw Harte standing there, his face drained of color.
His father’s shock lasted for only a moment. As soon as he saw Sammie standing behind Harte, Samuel Lowe’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. But Harte was no longer a child, and the instinctive, reflexive fear that sparked within him drained away quickly. He moved squarely into the center of the shop, daring his father to ignore him.
To Harte’s surprise, his father did just that. Samuel Lowe turned back to the customer, an older man with silvery hair, and continued to wrap up the contents of the scale. His father took his time as he finished securing the parcel before handing it over, then waved the customer off without taking payment. Once the customer was gone, he finally returned his attention to Harte, and his expression had transformed into something more familiar—a mask of barely leashed rage.
Harte had seen that expression on his father’s face too many times as a child. Then, he had never known what would be the right move—to run and hide, or to stand and protect his mother. Now, he didn’t so much as blink. He doubted there was anything this man could threaten to take from him that Harte hadn’t already given up, tossed away, or lost for himself.
“You shouldn’t be here,” his father said, but he wasn’t addressing Harte. His gaze had focused on the spot behind Harte, where Sammie stood. “You were to wait in my office, practicing your figures.”
“Don’t blame the boy,” Harte said, putting a protective arm around the child. “If someone hadn’t done such an abysmal job of tying the ropes, I’d probably still be secured in that cellar you put me in. Was it one of your lackeys at the restaurant who tied me up? Or was that particular incompetence all yours?”
His father didn’t answer, but Harte saw when the barb hit its mark. “It was for your own good.” A line Harte had heard far too many times as a child. “If the Committee found you—”
“Nothing you ever did to me or my mother was for our good. Last night wasn’t any different,” Harte said, cutting the old man off.
“Last night?” His father looked confused. “The raid on the restaurant happened two days ago.” The coldness in his father’s eyes gave Harte the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t lying.
Two days? He’d lost two days.
“You should be grateful I didn’t let the watchmen take you,” he sneered.
“Somehow, I doubt that,” Harte said. He took a moment to look around the shop. “What was your plan, anyway?” he wondered. “I’m surprised you didn’t already dispose of me.”
His father clenched his jaw. “Merchant ships are always in need of new crew, and there was one about to leave. But then you came down with the fever.”
“How very caring of you to let me recover before sending me anyway,” Harte mocked, even as he felt his skin ache. The very mention of the fever seemed to have reminded his body of how terrible he felt.
“They don’t take sickness on board.” His father ground the words between his teeth. “I couldn’t risk anyone tracing you back to me. The Vigilance Committee has the whole city on edge with talk of the plague, but at least right now they’re focused on blaming the Chinese. I wasn’t about to give them the opportunity to quarantine this building. It would ruin me.”
“So you were planning to keep me down there indefinitely?”
“You would improve or you wouldn’t,” he said with a shrug.
