Chapter 10: My Jade Pendant

Nell's scream was still echoing in my head when I realized I had no idea what a second ledger was, and that the answer might be hanging around my neck.

"A second ledger?" I looked at Elias. "Did you know there was one?"

"No." His voice was hoarse. "Your grandfather told me the originals were with the court and that the safe held the only backup. If there is a third copy, he never mentioned it to me."

"Moreau seems certain of it." Hollis kept his eyes on the window as he spoke. "Men like him don't ask for things that don't exist. He must have heard it somewhere, perhaps from your father, perhaps from someone who worked for Mr. Walter years ago."

I pressed my palm against my collar, and the jade pendant felt cold against my skin. Be patient, little river. Eighteen. Just reach eighteen. All evening I had treated those words as a sentimental goodbye, but my grandfather had never said anything by accident in his life.

"He gave me this the last time I saw him," I said, drawing the pendant out from under my dress. "He told me to reach eighteen."

Elias took it carefully between two fingers and turned it toward the lamp. It was a small, smooth piece of green jade carved into a curl of water, and I had worn it for so long that I had stopped noticing it. "It's heavier than it should be," he murmured.

Hollis crossed the room and held out his hand. "May I, my lady?" When I nodded, he took a thin steel pin from his pocket and ran it slowly along the carved edge. For a moment nothing happened, and then something clicked softly, and the back of the pendant slid sideways as if it had been waiting years to be opened.

Inside lay a tiny brass key and a slip of paper rolled as thin as a petal.

My hands were shaking as I unrolled it. The handwriting was my grandfather's, small and slanting and familiar from a hundred letters. Marlow Trust and Savings. Box 1138. Come alone, little river, and trust only the people who stood in the rain.

I read it twice. "Who stood in the rain?"

"Perhaps the people who stood at his funeral," Elias said slowly, and then his eyes lifted to Hollis, and a faint, unwilling smile crossed his face. "It rained for three days that week. You and I were the only ones who stayed at the grave until the end."

Hollis said nothing, but I saw the muscle in his jaw move.

"Marlow Trust is the oldest private bank in the city," Elias went on. "Your grandfather kept an account there before your father was born. It opens at nine in the morning, and Moreau's deadline is noon."

"Then we have three hours after it opens," I said.

"And a problem." Elias folded his hands. "If we hand Moreau the ledger, we give a criminal the very evidence that could send him and your father to prison, and he may still not let the girl go. If we don't, Nell dies. Whichever way we choose, someone will pay for what your father did."

I looked at Mr. Walton, who lay on the sofa with his eyes half-closed, his face gray, a blanket pulled up to his chin. His lips were moving in a silent prayer.

"Miss Tessa," he rasped, "if it comes to choosing between her and your safety..."

"It won't," I said. "I'm not choosing."

"My lady, with respect, we do not yet know what is in that box," Hollis said gently. "We should see it before we decide anything. A ledger can be copied, hidden, even altered. Moreau does not need to receive the original to believe he has."

I looked at him, and for the first time in hours, something warm kindled in my chest that wasn't anger. They were already thinking three steps ahead, and they were doing it for me.

"Then we go to the bank at nine," I said. "Elias, call someone who can look after Mr. Walton quietly. Hollis, we leave through the back."

"Dr. Okoro owes me a favor from an old case," Elias said, already dialing. "He was kind to you tonight, Miss Tessa. I think we can trust him to keep a secret."

Hollis crossed the room and lifted Mr. Walton onto his feet with careful arms, taking most of the old man's weight. I gathered my grandfather's coat and slipped the key and the note back inside the pendant, then closed it and tucked it beneath my collar. The townhouse had given me less than an hour of peace. It was the longest I had ever felt at home anywhere.

"The kitchen door," Hollis said quietly. "The car at the corner has been there too long. Whoever sent it is not here to watch."

We had reached the hallway when the world flashed white again.

It came without warning, sharper than any vision I'd had before. I saw the front windows bulging outward as if they were breathing, a wash of orange light across the hall rug, Hollis's shadow thrown long and black against the wall, and my own mouth open in a scream I couldn't hear.

The vision vanished, and I was standing in the hall with my hand pressed against the cold plaster, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Out!" I shouted. "Everybody out, now! Through the back door!"

Hollis didn't ask a single question. He swept Mr. Walton fully off the floor into his arms and ran, and Elias was right behind him, his tea cup still in his hand. I ran last, down the narrow kitchen passage, through the back door, and into the rain-slick alley behind the house. The cold air hit my lungs like a slap, and I heard Hollis's boots pounding ahead of me on the wet stone.

We had barely reached the end of the alley when the street behind us lit up like noon.

The sound came a heartbeat later, a deep, rolling roar that I felt in my teeth. The ground shook under my feet, and I was thrown against the brick wall as windows burst across the whole block in a glittering rain. I covered my head with my arms. When I dared to lift it, the townhouse, my grandfather's last home, was a pillar of fire, and flames were pouring out through the roof into the night sky.

Hollis set Mr. Walton gently against the wall and turned to me, his face streaked with soot, his eyes wide.

"My lady," he said, and for the first time his voice was not quite steady. "Another ten seconds, and we would have been inside."

Beyond the flames, at the far end of the street, the car with its lights off finally turned on its engine and drove away.