Semua Bab SHATTERED CROWNS: Bab 41 - Bab 44

Vanessa Sinclair had not slept on the plane.She had not been able to. She had been in coach, eleven hours in a middle seat between a man who snored and a woman who watched three different romance films without headphones. She had not eaten the airline food because she was rationing the seventy four pounds she had left after exchanging dollars at the airport.She arrived at the Hampstead Arms at seven fifty p.m. on Thursday in a coat that was too thin for London weather and shoes that had developed a hole in the left sole somewhere over the Atlantic. Her hair was unwashed. Her makeup had survived the flight better than her dignity had.The Hampstead Arms was a pub that catered to local drinkers. The kind of place that had not been renovated since the 1970s and was proud of it. Dark wood. Sticky tables. A barman who was not impressed by anyone.She ordered a glass of house red because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. She paid in coins. She took the glass to a corner booth and wai

The cafe by the Serpentine was busier than Seraphina had expected.Tourists in winter coats. A family with two small children eating pastries. A pair of old men reading newspapers by the window. A woman with a dog at her feet. A teenager on a laptop. The cafe smelled like coffee and warm pastry and wet leaves from the path outside.Seraphina took a table by the window. She ordered tea for two. The waitress did not recognize her. She put her phone face down on the table and laced her hands together in her lap to keep them still.At the next table, Catalina opened a paperback she was not reading.At the bar, Damien sat on a stool with his back to the room, which was the wrong way to sit unless you were trying to seem harmless, which he was.Rose walked in at nine fifty eight.She was alone. She wore a black coat. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly. Her face was the face from the Target footage, only sharper in person, the angles harder. Her eyes scanned the cafe in one slow sweep and