Free Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye Page B

like a lamppost?”
    I passed a moment gnawing on my own tongue. My brother calls me
Timmy
to infuriate me. He does so because it works. Every single time. Crossing my arms in a physical effort to subdue the smolder in my breast, I reviewed my options. The main point seemed to be whether or not a morphine-drunk Valentine was more valuable than an absent Valentine.
    Unfortunately, the answer was yes. Even a half-crazed Val is better than no Val at all. It’s one of the most intolerable things about my barely tolerable elder brother.
    “Can you walk?” I demanded.
    He scowled. “Of course I can.”
    “Can you think more or less clearly?”
    “Presently, I think you’re a milky little sow’s tit.”
    “Can you fight?”
    “Christ have mercy. Will you listen to the puppy? I can always fight.”
    “Will you come with me?”
    “I’ll mull it over.”
    I seized his arm and dragged him into the hallway. When he could see the otherworldly Mrs. Adams, who sat frozen in grief on the bench against the wall, her almond-shaped grey eyes pinned to the floor and her chaos of curls glittering with half-melted snow, I pointed.
    “Will you come with me to do a favor for
her
?”
    Valentine scratched lazily at the nape of his neck. Ruminating, no doubt. Or debating whether or not she was a wood nymph. Who in his right mind could say? Then he slapped me on the back so hard that my teeth clacked together.
    “You should have tried that argument first, young Tim,” he advised over his shoulder, winking. “Would have saved yourself ten minutes. Let me get my coat.”

five
    They are called slave-traders, and their occupation is to kidnap every colored stranger they can lay their hands on.
    —E. S. ABDY,
JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE AND TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, FROM APRIL 1833 TO OCTOBER 1834
    V
alentine employed the
shrillest whistle
I’ve ever heard to summon a roundsman. That copper star received strict orders to guard the woman in the office, and to bring her coffee and hot chestnuts to boot. Our poor hacksman, meanwhile, shivered pathetically as we three star police climbed back into his vehicle. Lurching forward with a grinding, sliding motion that smacked Mr. Piest’s head against the door, we rode in haste toward Corlears Hook. There had been ample room for three to sit abreast in Mrs. Adams’s company. But with Valentine’s sprawling bulk to accommodate—not to mention his weighted walking stick—Mr. Piest wedged his feet together while I in the center performed my gamest impersonation of a tinned sprat.
    “This falls shy of ideal rattle weather,” my brother observed, meaning
hackney cab
by
rattle
. “The sleighs will be out by morning. Now tell me what we’re about.”
    “We’re lioning a pair of slave catchers,” I answered.
    “Slave catchers,” Val repeated slowly. My brother is extremely fastidious about food, and he used the same timbre of voice he would have spent on
turned
fish.
“Right. When a human parasite crawls into my fair state and tells me the laws of his backwater swamp are trump and that I’d best flash my ivories and bend a knee about it, I’m itchy to lion him too. But why are we lioning these
particular
blackbirders, in a snowstorm?”
    “Mrs. Adams—did you notice anything about her?”
    “That she’s colored? I do own eyes, thank you.”
    “These slave catchers figured her family for some ripe valuables. But they operate out of Corlears Hook. And one has a pistol. And so I need you.”
    “We’re actually interfering with a catch?”
    “A shamelessly illegal catch, yes.”
    Valentine blew out a sharp gust of frustration through his teeth. The collar of his blue velvet greatcoat is tastefully lined with short fur, and the ether was compelling him to run his knuckles across it repeatedly, as if he were petting a cat. The gesture took on a worried sharpness.
    “What?” I prompted.
    “Nix.”
    “No, what is it?”
    “I’m just grateful you waited until I was off