Free The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden by Emma Trevayne Page B

left thesefor me. Think the same folks as buried my brother, in the same place. Need to sell ’em for something that won’t get me nicked for spending.”
    â€œToo right,” said Charley, who’d spent more than one night with a bruised ear from a copper sure he’d thieved the coins in his pockets. Of course, Charley usually had. “Look foreign. Wonder what it says. I know just where to go. Used to be a friend of Silas’s.”
    Such places were never officially open, and thus, they never closed.
    â€œNo beggars!” snarled the toothless, straggly man who answered at first sight of Thomas and Charley. “Got nuffink here for your ilk. Get away.”
    â€œWhat’ll you give me for this?” Thomas asked, drawing out one of the coins as the door painfully hit the side of his foot. That got the chap’s attention, though he tried not to show it, eyes widening, shoulders shrugging in a disinterested sort of way. His fingers betrayed more interest, darting up to grip the edge with long yellow fingernails.
    Thomas held fast. “Try to take it, and I’ll set Silas on you. He’s pretty good at digging graves, if you’ll recall.” It was an empty threat; Thomas wouldn’t tell Silas they’d come here, and far as he knew, Silas’d never killed more than a fish for supper, but the chap likely didn’t know that. There were rules down here about thieving from your own.
    â€œHmmm. Prob’ly tin in the middle. No good even melted down. Maybe worth a guinea.”
    â€œIt’s real,” said Charley. Thomas nodded. The coin was worth at least five times that, or more. “Four quid. We’d melt it down ourselves, get even more, but we’re in a hurry.”
    â€œTwo.”
    â€œThree.” Charley’s eyes glittered.
    Now Thomas knew how the people in the graves felt, robbed almost blind.
    â€œTwo, or I’ll shout for a copper to ask where you got your grubby ’ands on it.”
    â€œThree,” said Charley, “or I’ll shout for one and tell him to have a proper good look ’round your house.”
    â€œHmph. Stay there.”
    Thomas smiled at the man’s back as it disappeared down the corridor. “Good one, mate.” Charley grinned, a job well done.
    Two greasy pounds went into Thomas’s pocket, well away from the silver, and one disappeared into Charley’s palm. It was a great deal more than the promised breakfast, but Charley’d earned it, and what was left would do Thomas a nice while, no matter how many pies he ate. They got the breakfast, too, a dozen sizzling sausages that dripped oil on their fingers and which had cost far toomuch, but every bite was worth it. When he needed to, he’d sell another of the strange coins. Whoever had left them for him must have known Thomas couldn’t waltz into a shop, bold as brass, and plunk down a coin worth that much.
    They were foreign, to be sure, but from where, he didn’t know. He had a feeling who would, however. Someone who could sense where a coin had been just by touching it. Would she shriek old one the instant she saw him?
    â€œCharley,” said Thomas, chewing. “Who are the old ones ?”
    â€œHow d’you mean?”
    â€œI don’t know. It was something—something I heard a man say at the market.” There, that was safe enough.
    â€œWe-ell,” said Charley, “there’s some as call the faery folk that, don’t they? In the old stories? Me mam used to tell ’em to me, ’fore she died.”
    â€œDo they?” Thomas’d had a book of faery stories once, but he couldn’t recall it much.
    â€œHmmm.” Charley bit off half a sausage and swallowed it in one go. “And you know as I believe in that stuff, but I say there’s too many tales, strange creatures living in the hills and causing mischief, and don’t none of the stories agree with each