Kady Cross: The Girl with the Iron Touch

“Poor thing. I wonder if she’s being looked after.”

It took a moment longer than it should have for her to figure out what Emily was talking about. “The automaton?”

“Aye.”

“It’s a machine, Em. I’m fairly certain it can look after itself.” Not to mention it could break both the arms of a full-grown man without trying very hard.

“It’s not just a machine.” Emily looked outraged that Finley would even think such a thing. “If it was indeed covered in bits of flesh, then it has been exposed to organites. Either she’s badly injured and decomposing, or her skin is not yet fully formed. Regardless, she most certainly cannot look after herself.”

“You think she’s like the Victoria automaton?” The thought of that awful thing put a bad taste in her mouth. It had looked so much like the queen that she’d spent several days thinking someone was going to arrest her for ripping its head off. The thing had been so humanlike that destroying it felt like murder.

“We both know what the beasties are capable of doing. They helped repair Sam’s heart, treated injuries. They’re the reason we’re…evolved. I have no doubt that she’s very much like the mechanical majesty. By the time the organite process is completed, I reckon she’ll be a living, breathing girl with a gregorite skeleton and a great capacity for learning. I’ve no idea what someone might want with her. There are so many possibilities.”

“I wouldn’t recommend thinking on it too hard,” Finley suggested with a grimace. “I’ve heard stories about what some men like to do to automatons. Some women, too.”

Emily held up a hand. In the dark her shirt was so very bright it made her look a little tanned, though she often burned more than anything else. “I don’t want to know, thank you very much.”

Finley cast a sideways glance in her direction, her expression dubious. “Whenever anyone says that it’s because they already know or have a fairly good idea.”

“I know lots of things, but that doesn’t change the matter of me not wanting to speak of them. I’m not the fragile little doll everyone seems to think I am.”

She snorted. “Nothing fragile about you, you mad Irish harpy.” Finley waited until she had gotten a smile in return before pressing on. Now was as good a time as any…. “Em, did somebody hurt you?”

Emily came to an abrupt stop. Her eyes were wide, but her jaw was firm, as though something inside her was trying to force its way out and she was determined to control it. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said finally. When her expression went completely blank—even her eyes—Finley knew she’d struck a nerve, knew she was right. She wished she wasn’t.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I don’t want to pry, but if you do…I’d like to listen.” She began walking again to let her friend know she wasn’t going to pressure her.

“How did you know?” Emily asked a few moments later when the silence between them had stretched on.

Finley shrugged. Good Lord, where was the bloody exit? “For a while I’ve suspected something had happened.” Suspected and wished her friend would share with her, so she could share, as well. Lord Felix hadn’t been the first bloke to try to force himself on her, but he’d been the most frightening, and not just because he would have hurt her badly, but because of how badly she had wanted to hurt him for trying it.

“I should have known you’d figure it out. Of course you would.”

Was that a compliment or a judgment? Maybe neither. No one who had ever been hurt in such a manner would treat someone else’s experience as a positive thing, and they certainly wouldn’t cast blame.

“Do you want to talk about it?” This was what girls who were friends did, right? Talked about things that had happened to them, traded secrets. Emily was only the second friend she’d had since her twelfth birthday, and the first one had been her employer so it didn’t really count. She had no idea how to handle this sort of situation.

Only she knew that she would like five minutes alone with whoever had hurt Em. Five minutes and a cricket bat.

“Not really.” Emily looked straight ahead. “Not now. It was a boy I’d known most of my life. What’s important is that he might have gotten my body, but he couldn’t touch my heart or my soul.” She turned her head toward Finley, gaze bright. “I’ve never told anyone else this, but I had my revenge on him later.”

Finley prided herself on having a decent imagination, but she couldn’t begin to fathom the sort of suffering a girl as intelligent and determined as Emily could exact from such a bastard. She thought about the boot print she herself had left on Lord Felix’s forehead, and how good it had felt. “Did that make it easier?”

“It did, a little. I felt like I got a piece of myself back. Please don’t say anything to the boys. Sam doesn’t know. I’m not sure I ever want him to.”

“And he won’t ever—not from me. But doesn’t he frighten you a little?” He intimidated her at times, and she had almost killed him. He was so big, so strong. So angry. Even though she’d caught glimpses of lightness in him over these past few months, he normally stomped about as if a thundercloud hung over his head.

Emily smiled. “Nah. Sam makes me feel safe. Sometimes too safe. I think that’s why I fight him so often. I refuse to hide behind him. I don’t want him to stand in front of me and shield me. I want him to stand beside me. With me.”

Finley understood, so she nodded. What could she possibly say?

Small, warm fingers tangled with hers and squeezed. Emily had taken her hand and was smiling at her in a way that made her chest tight. “Thank you for caring enough to ask, but also not to push. I’d forgotten what it was to have a best friend before you came along.”

Oh, blast. Finley’s throat felt as though it was closing up on itself, and her eyes burned most uncomfortably. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she pulled her hand free and wrapped her arms around the Irish girl, lifting her off the ground in a fierce hug that made her squeal with laughter.

They walked the remainder of the distance to the exit in comfortable silence. It wasn’t until they were almost out that Finley realized she no longer felt as if they were being watched. They hadn’t encountered anyone else in the catacombs, hadn’t even seen a sign of humanity in that area.

So who could have been watching? And why?

Something dropped to the ground beside her. She whirled around, ready to fight. Emily pulled an Aether pistol from the holster on her belt.

It was a rat. There was another one on a ledge above their heads—no doubt the first one’s mate. The one above them had a button in its teeth that looked to be mother-of-pearl.

She and Emily exchanged sheepish glances. “I reckon we were being watched after all,” she joked.

Emily shook her head, putting her pistol away. “Let’s go home. There’s nothing down here.”

Finley agreed, and when they rounded the next corner they saw light from the exit ahead. It was odd for Jack to have been so wrong, but whoever had the crate must have moved it that same day. There was nothing down here to be worried about, except a rat with a button in its mouth.

Nothing at all.

If it were possible for people to be the weather, then Sam Morgan would be a thundercloud—dark, tumultuous, as gorgeous as he was intimidating. He watched the girls approach from his bedroom window.