Legacy of the Claw by C. R. Grey

Author:C. R. Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471401305
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 2014-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

OUTSIDE THE OPERA HOUSE, groups of wealthy Gray City citizens passed, wearing dresses and suits covered in decorative embroidery. The images of animals were everywhere: not just in the clothing, but in stained glass windows overlooking the square and the stone shapes that menaced from the rooftops. Real animals scuttled across the cobblestones and sat in windowsills, peering at their human kin.

Bailey caught sight of Tremelo on the opposite side of the Opera Square. Quickly, Bailey followed him down a narrow side street. The brightly lit atmosphere of the square dropped away. Here, most of the buildings were shuttered, and Bailey suspected that these businesses were closed because of the riots. Tremelo was leading him closer to the area of the city that was now the most dangerous.

After they’d walked for several blocks, Tremelo disappeared around a corner, and Bailey hurried to catch up. As he turned the same corner, he saw that Tremelo had stopped. Bailey ducked into a darkened doorway. The professor stood in front of a low wooden entrance to a sunken basement storefront. A small plaque was nailed next to the door with a name painted on it: the white tiger. The hairs on Bailey’s arms lifted.

Tremelo knocked—six times, in quick but precise succession—and the door swung inward to admit him. Bailey hung back. The basement storefront was nondescript, but Bailey heard loud shouts and even some singing from inside.

The air in the city had turned decidedly colder. Bailey shivered inside his Fairmount blazer. What was he doing? He couldn’t just burst in and confront the professor. He decided to wait until Tremelo had gone and then enter the building after him—though he could be waiting on the street for a long time, and he couldn’t risk missing the rigimotive back to Fairmount.

Thankfully, he only had to wait about twenty minutes for the door to open and the teacher to reappear. Bailey slunk back into the shadows of the doorway as Tremelo passed him. Once the professor had disappeared at the end of the street, Bailey took off his Fairmount blazer and turned it inside out, so the insignia was hidden against his chest. He spit into both his palms, and mussed up his hay-colored hair. Though he still didn’t think he’d pass as a Gray City native, he didn’t want to look like a wide-eyed student, fresh off the rigimotive. Unfortunately, the Fairmount blazers were lined with rather loud blue and gold stripes. There was nothing he could do about that.

He approached the door and knocked six times. Almost instantly, it creaked open, and two roughly wrinkled faces peered out at him. One belonged to a very old woman, and the other belonged to the tortoise on her shoulder who was munching very slowly on a withered piece of lettuce. Neither one took their eyes off of Bailey.

“How old are you?” she croaked.

Bailey squared his shoulders and tried to sound tough.

“Old enough,” he said.

The old watchwoman shrugged, as if reluctantly admitting that Bailey had knocked

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