Resurrection Man by Laylah Hunter

Author:Laylah Hunter [Hunter, Laylah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2014-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

By the time Colin leaves the Quartermaster, it’s late enough that he has to pay his shilling up front before the hired carriage will take him out past the west gate. He doesn’t mind so much; his luck held for most of the night, and he’s going home almost two guineas richer than he left. It’s not until they’ve passed the gate and driven all the way out past Mockingbird Lane that he remembers he meant to stop in at the Peacock and look for Barron before going home.

Well, there’s always next time. Even if he winds up in terrible trouble for this evening’s adventure, he can’t imagine it’ll be more than a week or so before he goes out again. He can always enlist Anna’s help to get out of the house—she’s only fifteen and a girl besides, so there’s no way their parents would let her go out in search of adventures, and she depends on Colin to bring home stories. She’ll love the tales Sebastian was telling tonight.

Colin gets the carriage driver to let him out at the top of the private lane to the main house. It’s not terribly likely he’ll manage to sneak up to bed without having a row with his father first, but he can always hope. He’s beaten worse odds tonight already. His breath fogs in the moonlight, and his boots kick up drifts of fallen leaves. The Lady’s feast night has already come and gone, so winter’s almost here—the dry chill that leads up to the Longest Night, and then the miserable cold rain that lasts right into spring. Danny had best come back from Nothwn soon, because it’ll be snowing in the mountains, and having him stuck so far away for the entire winter would be just awful.

The lamps are lit outside and in the front parlor. His parents must be waiting up for him. Colin slows, a bit of the swagger dropping out of his stride. There’s no avoiding the lecture he’s in for, he knows that, but it would be so much easier to take after he’s had a few hours to sleep off the exhaustion and the brandy headache. Perhaps his mother will have gone up to bed already, and that’ll keep his father from really getting blustery about it.

Only then he gets closer to the house, close enough to see the cracks in the doorframe, the raw splintered wood where the lock used to be. Colin takes a few more steps, catches himself looking to the shadows as if whoever did this might still be there, waiting for him. But that’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

The door swings open silently when Colin pushes, and he steps inside. He feels queasy, like he did the very first time he smoked a pipe. The hallway is dark, save for the moonlight filtering in through the glass of the back door. Why would burglars smash their way in the front door and leave the glass in the back alone?

He startles, nervous as a barn cat, when he hears a sound on the stairs.

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