The Girl and the Clockwork Cat (Entangled Teen) by Nikki McCormack

Author:Nikki McCormack [McCormack, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Clockwork Angel, steampunk, Gail Carriger, Leviathan, Cassandra Clare, The Girl in the Steel Corset, Victorian London
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2014-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

With a long walk ahead of them and a tempest of emotions to outrun, she set a brisk pace. When things went wrong, she and Chaff had a standing agreement to find each other at the Cheapside lurk at night or the nearby marketplace during the day. If he hadn’t gotten himself into trouble trying to find her, there was a good chance he would be at the marketplace. Since he’d gotten away from the new Literati orphanage once, he would know how best to get to Ash’s brother. He was her one constant in this life, and right now she needed someone she could count on.

“If your mum’s alive, why are you living on the streets?”

“It’s complicated,” she snapped.

He stared at the ground in front of them, his lips curving down hard.

She tried for a less bitter tone. “You saw the scars?”

He nodded.

“She was attacked by some men and hurt bad enough that she couldn’t work at the brothel anymore. No one pays for a woman with scars like that. The brothel owner let her do odd jobs around the place in exchange for a room while she healed, but that didn’t help with the medical bills. One day I overheard her telling another woman there that she was going to give me up to an orphanage.”

She chewed at her lip, remembering her mother’s stitched face the last time she had seen her. The solemn resolve in her expression, the distance she forced between them like scar tissue Maeko couldn’t see, but she felt it building. The rejection still stung, like the prick of a thousand angry bees.

“So you decided to run,” he prompted.

“Better that than to end up in a Literati workhouse.”

“Don’t you think you were a little hard on her back there?”

Maeko gave him a look of warning. “It’s not your concern.”

He glared back. “Is money all you care about?”

Maeko increased the pace. She didn’t have to explain herself to him. Theirs was only a business arrangement.

They ducked into crowds a few times along the way when Lit officers on steamcycles passed by. Ash followed her direction without question, which gave her some hope for their chances of getting through this without too much more trouble.

“Do you think the detective believes my parents killed those people?” he asked after a noisy steam-collector rumbled past.

The edge of hopelessness in his voice diffused her temper. Unable to come up with a reassuring lie, she nodded.

“They’d never do something like that,” he defended. “Not even to someone who deserved it.”

She already believed that of the man who treated her so kindly in the pub, before making off with the cat, of course. To have Ash confirm it with such certainty banished any lingering doubts. “I’m not sure it was pirates at all. If what your dad said about Mr. Folesworth denying the weapons development is true, the pirates would want him in charge of Clockwork Enterprises rather than let it fall into the hands of his partner.”

“His partner might be a target too.

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