Elemental Thief Read online

  The bell above the front door rang out again, startling Ridley from her thoughts. She straightened, looked up, and her heart almost stopped at the sight of the girl who stood there smiling sweetly at her.

  Delilah Davenport.

  4

  Ridley wiped the shock from her face and replaced it with an innocent smile. “Lilah. How nice to see you here. It’s been … what? Ten years?”

  On the far side of the room, Lilah Davenport’s gaze slid slowly from one display case to the next. “Probably more.”

  “I’m surprised you remembered how to get here,” Ridley added, knowing she should keep her mouth shut and finding herself utterly unable to follow her own good instincts.

  “I didn’t,” Lilah said. She waved her commscreen at Ridley as she stalked between the tables and cabinets. “Some tiny corner of the net seemed to remember that this place still exists and showed the car where to go.”

  “Lovely,” Ridley said, her overly fake smile stretching wider as she forced herself to keep her fists hidden behind the desk. She knew she should be afraid right now. Her mind should be racing back over the events of the afternoon, working furiously to figure out whether there was any possibility of a camera in the Davenports’ apartment having seen her face. But all Ridley felt was heat in her veins and a heavy pulse pounding in her ears.

  Lilah looked over her shoulder at the door, then turned her frown back to the table of candlestick holders and teaspoons in front of her. She was dressed more casually now than when Ridley had seen her earlier, but even in jeans and a sweater she managed to look glamorous. Perhaps it was her perpetually glossy hair. Or her perfect posture. Or—

  The bell over the door jangled again. Ridley looked toward it, and her jaw just about hit her chest. “Oh, there you are,” Lilah said to her brother. “I thought you were right behind me.”

  The door swung closed behind Archer Davenport as he wandered past an eighty-eight-year-old wrought iron side table toward Lilah, his gaze traveling lazily across the store’s contents. “Just checking the takeout options in this area. How do you feel about Chinese?”

  “From this part of town?” Lilah wrinkled her nose. Ridley might have thrown something at her if shock wasn’t still rooting her to the spot.

  Archer shrugged. “Yeah, why not? It’s not exactly the Ju-long Bar, but how bad can it be?” He finally deigned to look across the room at Ridley. With a small nod, he said, “Hey,” before looking away.

  Which was actually quite something, Ridley had to admit. He’d barely spoken a word to her since the Cataclysm. Where have you been? she almost blurted out. It was the question everyone would ask the moment they realized he’d returned. Archer had left Lumina City at the beginning of last summer as soon as he’d graduated high school, and it seemed not even his friends knew where he’d gone. The most popular rumor was that he’d run off to get away from his overbearing parents so he could continue his partying playboy lifestyle in peace. Ridley saw a few holes in that theory, but in truth, she was just as clueless as everyone else.

  “Fine, whatever,” Lilah said. “We can get Chinese here. Anyway.” She turned to face Ridley as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation when Archer walked in. “It’s our mother’s birthday tomorrow, and with everything that’s—” She cut herself off, her expression faltering for only a moment before she smoothly went on. “We both forgot. I was just going to pop out to Voletti’s quickly, but Archer reminded me that Mom already has all the scarves she could possibly want and that we should get something different. He remembered she likes quaint old things.” She looked around, her eyes landing on a midnight blue masquerade mask that definitely wasn’t an antique, though it was almost as old as Ridley, and added, “I told him this place was always more of a secondhand shop than a genuine antique store, but he didn’t listen. So here we are.”

  Ridley nodded slowly, focusing more on Lilah’s story than on her barely disguised insult. It might be true that it was Mrs. Davenport’s birthday tomorrow. Or the real reason that Lilah and Archer had come all the way to the butt end of Demmer District could be that they’d noticed the missing figurine and taken a close look at their home’s security footage. Was Lilah waiting for the perfect moment to reveal that she knew exactly what Ridley had done? If so, she was taking her sweet time. She walked slowly through the store, humming quietly as Archer stood with his arms crossed, reading something on his commscreen.

  “Did you see this?” he asked Lilah, unfolding his arms and pointing the commscreen to face her. She moved closer as he added, “They arrested her, but she escaped and lost control of all the magic she’d managed to pull.”

  “Yeah, I saw,” Lilah said, peering at the screen. “No doubt the magic would have killed her if that bullet hadn’t. Reminded me of what’s-her-name who went to Wallace.”

  “Serena,” Archer said, slipping the commscreen back into his pocket.

  “Yeah, Serena Adams.” Lilah sighed and picked up a solid brass nutcracker. “If people want to be stupid and break the law, then that’s what happens. I just wish they’d go do it somewhere it won’t affect the rest of us. What is this?” She frowned at the nutcracker, which was essentially two metal clowns joined by a hinge. Pretty much useless these days considering how rare nuts were. “It’s, like, the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Mmm,” Archer said, looking at the nutcracker for only a moment before his gaze moved onward. “Mom wouldn’t like it.”

  Ridley couldn’t help staring as the two of them stood side by side. They were so alike—dark hair, dark eyes, the confidence that came with their wealth and status—and she hated them equally in that moment. She opened her mouth to tell them she was about to close the store and that they’d have to find their last-minute gift elsewhere, but a creak from the floorboards upstairs reminded her that Dad would never turn customers away, no matter how he felt about them. His pride might once have been more important to him than the bills he needed to pay, but that had changed after his savings finally ran out and their electricity was cut off for the first time.

  “How about this music box?” Ridley found herself saying, shoving down her own pride as her feet carried her around the side of the desk. She picked up a small wooden box with a flower-shaped mother-of-pearl inlay decorating the lid. “It’s almost a hundred and twenty years old. The lid has been chipped on the corner here, and part of the mother-of-pearl inlay is gone, but it’s in otherwise excellent condition. My father fixed the cylinder mechanism so it still makes music.”

  “Sure, let’s take a look,” Archer said.

  As Ridley carried the box to them, some part of her mind wondered if Lilah had been waiting for her to come closer. Maybe she wanted Ridley to be right in front of her when she stared into her eyes and told Ridley she knew exactly what she’d done. But Lilah said nothing as Ridley set the box down beside the nutcracker, opened the lid, and twisted the small metal ring on the side of the box to wind up the mechanism. The metal cylinder with its tiny spikes began to turn, and a sweet but somewhat uneven melody filled the room.

  “It sounds a bit … off,” Lilah said.

  Archer tilted his head. “True, but it has an old-world charm to it.”

  Ridley nodded, doing her best to keep her smile glued to her face. Do it for Dad, she reminded herself silently. For Dad. For Dad. For—

  “Why hasn’t this item been sold already?” Archer asked, lifting the music box carefully as it continued to play its tune. “It must be quite valuable if it’s so old. Surely someone else has wanted to purchase it by now.”

  Ridley sucked in a deep breath, wishing she didn’t have to explain this bit. “We don’t get a great many customers here. People know who Maverick Kayne was before the Cataclysm. They’re afraid magic might be hiding inside everything in this shop, or that all the antiques are fake and have been aged with magic, or something crazy like that.”

  Lilah frowned as the music box’s mechanism wound down, playing its last few notes slowe
r and slower until it came to a stop. “How do we know this item is genuine?”

  Ridley sighed. “We have files for everything.” She gestured over her shoulder to the back rooms. “You can look at the paperwork if you want. Find out when and how my grandfather acquired this music box.”

  “Paperwork can be faked,” Lilah said.

  For Dad, Ridley repeated silently, clamping her jaw shut so she wouldn’t tell Lilah exactly where she could stick her fake paperwork.

  “I believe it’s real,” Archer said. “And I like it. I think Mom will like it too. We’ll take it,” he told Ridley, and she couldn’t help wondering how many times he’d said those words before. Classic cars, expensive watches, rare vintage Champagne. We’ll take it rolled so easily off the tongue for someone as wealthy as Archer Davenport.

  Ridley took the music box from Archer—telling herself not to feel weird as her fingers accidentally brushed his—and closed the lid before heading for the counter and the antique cash register. The Davenports followed. Ridley slid the slim gray PayLX pad toward them, then pulled a few sheets of tissue paper from beneath the counter. Even as she began wrapping the music box, she kept waiting. Waiting for the moment Lilah would slam her fist down on the counter and shout, “I know it was you! You broke in and stole that figurine! Admit it!” But Lilah said nothing as Ridley lowered the packaged music box into a Kayne’s Antiques bag. She silently placed her commscreen on top of the PayLX pad, her gold-polished nails glinting in the light. There was a pause as they all waited for the transaction to go through. Ridley glanced up, found Archer watching her, and looked down again.

  The PayLX pad beeped. Lilah clasped her commscreen in one hand and lifted the Kayne’s Antiques bag in the other. “Thanks,” she said. And without another word, she and Archer left the shop.

  It was only as the door shut behind them that Ridley finally relaxed and allowed herself to believe it really was a coincidence that two Davenports had walked into her store little more than an hour after she’d robbed them. She leaned against the counter and let out a long breath. “So weird,” she murmured.

  Then she crossed the room and locked the front door. After switching off all the lamps around the store, she walked into the office at the back. She passed the staircase that led up to Grandpa’s old apartment, checked the back door was locked, and slid the bolt across. But as she turned away, movement caught her eye from outside the small window beside the door. She stepped back a little so she wouldn’t be seen as she looked out and found—

  Archer. And the man in the maroon coat. Speaking to one another.

  “What on earth?” Ridley whispered. The stranger looked her way, and Ridley pulled her head back further. She waited for several heart-pattering seconds, then inched her head forward again. Something moved at the open end of the alley, and her eyes flicked toward it: A running figure, a blond head turned back for a moment. Her breath caught in her throat as her gaze whipped back to Archer and the stranger—just as the latter slumped to the ground, a dark patch blooming across his shirt around a glowing knife protruding from his chest.

  His hands lay still at his sides.

  Blood spread slowly away from his body.

  The wisps of glowing magic around the knife disappeared.

  Then a woman’s scream ripped through the quiet evening, and Ridley looked across the alley to where Mrs. Longbourne from the shoe shop stood at her back door. Her husband joined her a second later. Then Shen’s father and another man appeared at the open end of the alley where, only moments before, Ridley had seen someone running away.

  She didn’t wait to see anyone else. She didn’t wait to let anyone see that she was also watching. She raced up the stairs as Dad shouted her name. “It’s okay, I’m fine.” She didn’t stop as she reached the top step, but instead ran across the small living area. After skidding on the handwoven rug, she landed on her knees on the couch and leaned over the back of it to pull the curtain aside a few inches.

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked. “What happened?” A moment later, he joined Ridley on the couch and peered over her head through the gap.

  “I think … I think someone was just murdered.”

  “What? Wait, is that …”

  “Archer Davenport,” Ridley filled in as Dad’s voice trailed off. Where was Lilah though? Ridley couldn’t see her anywhere in the alley.

  Tense silence filled the small apartment as Ridley and Dad watched the activity below. Someone must have called the police, because it wasn’t long before there were flashing lights and screeching tires and uniformed men and women running toward Archer. “Careful,” Dad said as he drew back slightly. “If anyone looks up—”

  “I know,” Ridley said, pulling the two curtains together until only a crack of space remained between them. She and Dad had always done their best to avoid police attention, and tonight was no different. Neither of them wanted to be questioned as witnesses.

  Through the narrow gap between the curtains, Ridley and Dad watched as Archer was dragged away by two police officers. “How very strange,” Dad murmured. “He’s been gone for so long, and when he shows up out of the blue … this happens.”

  Ridley nodded. She didn’t mention that Archer had been downstairs just minutes before she saw him in the alley. She didn’t mention that the man in the maroon coat had been following her earlier. And she didn’t mention the person she’d seen running from the alley. She didn’t know what was coincidence and what wasn’t, and there was no point in freaking Dad out. But there was one thing that would be public knowledge soon enough, so she didn’t bother keeping it to herself.

  “It was magic, Dad,” she whispered. “Magic killed that man.”

  5

  “Archer Davenport?” Ridley’s friend Meera repeated the following morning as they sat together on the couch in Meera’s family’s living room. “Seriously? What was he doing behind your building?”

  “He was probably lost,” Ridley said, hugging one of the threadbare cushions to her chest. “I mean, it’s a long way from the top of Aura Tower to a back alley in Demmer District. Easy for a rich boy to take a wrong turn and lose his way.” Her tone was light, but Meera’s question was the same one that had been plaguing Ridley’s mind as she tried to fall asleep the night before.

  What was Archer doing in that alley?

  Had he ended up there by chance? Wrong place, wrong time? Or did he actually know the man who’d been following Ridley earlier that afternoon? She kept thinking back on the few seconds she’d seen them standing together. They’d been speaking, she was sure of it, but she hadn’t seen enough to be able to tell if they knew each other.

  “Okay—so—wait.” Meera sat up straighter, looped her long black hair behind her ears, and pushed her owl-like glasses up her nose. “Archer Davenport was in your store, and then you saw him in the alley behind your building talking to some stranger seconds before that stranger ended up dead—killed by a knife with magic on it. And now Archer, who can’t have performed any magical conjuration himself because it’s been confirmed he still has both his amulets, has been charged with the murder.”

  “Yes. Mrs. Longbourne said she saw the stranger, the knife in his chest, and Archer standing right in front of him. No one else.” Ridley frowned. “Haven’t you looked at the social feeds today? Or the news?”

  “No! Anika’s got some educational documentary on.” Meera gestured to their old TV, where the ocean from a time before the Cataclysm moved across the screen while a soothing British voice spoke about whales and dolphins and other species on the brink of extinction. “And she’s not even watching it,” Meera groaned, climbing off the couch and picking up the remote from beside her eleven-year-old sister. Anika lay on her stomach on the floor, her chin propped up on her palms as she read a book. Meera exited the documentary and opened a news app. She started scrolling through the various recent stories.

  “Well, it’s not like you need to see it now that I’ve told you all about it,” Ridley po
inted out.

  “True.” Meera lowered the remote. “So …” She shook her head again, as if still trying to wrap it around everything Ridley had just told her. “Wow. Alastair Davenport must be furious. It can’t be good for the public image when your son winds up accused of killing someone and getting involved with magic. Though why you’d need to put magic on a knife that you’re about to stab someone with, I have no idea. Wait—” Her hand flew out and smacked down on Ridley’s knee as her eyes widened. “Do you think they’ll give Archer the death penalty for this? I mean, he couldn’t have pulled the magic himself, so at least he didn’t break that law, but the crime is magic-related.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. Someone else without an AI2 must have applied the magic to the knife and given it to Archer. That isn’t enough to earn Archer the death penalty, is it? And no one actually saw him stab the man, so I’m sure that charge won’t stick for long.”

  “But it must have been him, right? Who else could have done it if he was the only one there?”

  “Yeah …” Ridley said slowly. But there was someone else who could have done it: the blond figure she’d seen running from the scene. She hadn’t mentioned that bit to Meera. She was ninety-nine percent certain she recognized the guy, but she didn’t want to start a rumor if it might not be true.

  “This is crazy,” Meera continued. “Archer Davenport, charged with both murder and possession of an illegal magical item. And he just got back,” she added, as if this somehow made it worse. She tilted her head. “When did he get back?”

  Ridley lifted her shoulders. “No idea. Probably very recently, since none of us saw anything about him on the social feeds until this morning.”

  “And you said Lilah was there too?”

  “In the store, yes, but I didn’t see her near the alley. Maybe she was waiting for the food.”