Maggie woke to sunlight on her face, like a warm brush gently drawn across her cheek and eyelids. She squinted, putting her hand across her eyes as she stretched, trying to remember what she’d been dreaming of, what it all meant, and—
“You’re awake,” said a voice across the room, and she jerked to attention. Sitting on a chair, cradling a tea, was a man she’d never seen before. In a house she’d never seen before. The only thing she could really hold onto was his French accent, and the wary look in his eye as she tried to stir up memories of how she’d—
Flashes of blurred terror jolted her fully awake. She started to sit, but found it much harder than expected. Her head ached like someone had sunk a nail into it. She gasped, doubling over, trying to feel the back of her skull…but couldn’t make her hand make contact.
“Slowly,” said the man, setting down his tea. “You should take things slow.”
Maggie caught her breath, blinking back tears as she tried to focus. “W-where am I?”
“Someplace safe,” said the man. “Do you remember what happened?”
Even in her muddled state, she knew better than to say too much. Especially to a stranger watching her sleep. “No,” she said. “I was walking home, and—”
“From where?” he asked. Not unkindly, but not patiently, either.
She considered her options. “The river. The cliff by the river.”
“Doing what?”
“Just…looking. Wrightstown, the stars, the clouds, I don’t know. Who are you?”
“It was a bitter night for sightseeing.”
“I’ve a lot on my mind,” she said.
“Your husband?”
She tried to focus her eyes, tried to see who she was talking to, exactly. One of Montferrand’s men? If so, why? If not, then—
“After the cliffs,” he said, “you walked where? South? Vers le marché?”
“Back home,” she said. “To Corkstown.”
“Hmm,” he said, nodding, drawing a line in the air like he was tracing the route on a map. North, from the cliffs. South, to Corkstown. Almost directly south. But then his finger slid east, and paused. “So how, then, did you end up in my shop?”
Maggie’s head started to throb even more. “What shop?” she asked. “Who are you?”
“Did you sight-see in Lowertown as well?”
“No, I—”
“How did your husband die?”
She shot him a warning look, but answered anyway: “Murdered.”
“By whom?”
“I’m sorry, what is all this? Where am I? Who are you?”
The man watched her a moment, like he was trying to decide if he believed her or not. But disbelieved what? Her confusion? That Rían had been murdered? She couldn’t tell.
He relaxed back in his chair. “Very well. My name is Émile Deschênes,” he said.
“Well, Émile Deschênes,” she said. “Again I ask: who are you?”
“The one who found you.”
“Found me where?”
“Nearly burning to death,” he said, and her mouth hung open as she processed the words. Then her sense of smell came back to the fore, filling her with all kinds of information she’d been ignoring until now. Her hands were blackened with soot; her throat burned; her hair reeked of smoke.
She looked at Émile, shocked. “I…I don’t…”
Every time she tried to think back, her mind filled with flashes of traumatic events scattered through her past. She desperately wanted to focus on how she’d ended up here, but all she could remember was someplace else, somewhere else…the blood, the vacant eyes staring up at her, the way her hands trembled as she fought off a fury she couldn’t let—
She swallowed bile, pulling herself back to the present. “Why?”
He frowned at that question. “Who killed your husband?”
She tensed at the words. Who killed her husband? Peter Aylen. The most dangerous man in Bytown, with allies and henchmen strewn into every crack he could find. He’d seen Rían as an enemy or obstacle or mere nuisance…and now, thanks to her own naïveté, she had made herself a nuisance as well. She had no doubt that her near-death experience had been by his command…and once he discovered she’d survived, she would go from a nuisance to a threat.
Was Émile another of Aylen’s men, meant to lull her into a false sense of security before sinking a knife into her heart? If so, why? Why not just be done with it?
Suddenly her miraculous survival took on a whole other tone.
She stared at Émile, watching him watching her, and let her expression go neutral. The longer she held him at a distance, the more time she would have to find her escape.
“Who killed him?” he asked, sensing her change of mood.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t know, or won’t say?” he asked.
She stared, expressionless, in reply.
“Were they Canadien?” asked Émile, eyes narrowing. “Did they say why?”
“Why what?”
“Why they killed him,” said Émile. “Why they came after you.”
“I don’t know who you mean,” she said.
“Hmm,” he said. “You do not remember Monsieur Montferrand? He is quite a hard man to forget, I think.”
Her face went still. “He isn’t—”
“He didn’t—?”
“He has nothing to do with this,” she said. “We left on civil terms.”
“Left?” said Émile, again drawing a map in the air. “Was that between the sight-seeing and the fire? Or before?”
She glared at him. “I don’t see why—”
“Because it seems to me you remember more of your journeys than you suggest. And so I wonder what else you remember that you choose to forget.”
Her head throbbed, just about as loudly as her heart. Her eyes darted to the door, looking for an escape. Émile smiled. “You are in no state to run, madame.”
She glowered at him, but knew he was right.
He shook his head. “Why would Monsieur Montferrand order you dead?” he asked.
“I told you he didn’t—”
“Unless the situation was dire. Unless you could say things that would hurt him. Show things that would hurt him.”
Her teeth ground together. “I don’t—”
“Did you have it on you? The evidence? Or was it lost in the fire? Because if you—”
“Montferrand did not do this,” she said forcefully.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know—”
“What do you know?”
“I know he—”
“He what? He did what?”
“He didn’t kill my husband!” she shouted, and instead of looking shocked, Émile smiled, content, and settled back in his seat.
“Well then,” he said. “Will you tell me who did?”
She opened her mouth to speak when the front door opened without warning, and a woman peeked through with a smile on her face.
“Ah, she’s awake,” said Béatrice.
“You…?” Maggie said, trying to stitch together the logic of what was happening. “Why are you—”
“My house,” said Béatrice, waving her hand to illustrate the space around them—her domain. “I hope you have not been yelling.”
Maggie was having a hard time keeping up. “I…I mean—”
Béatrice winked. “It’s early yet.” She nodded to Émile next, spoke in quick and quiet French.
He gave Maggie a wary look, spoke French in reply, and then shrugged. Béatrice was shooing him outside, but he didn’t want to go.
“Émile,” she said, and he sighed and grabbed his coat off the back of a chair and slung it over his shoulders. Béatrice held a finger up to Maggie. “One moment, s’il vous plaît. We will be right back.” She gave a little bow and added: “Please, make yourself at home.”
The door closed, and Maggie’s mind started rumbling through potential outcomes. Aylen would be looking for her, and anyone in her vicinity was as good as dead. Émile was clever, perhaps, but wouldn’t stand a chance against a man like Sisk. And that was supposing he and Béatrice didn’t just hand her over to Aylen themselves. His question about evidence put her in a dangerous situation: if she had evidence to convict Rían’s killer, that would only intensify Aylen’s attacks. But if she had nothing of value…she had no idea how Émile would react. No matter which way she looked at it, she was in a very precarious position.
She had to disappear. Now, before things got even worse.
It took her a second to get to her feet, but the second she did, she was off. Quickly, along the far wall, hands dancing along the wood for support and investigation. She had to find another exit; someplace she could escape that wouldn’t be spotted by Émile and Béatrice too soon.
There were no other doors she could find, and only one obvious window, in the kitchen area, above the counter. It was far too close to the front door to make a decent escape route, and, she worried, too small to squeeze through. But it was all she had available…so she went to work.
///
Béatrice closed the door and gave Émile a wide smile. “Seduced her yet?”
“Be serious,” he said.
“Oh, I am,” she said. “She seemed flustered when I came in. Red in the cheeks. Was I interrupting?”
“Interrupting her confession,” said Émile, checking that there were no eavesdroppers. “She’s hiding something. What, I can’t tell. But when I asked who killed her husband, she pretended she didn’t know.”
“But she doesn’t know,” said Béatrice. “Pointing fingers at Montferrand seemed like a shot in the dark, at best. Maybe she knows as little as you do.”
He frowned at her. “And you can do better?”
She grinned, hand on the doorknob and easing it open a little. “No,” she said. “but I know someone who can.”
Émile frowned and—
///
Maggie froze in terror. There, on the counter under the window she needed to climb through, were a pair of knives, just sitting out, glinting in the morning sun. There was no way out without crossing their path. No way to escape at all.
The door swayed open a crack, but paused, so Maggie swallowed her fear, and—
///
“Oh no,” said Émile, standing away from the door. “No, no, no. Not her. No.”
Béatrice giggled at his reaction, then gave a little curtsy to the woman walking down the street toward them, wearing a long black coat and tricorn hat. She stopped just shy of Émile, then gave a bow.
“Monsieur Deschênes,” she said, with a horrible French accent overtop her British poise.
Émile glared at Béatrice. “You said you were going to get help.”
“And I did!” said Béatrice, wrapping her arm around the newcomer. “What we need here is information. And there is absolutely nothing that happens in Bytown without Ada hearing it first, n’est-ce pas, Ada?”
Ada tipped her hat and grinned. “I adore drama.”
Émile rolled his eyes. “God help us…”
///
The counter had uneven legs. Uneven legs that left it tipping a little to the side…but more importantly, suggested it wasn’t attached to the floor. That was Maggie’s angle. That was her way out. She snatched a broom from near the front door—where she could hear Émile talking intensely about something he clearly did not like—and she slipped back near the counter. Near enough, anyway.
Using the broom as an extension of her body, and keeping a safe distance from the knives, she tried pushing the counter aside. Right to left. Out of the way. Just enough to escape.
It moved.
Slowly.
She worried the broom would snap from the strain, or her arms might, too. There was a low scrrrrritch sound as wood ground into wood. She pushed harder, trying not to let out any noise herself.
The counter was moving. It was actually moving out of the way, and—
A table leg caught on a crooked floorboard, and the whole thing tipped—just enough to send one of the knives sliding off the edge and—
///
“She’s going to make it worse,” Émile sighed. “You’re going to make it worse. On purpose, too, I imagine.”
Ada just shrugged, like it hadn’t occurred to her.
Béatrice leaned close to Émile’s ear and whispered in French: “If someone can broker a deal with whoever we’re brokering a deal with, it will be her.”
“I don’t trust—”
“And that is precisely why I asked her,” said Béatrice. “Because she can ask questions, and no one will bat an eye. She’s just as likely bluffing as being honest. Safer for you, safer for me, safer for—”
///
Maggie saw the knife fall in slow motion, saw it tumbling toward a noisy end, and her whole body shuddered in horror, wishing there were some other way but to—
Her body moved faster than her mind: she swished the broom from one side of the counter to the other, turning it ‘round ‘til the head was only barely in the right position that—
—yes! The knife landed in the bristles, bouncing up and—
///
Ada looked over her shoulder, back the way she’d come. “Right, well, I do enjoy a good stroll in the bloody freezing cold, but if you’re not going to invite me in, I’ve a fire and sherry waiting for me at home.”
“No,” said Béatrice.
“Yes,” said Émile, then sighed at Béatrice’s withering glare. “I mean wait. I suppose there’s no harm in you seeing the situation.”
Ada’s smile was wide and hungry. “Oh, there’s a situation, is there?”
Émile put his hand on the door and pushed, and—
///
Maggie grabbed hold of the window frame and pulled herself up, and—
///
“We’ll explain everything, just be patient,” said Émile, and opened the door—
—to Maggie, standing by the counter, sweeping the floor. She looked up, surprised to see them.
“You’re standing!” beamed Béatrice.
“Accusations do that to you,” said Maggie, glaring at Émile. He opened his mouth to argue when—
“Maggie Kelly!” cried Ada, walking past him with her arms spread wide. “Goodness, my darling, you look a mess. Here, put down the broom and join me in the parlour. There’s so much to cover.”
Maggie let herself be ushered away by this strange older woman in a tricorn hat. Béatrice followed close behind, eagerly waiting for the show. Émile closed the door with a scowl on his face, and by the time he reached the seats—which were not in “the parlour”, as there was only one room to this house—Ada waved a hand in his direction.
“Tea, Émile, if you could,” said Ada said, like he was a servant. Then she offered to the others: “Tea? Tea? Good, yes, three.” She peeled her gloves off, set them on the arm of the chair. “That’s a good lad.”
Béatrice was giddy at the spectacle, but Maggie was growing increasingly anxious. The exits were so far away now, and while this newcomer didn’t seem like the kind of person who would rub elbows with someone like Aylen, she was quickly learning not to trust anyone, for any reason, ever.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Maggie asked.
“No, my dear. You’d remember if you did.” said Ada. “Ada Honeywell, at your service. And you, at mine.”
“I don’t—”
“My condolences on your loss,” said Ada, sighing sadly. “Though congratulations are in order for your averted eviction.” Her face turned into a mischievous grin. “And well done on your daring foray into La Croix Verte last night. Quite the spectacle, I must say.”
Émile, preparing tea by the hearth, glanced at Béatrice, mouthing: did you tell her that?
Béatrice practically giggled when she mouthed back: No!
“W-were you there?” Maggie asked, trying to think of how she could have possibly missed a woman looking like this in a room of Canadiens like that.
“No, my dear, I simply know how to listen. Speaking of which—and I don’t mean to sound abrasive—but who did kill your husband, after all?”
Maggie gave Émile a sharp glare, but even he was surprised by it.
Ada noted the tension, stowed a gnawing smile, and forged on: “Let me rephrase. Did Montferrand kill him, as you announced to all of Christendom, or no?”
Maggie replied to Émile as much as Ada: “No. He did not.”
“Excellent!” said Ada, clapping her hands together. “We can work together after all!”
She got to her feet, started pulling on her gloves before noticing the other two women were still sitting. “Up we go! No time to waste! They’ll come ‘round this way soon.”
“Wait, who?” asked Maggie, getting to her feet and backing into the corner like someone might burst through the door at any second. “Who’s coming?”
Ada just winked, smiled and said: “The better question would be: who isn’t coming for you?” She turned and saw Béatrice was already in her coat, ready to go. “No time for tea, Mr Deschênes!” she called out to a grumbling Émile.
She paused at the door to add: “And do make sure the hearth’s out this time. Can’t have you blamed for all the fires in Bytown, now can we?”