The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(19)

I looked between the slightly damaged flower and the man’s earnest brown eyes. I didn’t particularly want a human present, but I got the impression that declining would read as a rather un-human behavior, so I accepted the flower with stiff fingers.

“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound human and sincere, but the words sounded more like they’d been forcibly squeezed from my throat. I turned away so the man couldn’t continue the interaction.

“See?” Neven whispered. “Not all humans are the same.”

“Perhaps,” I said, lifting the flower to my face. The scent triggered a vivid recollection of the cemetery in spring. Would London truly follow me everywhere for the rest of my life, hiding out in scents and colors just to remind me that my freedom could end at any moment?

When I pulled the flower back from my face, it was dead.

The petals had stiffened and turned a wicked brown, the leaves dried and curled in on themselves. The whole bulb tipped back with a dry cracking sound and fell to the floor, where someone’s leather shoe crushed it.

I frowned, examining the brittle stem. It hadn’t been so withered a moment ago, had it? What sort of bizarre flower had the human given me?

Before I could consider it any further, a man with white blond hair shoved his way into the steerage compartment at the other end of the room.

He wore a tailcoat two sizes too big and an undone cravat—clothes that were not only too expensive for a steerage passenger but clearly didn’t belong to him. His face was the sickly pale color of nightshift workers and was twisted into the most thoroughly displeased expression I’d ever seen, like he’d been tasked with cleaning public toilets. He scanned the room, his irises darkening from light blue to stony indigo.

I dropped to the floor, dragging Neven down with me and slapping a hand over his mouth so he couldn’t ask questions. He squawked out a sound of surprise against my palm, but went still when he saw my face.

I’d expected any Reapers pursuing us to use the full extent of their powers and rip me from frozen time, but perhaps I hadn’t considered what a full search of London would entail. Even if they forced every off-duty Reaper to spend all day combing through London to find me, how many days or weeks would it take to thoroughly search every nook and cranny, every basement and attic, every civilian home and shop and church? Of course most Reapers wouldn’t want to shorten their own lifespans by freezing time to search for me. Maybe someone like Ivy would do it, but this was clearly a young Reaper woken up on his off-shift who seemed more inconvenienced than vengeful. As long as he didn’t see us, we would be fine. Regardless, steerage was no longer safe for us.

I abandoned my suitcase and pulled a denser shadow over the emergency exit, keeping my back to the Reaper as I shouldered it open and slid through the opening. Neven followed close behind me, quietly closing the door.

We emerged in a dim hallway of pipes and portholes and dozens of signs that said NO PASSENGERS, which I ignored. I closed the emergency door and snapped the handle off, tossing it to the ground.

“Hey!” a crew member called out, appearing around the corner. “You can’t be down here!”

I grabbed Neven’s suitcase and swung it into the human’s face, knocking him back against the wall where he slumped down, unmoving.

“Ren!” Neven said, grabbing his suitcase back. “Don’t use my luggage to hurt people!”

“He’s fine! I aimed away from his nose and teeth.”

“You hit his head!”

“Bone heals faster than cartilage!”

Neven let out a shaky sound of frustration but dropped the argument once satisfied that the human was breathing.

“Now what?” he said, clutching his suitcase to his chest like some sort of hard rectangular pillow. Of course he expected me to have a plan, as if I’d spent my life drawing up escape strategies instead of learning languages and reading poetry.

We couldn’t stay on the ferry, that was certain. Even if the Reaper on board was exhausted and disgruntled, he didn’t need to catch us to win, he only needed to see us. The moment he did, it would all be over. I wouldn’t stake my life on another Reaper’s potential fatigue. Fighting him wasn’t ideal, either, as a fight among so many humans would quickly get messy.

I looked out the porthole at the endless stretch of gray sea sloshing against the boat.

“Out there,” I said, pointing.

Neven’s eyes went wide. “You want to swim to France?”

“Well, I don’t want to be dissected by High Reapers.”

The swirl of colors in Neven’s eyes told me how little he liked my plan, but what choice did we have?

“Come on,” I said, setting a hand on his arm that I hoped conveyed some sort of warmth instead of the panicked urgency I felt hammering through my whole body. “Most of the sharks in the channel are harmless.”

“Is that your idea of reassurance?” Neven said, shuddering but allowing me to drag him down the hall.

We hurried up a wet staircase to the next level, sunlight spilling out from the doorway. I froze a small part of the upper deck just before we emerged into the light, to keep any humans from seeing us go overboard, then grabbed Neven and clambered up onto the lip of the boat before I could change my mind. I’d already stepped off and started falling when I realized Neven was frozen with fear, peering down at the steep drop into black waters. It was too late to try to convince him to jump, and once I hit the water I wouldn’t be able to climb back up to help him.