Steelhands - Jaida Jones [32]
Yet my private quarters were too private. If the upstairs neighbors weren’t at home, all was too quiet, save for the wind howling outside the window on the colder nights, or the sound of the dog above shuffling around his favorite bone.
It didn’t make sense. Perhaps if Thom had been there, he might’ve explained it to me, but he wasn’t, and he had troubles enough of his own. I wasn’t about to write to him with mine.
I always knew when I was getting close to the Crescents, because abruptly the city planning and even the buildings themselves ceased to make any kind of logical sense. They rose up around me like abstract paintings—a chimney here, a steeple there, and now and then a large round room supported by a twisted scaffolding structure that didn’t look as though it could possibly bear the weight. It was difficult not to feel like you were about to become part of an architectural accident in the Crescents, the way the houses all leaned toward the streets like they couldn’t wait to be the first one to topple over and crush you.
The houses never did fall of course, but I couldn’t help being glad the wind had died down, all the same.
The sun was just beginning to set, bruising the sky a lovely gray-purple, when I made my way to Crescent Number 27—a tall, crooked affair made of polished white stone, with a set of silver chimes hanging in the entranceway to ward off evil spirits. There was a light on in the tower but none at ground level, which wasn’t so unusual. The tower was her workspace, and she’d probably gone up there to prepare her instruments beforehand, or something of that nature.
For someone so intimately involved in the proceedings, I had very little understanding of how they worked. I tended to look away when the gears were out. I supposed they disturbed me more than I was ready to admit to myself.
I knocked—rather loudly, just to be sure she’d hear it from upstairs—the sound rattling the gears in my knuckles. It was an uncomfortable sensation, like grinding your teeth in the night. I rocked between my heels and the balls of my feet, glancing up and down the street out of idle curiosity. It wasn’t as crowded as it had been up near the Basquiat, but then I had come around dinnertime. Most people were either inside with hot meals on the stove or still hard at work, I imagined, with little crossover between the two. I hesitated, then knocked at the door again.
The problem with magicians—aside from getting around their quirks, which often translated to sheer rudeness—was that if they were working on something, it was nearly impossible to get their attention. I’d let myself in once before—after knocking and waiting in the streets in the heat of summer for nearly half an hour—only for her to demand why I’d come so late.
I wasn’t about to make that mistake again, and the light was on in her workroom. Yet even though I’d taken up with ruffians, breaking and entering wasn’t something I wished to add to my list of “unexpected things I’d done because of the strange crowd I spent my time with.” Sighing, I tried the door before I could talk myself out of the idea and found it unlocked.
Perhaps we’d both learned something from that little incident, then.
There was a gray cat in the entranceway, as well as several pairs of women’s shoes on the floor and matching coats hung up along the wall, but the house was otherwise silent. The cat wound around blue satin boots, rubbing its face against the toe, then yowled enigmatically at me.
Almost on instinct, I reached down to let it sniff my fingers. It did so just as one of my metal knuckles let out a hiss and a creak, and the cat’s ears folded backward, the fur over his spine prickling up in mistrust.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, glad no one was around to see me offend, then attempt to rationalize with, a simple house cat. “It startles me, too, you know.”
The cat sniffed and turned its back on me, bolting deeper into the house.
I should have expected something like that, I thought, and shut