Page 5 of Shadowed

I stop. My back finds the opposite wall before I tell it to. The brickwork is cold through my coat, damp from the fog, gritty where the mortar's crumbling. Knife in my hand—cheap, three inches, sharp because I keep it sharp, worth nothing to anyone but me.

I hold it and watch the shadow sit in the wrong place and try to think of a reasonable explanation.

Wind. Except there's no wind. Someone moved the lamp. Except nobody moved the lamp. I'm tired and seeing things. Except I don't see things. My eyes are as reliable as my hands, which is to say they are the only parts of me I trust without reservation, and my eyes are telling me that shadow is wrong.

Four minutes. The alley is empty. The fog presses in, wet and cold against my face, tasting of coal smoke and the river.

The shadow sits where it shouldn't, patient and deliberate, and I'm more frightened than I have been of any copper, any gang runner, any drunk with a grudge and a bottle. Those things I understand. Those things have locks I can pick.

This doesn't have a lock. This doesn't have a shape I recognise.

The shadow settles. Slowly, the way something that was leaning forward sits back. The pool under the gas lamp slides left, where it belongs. The alley looks normal. I'm standing in it holding a knife and feeling stupid.

Except not just stupid. There's a heat low in my belly that wasn't there before—a pull that sinks lower with each breath, liquid and terrible and without a name. My thighs are pressed together against the cold wall and the pressure is—it shouldn't be anything. It's brick, fog, fear. There's no reason my body should be doing whatever this is.

I shove off the wall hard enough that the grit scrapes my shoulder blades.

I hate feeling stupid more than I hate feeling afraid. Fear is useful. Stupid is just expensive. Whatever that was—the heat, the pull—that's neither useful nor expensive. That's insanity. And I don't have time for insanity. Insanity doesn't pay the rent.

"Lovely chat," I tell the alley. "Let's not do this again."

The alley doesn't respond. I walk fast. The knife stays in my hand until Brick Lane absorbs me and the Tuesday market wraps its noise around me like a coat.

Shopping. The good kind, the kind where the numbers actually work. A full loaf of bread instead of the usual half. Cheese. Milk for Tommy because the boy is growing and his bones need it. Two apples for Marcus. A scrap of blue ribbon for Elena's hair—her birthday was last week and I gave her nothing, which she noticed and forgave immediately, which is worse than if she'd been angry about it.

Home. Marcus lit the fire, bless him, which means Marcus used the last of the coal, damn him, which means I need coal, which means the arithmetic has already shifted. Poverty is a lock that re-tumbles itself every time you think you've cracked it.

Elena is at the table reading a book she stole from the lending library. She didn't steal it well—cracked spine, water-damaged cover. A competent thief would have taken one in better condition. I've offered to teach her technique. She says stealing books is different from stealing bread and that she has principles. She has principles and wet feet. I have questions about the exchange rate.

"Shoes," I say, and put two shillings beside her book.

Her head snaps up. She looks at the coins, then at me, then at the coins again. Her eyes go bright. She doesn't say thank you—we don't, in this family—but she touches the money three times like she's checking it won't disappear, and that's the same thing.

Marcus comes in from the hall, sees the apples, pockets one for later. He is sixteen and saving food is so automatic he does it before he registers that there's enough. He'll eat the other one where Tommy can't see because Marcus has decided, in the private mathematics of being the second-oldest, that the youngest eats first and the rest of us negotiate.

Tommy is on the floor drawing. Same picture he draws every week—our family, all five of us, in front of a house with a garden. Da is in the picture. Da is always in the picture, tall and smiling, his hand on my shoulder.

"Did you hear from Da?" he asks, without looking up.

"Not yet. I'm sure he'll write soon."

The lie slides out easy and clean. My best work always does. Da isn't going to write. Da left six years ago for his legitimate family—right surname, proper house, children who aren't bastards—and hasn't opened a door in our direction since. I'vefiled him in the same drawer as unpickable locks: theoretical. A thing that exists in a category I don't visit.

Marcus catches my eye across the room. He knows. He's known for at least two years. He says nothing, because we have an agreement, Marcus and I—we lie to Tommy together and we never discuss the cost of it.

The bread is good. The cheese is good. Tommy drinks half the milk in one go, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, grins at me. The grin is so like Da's that something behind my ribs clenches hard enough to bruise.

"Not hungry," I say when Elena pushes the bread toward me. This is a lie but the kind that feeds people, so I count it differently.

They fall asleep in stages. Marcus first—always a surprise, the boy reads for twenty minutes and drops like he's been hit. Elena next, with Tommy curled against her, his drawing on the floor beside the bed. Five figures. A garden. A door that stays open.

The flat goes quiet. Coal fire burning down to red. I sit on the floor and I don't think about locks.

I think about locks.

The one last night that opened before I finished. Morrow paying triple without a fight. The shadow in Cutler's Alley that leaned the wrong way and corrected itself like a child caught staring.

Someone planted those documents. The job came through Morrow, and Morrow's scared of whoever put them there, and whoever put them there wanted me. Only me. A nineteen-year-old thief with fast hands, an empty jar, and three children she'd do anything for. That's not a job. That's bait, and it's very good bait, because it's shaped like everything I need.