a lamp and went over to the coldbox, trying to push the child's gaze out of his thoughts. Everyone had problems. Whether or not she learned to cope with life wasn't his concern. He grabbed a wine jar and drained it in several deep swallows. He looked at the last dregs of wine gathered at the bottom of the jar. Something tugged at the back of his mind. An unquantifiable urge to action tickled his nerves, like some nameless doom poised over his head, waiting to strike. I'm just tired, he told himself, but he almost jumped when Kit appeared behind him and threw her arms around his neck.
"I missed you," she said. "What did you find out?"
Caim put the jar down. He wanted to drink more, to get completely wrecked and forget these past couple days, but he needed all his wits about him.
"Mathias is dead."
Kit rushed around to face him. Her fingers brushed across his hands like faint cobwebs. "What happened?"
"Someone cut his heart out while he slept."
"Oh, Caim!"
He poured out the whole story. Once he started talking, it all gushed out of him, like pus from an infected wound. Afterward, he felt a little better. The wine helped too.
"So are you going to listen to me now?" Kit sat cross-legged on the kitchen table. "Will you leave Othir? Tonight?"
Caim let out a long sigh. He didn't feel like fighting, but he couldn't walk away from this problem. It was too big, cut too close to the bone.
"I can't yet, Kit. Mat was a friend."
"What's the girl got to do with this?"
He tried to explain it to her, but he could tell by her rigid expression that he might as well be talking to the table. Why, why, why, she asked, until finally he collapsed in a chair, exhausted.
"I give up, Kit. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just chasing my tail, but for as long as I can remember I've been running from something. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder."
Kit set her hands on her tiny hips. "That's what I'm saying. A new start, someplace where nobody knows-"
Before she could finish, a scream came from the bedroom, followed by muffled pounding. Caim leapt across the room and swung open the door. The old man's daughter was pulling frantically on the bindings that secured the window. The feeling of dread returned as Caim stepped into the room, so intense that he ducked his head between his shoulders. He crossed the narrow room and pulled the girl away from the window. Her screams sliced away the last remnants of his euphoria.
He dragged her out into the kitchen and wrestled her into the chair. She started to rise again until he stood over her. Sucking in deep breaths, she stared up at him with a sullen expression. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her hands were clenched into tight fists. For a moment, he thought she might try to attack him. The image in his head made him smile. The girl glared with a hard set to her mouth. At least she had stopped screaming.
Caim turned away and filled a kettle with tepid water from a jug. He had thought the girl was pretty before, but unconscious she had been only a distant presence, like the moon on a frigid winter night. Now, awake and animate, she was even more breathtaking. He squeezed his right hand into a fist until the fingernails cut into his palm. He had to keep his head on straight. He was a hunted man. He had to play this smart.
With one eye on the girl, he lit the stove and put the kettle on to boil. He had a feeling he was in for a long night. Maybe Kit was right. Maybe he should have dumped this problem in an alley and left for greener pastures. He shook his head. No, he was too stubborn, or too stupid, to give up that easily. One thing he knew for sure. He wasn't letting this girl out of his sight until he found out what was going on. He owed Mathias that much.
His hands tightened around the lid of the tea tin.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
osey concentrated on her hands, clutched together in her lap. She had always liked her hands. They were small-boned, with long, tapering fingers. Her nails needed painting; the pink lacquer was flaking off at the tips, but besides that, they were very nice hands.
The killer's hands, however, the hands that had murdered her father,