Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,3
already shrieking around me, I could throw caution to the wind. I sprinted to the first cage, chopped at the lock itself with my scorch-knife, and managed to sever it with several sawing motions. At my yank, that door flew open. To ease the captive’s escape, I hurled my blackout cloth at the lamp overhead. It covered the light for only a moment before it slipped back down for me to catch it, but in that moment a presence hurtled past me so large and so close the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
No time to make any formal introductions. I dashed to the second cage, sliced through that lock a little faster than the first, flung my cloth, and raced to the third without stopping for a “How do you do?” No sounds of approaching doom reached my ears through the wail of the alarm, but it was practically deafening me, so that wasn’t much comfort. It wasn’t a question of whether the master of the house was charging toward the room, only how quickly he could get here—and how lethal the reinforcements he’d bring would be.
As I snatched back my blackout cloth for the third time, I was already digging my final gambit out of my bag. With a pop of the bottle’s lid, I tossed a splash of kerosene across the traitorous rug. Then I whipped the flame of my lighter at it.
The damp patch caught fire with a whoosh of heat. I glanced around one last time to make sure no living things were left in the place—I hoped my signature farewell would destroy as much of his inanimate collection as possible, considering the uses he’d put it to—and realized that in my rush I’d nearly cut off my route to the nearest window.
Heat licked my face. I dodged to the side as the fire shot up higher. Smoke seared down my throat, and my pulse thrummed through my body with its own inner burn of adrenaline. If the flames would be kind enough to travel more to the right than to the left, attack those rows of books before it snatched at the window curtains…
Luck was on my side. The thought had barely crossed my mind when the flames flared with sharper intensity toward the bookshelves at the opposite side of the room, giving me a smidge of an opening. A shiver passed through my nerves at just how convenient that was, but who was I to argue? I dove around the growing wave of fire and whipped the curtain aside.
Without needing to think, my grappling hook was in my hand. I slammed it into the pane, and the glass burst with a rain of shards onto the patio below. As I leapt onto the ledge, I was already sighting the utility pole just beyond the nearest wall of the backyard. One swing of my arm sent the hook soaring to latch onto the fixture at the top of the pole.
A shout of rage reverberated through the room behind me. Adios, asshole. With my hands tight around the rope, I launched myself out into the much more temperate night air.
I aimed myself at the perfect angle to catch hold of one of the metal bars protruding farther down the utility pole. Piece of cake. A flick of my wrist detached the grappling hook overhead. I clicked it onto the back of my belt, dropped down onto the sidewalk, and vanished into the shadows as completely as the creatures I’d come to save had, all ties to the place behind me severed.
At least, that was how it’d always worked before.
Despite the weirdness I’d encountered on the mission, everything about my escape appeared to go perfectly smoothly. I arrived back at my apartment in the wee hours of the morning, showered the smoke stink out of my hair, and curled up in bed. When I woke up, the sun was beaming outside, the birds were chirping, and I had new treasures to sell sitting on my desk.
I poked at them, grinning at the thought of the cash they’d bring in and the collector who’d now hopefully be agonizing at least as much over his loss as his captives had in their cages, and headed down the hall to grab some breakfast singing, “How wrong, how wrong was that dinged-up dong. How wrong, how—”
My voice jarred in my throat. I jerked to a halt a few steps from my kitchen, which was currently inhabited