ItCP14

## Chapter 14

**Chapter 14** of **Into the Crooked Place** follows **Tavia**.

## **Full Version**

TAVIA KNEW WELL ENOUGH that Crafters had more power in their pinkies than she did in her whole arsenal, but seeing that power in the flesh, in Saxony’s hands, was a little different.

Saxony spoke three words, just three, and the room stopped closing in.

“*Deft es gurs*.”

The walls retreated and the iron bars that blockaded around them squealed upward.

The air thinned out.

Tavia panted on the floor, tasting the alcohol wafting over from the consort’s half-empty glass. The one that was right beside her fully dead hand.

The walls trembled in fear and then slammed back on themselves, shattering a hole through the side of the building like a gaping mouth.

Saxony walked toward the edge and let out a low whistle.

“Did you mean to do that?” Tavia asked.

“At least I blasted a hole in the building and not our faces.”

“Tell me you have Ashwood’s location,” Wesley said.

Saxony nodded. “I’ve got the way to his island inside my mind like a map.”

“I guess I was right to put my faith in you.”

Wesley took out his gun and checked the bullets. He turned to face the doorway, which solidified into a mirror that reflected back at them the horror of what they had done.

The consort’s body was angled toward Tavia. Blood on her cheek, her eyes wide and accusing.

Wesley aimed the gun at the reflection and fired.

The doorway exploded at their feet.

“We need to go,” he said. “Shattering it will only keep the consort’s guards at bay for so long. They’ll find another way in.”

Tavia stood, trying not to look at the consort.

“How do we get out?” she asked. “There’s no other exit.”

Wesley gestured to the new hole in the building.

“You’ve read one too many children’s tales about Crafters.” Saxony peered out of the wounded building and down to the streets below. “We can’t actually fly.”

“Maybe *you* can’t,” Wesley said.

Tavia felt him looking at her and she knew he was thinking of the hover charms she’d stolen from under the nose of his predecessor. The ones she had used to break into the amity precinct.

“I’ve only got three left,” she said.

Wesley pulled a hand through his hair, the bone gun still firm in his grip. “Many Gods, Tavia. You think I let you keep those so you could just throw them away?”

“You don’t let me do anything,” she said. “And they weren’t yours in the first place.”

“You should know better. I inherited everything when I became underboss, even the stolen things.”

He adjusted his tie indignantly.

He looked ridiculously punchable.

It was typical that even when their only choices were falling to their deaths or being tortured by the consort’s guards, Wesley could still make time to be a pompous ass.

Tavia folded her arms across her chest. “Three is more than enough.”

“Are you volunteering to be left behind?” Wesley asked.

“I’m saying that if we hold hands, then we should be able to stretch three charms. Distribute the weight. Not to mention, Saxony is powerful enough to boost the magic.”

Wesley pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he said. “But if we start falling to our deaths, then it’s your hand I’m letting go of.”

“I’d thank you for it.”

Tavia reached into her pocket to dig out the stolen hover charms and dropped them, one by one, into Wesley’s outstretched palms.

The four of them gathered by the new hole in the building and looked down to the city streets that concreted miles below. Wesley palmed the stolen magic contemplatively, letting it coat his skin.

He closed his eyes and stretched out his hand for them to form a link.

Saxony’s face wrinkled in disgust at the prospect and though Wesley couldn’t have seen, he smirked as though he had.

Tavia eyed him, trying to remember the last time she held his hand.

It had been so long since they’d done anything but bait each other that she struggled to remember the times of tenderness and warmth. Not that a memory of his skin would matter—Tavia imagined the years of killing had probably roughened his hands quite a bit.

In fact, she hoped Wesley had a callous for every life he’d taken.

When nobody stepped forward, Karam took Wesley’s hand. She waited a moment, scratched her teeth hard across her bottom lip, and then snatched Saxony’s, too. Saxony rolled her shoulder as if the force had nearly loosed it from its socket.

Tavia turned to survey the mess they were going to leave. The room was in chaos, everything spilled out onto the floor and ripped from the walls and stained in glass and blood. Even the floorboards had splintered upward to knifepoints, revealing the darkness beneath.

Except, not all of it was darkness.

There was something strange about the way the floor jutted out in odd crisscrosses. Something that was glistening underneath, calling to her like a song.

“Tavia.”

She looked back over her shoulder to Wesley. His eyes were still closed, right hand empty where hers should have been. Wesley was absorbing the magic, keeping focus so that he could let the hover charm flow evenly between them all. Tavia noticed his dark skin taking on a silver sheen as he forced the charm to channel in and out of himself.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Tavia didn’t answer, but she did smile.

From her new vantage point, she could see it clearly. Hidden under the floor, with red flashing on the lock like a beacon.

A hidden safe.

Magic the consort had collected and stashed from each of her dirty deals.

There were so many rumors about those safes that it had become a bit of a busking legend, and too many times Tavia had imagined finding one of them and using the power to take her freedom by force.

She beelined for the safe just as a series of explosive pops rattled the room.

Tavia crouched to her knees and covered her head like the whole building might just come crashing down.

“It’s the consort’s guards,” Wesley said. “They can’t use magic to get in now that the doorway’s smashed, so they’re breaking their way through. We need to go.”

“Not yet,” Tavia said.

She pulled away the pieces of floor that had been loosed by the explosion. Sure enough, the safe was there. A small metallic thing built into the floor, not much wider than a briefcase.

But Tavia knew better than anyone how many charms could fit inside a briefcase.

“It’s the consort’s safe,” she called out. “I can crack it. We need the firepower.”

“I’m a Crafter,” Saxony said. “I *am* your firepower.”

“Everyone knows that the consort has magic not even in circulation,” Tavia said. “Can you imagine what she had access to? The secrets of Wrenyal. Things nobody outside Volo has even heard of. It’s a gold mine of magic.”

The guards crashed against the doorway and Tavia reached into her pocket, still crouched on the floor. She pulled out a small magnet.

“You have a magical magnet?” Karam asked.

Wesley shoved a hand into his pocket. “And yet only three hover charms.”

Tavia ignored him and pressed the magnet against the safe.

The doorway shook as the guards raged on, small pieces of debris crumbling to the floor. Sooner or later, they were going to rip another hole in the building.

The magnet fixed onto the lock.

Tavia closed her eyes, letting the combinations flow through her as the magic did its work. Code flashed across her mind, lines of it screaming out to her. Numbers she couldn’t even count to crawled along her vision. It made her want to scratch her own eyes out.

Then a click sounded.

The first combination unlocked.

“Get a move on,” Wesley said.

Tavia moved the magnet down the strip, letting the magic tap into the next combination.

In a safe like this, there couldn’t be more than five.

“I’ve nearly got it.” Tavia squeezed her eyes shut. “Just a few more minutes.”

“We don’t have a few minutes!” Saxony said. “Tavia, come on!”

Every word she spoke was punctured by a crescendo of bangs from the guards.

Another click. Two down.

There was no way Tavia was leaving this room without getting her hands on the consort’s magic. If the Kingpin had an army of Crafters, the least they needed were a few surprises.

“Just go without me,” Tavia said, waving them off.

“We’re not leaving you!” Saxony said.

“You want us to let you get killed?” Wesley asked.

The banging grew louder.

Tavia gestured to the consort. “We get people killed all the time,” she said. “Just give me the third hover charm and I’ll catch up. Make sure the buskers are ready to go as soon as I get there.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Wesley said.

Tavia pulled the magnet away. She was almost certain that Wesley was going to yank her to her feet and throw her out of the window before he gave in. He had that look in his eyes that he always got before tearing a busker a new one. Instead, he let out a curse—and not the magical kind—then thrust an open palm. The sheen from his hands gathered into the center and a small bead formed atop his skin.

Wesley chucked the charm at Tavia and she caught it with a lopsided grin.

He was trusting her to get the job done.

“You better get to the train tracks within an hour,” Wesley said. “Or we’re leaving.”

He linked hands with the others and the three of them stepped backward, out into the air, floating above the city they were trying to save.

“Don’t get yourself killed,” Saxony said. “I’ll be pissed.”

“Get going before that charm wears off and you plummet to your deaths!” Tavia yelled, her hands buried in the floorboards. “I don’t want to step on you on my way out.”

She turned her focus back to the safe and she could just about hear the cogs churning inside, clicking with each combination. Just one more minute.

She fingered the magnet and felt the fourth combination click into place, but the rush of success was followed by a final explosive roar.

The wall that had kept them safe came crumbling down. The guards burst through the doorway, guns and magic. Charms were lassoed to their belts and pistols were primed in their hands and murder was all over their somber faces. Tavia crouched low, hidden behind the bar, while Wesley and the others floated in midair, hands still linked.

Wesley’s eyes snapped to Tavia’s, and in a blink his face hardened. He stepped back into the building, dragging Karam and Saxony with him, but the moment their feet touched the broken ground, the guards opened fire.

There were too many shots to count, but only one that mattered.

Karam’s shoulder whipped back.

The bullet tore into her chest, blood splattering on the wall beside her. She staggered from the impact, one foot stumbling out of the building.

And then she fell.

In a blink, Karam careened out of the tower, taking Wesley and Saxony down with her.

And leaving Tavia to the guards.