The boy gaped, the open mouth under his window-glass eyes making his face look fishlike. He’d undoubtedly paid a handsome sum for the pinch of foxglove he’d taken. If it wasn’t so imperative that she lie low, Lore might’ve become a deathdealer. They made a whole lot of coin for doing a whole lot of jack shit.

Pierre’s unfortunate blush spread down his neck. “I can’t— He’ll ask where the money is—”

“I’m confident an industrious young man like yourself can come up with it somewhere.” A flick of her fingers, and Lore let him go. Pierre stumbled up on shaky legs—Buried Goddess and her plucked-out eyes, she should’ve known he was on something; he stood like a colt—and straightened his mussed shirt. “I’ll try,” he said, voice just as tremulous as the rest of him. “I can’t promise he’ll believe me.”

Lore gave him a winning smile. Standing, she yanked up the shoulder of her dressing gown. “He better.”

Eyes wide, the boy turned down the street. The Harbor District was slowly waking up—bundles of cloth stirred in dark corners, drunks coaxed awake by the sun and the cold sea breeze. In the row house across the street, Lore heard the telltale sighs of Madam Brochfort’s girls starting their daily squabbles over who got the washtub first, and any minute now, at least two straggling patrons would be politely but firmly escorted outside.

Soothing, familiar. In all her years of rambling around Dellaire, here was the only place where it really felt like home.

“Pierre?” she called when he was halfway down the street. He turned, lips pressed together, clearly considering what other things she might blackmail him with.

“A word of advice.” She turned toward Michal’s row house in a flutter of threadbare dressing gown. “The real deathdealers have morgues in the back.”

Elle was awake, but only just. She squinted from beneath a pile of gold curls through the light-laden dust, paint still smeared across her lips. “Whassat?”

“As if you don’t know.” There was barely enough coffee in the chipped ceramic pot for one cup. Lore poured all of it into the stained cloth she used as a strainer and balled it in her hand as she put the kettle over the fire. If there was only one cup of coffee in this house, she’d be the one drinking it. “End of the month, Elle-Flower.”