He hesitated, and she saw the debate going on behind his eyes. To pay, or not to pay, that was the question, and it was a debate Sabine was used to seeing. The outcome, of course, was never in question.

Badstreet passed an envelope to her beneath the table. Keeping it out of sight, Sabine opened it up and quickly counted. It certainly seemed to be all there. She nodded, pocketed the envelope, and put the ring into a small wooden box. Then she stood up, handed the box to Badstreet, and gave him her best smile.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” she said.

She walked to the back of the pub, squeezing through the throngs of people. It would take Badstreet fifteen to twenty seconds to figure out how to open the box, another ten seconds of examining the ring and savouring the power, and then a full two to three minutes before the power started to fade and he was left with a useless trinket she’d picked up from a dingy shop on the way there. Plenty of time.

She had already deactivated the alarm, so she left quietly through the fire escape door, stepping into the alley behind the pub. She turned away from the street, because that would be the direction in which Badstreet would eventually sprint, and instead walked deeper into the darkness. Another job done. Another sucker suckered. All in a night’s work.

“Such a naughty girl.”

Sabine whirled, looked up. Standing straight out from the wall above her was a blonde woman in a long leather coat.

“Good to see some things haven’t changed, though,” the woman said, slowly strolling down to street level. “You were a sneaky little thief thirty years ago and you’re a sneaky little thief now.”

Sabine tried a smile. “Hi, Tanith. Been a while.”

“It has at that,” Tanith said, hopping to the ground. She was taller than Sabine. “To be honest, I never thought you’d live this long. Sneaky little Sabine, always conning the wrong people, always getting the wrong people mad with her. I thought you’d have ended up dead in the gutter a long time before this.”

“Is that why you’re here, then? To kill me?”

“Kill you?” Tanith laughed. “Now why would I do something as mean-spirited as that?”

“I heard you’ve got a Remnant inside you.”

“True enough, but while my insides may be rotten, I still like a good reason to kill someone. It has to be either business, personal or out of sheer boredom. Do I look bored to you, Sabine?”

“So what do you want?”

Tanith’s smile was as bright and radiant as ever. “You.”

6

own there, in the dark and the cold, all the girl did was train.