He waited a moment listening Awhoo Awhoo An owl hoot the signal that the line was secure The searchlight was fast approaching once more Jack dropped flat against the tiled roof and when it had passed jumped up and pulled the rope taut testing his weight against it His knots held as he knew they would He scraped the soles of his boots in the roof tar to make them sticky Then he began to climb The cracks between each stone made strong footholds The top of the wall was fifteen feet above but he took mere seconds to reach it and hop nimbly over a row of spikes that guarded the parapet before lowering himself down the far side into the street Finlo stood beneath him wearing a battered bowler hat He was a little taller than his father though that wasn’t saying much all the Doors were short As a teenager fifteen years ago he’d been a skinny disappointing runt but since then he’d added a few inches filled out into a man Perhaps Jack thought he might be useful on this mission after all Jack dropped to the pavement beside his son and embraced him sniffing the air Get a whiff of that 10
peppery smell Fin I haven’t smelled that in fifteen years Finlo took a deep breath What is it Freedom Jack flashed him a scarred smile As he strode toward the prison entrance a few feet away along the wall a loud alarm bell began to wail Da please Finlo called softly We have to go Quiet I’ve one more trick up my sleeve Jack pulled a playing card from thin air and pinned it to the jail door When he lowered his arm Finlo saw what it was the Jack of Diamonds And now said Jack slipping into the shadows we disappear 11
CHAPTER 1 In her short life Lily Hartman had come back from the dead not once but twice Neither time had been particularly pleasant The first she didn’t like to recall the second she wished every day she could forget Her first near-death occurred when she was six years old She’d been in a terrible steam-wagon crash which had killed Mama and left her mortally injured Her second near-death took place last winter barely three months past her thirteenth birthday On that cold November day Lily was shot by someone she trusted dearly and it was only thanks to the bravery of her friends Robert and Malkin and the enormous strength 12
of the Cogheart an amazing invention of her papa’s that she’d survived Though it had brought her back to life the Cogheart made Lily different She was a hybrid with a clockwork heart that might tick forever A girl with untold secrets for who could she tell when outside her family everyone regarded hybrids and mechanicals as less than human Not that Lily liked to dwell on such things This morning her troubles felt truly behind her She lay with her back on the warming earth enjoying the fizzing feeling of being alive and let her mind drift to the promise of the long hot summer ahead Malkin her pet mechanical fox was curled at her side one black beady eye open watching Tall stems of corn towered over him Oughtn’t we to be indoors he snapped gnawing disdainfully at a burr-covered leg It’s practically breakfast time You don’t eat breakfast Malkin said a second voice Robert Lily’s other best friend in the whole world was picking dandelion clocks a few feet away He stuck one in his buttonhole It looked almost as good as the crown of daisies garlanding Lily’s flame-red hair Almost but not quite Malkin spat out a mangy hairball with a sound like 13
