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with Casper gone, she could finally sneak through the hidden door in her closet. She had business to attend to on the roof, after all.

    Hours later, as she prepared to drag herself inside and into bed, her eye was caught by a movement on the next roof over, down on Maisie’s building. Frannie’s row house had the tallest façade on the block, but there were decorative windows in the brick to encourage proper air flow. She could easily see what occurred on all the other roofs, which was mostly nothing. She glanced over, hopeful that perhaps the last of her clever crows had found its way home, but the shadow was gone. Strange that anyone or anything else would be about on the roof, in the milky light of the moon. She waited a while longer until a yawn nearly cracked her jaw, then finally went inside and gave in to sleep.

    When Thom arrived the next morning, Frannie was sweeping the shop for the third unnecessary time. His knock was soft, and the first rays of the sun barely painted him pink when she unlocked the door and shyly let him in. Thom was wearing a different skirt this time—a kilt, she reminded herself. Her curiosity had been piqued by their last conversation, and she had looked up Edinburgh in her atlas to brush up on what little she had been taught about Scotland. For a country that was bloody close, things up north were terribly strange, and men with bare knees were the least of it. Compared with the native creatures of his homeland, bludrats attacking his skin must have seemed but a minor inconvenience. He certainly didn’t seem concerned about his shocking state of undress.
    Clad all in grays and browns, he almost melded with the dreary stones and fug of London. His eyes were the lone bit of nature, warmly hazel. He grinned at her, and when he spoke, his voice was soft enough to keep from riling up the still-sleepy creatures.
    “Ready to do some work, lass?”
    “I am. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
    In response, he shrugged amiably and scratched his chin. He looked remarkably awake and tidy for someone who’d been fighting fires all night, but she handed him her flask anyway.
    “Bit early for whiskey, aye?” he said, but then he smelled it and murmured approvingly. “Coffee.” He sipped it. “With goat milk?” He drew back to look at her, and she smiled smugly.
    “I have my ways,” she said, enjoying his incredulity. For a quiet London lass in a dowdy tweed suit, she held quite a few secrets. As long as Thom never found his way to the roof, she didn’t have much to fear.
    “I’ve brought a bit of wood and glass and my kit. Mind if I bring it into the shop before we head upstairs to assess the damage? Never seen a city with such sticky fingers. They’d steal the hoses off the truck, if we weren’t careful.”
    He eased a cart through the door, careful of the old boards and wrapped bit of glass. Frannie locked the door behind him, an oddly intimate gesture in the dusky morning. It was even stranger when he followed her past the curtain and up the narrow steps to the upstairs hall and into her room. The last time a man had been in there, the ensuing kerfuffle had ended worse than badly.
    Thom went first to the window, his brow furrowing as he ran a leather-gloved finger over the jagged, fire-darkened remains of the glass.
    “I couldn’t really see the damage last night, but the Brigade didn’t do this. Did you break it trying to escape?”
    Frannie came closer but didn’t reach out to touch the thick, wavy glass. It wasn’t the newer, thinner glass that one could easily see through, but had been original to the house, too heavy to let in anything but a token bit of light.
    “I didn’t touch the glass. There was smoke everywhere, and the curtains were on fire. I didn’t even look, really. But it would have taken a lot of force to do this much damage, correct? It’s as thick as my thumb!”
    Thom looked out the window, mindful of the scorched shards as he scouted along the street