“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.”
“Don’t call me that.” Elle groaned as she shifted to sit. She’d fallen asleep in her dancer’s tights, and a long run traced up each calf. It’d piss her off once she noticed, but the patrons of the Foghorn and Fiddle down the street wouldn’t care. One squinting look into the wine bottle to make sure it was empty, and Elle shoved off the couch to stand. “Michal isn’t awake, we don’t have to pretend to like each other.”
It was extremely obvious to anyone with the misfortune of being in the same room as the two of them that Lore and Elle didn’t like each other, and Elle’s older brother knew it better than most. But Lore just shrugged.
Elle pushed past her into the kitchen, the spiderweb cracks on the windows refracting veined light on the tattered edges of her tulle skirt. She peered into the pot. “No coffee?”
Lore tightened her hand around the cloth knotted in her fist. “Afraid not.”
“Bleeding God.” Elle flopped onto one of the chairs by the pockmarked kitchen table. For a dancer, she was surprisingly ungraceful when sober. “I’ll take tea, then.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to get it for you.”
A grumble and a roll of bright blue eyes as Elle slunk her way toward the cupboard. While her back was turned, Lore tucked the straining cloth into the lip of her mug and poured hot water over it.
Still grumbling, Elle scooped tea that was little more than dust into another mug. “Well?” She took the kettle from Lore without looking at her. “How’d it go?”
Lore kept her back turned as she tugged the straining cloth and the tiny knot of coffee grounds from her cup and stuffed it in the pocket of her dressing gown. “We’re paid up for six months.”
“Is that why you look so disheveled?” Elle’s mouth pulled into a self-satisfied moue. “He could get it cheaper across the street.”
“The dishevelment is the fault of your brother, actually.” Lore turned and leaned against the counter with a cat’s smile. “And barbs about Madam’s girls don’t suit you, Elle-Flower. It’s work like any other. To think otherwise just proves you dull.”
Another eye roll. Elle made a face when she sipped her weak tea, and sharp satisfaction hitched Lore’s smile higher. She took a long, luxurious sip of coffee.
Another knock, shivering through the morning quiet and nearly shaking the thin boards of the row house.
Elle rose up on her tiptoes to look out the small window above the sink, head craned toward the door. She raised her eyebrows. “Your boss is here.”
Swearing under her breath, Lore plunked her mug on the counter with a dangerous clink of porcelain and strode toward the door.
“Hey,” Elle whined from the kitchen. “There was too coffee!”
For the second time that morning, Lore wrenched open the door, the squealing hinges echoing through the row house. “Val.”
Green eyes glinted beneath a faded scarf, white-blond hair a corona around pale cheeks sunburned to ruddy. Val always wore the same scarf and the same braid, and she never wasted time with pleasantries. “You and Michal need to be headed for the Ward in fifteen minutes.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
“I’m not playing, mouse.” Val gave a scrutinizing look to Lore’s dressing gown, her mussed hair. “This could be a hard job. You need to be ready.”
“I always am.” In the ten years since Lore had been running poisons for Val, she’d never had the woman herself show up like this, right before a drop. A confused line carved between her brows. “Is something the matter, Val?”
The older woman shifted on her feet, her eyes flicking away for half a heartbeat before landing on Lore’s again, steadied and sure. “It’s fine,” she said. “This is just a new client. I want to make sure everything goes off without a hitch.”