This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee

morning, but I hadn’t thought I’d need them at the market. If the police had my name and description, it would be hard to get out of the city and into France undetected.
    I slipped down the stairs and let myself into the shop, hoping for some money left in the cash box, but everything was smashed up and torn apart, same as upstairs. They had found the door to the workshop, forced it open and left it that way, like a gaping mouth stretched wide behind the counter. It bothered me almost more than the mess to see it like that, our secret so exposed, and I stood for a moment with one hand on the frame, looking down the passage.
    Then, from deep in the darkness, I heard something move.
    Hope flexed inside me, and I took a cautious step forward. “Mum?” I called. The shuffling movement stopped, followed by a cold silence. “Mum?” I called again, a little louder.
    There was the scratch of a match, then a small flame appeared, illuminating the pale face I had seen on the omnibus the day before. Inspector Jiroux. The shadowsintensified the contours of his face as our eyes met through the darkness. “Finch!” he bellowed.
    I didn’t know if it was me he was after or if he thought I was Father, but I didn’t hang around to find out. I slammed the workshop door in his face. All the mechanisms that kept it from being opened from the inside had been gutted, but it would at least slow him down.
    I scrambled out from behind the counter, stumbling on the ruins of windup toys that decorated the floor like spiked carpet, and burst out of the shop. The night air was sharp against my burning face as I turned down the first alley I came to and plunged deeper into the old town, not caring where I ran so long as I got away. The city here was a labyrinth, steep, decrepit passages without clockwork carriages or industrial torches. The moon was blotted out by icy laundry strung between windows, and most of the snow had been trampled into slick gray mud.
    I sprinted past a rowdy pub where Oliver had once been arrested for brawling. Some men in the doorway shouted drunken nonsense at me, and one threw a glass of ale. I felt the spray on the back of my neck, but I didn’t stop. As I reached the end of the street, I heard them shout again, this time with screechy catcalls. Was Jiroux still following me? I sped up, though my legs ached.
    Two streets farther, I turned down a dead end. I whipped around to go back the way I had come, but asilhouetted figure appeared at the mouth of the alley, blocking my path. I snatched up the nearest weapon I could find—a cheap coal shovel with all the weight of a sheet of paper—and held it before me like a sword, bracing for a fight I knew I’d lose.
    But it wasn’t a policeman. It was a girl.
    A young woman, I realized as she stepped into a chasm of moonlight, though it was only her long, plaited hair that made her look it. She was whip thin, her body a shapeless board like a boy’s, and she was dressed in rough trousers and a heavy gray workman’s coat, unbuttoned and lashed at the waist as though she had thrown on her father’s coat from beside the door as she rushed out.
    I lowered the shovel. Perhaps she hadn’t been chasing me at all. It seemed more likely she had come out of one of the houses to see what the commotion was.
    Then she called, “Alasdair Finch.”
    The shovel shot back up. “What do you want?” I said, and in my panic, the words fell out in English.She took another step toward me, and I shouted, “Stay back!” and whipped the shovel around a few times for good measure.
    She raised her hands, palms forward. “Consider me threatened.” She spoke English too, but with swallowed Parisian vowels that didn’t match her tattered clothes.
    “Are you with the police?” Even as I asked it, the question felt stupid. I could tell she wasn’t just by looking at her.
    She took another step forward, icy snow crunching under her boots. “I’ve come from Geisler.”
    I almost dropped