One With the Shadows by Susan Squires Read Free Book Online Page B

The voice was baritone.
    She looked around. Gian Urbano was holding her against his chest and hurrying across the piazza in front of her lodgings toward the fountain. People were scurrying about the piazza, shouting. Behind Urbano, a building was engulfed in flames. That seemed familiar. She stretched up against his shoulder. It was her building! The stone was in there.
    Urbano looked over his shoulder and cursed under his breath. A man came tottering out of the building in his nightshirt. Urbano put her down, and grabbed a man with luxuriant mustachios just coming up to gawk. “Watch over her,” he commanded. He looked back at the fire. That seemed familiar somehow. “There are still people in there.”
    “Are you going for the stone?”
    He swiveled his head and stared at her. “I thought you took it to a bank.”
    She looked up at him, still dazed, and shook her head. “In a drawer of the dresser, wrapped in my chemise.”
    He stared at her for one long moment. Realization struck him. She could feel his dismay, and then his resolution. He swallowed. Then he faced the burning building again, straightened, and struck off at a lope across the square.
    Kate sat up, ignoring the protest of her guardian. He’d be burned alive. And what she had just witnessed was exactly what she had seen in her premonition.
    Everything she’d ever had was in that building. She looked down. Her reticule still hung from her wrist. That meant she had her cards at least. But that was all. Oh, she had the money from her readings tonight, enough for a few nights’ lodging, no more. She’d spent her dream money and never even gotten the stone cut. The stone was her only hope …
    Urbano was up there getting the emerald for himself. Why, for God’s sake, had she told him where it was? Either he retrieved it for himself or it was cracked or spoiled by the heat. Then no one would have it. At least if he got it out, she’d have a chance to purloin it from him.
    Long minutes passed. People ran from the building, coughing. She thought she saw Urbano escorting them through the blaze to the front door, but she could not be sure because he always disappeared back into the smoke and flame. Kate pushed herself to her knees. The wait was unbearable. Where was he? No one could survive the inferno the building had become.
    Behind her, she heard a great splash. She turned. People with buckets were taking water from the fountain to throw on the building. Useless.
    Gian Urbano staggered up out of the fountain. People jumped back, shouting in surprise.
    His coat was shredded on his back, his breeches burned away from his thighs, revealing skin red and bubbling everywhere it was not black with smoke or, worse, charred. She felt her stomach turn and scrambled to her feet, a little shaky. Dripping, he climbed with effort over the stone lip of the fountain. How had he gotten by her without her noticing?
    There! He put something in the pocket of his tattered coat. It had to be the jewel.
    She hurried over, resisting the urge to ask if he was all right. “Well, that was foolish.” Her voice sounded tremulous. She cleared her throat. “Did you get it?” That was better.
    He bent over, choking. He smelled like a doused fire, which she suspected he was. But finally he nodded. Well, then …
    She put her arm around him, as though she was assisting him. It was the work of a moment to slip the stone out of its box in his pocket and into her reticule as he caught his breath. He’d never know it was no longer his until he opened the box and found it gone.
    He coughed again, then stood upright. “If it makes you feel better, by all means keep it.”
    She was taken aback. No one had ever caught her out. Ever. She was the best at what she did. She wanted to protest, but she, for once, was at a loss for words.
    “And now,” he gasped, sounding stronger. “Let us away before we run into our friend Elyta once again.”
    “She’ll be back?”
    “I expect so.”
    He