The Wolf with the Iron Jaw (Elysium #1)

Chapter Ten

 Trinket woke with a start two nights later when someone knocked on her bedroom door.

"Trinket, are you awake?" Booker asked from the hallway.

She blinked against the darkness, her vision blurry as she fumbled for a candle and matches. After managing to strike up a flame, she threw on her dressing gown and opened the door. Booker, fully dressed and with a lit candle in his hand, flashed her an impish grin. This was clearly not an emergency.

"Can I help you, Mr. Larkin?" she asked, glancing back at the clock in her room. It was only a little after three in the morning.

"It just stopped snowing."

"So? It's been snowing all night."

"Exactly. It's been snowing all night while everyone's been sleeping, and now it has stopped snowing in the early hours of the morning while people are still sleeping."

She shook her head slowly. "I don't know what you want from me, Booker."

"There is fresh powder on the streets. No one will be up walking about, so any tracks that some creature may leave as it wanders around in search of food and shelter will be left undisturbed for those interested in finding them."

Ah. Now she understood. "All right, but why do you need me?"

"You're my assistant, aren't you?"

She opened her mouth to object, but her head was foggy with sleep, and she couldn't put a coherent sentence together.

"Besides," he continued, "I need your keen observation skills. You may catch things that I would otherwise miss."

She rubbed her eyes and sighed. "Give me five minutes to get dressed."

He beamed victoriously as she closed the door on him. She quickly set her candle down so she could pull one of her work dresses out of the wardrobe and clumsily plait her hair into a braid. After lacing up her boots, she pinched out the candle and opened the door to find Booker impatiently drumming his fingers against the wall.

"Let's be off," he said as he linked his arm with hers and pulled her towards the stairs.

~

The temperature had dropped significantly. Despite her thick coat wrapped tightly around her, the chill still seeped into Trinket's bones. She kept rubbing her arms in an effort to warm herself but to no avail. The night was silent yet deafening. Something about snowy nights made silence loud. Every tiny noise could be heard from even a great distance. If the Wolf was out there, they were sure to hear it.

"Look at this. Not a single mark on any of it," Booker said as he scanned the freshly coated street.

"I wouldn't think so this early in the morning," she said, gazing at a nearby shop, its dark display window covered in frost.

There was a clatter up ahead.

She and Booker stopped in their tracks. It was impossible to tell if it had been close by or farther off. Trinket's eyes darted about, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Of course, once finding something, the real task would be deciding if it was actually there or not.

"We should stick together," Booker whispered.

"I had no intentions of setting off on my own," she said.

He pressed a hard object into her palm. "Take this."

She furrowed her brow and glanced down.

A pistol.