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He smiled his crooked, unsettling smile—as though he knew secrets he not only would never tell you but would also use to play tricks on you, should you give him reason. That you could never be certain of what he would do next or what he was thinking was one of the things Clara loved about him—that and the fact that despite his unpredictable nature, she could always be sure of his love for her.
    Or she had been, until today.
    â€œYou know, dear heart, that I prefer you to make appointments before coming to see me,” he said, shaking out soot from his clothes as he approached her. “I was in the middle of a most precarious project.”
    She waited until he was close enough to touch—and then, giving in to the fury swelling within her, she turned on him, shoving him against the wall.
    He nearly fell. His dragon-headed cane went flying, clattering against the stone floor as he stumbled to regain his footing. Normally, even with her extensive training, Clara would not have been able toknock her tall, lean Godfather off his feet, but she had surprised him, and her rage and confusion gave her unnatural strength.
    The shelves behind him rattled; the figurine of a masked wolf dancing on its hind legs crashed to the ground and shattered; a clockwork soldier fell and cracked open, spilling his gears and shooting tiny pellets from his gun. Overhead, lanterns quivered like roosting bats. Godfather’s birds—crows, pigeons, a tiny hawk; animals had always had an affinity for him—squawked and flapped on their perches near the thrumming back room, into which Clara had never been allowed. The familiar taste of spice, sweat, and tools flooded her mouth.
    â€œClara, what in God’s name—?”
    â€œI snuck into Patricia Plum’s office today.”
    Godfather paused, blinking. “You mean you snuck into Rivington Hall?”
    â€œThat is the location of her office, yes.”
    â€œI have warned you—”
    â€œYes, you have warned me not to go there without you, even though the whole point of your teaching me how to do things like sneak into Rivington Hall is, I assume, so I can actually do things like sneak into Rivington Hall and not, in fact, to fill my head with useless covert skills.” Her heart pounded in her ears. This wasn’t the exhilaration of a nice, healthy evening of sparring; this was a new exhilaration, a furious one. “I was looking for answers, you see, because no one else would give me any.”
    Godfather interrupted her quietly. “The ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was today, wasn’t it? That’s why you did this.”
    She glared at him, irrationally cross that he should know her so well. “I snuck into her office and found something of great interest.”
    With that, Clara reached into her coat pocket, withdrew the paper onto which she had copied the markings on her mother’s corpse, and thrust it into Godfather’s face.
    She watched his expression as he took in the sketched symbols—thesymbols, Clara had realized in Plum’s office, that covered the hard metal body of Godfather’s statue by the hundreds. Godfather’s skin, pale from too many days hunched indoors over his toys, grew even paler.
    â€œAh.” Clara felt a terrible, grim satisfaction. “You recognize them, do you?”
    His voice was steady, even cool, but he would not look at her. “Of course I do.”
    â€œAs do I.” She nodded toward the statue. Its markings repulsed her with their new, sinister meaning, yet the sight of the statue itself still heated her blood. It had always fascinated her, even at a young age; she had made a strange, secret game of talking to it and imagining how it would answer her. But in the months following that night, when she had learned against the planes of its body how to melt into the shadows, her fascination had evolved into something more, something she couldn’t describe. Something,