The Price {Completed}

Chapter Twenty-Three

In the cold gray of dawn I was awoken by a gentle knock on my door. I swam out of a dead sleep, surfacing in a soft and lovely bed. It had the clean feeling that things in a guest room had. They had no memories attached to them, only brief glimpses into lives that the next guest would never know about.

I slid out of bed and went to answer the door with a blanket over my shoulders. Ferdinand stood on the other side, his face still creased with sleep. He stifled a yawn. "We should head out as soon as we can, to avoid anyone on the streets," he whispered.

"Give me a moment. I'll meet you downstairs."

I closed the door and began to get ready for the day. There was no nightgown in the room, so I'd slept in my clothes, which meant I only had to splash my face with water and refasten my hair before wandering down the stairs to the front hall.

The Padvas were not yet awake, and the house didn't seem like it was either. Everything hung in heavy silence, with even the clocks seeming to quiet their voices. Ferdinand stood by the front door, his eyes trained on a crack between the curtains of a nearby window. I walked to his side, resting a hand on his elbow. He startled until he saw it was only me, at which point he pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it in my hand. I unwrapped the cloth wrapping to see an iced bun, cold but still fresh enough that the glaze hadn't yet become stone-hard. I grinned and took a bite.

Ferdinand unlocked the door and we stepped outside into the hard winter's morning. He hid the key in a flower pot under one of the windows, and we were on our way.

As we walked wherever it was that Ferdinand was headed, I glanced around at the empty streets. Normally, at this hour, the servants were just getting up and going about their business. There should have soon been cabs and horses coming and going, and those who liked to take the air walking on the sidewalks. Yet, none of that happened on this day. We were eerily alone on the roads when we should have been just two of many. I felt uneasy with the complete abandonment of the city. Somehow it felt like living underwater, blocked off from everything else. There were no noises or voices, not one person walked to work or passed us on the way to buy the morning's groceries. I commented on it to Ferdinand, who looked grim.

"It took me a while to even find a baker who was open in order for me to get breakfast," he said, just as I took another bite of the iced bun. I looked down at it as I chewed. "He wanted me out as soon as possible, so when the buns were done he gave them to me and went into the back without another word. Other than you, he's the only other person I've seen today."

"I wonder where they all are?" I asked, shivering.

"Hiding. Our worlds are about to change forever, and maybe if we all keep locked up in our homes it might stave it off for a few more days," Ferdinand said. "I doubt it, though. I think this festering boil is on its way to finally bursting."

"That is a disgusting analogy," I said. Ferdinand looked at me in surprise, blinking once before beginning to laugh.

I smiled and slid my arm through his so that we walked down the empty path side by side.

I didn't even think to ask where we were headed until I recognized the buildings rising around us. We'd been walking for about an hour, the sun slowly rising enough to burn away the mist of the dawn, and I stared at the lodging homes of the middleclass that sat in uniform rows of brick and white shutters. My steps faltered as the Lennox Company's boarding house rose into view, just as I remembered it before the attack on our show. I wondered if anyone was home, and the thought chilled my blood for some reason.

"Come on, I want to get your things," he said, pulling me forward with a tug on my arm.

"What do you mean?" I asked, letting him walk me to the door where he tried the locked handle.