Elizabeth recognized them as soon as she rounded the corner toward home—a man and a woman flanking the front door of her boarding house. Heart thumping in her chest, she resisted the impulse to dart behind a passing steamcoach. A quick movement would draw the hunters’ attention. Dear God. They were so close. In another twenty steps, she would have crossed the busy street and fallen straight into their hands. Without a change in pace, Elizabeth tucked her chin deeper into her woolen scarf, burying the bottom of her face. Acrid smoke billowed behind the steamcoach as it rattled past, the dingy cloud obscuring her view of the hunters—and preventing them from seeing her slip into a tinkerer’s shop. Inside, she pretended to browse the clockwork novelties displayed in the window, stealing glances at the hunters as she wound up a jumping frog. Matthias and Amelia. Almost five years had passed since Elizabeth had seen either of them, but both looked the same as they had when delivering wild beasts to her father’s sanctuary.
