Ticker by Lisa Mantchev

hug.
    Reveling in the embrace, I wished it would never end, but Violet interrupted, “Is your RiPA turned off? I sent you half a dozen messages!” The ride in the SkyDart had painted her cheeks pink.
    I unstrapped the device from my leg garter; sure enough, one of the switches was bent at a ninety-degree angle. I handed it to Nic with a weary, “Must have happened in the catacombs.”
    “The verdict came in,” he said. “They found Warwick guilty, then there was some sort of explosion.”
    “Quite the jolt it caused, too. The noise of it was certainly impressive.” Removing a glove, Sebastian made a great show of tugging at his ear.
    “I know. I heard the reports coming in afterward.” I couldn’t help but picture it: the courthouse exploding, the city descending into chaos. “Warwick claimed responsibility for it.”
    Pulling me to the nearest chaise, Nic forced me to sit. I expected harsh words from him, but he slipped an arm about me and let me rest my head on his shoulder. In my recollection, five minutes was the longest we’d gone without arguing since Dimitria died.
    “Apparently,” I said softly, “all it takes for us to get along is two explosions and a double kidnapping.” We’d already lost two members of our family, and the prospect of losing another two sickened me. As hastily as I could, I told the others about Mama’s work with the Ferrum Viriae. “But Marcus didn’t have a chance to explain what sort of machine it is.”
    “I suspected she had a new project,” Nic said.
    “I didn’t,” I said with a large serving of guilt. “I just assumed all those appointments were with more psychics.”
    When Nic squeezed my hands in unspoken sympathy, his thumbs brushed over my iron bracelets. He scrutinized them by firelight. “What the blanketed codfish are these?”
    I repressed the urge to salute. “Tesseraria Farthing, reporting for duty.”
    “We left you alone for a half an hour and you enlisted?” Intrigued, Sebastian peered at my wrists. “If you wanted a new bit of jewelry, Penny, all you needed to do was ask.”
    “It’s not what it looks like,” I started to argue, before realizing it was exactly what it looked like.
    “I need a cup of tea,” Violet said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You just put a crease on my brain.”
    “I don’t think there’s enough tea in the world to fix this,” I said.
    “I’m not taking any sass off you, Penelope Farthing,” Violet snapped back. “If I’d known where a box of sticky buns was leading me today, I never would have messaged you this morning.”
    “If you hadn’t, I would have been on time to pick up Nic, and he wouldn’t have been caught in the factory explosion,” I countered with an equal amount of heat.
    Perhaps as a result of sparring with twelve siblings, Violet’s hands curled into fists when she answered, “I won’t be blamed for that. You’d have been late anyway.”
    As we glared at each other, Sebastian strolled over to the refreshments cart, poured a cup of tea for Violet, and thrust it into her hands as a distraction. “My lady.” He then poured several fingers of brandy into a cut-glass tumbler for himself and took the conversation around an abrupt but welcome corner. “Just where were you when the courthouse bomb went off, Tesseraria?”
    “In Marcus’s office, in the middle of a mutual interrogation, and don’t call me that.” I fiddled with the bracelets, unused to the feel of them upon my wrists. They seemed to contain all the weight of my worry, dragging at my arms, a constant reminder of Mama and Papa and their precarious situation. “He took me down to the Communications Center. There’s news coming in from all over the city. People got hurt. They’re still counting the number of injured . . . and the dead.”
    “The verdict is ridiculous,” Nic said with raw vehemence. Head bowed, he attacked my broken RiPA with a series of jerks, bending bits back into place and tightening screws