"It really takes a lot -especially in our line of work- for me to feel alive...but you do that for me, Vivienne."
When psychically gifted Vivienne Salvatore is forced to flee to London from her home up north, she stumbles upon a "prestigious" agency...
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Waking up next to Lockwood wasn't something I ever thought I'd do, let alone twice in the same week.
There was something so intimate about seeing him this way; his dark eyes shut, one of his arms draped over my waist, his expression plain and soft.
In his sleep, he didn't shield himself with the same mask he wore around in the day: a facade of a man much older and more mature than himself, capable of running his own agency and keeping a roof over the heads of three others.
Now, alone with me, he was himself.
He was the seventeen-year-old boy who drank orange juice with pulp because it made him feel like a whale. The boy who wore pink socks everyday because it was secretly his favourite colour. The boy who made up stupid names for rapier moves just to impress me, and was sure I didn't know.
He was the Lockwood I knew and admired.
This display of vulnerability is what makes me feel a slight pang of guilt for what I'm about to do...the same thing I'd been lying awake in bed beside him trying to restrain myself from doing for the past ten minutes:
Steal the ring.
Lockwood's bedroom was only downstairs, and I knew him well enough to know that his long, stylish coat —which held the keys to the silver-glass container trapping the ring— had likely been carelessly tossed over the back of a chair in his room after we'd returned home late last night.
With that, I carefully pull myself from his arms, making sure not to wake him. I step over each creaky floorboard and start down the stairs.
Like most mornings, I can hear Lucy and George bickering on the floor below, down in the kitchen.
I'm willing to bet serious money that Lucy's done something purely for the sake of pissing him off.
I slip into Lockwood's bedroom and —sure enough— the coat is exactly where I guessed: thrown over the back of the chair at his desk.
I reach a hand into the pocket of Lockwood's coat, and feel the cold metal of the key meet my fingers.
I grasp it firmly in my fist and leave the room, taking care to avoid the creaky floorboards. Before I sneak off to the basement, I peak my head through the kitchen door.
