“OH, LOOK,” ADELAIDE said frostily. “A steam bus. How very interesting.”
She was nodding across the street as we shrugged off the theatre’s cozy warmth and stepped outside into the cold. Only pockets of attendees from the packed audience remained huddled on the sidewalk out front. Most had dispersed while we were backstage. I looked about, disappointed that Dickens was not waiting for us with guardsmen; I’d given him the address in the note I sent over.
I cast anxious looks about for Sikes, Shen, or any suspicious-looking types, then peered at the steel contraption that had arrested Miss Owen’s interest. “The Silver Flash”—painted along its sterling flanks—was built to hold twelve, but the so-called engineers of these ungodly devices routinely crammed in twice as many to increase their p
