The first thing they had to do, of course, was survive.
But there was plenty she could do, while surviving. And the first thing to enter Jenna’s mind was the need to find Ianira Cassondra. The tug of bandages across the side of her head, where Dr. Mindel had shaved the hair close to treat the grazing path of a stranger’s bullet, brought a deep shiver. It hadn’t been one of her father’s hired killers, who’d shot her. A down-timer had done that. A native Londoner who’d saved Jenna’s life, then realized what Ianira could do, with her gift for prophetic clairvoyance. Her erstwhile rescuer had calmly shot Jenna in cold blood, then had disappeared into the drizzling yellow rain with the Cassondra of Ephesus.
Eventually, footsteps thumped up the wooden steps outside her bedroom. Jenna sat up, grateful for the lessening of dizziness from concussion, as Noah Armstrong pushed open the door with her breakfast tray. “Good morning.” The detective smiled.
“Good morning, Noah.” She didn’t know, yet, whether the enigmatic private detective was male or female; but it didn’t really matter. She owed Armstrong her life, several times over. If Aunt Cassie hadn’t hired the best, before the Ansar Majlis had shot Cassie Tyrol dead in New York . . .
“You look better this morning,” Noah smiled, grey eyes warm and friendly. Dresssed in a Victorian woman’s long skirt and a plain brown bodice ten years out of fashion, its perenially high collar obscuring Noah’s throat—and therefore any hint of whether or not Noah possessed an Adam’s apple—the detective wore what might’ve been a wig or real hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of the neck. “Are you hungry?”