Fiona scowled at him.
“You always were an arse, Tommy,” Ian said.
“Aye, ye’d know now, would ye no’?” Tommy reached into the pocket of his scrubby jeans and fished out a cigarette and a lighter.
“Goodbye, Tommy.” Ian nodded and took her arm.
“Oy, wait.” He blew out a puff of smoke. “We’re running a con tomorrow night. Could use a hand like yours. Interested?”
“Nay.”
“What, too fancy now, are ye? All yer money and yer women and yer standards. Too good for what ye came from? Ye were the best of us, lad. No’ a moral in sight and always brought in the biggest haul.”
“It’s been over a hundred and fifty years, Tommy. I’m gone from that life.”
“Ach, ye know I doona see time like that. Come on then, gotta pretty pay day in it fer ye if ye join us. Just an evening’s work.”
“Nay, Tommy. Goodbye.” Ian pulled on her arm until she turned and followed him. He looked back over his shoulder. “Be careful. Stay out of sight of the university.”
She glanced back to see Tommy shrug, then amble off down the street.
“Who was that?”
“Old mate. A walker I grew up with.”
A walker. She craned her neck around to see if she could catch sight of him again, but he’d disappeared. So that’s what he’d meant about not seeing time, and why he’d asked Ian to join him in a con after so many years apart. Walkers could travel back and forth through time. But if they weren’t careful—and it didn’t look like Tommy was the careful sort—it scrambled their brains until they couldn’t quite tell when things had happened. In Tommy’s mind, he might have been with Ian yesterday.
“What did you mean, stay out of sight of the university?”
Ian shrugged. “Doona want to see Tommy anymore, but doona want him to end up in prison either.”
“You were close?”
“No one was close in our crowd.”
“Then why hang out together?”
“No choice. Canna survive on your own on the streets when you’re a Mythean orphan.”
They reached the wide blue door to the building that housed their rented flat. He pushed it open and waited for her to precede him inside. They climbed the darkened stairwell in silence, but she couldn’t get her mind off the thought of Ian as a child, trying to survive on the streets of Edinburgh.
It was dim in the flat, the sun close to setting and no longer shining through the little windows. It was still midafternoon, but the sun set early this time of year. She flipped the lights on and tried to stow her curiosity about Ian. What they had between them—what little it was—couldn’t just be sexual attraction if she was worried about his childhood. She liked him. And that was bad. He had to go back to prison when this was all over. There was no other choice.
So she had to stop worrying about him.
But she couldn’t help herself from following him over to the window and looking out. Her palms positively itched to wrap around his waist from behind. Crazy thought.
She clenched them and stood next to him, peering out at the near-darkened street below. Though night fell early in December, they’d have to wait until the street quieted down to break in. It had started to rain, a pathetic sort of drizzle that made the yellow lamps glow eerily and the road gleam darkly. A few people rushed out of the rain. But what about the people that had nowhere to go?
That would have been him as a child, in a time that was far harsher than this.
“Will you tell me about it?” she asked.
“About what?”
“What it was like to be alone out there back then. With Tommy and the others.”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a long time past, lassie. Let’s no’ worry about it.”