Read Online Cogling by Jordan Elizabeth - Free Book Online Page B

Could he escape from them? Harrison fought for a tear, but his eyes remained dry.



Here we meet, here we see.
    hank the Saints we don’t have to put up with that train’s sway and growl anymore.”
    Edna staggered when she touched the solid ground of the station and Ike pulled her closer to his side. People crushed them from all directions, exiting and entering.
    Edna wrinkled her nose against the barrage of engineered garlic and unwashed bodies. “Just like getting on the trolley back home.” Home, with Harrison. She’d trade all to live a penniless, frozen life with him where they stuck together always, where she wouldn’t have to look farther than her right or left to see him.
    “Keep the shawl over your head,” Ike said.
    “I’ve never worn something stolen before.” She stared at the ground underfoot where dust clung to her skirt and boots.
    “
I
stole it, you didn’t. Don’t let it weigh down your conscience.”
    “I’m an accomplice. That doesn’t make it better.” Scowling, she glanced at her bag clasped under his arm. Since their luggage was heavy and they had to move fast, he carried it. “Don’t make off with my stuff. I’ve got all the money. You won’t get far with my clothes.”
    Ike snorted as he edged her into the station. A large sign erected over the open door read
Kincaid,
with a clock hanging beneath it. Benches surrounded a pot-bellied stove, with faded maps nailed to the whitewashed walls. A man stood at the gated window, paying for a ticket. Calico patches decorated the back of his overalls. The other occupant, a girl, sat in the back staring at her lap.
    Ike thrust the bag into Edna’s arms. “Take a seat while I talk to the ticket seller, and try to figure out where we go from here. Keep your head down so we aren’t recognized.”
    “We wouldn’t have to worry if you weren’t a cheat and a thief.” Edna glared at him until he fell into line behind the man at the window. Of the millions who lived in Moser City, she had to find
him
to help her. Harrison was going to laugh when he discovered she relied on a thief.
    The floorboards creaked beneath her boots as she walked to the back of the station. Grime clung to the cracks in the wood and nails poked up. The girl, around eight years in age, lifted her head to glance at Edna through the fan of her dark lashes. Sighing, she looked back down at a book clasped in her hands. The corners of the pages curled around the faded print.
    “Hello.” Edna sat at the other end of the bench. “I got a brother around your age. His name’s Harrison.” He would’ve done something silly, such as poke the girl’s shoulder and cross his eyes to make her laugh.
    When she got him back, she would take him for a train ride anywhere he wanted to go.
    “You talk funny.” The girl rubbed her pert nose. “Your words don’t sound like mine.”
    “I have an accent. Huh.” Edna opened her mouth to tell the girl she came from Moser City, but the men from the train might know that.
    Sitting in a train station wouldn’t bring her closer to her brother. Edna tapped her heels against the floor; there had to be something to do other than wait. “Have you ever heard of coglings?”
    “That have to do with clocks?”
    Sort of, if the pocket watch counted. “It’s…a tale about the hags in the swamps.”
    The girl bared her yellow teeth. “Those filthy things. Best thing the king could do would be to burn the lot of them. That’s what you gotta do with hags. Burn ‘em up.”
    “Have you heard that hags steal children, leave changelings in their place? That’s what a cogling is.”
    “Don’t doubt it’d be something they’d do.” She snorted. “My name’s Annie, by the by.”
    “I’m… Eddie.” She used the nickname Harrison gave her when he was a baby.
    “That’s a boy’s name.”
    “It’s short for something longer.” Edna glanced at Ike where he spoke to the ticket seller, waving his arms.
    “That your man?” Annie