The trouble started, as it so often does, with tea.
Not just any tea—Royal Jasmine Sunrise, brewed exclusively for Lady Everlyn Frox, Dowager Countess of Quincevine and the realm's most notorious collector of exotic gems, salacious rumors, and mounted ducks.
She was presiding at her preferred corner table in the Lady Pomegranate Tea Room—a place where the cakes were so light they needed leashing—when her jewel-bright eyes caught a glint near the door.
A brooch.
It sparkled smugly on the cloak of a flushed young lord attempting to flirt with a florist. He laughed, tilting upward to unpin it—utterly unaware that the stunning blue stone at its center had last been seen at the neckline of Lady Gildore's state gown.
Lady Frox gasped.
Her teacup clinked.
The room fell silent.
"That—" she declared, sinking her parasol into the floor like a judge passing sentence, "is the Star of Ambré."
The florist blinked. "The… star of what now?"
Lady Frox rose, thunder cracking in her wake.
"That gem disappeared at the Duchess of Gildore's masked ball. Two nights ago." Her eyes narrowed. "You there. What's your name?"
The nobleman paled. "P-Percival Fogsby."
"You stole it?" she snapped.
"I purchased it! From a very respectable-looking merchant woman with six shawls and a rattling cough!"
Lady Frox turned sharply. "Get the constable."
Meanwhile, in the Loft—
Thistle sprawled across a pile of cushions, counting coins between fits of laughter while Sir Pecks-a-Lot snored into an empty pastry box. Pips was using a gold coin as a monocle, and Nibs had fallen asleep mid–sausage roll.
All was glorious.
Until someone from the alley hurled a broadsheet through the window, followed by a shouted, "You're in the paper!"
Thistle snatched it up, brushing croissant flakes from the headline:
"Countess Frox Identifies Stolen Jewel at Afternoon Tea: Constables on Alert for Disguised Swindlers."
She stared at the headline, then at the accompanying sketch. It resembled a rotten potato in a corset—but the dagger-shaped beauty mark on the cheek was unmistakable.
"Oh bother," she muttered. "That's me."
Sir Pecks-a-Lot blinked blearily. "What'd I miss?"
"We may have inadvertently sold a very traceable jewel to a walking scandal factory."
Nibs stirred. "Do you suppose she remembers my silver teeth?"
"She remembers everything. She once identified a missing earring by the emotional weight of the pearl alone."
Pips made a strangled sound. "We're doomed. She'll call the Royal Collector's Guild. They can smell smuggled rubies through a brick wall."
Thistle paced, muttering. "Then we've no choice. We have to get that brooch back before it ends up in the evidence vault."
Nibs blinked. "So… we're stealing back the thing we already stole?"
Thistle grinned. "Exactly. Tonight, we become reverse thieves."
Sir Pecks-a-Lot groaned. "I'm not wearing the mustache again. I ate it last time."
"Fine," she said, already rummaging in the Emergency Costumes Box. "But you're getting a cape."
He narrowed his eyes. "Feathered. And dramatic."
She tossed him a bolt of crimson velvet.
"Let's go reclaim what's technically ours."