“Come on,” Viola told them, taking hold of Ruby’s wrist. “You need to get out of here. This way.”
The warmth that had coursed through Ruby just a moment before cooled, but her skin was still hot where Viola’s fingers circled her wrist. She tried to jerk away, but Viola held firm and turned to her.
“We need to go. Now,” Viola commanded, glancing to Theo for support.
“She’s right,” he told her, his expression apologetic. “It’s not safe here.”
Safe? What was safety but a cage? Her whole life had been designed to keep her safe—away from trouble, away from harm—away from anything real or important. No. She’d made the decision that she wasn’t interested in “safe” the day they found her father in his study, driven mad by his own obsession with safety. He’d tried to master magic, just as the men in the Order had instructed, and it had mastered him instead. No, not just mastered him, destroyed him—and it had nearly destroyed her entire family along with him.
Now Ruby was interested only in truth, and the truth was that no male journalist in her position would run because of a little scuffle.
“I can’t leave now,” she told her. “I need to find out what happened. The story—”
“It’s not safe here for you,” Viola said, pulling at her arm.
“I don’t care,” Ruby said, her face creased in frustration.
“Ruby—” Theo tried.
“No, Theo. We came to see the fire, and I’m going to see the fire.” She turned to Viola, her veins warming with her determination. “If the flames weren’t natural, I need to know. Don’t you see how important this is?”
“It won’t be important if you’re dead,” Viola said, struggling to stay upright in the tumultuous crowd.
There were worse things than dying, Ruby thought, thinking of her father in the sanitarium upstate before he died finally and her sisters, who sometimes loved their husbands but often did not. And of herself, forced to live stuck in a narrow slice of a life that should be so much bigger, so much wider.
“I think we should listen to Miss Vaccarelli,” Theo told her. The traitor.
But Ruby shook her head and pushed her way farther into the crowd.
She hadn’t gone more than three steps when a man nearby threw a punch that transformed the crowd into a cascading wave of violence. The people around her shoved, some diving into the fray and others desperately trying to retreat, and in that moment, she had the first inkling of fear. She stumbled back, and Theo was there, just as he always was.
Please, his familiar eyes pleaded, and as much as she wanted to be stronger, as much as she wanted to stand firm, she couldn’t deny him. She gave him a nod, and together they followed the path that Viola was cutting through the crowd.
They were nearly there, nearly to the edge of the madness. A few steps more, Ruby thought, and they would be safe. But they’d barely reached the edge of the crush of bodies when the sound of sirens erupted through the air—the police were coming. In response, the crowd surged again, and as Ruby tried to regain her balance, a gunshot exploded over the noise and Theo’s hand let go of hers.
She looked back in time to see him falling, the brightness of his blood blooming like a carnation tucked into his lapel.
HELPLESS
1902—New York
The sound of Ruby’s scream cut through the noise and hit Viola like a dagger to the gut. She turned in time to see Ruby trying to catch Theo as he fell to the ground.
The crowd was scattering now, no longer bothering to fight each other as they tried to get away from the threat. Another gunshot erupted, and then another, as the street descended into madness.
Viola looked around, searching for her brother and Torrio even as she lunged back into the mess of the crowd for Ruby and Theo, but instead of finding the Five Pointers, she realized that the gunshots had come from a different source—two groups of the Chinese tongs were facing off in the midst of the madness. It was as though the entire Bowery had completely lost its mind.
Theo was on the ground, the fine wool of his suit already marred by the dirt of the streets and the blood that was seeping from his chest, and Ruby was there with him, cradling him. The girl’s rosy complexion had gone an almost ghostly white, and her mouth was moving without any words coming out. But Theo was still breathing. His eyes were open, and he looked at Viola. “Get her out of here,” he said, his voice racked with pain.
“No.” Ruby glared at Viola. “I’m not leaving without him.”
All around them was violence, but from the seriousness in Ruby’s expression, Viola knew it would be pointless to argue. “Then you’d best help me get him up,” she told Ruby.
With a sure nod, Ruby helped Viola hoist Theo upright as he groaned in agony. If Viola had expected the willowy-looking girl to falter beneath the weight of him, she was wrong. Ruby’s face was creased with the effort of supporting Theo’s weight as he dropped an arm over each of their shoulders, but Viola admired the girl all the more for her determination.
Even as her heart clenched to see the way Ruby looked at Theo.
By the time they moved him far enough away from the fighting to be safe, Theo was all but deadweight. Still, Viola urged them to go a little farther, until they found the relative safety of a doorway to a tenement that she recognized. Once, the people inside had been loyal to Dolph. She could only hope that they would recognize her as a friend instead of a traitor.
They pulled Theo inside, where the noise of the street was blocked out by the door. One tenant opened his door long enough to determine he wanted nothing to do with whatever was happening in the hallway.
Ruby cradled Theo against herself, patting his cheek softly, but Theo was fading. His eyes were half-open, but Viola could tell by their glassiness that he wasn’t focusing on either one of them. His skin had gone pale as death, and his lips were already tinged with blue.
“No,” Ruby said, her voice nearly breaking when he didn’t respond. “You stay with me, Theodore Barclay. Do you hear me?” There were already tears on her cheeks. “Don’t you dare leave me here alone.”
But Theo didn’t respond. His breathing was shallow, and there was a rattling sound coming from his chest that Viola knew too well. All at once she was in Tilly’s apartment again, helpless to do anything as she watched her friend die.
Except she wasn’t helpless this time.
“Please,” Ruby said, leaning her forehead against Theo’s. Over and over she pleaded, her voice trembling. But Theo didn’t respond.
“Move,” Viola said. Her voice sounded as empty and hopeless as she felt inside, but she could do this one thing, even if it meant exposing what she was. “Move,” she repeated, pushing gently at Ruby.
Ruby looked up at Viola, her eyes filled with tears, and opened her mouth to refuse, but Viola cut her off.
“I can help him,” she said more gently. “But you need to let me.”
Reluctantly, Ruby backed away from Theo, who was still bleeding. He was alive, though. Viola could tell from the blood that continued to flow from the wound in his chest.
She didn’t want to touch him. She didn’t need to touch him, but she knew it would be easier and would work faster if she did, so she placed her hand on his chest, over the wetness of the fabric. His blood was hot and slick beneath her fingers, but she ignored how clearly it spoke to her of dying as she pressed her affinity into him.