Little by little, she found the source of the damage and used her magic to knit him back together, until his body forced the bullet from the wound and into her hand. She didn’t stop or allow herself to look up at Ruby, but continued to direct her affinity toward him, into him, pulling together the spaces that had been ripped apart by the violence of the bullet.
Pulling the life back into him.
He gasped suddenly, and she waited until he opened his eyes to back away. Her hands were sticky with his blood and holding what was left of the bullet. But he would live. He would be fine. And so would Ruby.
Viola looked up, drained but satisfied with what she had managed, only to find shock and horror in Ruby’s eyes.
“It was you,” Ruby whispered before Viola could so much as explain. “It was never John Torrio who was Mageus, was it?”
Viola’s head was shaking of its own accord, even as she wanted to explain, to tell Ruby everything—how she had been ordered to kill her and how she had refused. But something in Ruby’s tone stopped her, a coolness that Viola hadn’t expected.
“You lied to me,” Ruby said. “All this time, you were lying to me.” There was something new in Ruby’s eyes now. “You’re one of them.”
Confusion swamped her. “I—” She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. “But you told me you wanted to destroy the Order,” Viola pleaded.
“Because they depend on magic for their power.” Ruby’s expression was a well of disgust. “Because this city will never be safe as long as unnatural power remains a threat. It destroyed my father—my entire family was nearly destroyed as well because of it,” she said.
“I thought—”
“I can’t believe I didn’t see what you were.” Ruby’s eyes were filled with angry tears. “I should have known, but I let you get close to us. I actually begged you for help,” she said, her words crumbling into a fit of hysterical laughter that broke into a sob. “And look what happened.”
Something about the accusation in Ruby’s voice had Viola’s temper snapping. “I never asked you to come after me. I told you to stay away. I tried to warn you, didn’t I?”
But Ruby wasn’t backing down. “Theo nearly died because of you.”
Theo made a soft sound, but Ruby couldn’t see that he was already improving, not through the haze of hate that shone in her eyes.
Viola staggered to her feet. “I’m not the one who dragged him into that mess today. I’m not the one who refused to leave.” She lashed out at Ruby with all the hurt and anger she felt burning inside of her. It was a flame that would consume her. “That was you, Miss Reynolds. You can blame me all you want. You can hate me for what I am, for something I had no choice in and no ability to refuse, but while you’re telling yourself stories about who and what is evil, you should remember that Theo getting shot is your fault,” Viola said, her voice breaking. “I’m the one who saved him.”
“Get away from me,” Ruby told her, shielding Theo with her body. “From both of us.”
The look in Ruby’s eyes was one Viola had seen too many times before. The combination of loathing and fear struck her clear to the bone. She had spent too long trying to be what she wasn’t, so this time she didn’t fight. She honored Ruby’s demand, and without another word, she turned and left. And she didn’t look back.
DENIAL
1902—New York
Ruby could barely see from the tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t sorry to see the back of Viola Vaccarelli. She wasn’t.
She barely noticed that Theo was moving in her arms until he was already pulling himself upright, rubbing at the place on his chest that was still damp with blood.
“Theo?” His name came out in a rushing gasp as she threw her arms around him.
But he shook her off. “I’m fine,” he told her, his voice still weak. “That was rather harsh, though, don’t you think?” He cocked one brow in her direction, and her heart flipped to see the familiar, endearing look.
“What was?” she asked, already knowing exactly what he was talking about.
He only stared at her.
“She’s one of them, Theo. What did you want me to do?”
“You could have thanked her,” he said gently.
He was right, of course. But she’s one of them.
“She lied to us,” she said instead. She brushed his hair back from his face. “Are you truly all right?”
Taking a deep breath, as though testing out his lungs, he nodded. “I think I am, actually. Are you?” he said, his voice softening.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “I’m not the one who was shot.”
“That isn’t what I mean. You liked her,” he pressed.
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t,” he said gently. “You lie to the whole world, but you’ve never needed to lie to me.”
Ruby felt the burn of tears threatening again, but she shook her head, trying to will them away. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “She is one of them, and you know how I feel about magic. You know what it did to my family.”
Theo didn’t speak for a moment, but then he took her chin and turned her toward him. “Ruby . . .”
“Don’t, Theo.” She shook her head again, not wanting to think about any of it.
“No,” he said, cupping her face. “You are my dearest friend, and because I love you as well as I’ve ever loved anyone, I’m going to tell you something that I should have told you months ago—before you started this quest of yours: Your father made his own choices, love.”
She started to argue, but he stopped her with a single look. They’d been friends since they were both babes in leading strings. No one understood her as he did because no one had ever felt as safe as he had. But now he didn’t look safe. Now he looked like the truth staring at her and forcing her to accept it.
“Yes, the Order might have driven your father deeper into an already unhealthy obsession, but he knew what he was doing when he started, and it had nothing to do with the good of your family or the good of the city. Magic didn’t drive him to his breaking point. Perhaps it helped, but he did that on his own.”
She was shaking her head and wishing that she could block his words, but in her heart—in that place where she had always understood unspoken things—she’d known this all along. She had been so young when her father had lost his mind and tried to attack a friend over some supposed magical object. He’d nearly murdered someone over a trinket, and it had been so much easier for her—for all of them—to blame the magic itself, that thing outside and apart from him. It had been so much more satisfying to hate and fight against that than to accept that her father had been the cause of her family’s misfortunes.
Perhaps he’d dabbled in alchemy and other occult studies because of the Order. But Ruby knew the truth. Her father had always been the sort of man who wanted to be bigger and more important than he was. His membership in the Order wasn’t separate from that. When she was a girl, his boasting and posturing had made it seem as though he were some paragon of manliness . . . like he was untouchable.