“It’s not just a fire,” Morgan said, his voice dangerous. “It was intentional arson, and the flames weren’t normal flames. For more than an hour, the hoses didn’t touch them. The whole thing stank of feral magic.”
“So?” Jack asked, not seeing how some decrepit engine company had any impact on him whatsoever. The whole Bowery could burn for all he cared.
“Do you know how bad this makes us look?” Morgan demanded, thumping at his desk. “How ineffective?”
Jack wondered how he’d ever been afraid of the old man. With all his bluster, it was clear how weak he was. True power didn’t need to rage. It could quietly burn, consuming a place from the inside out.
“It only makes the Order look weak if you and the rest of the Inner Circle fail to answer it,” he said. With the morphine in his veins, he was relaxed, his brain clear and sure. “If anything, this only helps our cause. It gives the Order the ammunition it needs to move against the maggots once and for all.”
“Maybe, but if Tammany starts making trouble, it could mean problems for the Conclave. They’re already starting to make overtures about how powerful they’ve become in the city,” Morgan said. “The other day, Barclay said he heard one of them bragging about how, by the end of the year, the Order would be a nonentity.”
“Who cares what one of them said—”
“I care,” Morgan roared. “The Inner Circle cares. We have three other Brotherhoods coming into the city later this year for the Conclave, and I will not allow the Order to be seen as weak. The Conclave is just the beginning. It will determine who has power in the century to come—and who doesn’t. It’s bad enough that those damn thieves took the artifacts and the Ars Arcana. It’s worse that because of you, others suspect that we’ve been weakened. If the Order doesn’t claim our spot at the head of the united Brotherhoods now, New York will lose in stature and in power. Right now we have the president’s ear. If we master the Conclave, we could have the entire country in the palm of our hands.”
“I understand,” Jack said. Because he did understand. He simply didn’t have any intention of allowing the old farts that ruled the Inner Circle to be the ones who held that power.
“I doubt you do,” Morgan snapped, “but if you screw this up, you will. Some of Tammany’s people are coming to this gala, so it’s essential that we show them exactly how powerful we are.”
“We will,” Jack told him, suppressing the amusement that he felt stirring inside of him. At the gala, the entire city would know exactly how powerful each of them was, and Jack would be the one on top.
ONCE MORE
1902—New York
With a knife in her hand, Viola could pierce a man’s heart from forty paces. Because he wasn’t an idiot, Paul didn’t often allow her to have knives. Still, as she listened to her brother drone on about her most recent failings, she wondered what damage she would be able to do with the wooden spoon she was currently holding. Certainly, she should be able to do something to shut him up.
“I know, Paolo,” she said, her hands on her hips. “But I don’t want to go with John Torrio.”
“Why not?” Paul asked, his brows bunching. “You think you’re too good for him? Or is there some other reason, some other person I should know about?”
“I don’t like him, that’s why,” she said, practically spitting the words.
He lifted his hand to slap her, but she only smiled. “No,” he said, gritting his teeth as he lowered his hand. “We can’t have you bruised for the gala.”
“I still don’t see why I should get trussed up for that maiale to drool over. I don’t trust him, Paolo, and neither should you. He’ll cut you in the back the second he can.”
“You think I don’t know that?” her brother asked. “Why do you think I want you to go with him?”
“I know why you want me to go with him. You don’t trust me still.”
“I don’t trust anyone, including Torrio. I need my blade at my side walking into that gala, looking polished and sharp. You’ll go with the Fox, and you’ll do your duty to me and to the family, or you won’t have a place here anymore.” His mouth drew up on one side, exposing his crooked eyetooth. “But don’t forget, it’s not just Tammany’s patrols or the boys in the neighborhood you have to watch your back for. I have friends in higher places now too. I’m sure my friend Mr. Grew would like to know where one of the thieves who stole the Order’s treasures could be found. I’m sure they’d be even more grateful if I handed her over myself.”
She spit on the floor at his feet. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said. “You’d be dead before you could open your mouth.”
“So many threats, sister. And yet here I stand. Still holding your life in my hands.” He stalked toward her. “I took you back into the protection of the family because Mamma asked me. Because she doesn’t see you for what you are. She never did. You don’t think I remember the way she and Papà used to coddle you, leaving me to clean up your messes? All because you were born a monster—a freak. You always thought you were better than the rest of us, as though the rules of this world didn’t matter to you. But now you see. Now the rules are my rules. The city is my city.”
She let out a bark of laughter. “Those men use you, Paolo. Tammany and the men in the Order both. They don’t respect you or your money. It’s too new. And it’s too dirty for their liking.”
His expression was thunderous. “Maybe they think they use me, but my money’s as good as anyone’s, and the country is changing, sister. Soon the age of their purses won’t matter as much as what they contain, and I aim to have more.”
“Paolo—”
“You go with Torrio, or you don’t go at all, capisce?”
Viola clenched her teeth to keep from saying all the things she was feeling. If she didn’t need a way into the gala, she would have tried her luck with the spoon. “I understand,” she said, turning back to the pot she had been stirring before he’d interrupted her.
“I’ll have a dress sent to you. Be ready by six, eh?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to say more, but the minute he was out of the kitchen, she launched the spoon across the room, right at the place where his head had been moments before. She’d do his bidding just one more time and put up with John Torrio’s wandering eyes and too-free hands. But only because she needed her brother and his men to get close to the Order. After that, all bets were off.
MAROONED
1902—New York
Logan Sullivan was cold, hungry, and in desperate need of a shower, but at least he was free. In the days since he’d been taken off guard in that woman’s apartment, he’d been following her. Rather, he’d been following the stone, and he’d been collecting information.
Now, standing across from the Bella Strega, the witch on the sign stared down at him, as though daring him to run.
Maybe he should. The person Professor Lachlan was in the past wasn’t the man Logan had known and come to think of as a mentor—as a father figure of sorts. The kid was barely sixteen and as cagey and dangerous as a feral cat. Going back to him now might be the worst idea he’d ever had.