“They might already have the Guard in place by then,” Maggie said, worrying her lip.
“Right. Let’s go back a few then. Once we’re in, I can set us to the time we need,” he told her. “If we can get into the building while it’s still daylight, we can go forward again, until just before the Prophet arrives. That way, we can be ready for them.”
Esta caught Harte’s eye. “It will be fine,” she said, understanding his reluctance.
But his jaw was tense and his eyes wary. “What about the stones we have?” he asked in a low voice so the others couldn’t hear.
“I’ll have to leave them here. In the wagon?” she asked.
“You really think that’s wise?”
She didn’t. It felt like abandoning part of herself to think about leaving the stones behind. But if North could take them back without her risking the cuff . . . “I don’t see that we have any choice if we want to save Julien. We have to try to stop this if we can.”
“What about in the wall?” he asked. “They’ll be less likely to be found if Ruth comes for the wagon.”
He was right. While Maggie was gathering her supplies from the back of the wagon, Harte and Esta found a place close to the wall of the fairgrounds to hide the stones. They buried them, and then Harte used one of Maggie’s devices to set a trap. Anyone who might disturb it would get an unpleasant surprise.
“Come on over here.” North motioned them around the corner from the gates. “Now hold on.” Maggie reached out to take his arm first, and then Esta did the same. Harte hesitated, clearly dreading the thought of traveling through time again.
“If you’re afraid . . . ,” North teased.
Harte took hold of North, who only smirked as he clicked the watch shut.
THE ALCHEMIST
1902—New York
Jack took a minute to accept the applause as his due. It rolled over him, a benediction for all he’d suffered and all the plans he’d worked so diligently to put in place. The lights of the ballroom twinkled and shone, winking at him as the morphine coursed through his veins, clearing his mind. Opening him to the possibilities this moment held.
He lifted his hands, gratified to see the crowd follow his directive as he took control of the room and began the evening’s festivities.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot tell you what it means to me to be here tonight, honoring the Order’s essential work and marking our commitment to the city we love so dearly. I know that for some of us, the past weeks have been a trial. Our newspapers have not always been kind to our esteemed organization or the work that we do to keep our city safe. But tonight we prove the naysayers wrong. Tonight we show that the power of logic and science, the enlightened study of hermetic arts, will always be far superior to the craven wildness of the old magic, which once threatened the very essence of civilization.
“Tonight, on behalf of the Order and their Inner Circle, I am honored to present our tableaux vivants.”
The orchestra started into their first series of chords, a minor-key piece that sounded as dangerous as Jack himself felt, and the attention of the audience only bolstered him more.
“Without further ado, our first tableau, a painting by the esteemed Joseph Wright, The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorous.”
With a flourish of his arms, the curtains on the first of the stages pulled back, revealing the dimly lit scene. Two men sat in the background, leaning over a desk as though doing calculations. In the foreground, J. P. Morgan himself played Wright’s alchemist. His uncle was wearing a false beard and his expression was enraptured over the enormous glass flask held on an iron pedestal. Genuflecting before the altar of science, Morgan was dressed in an ancient-looking robe, tied with a sash.
The audience applauded politely, murmuring with amusement to see who was in the first tableau.
“A charming scene, to be sure,” Jack told them, anticipation racing alongside the morphine in his blood. “But we can do better, don’t you think?”
The crowd murmured and rustled, but he ignored them as he walked over to the tableau. His uncle and the other actors kept their positions, frozen as though they were living, breathing statues. He hadn’t warned them, hadn’t told them what he would do, because he wanted their shock as well.
“Those who live in the shadows of our city, like rats infesting the very structure of the society we have built here, depend upon feral magic. Weak, unruly power. But see what an enlightened study of the occult arts can accomplish.” He lifted his hands and sank into the looseness of the morphine in his veins, and the words he’d practiced in the privacy of his room came from his lips as though he had been born to say them.
The orchestra went silent and the crowd tittered, but Jack barely heard them. He was calling to something bigger, something deeper. Against his chest, the Book felt positively hot.
Suddenly, the chandeliers flickered and the lights wavered. Then, as though they were some sort of fairy creatures, the light from the chandeliers flew toward the dark liquid in the flask his uncle knelt before and set it aglow.
The audience went completely silent as the room went dark except for the glowing flask in the tableau, and then, all at once, they burst into thunderous applause. His blood thrummed, hot and sure. And he had only just begun.
A BRUSH OF MAGIC
1902—New York
The lights flickered back on, and Viola felt the chill of the unnatural magic seep out of the air. She shuddered slightly. “We need to get her now,” she repeated to Theo.
He didn’t need to tell her that it was impossible. She could see for herself that there was no way to get through the crowd and behind the curtain without everyone seeing her, including Paul and Torrio. When the curtain opened, Ruby would be exposed. Torrio would know the truth of Viola’s duplicity, and neither of them would ever be safe again.
Vaguely, she felt the warm brush of magic nearby. At first she dismissed it as more of Jack’s tricks, but when it didn’t immediately dissipate with the cold power that had flooded the room, she had another thought. Her hand went instinctively to the slit she’d made in her skirts, to take her knife from its sheath and, in a single fluid motion, she held it up to the empty air. “Show yourself.”
“Viola?” Theo sounded as though he thought she’d lost her mind, but she ignored him and moved toward the warm energy until it grew denser.
She pressed her knife forward, and in an instant Jianyu was there.
“Viola,” he said, his voice every bit as nervous as he should have been.
She didn’t lower her blade. Nibsy had indicated that Jianyu could have been one of the traitors, and while she didn’t trust the conniving rat, she also didn’t trust Dolph’s spy, who’d been suspiciously absent for these long weeks. “So you return. Where have you been?”
Jianyu glanced down at the blade at the same time that Theo stepped toward her. But she glared at Theo and then turned her attention back to Jianyu. “You were there on the bridge,” she said.
“I was—”
“You weren’t any help at all then.” She moved the blade closer.
“I was with Darriga—”
The blade went to his throat. “That traitor?”