“Cela Johnson?” he asked, sure that he could not be right. It was not possible that the girl he had been searching for was here, in the Strega.
Cela gave him a small nod, the only affirmation he would have for now, it seemed.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, trying to focus on her. His head ached so badly that it looked as though there were two of her.
“Saving you,” she said with a tone that told him he should have figured that much out on his own. “Or can’t you tell?” She was already working at the ropes around his wrist with her nimble fingers.
“But how did you find me?” he asked, wincing at the way she tugged at the ropes, jarring him.
“I followed you from the theater.”
His wrists were free and she started on the ropes at his ankles. He should have helped her, but the very thought of movement made the room spin.
“But why—”
“Look, Mr. Lee—”
“Jianyu,” he said, not wanting her to use a name that wasn’t truly his.
“Mr. Jianyu—”
“Simply Jianyu. No mister.”
She made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. “We don’t have time for this. They’re going to figure out pretty quick that the fire I started isn’t any real threat. We need to be gone by then.”
Even through his pain, that surprised him. “You started the fire?”
“You have a lot of questions,” she muttered as the last of the ropes came untied. “That’s fine, because I have some of my own. But all that is gonna have to wait. We need to move. Can you walk okay?”
Jianyu gave her a sure nod, hoping it was not a lie as he got to his feet, using the table to steady himself. His eyes caught on a piece of newsprint sitting there. It had been cut unevenly, and when his eyes caught on the headline, he understood why. Crumpling the paper, he stuffed it into his tunic pockets.
“Come on,” Cela urged, already at the door.
On unsteady feet, he followed, but the specter of smoke that signaled the burning of the Strega hung heavy in the air.
INTO THE FIRE
1902—New York
The moment Jianyu Lee told Cela that Harte Darrigan had sent him, she’d had a feeling that he would be trouble. Watching him try to keep himself upright as they made their escape from the building, she knew she’d been right.
She never should have followed him. Once she was freed from her workroom, she should have turned north and gone straight to her family, but curiosity had gotten the better of her when she’d watched him walking away from the theater late the night before, his long braid swinging down his back.
She hadn’t known that Darrigan was friends with any Chinese men. She didn’t know anyone who even knew any of the Chinese people, who mostly kept to themselves as they held on to their strange dress and stranger customs. So she couldn’t help but wonder if Darrigan really had sent the man to help her, and if he had, why? Did he know who was responsible for her brother’s murder?
If he knew anything about what had happened to Abe, it seemed worth the risk, so she’d followed him, keeping herself back a ways as he headed first to a Chinese laundry on Twenty-Fourth Street, at the southern edge of the area some called the Tenderloin and others called Satan’s Circus. She probably should have left him there, but she’d felt almost safe hiding in the quiet side alley near the laundry. She’d only meant to rest for a little while, but she’d fallen asleep without meaning to and only woke when she heard the door of the laundry close sometime around dawn. Rousing herself, she’d followed him as he walked south, toward the Bowery.
She had seen the boys following before he did—stupid, rangy things who barely had hair sprouting on their pale, pimpled chins, and mean as rats. There wasn’t even time to warn him before they had him cornered and on the ground, and she wasn’t big enough or strong enough—or stupid enough—to jump into a fight she couldn’t win. She’d thought to wait until they’d left to help him, but then that other one came.
Mock Duck, they called him, and everyone in the city had read about what he was capable of. The papers had been covering the war between the tongs on Mott Street and Pell Street the same way they covered the gossip of the people who lived in the mansions on Fifth Avenue—like it was some kind of sport. But while the people in the fancy mansions wore the wrong hats or went out dancing with people who might not be their own wives, the violence stirred up by Mock Duck and his highbinders killed innocent people.
Cela had almost left then, because she’d figured the guy she’d been following must’ve been one of Mock Duck’s highbinders himself. They’d take care of their own, even if they wouldn’t be able to put his hair back onto his head. But it was clear soon enough that Mock Duck wasn’t saving him so much as taking him prisoner.
A smarter woman would have called it quits right then and there, maybe. A woman with some brains in her head wouldn’t have followed them deeper into the Bowery. But she was a woman without much more to lose. Jianyu Lee had claimed that Darrigan had sent him to protect her. Her brother had already died doing that—just as her father had—and she would carry that knowledge with her all her days. She wasn’t about to add another life to her load.
Out of the frying pan, she thought as she pulled the scrap of fabric she’d taken up over her head. She kept her distance as she followed them to some saloon on the Bowery. And then, when she needed a distraction to get Jianyu on his own, she made one.
She was in the fire now—literally, if they didn’t get out of there, and fast. But from the way Jianyu was moving, it didn’t seem like fast was an option.
They were nearly to the ground floor, nearly free, when they heard voices—angry voices—coming their way.
She looked back up at Jianyu, who was standing on the step above her, to see if he’d heard them. From the expression on his face, it was clear that he had. Maybe they could go back up. . . . But if the fire was still burning—she didn’t think it would be, but if it was—she wasn’t ready to die quite yet.
The boy didn’t look half as concerned as Cela felt. With a smooth, practiced motion, he withdrew two dark disks from the inside pocket of his tunic.
“Step up here and hold on to me,” he told her.
“Hold on to you?” she repeated, sure she must have misheard him.
“You’re right. It would be better if you climbed onto my back.” He maneuvered past her and then stooped slightly, waiting.
“I’m not climbing up onto you. I don’t know you from Adam,” she said, thinking that maybe she should take her chances with the fire. “You can barely walk as it is.”
“I’m fine,” he said, clipping out the words through clenched teeth.
She saw the way he was masking the hurt with the fire in his eyes. She’d done the same thing many times herself.
“It’s nothing personal. I just—”
“Unless you would like to explain to the men coming up the steps who you are and what you’re doing here, you would be wise to do as I say and climb onto my back.”
The voices were getting closer.
“Fine,” she said, hoping with every bit of her being that her mother wasn’t watching from the hereafter as she used his shoulders to pull herself up and wrapped her legs around him.