The first thing she thought, and it was maybe the least sensible thing she could have picked to think, was that the guy beneath her was all muscle. He looked half-dead from the beating he’d gotten, but with her legs secure around his midsection and her arms around his neck, she could feel the strength beneath his loose clothes.
The second thing she thought, once she got over the idiotic first thought, was that the papers were wrong. But then, she should have known that the papers would be wrong. Weren’t they usually when it came to anyone who wasn’t white? She’d read all sorts of things about the Chinese men who made their home in the city—about their strange habits and the filthy conditions in which they lived, refusing to become good, solid Americans like everyone else. But this boy smelled like the earth, like something green and pleasant.
She was still thinking the second thought when Jianyu made a subtle movement of his hands, and she felt the world tilt.
“Hold on,” he said, and started down the steps.
When they reached the landing below, he paused, listening. She could feel his labored breathing. “Stay still and be quiet,” he commanded, as though he had some right to command her when she was the one who was doing the rescuing. But seeing how she was the one who’d climbed up onto him, however unwillingly, maybe he wasn’t too far off the mark.
Men were coming up the steps—the same swarthy-skinned Italians who’d been standing around at the saloon. They were dressed in dark pants and coats and there was a meanness to the air around them, but the guy carrying her didn’t do more than pull back against the wall.
And just like that, those men walked past them like they weren’t even standing there. Like she wasn’t nothing but a haint walking in the world.
The men were still too close and Cela was too unnerved to ask what had happened. She decided instead to take the blessings as they came and to hope that their luck held.
As the men continued up, Jianyu began to descend again, and a moment later they were out the back of the building and into the busy traffic of Elizabeth Street.
“Don’t let go,” he told her just as she started to release his neck.
She probably shouldn’t have listened, but there was something about the way he said it—more desperate than commanding—that made her comply.
“They can’t see us,” he whispered, answering her unspoken question.
“None of them?”
“Not as long as you stay where you are,” he said, hitching her up higher on his back and walking away from the building she’d rescued him from.
She understood then. “You’re one of them,” she said. But though his jaw went tight, he didn’t answer.
He didn’t put her down until they were two blocks away. In the distance, she could hear the clanging of a fire brigade’s wagons as he released her. His face was turned, solemn and serious, toward the direction of the sound.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Dolph built the Strega from nothing. To see it burn . . .” His voice fell away.
“The bar, you mean? It won’t burn,” she assured him. “I only set a small fire in a waste can—one that would make a lot of smoke and look worse than it is. Besides,” she said, pausing to listen to the approaching sirens, “it sounds like someone there has friends in high places if the brigades are already coming.”
He turned to her. “Thank you for rescuing me, Miss Johnson.” His straight, dark hair was hanging lank and uneven around his face from where it had been so unceremoniously chopped. It should have looked a mess, but instead it served to accent the sharp angles of him—his razor-blade cheekbones and sharp chin, the wide, strong nose, and the finely knit brows over too-knowing eyes.
“You might as well call me Cela. Everyone else does.”
“Cela,” he repeated, swaying a bit on his feet.
“Whoa, there,” she said, catching him up under the arm before he toppled over. “They messed you up good, didn’t they?”
“I’m fine,” Jianyu said, grimacing even as he said it.
“Sure you are.” She helped him over to a shuttered doorway, where he could lean and rest.
“Come,” he said. “We’re still too close.”
He led the way to a streetcar stop another block over, and he didn’t speak again until they were heading uptown and away from the Bowery. “Is there somewhere you can go?” he asked her, still clutching his stomach as the car rattled along, like he was trying to hold it in. “Somewhere you would feel safe?”
“Safe?” Cela wanted to laugh from the sheer absurdity of the idea. “I’m not sure what safe even is anymore.”
BEWARE THE DEVIL’S THIEF
1904—St. Louis
Harte Darrigan was probably more likely to put on a dress himself than ever admit to Esta that her decision to wear the clothing she’d found in the hotel room was a good idea, even if the ballroom below was filled with nothing but men. For one thing, admitting that she had been right would only embolden her, but more important, maybe, it was taking everything he had not to be distracted by the shape of her legs in the trousers she was wearing. So he shot her a dark look instead and focused on the problem at hand—getting them out of the hotel before they were found.
“The kitchen entrance must be there,” Harte said, ignoring her remark as he pointed toward the far end of the room, where a door periodically swung open as white-coated servers came and went at regular intervals. “There are steps in the corner there, by the stage. Then we’ll keep to the edge of the room until we have to cut across. Stick close, but not too close,” he said, “and try not to sway your hips so much.”
“I do not sway my hips.” She glared at him.
“You do,” he told her flatly. He should know, since he’d just followed her down a hallway. She opened her mouth as if to argue, but he cut her off. “You walk like a woman.” He took a moment to look her over for any other flaw that might give her away. “Pull your hat down lower,” he told her as she stared at him. “Your eyes—they’re too soft. Christ,” he swore, his stomach twisting. There was no way she was going to make it through a room full of men without them noticing what she really was. She might as well have worn just the corset. “We’re dead.”
“We’ll be fine,” she told him. “I’ve been around men my whole life.”
“Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve actually been one,” he grumbled.
“It would have been kind of hard for me to miss.” Her mouth twitched, and he thought he saw something warmer than mere amusement flicker in her whiskey-colored eyes. At the sight of it, the power inside of him flared with anticipation. He was too busy pushing it back down to return her banter, and she let out a tired breath at his silence. “Oh, come on, Harte. Most of the people in here are drunk. They’re not going to notice me.”
“Let’s hope not.” But he didn’t have a lot of confidence.
Once they’d descended to the main ballroom, the sounds of glasses clinking and the rumble of men amused at their own jokes surrounded them. As they skirted the edges of the ballroom, something in Harte’s periphery drew his attention, and he glanced up to see that there were now a few men standing at the edge of the mezzanine, searching the crowd below. They were wearing the same dark coats and white armbands as the Guard outside the theater.