Harte’s awareness was prickling. The people in the Jefferson had used the same sort of thing for their little performance in the ballroom. He hadn’t stuck around long enough to see what the effect of it would be, but he’d felt the cold magic in that room. From what Julien was saying, they might have escaped more than they’d realized.
Harte had met plenty of Mageus in New York, but he’d never heard of anyone using a fog. Magic—true magic—didn’t need any trick to make it work. It was just a connection with the very essence of the world itself. Now, ritual magic—corrupt magic—that was something different. Ritual magic was about separation. It was a breaking apart of the elements of existence in order to control them instead of working within their connections.
Ritual magic—like what the Order did when they’d created the Brink and what Dolph had done when he’d created the marks worn by the Devil’s Own—always came with a price.
“Did they ever catch the people who did it—these Antistasi?” Harte asked.
Julien shook his head. “No. The Antistasi are damn good at evading capture. But ever since the attack last October, the Jefferson Guard was given as much authority as the actual police to stop them,” he said. “If your girl is here to cause problems, she’s going to have a hell of a time trying to get away after. The police and the Jefferson Guard both . . . none of them are taking any chances. Not with the world watching the Exposition.”
“Esta’s not here to cause any trouble,” Harte told him, which was nearly the truth. Esta certainly wasn’t an Antistasi or any other kind of anarchist. They just needed the necklace, and once they had it, they’d be gone.
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it,” Julien said. “Where is the minx anyway?”
“I left her behind at our hotel. Told her to stay put,” Harte said gruffly, inwardly glad that Esta wasn’t there to hear him. But it was easier this way, to speak Julien’s language—and to pretend that he had some actual control over the situation. In reality, the idea of anyone being able to control Esta was laughable. “I thought we could handle this between the two of us old friends.”
“Ah,” Julien said, stubbing out his cigar in the ashtray. “So we come to it at last . . . old friend.”
Harte shrugged. “You said yourself that I wasn’t here to talk about my European vacation.”
“I know this is about the package you sent me a couple years back,” Julien said darkly. “That necklace.”
Something about Julien’s tone put Harte on edge. “So it is,” he said carefully.
“When I got the damn thing, I told myself that it would come back to bite me.” Julien leaned his elbows on the table. “The second I got the package and that ridiculous note of yours, I told myself, ‘This is going to be trouble.’ I wanted to send it back, but by then, I’d already heard about your leap from the bridge. I thought about just tossing it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that, either.”
“I can solve that problem right now by taking it off your hands once and for all,” Harte said easily.
“Don’t I wish,” Julien told him, more agitated now. “I’d like nothing better than to give the blasted thing back to you, but I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” Harte said, urging him on.
But Julien was shaking his head, and Harte had the sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to like what Julien had to say next.
“I don’t have it,” Julien told him, and at least he had the grace to look embarrassed.
Before Harte could say another word, a voice broke through the music and noise of the barroom. “What do you mean, you don’t have it?”
Harte looked up, knowing already who would be standing there, knowing before his eyes took in the rumpled, dirty coat and the wide-brimmed hat that Esta would be glaring down at him. But he wasn’t ready for how she looked or what she’d done to herself.
“Well, well,” Julien said as he took her in, head to toe. He tossed a sardonic look Harte’s way, and he knew Julien was laughing at him. “So much for telling her to stay put.”
UNEXPECTED
1902—New York
Viola made her way across the restaurant toward the private booth where R. A. Reynolds waited, shoring up her resolve for what she was about to do. It wasn’t that she was squeamish. She’d taken lives before and had still found a way to live with herself, but the men she had killed in the past had deserved their deaths, as much as anyone could deserve such a thing. At the very least, those men had each had a fighting chance, because she’d used skill, not magic. She hadn’t taken a life with her affinity since she was just a child, back when she’d believed that duty to family was more important than her own soul. Before she’d understood that she was more than the blood that ran in her veins.
She knew what those in the Bowery believed about her—that she could kill without touching them. It was true enough, but she’d used their fear of her and her affinity as armor. She killed, yes, but only those who preyed on the weak. And she killed not with what she was—what her god had made her to be—but from choice and practiced skill. She killed with a blade.
But her favorite blade was in the hands of a traitor. All she had left was herself.
Her own heartbeat felt unsteady as she drew closer to the booth. She didn’t know what Torrio would ultimately do—whether he would create a diversion, as he’d said, or whether he would attack her for what she’d done to him. But when she was only a few steps away from the velvet draperies that hid Reynolds from the prying eyes of the other diners, she heard Torrio erupt behind her.
“I asked for scotch, damn you!” he shouted.
Viola glanced over her shoulder just in time to see him throw a glass of scotch into the face of one of the waiters. With the eyes of the restaurant on the scene he was making, Viola took her chance and slipped behind the curtain of the booth.
The man in the small private dining room looked up from his soup, and Viola saw the moment when expectation became confusion.
“Yes?” he asked. “Can I help you?”
He has a nice face.
It was a ridiculous thought. She could see from across the room that Reynolds was a handsome man, but here in the muffled intimacy of the private dining booth, she saw that he had the kind of face that would grow old well.
“Are you Reynolds?”
“Excuse me?” The brows drew together, but there was no threat in his expression. Only interest.
“Are you R. A. Reynolds?” she repeated more slowly.
The man’s face went blank, and he leaned forward in his seat. “Who is it that’s asking?”
His confidence told the story of who he was. From his fine suit jacket to the look of boredom on his face, it was clear that this Reynolds came from money. He was no better than the rest of them, no better than the people in the dining room whose lives were so far above Viola’s that she could barely imagine them.
She could kill him, she realized. It wouldn’t really be so hard to let her affinity find the blood pumping in his veins again and stop it. Just as she’d healed her mother’s gout, she could fell him in an instant, and no one would know. One less rich boy to grow into a rich man. One less danger for her kind in the future. She was already damned—what would one more mark on her soul matter in the end?