The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  “You know damn well it’s me. You’ve been following me for three blocks.” He walked toward the boy until they were nearly toe-to-toe. “Were you at the Haymarket, too?” he demanded, wondering if the sense of unease that had driven him to his feet might have been Nibsy and not the girl after all.

  “The Haymarket?” The boy sounded confused, but Harte didn’t believe the act for a second. People tended to overlook Nibsy Lorcan because he didn’t have any discernible affinity, but then, neither did Harte. Nibs kept his secrets close to the vest, but Harte knew that anyone Dolph Saunders trusted as much as he trusted the boy had to have something to him. It should have been easy enough to find out for sure, but Nibs had a way of staying just out of reach—a defense mechanism, Harte supposed. One that seemed to serve him well.

  Even now Nibsy took a step back.

  “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know I was at the Haymarket,” Harte said, too tired to deal anything else that night.

  Behind his glasses, the boy’s eyes were unreadable, but Harte got the sense they were taking everything in.

  “Yeah, you got me all right,” Nibsy said affably enough. “Bridget told me you were meeting with Jack Grew.”

  So they were finally coming to it. New York might have been one of the biggest cities in the world, but Harte should have known he couldn’t do anything without everyone knowing his business. “Yeah, I met with him, all right. With Vanderbilt and Chandler and a couple of others, too. What business is that of yours? And why were you waiting for me to start with?”

  “I needed to talk with you. They won’t let me backstage anymore.” There was a tone of reproach in his voice.

  “It’s a new policy,” Harte said, skirting the truth. In fact, it was his new policy. A few weeks before, Nibsy had started showing up and pestering him about Dolph’s proposal again. It got so bad Harte could barely think straight, much less get ready for his next performance.

  Besides, he had plans of his own, and he couldn’t chance Nibsy running into Jack.

  The boy frowned, like he understood this wasn’t exactly a lie, but it also wasn’t exactly the truth. Which was what worried Harte about the kid—he always seemed to know a little too much when he shouldn’t have known anything at all. “Does your meeting with Jack Grew mean you’ve thought about Dolph’s proposition?”

  “Not a chance,” Harte said, shaking his head.

  In truth, Harte had done little else but think about Dolph’s proposition. It was the reason he’d been getting friendlier with Jack. Harte wasn’t about to join the ragtag crew Dolph Saunders was assembling. He’d had enough of working for other people to last him a lifetime. But he’d thought a lot about why Dolph was assembling them—and about how he could do the same job, but better, and on his own.

  “Dolph’s still eager to have you on board,” Nibsy said, rubbing his hands a little for warmth. “He needs you to make a go of it.”

  While Harte could appreciate a bit of theater as well as the next person, he wasn’t buying the meek-and-humble routine Nibs was playing for him. “Why’s that? Far as I can tell, Dolph isn’t hurting any for talent. All I can do is make some rabbits disappear.”

  Nibsy didn’t react, and he didn’t call Harte on the lie, which made him wonder how much Dolph had shared with Nibs. “Dolph still thinks you’re our way in. With you on board, the job would be a certain bet,” Nibsy said, ducking his head to look over the rims of his glasses. “You gotta at least consider it.”

  “It’s been a long day, Nibs. I had two curtains today, and three more tomorrow. The only thing I’m considering is the way my bed’s going to feel when I finally sink into it.” Harte clapped the boy on the shoulder, squeezing gently. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that Dolph had put him up to this, but Harte wasn’t soft enough to care. “Take care, and stop following me, will you?” he said as he walked past Nibs.

  “So what do I tell Dolph?” Nibsy called.

  Harte turned, walking backward for a few steps. “Tell him I’m still not interested in the suicide mission he’s cooked up.” Not when he had plans of his own.

  BRIDGET MALONE, I PRESUME

  The Haymarket

  The first thing Esta noticed when she came to was that she wasn’t alone. Her head still ached from the blow, and she was slumped against a damp wall in a room that smelled dank and old, the way basements do.

  She kept her breathing steady, her body still as she slowly moved her hand down her leg. Her fingers finally found the edge of her boot, but Dakari’s knife was gone.

  All at once the air went out of her lungs. Her eyes opened as her chest constricted in a desperate attempt to breathe.

  “Ah, so I was right,” a rasping voice crowed. “You are awake.”

  Esta’s vision struggled to adjust to the sudden brightness, and when it did, she saw that the light in the room wasn’t coming from a lamp, but from a person holding a dancing flame in the palm of her hands.

  “That’s enough, Werner,” the woman said, nodding to the boy standing next to her. He glared at Esta, but a moment later she could breathe again.

  “You’re maybe wondering where you are?” the woman said with a sly, satisfied smile. She was small and surprisingly willowy, considering the rasping tenor of her voice. With her coppery hair and fair skin, she might have once been pretty, but now she only looked worn. The boy was about Esta’s own age with a squint-eyed glare and a smirk on his face.

  Esta didn’t particularly care where she was, because she wasn’t going to be there for very long. She focused on the seconds that ticked by, but her head felt wobbly and unclear, and when she tried to slow time, she felt a splitting pain behind her eyes. She couldn’t keep the panicked gasp from escaping her throat when time slipped out of her grasp, eluding her.

  “That would be the opium,” the woman said as Esta tried to pull herself back up against the wall. “We couldn’t have you leaving us too soon, could we now? You’ll find it impossible to call on your affinity so long as the poppy remains in your blood, so it’s best you resign yourself to being our guest for a while longer. Until we decide what your fate will be.”

  “Please,” Esta said, forcing herself to make her voice small. She noticed the sticky sweetness hanging in the air now, the fuzziness in her head.

  “You’ve caused me quite the problem, girl,” the woman cut in, her voice barely above a whispering growl. “The man you laid low is Mr. Murphy, and he happens to be one of Mr. Corey’s best customers and one of the most powerful men in the city. There’s few daft enough to cross him as you did. He’ll not rest until he finds the girl who broke his ugly gob, and he’ll not be satisfied until he pays someone back in kind. That someone isn’t going to be me. He’s a right nasty one. The type to enjoy every second of your pain, if you understand what I’m saying?”

  Esta made no move, but the woman gave a wan smile nevertheless.

  “Ah. You do understand, then.” The smile fell from the woman’s face, and her eyes went cold. “So you’ll understand that you don’t have much time before Mr. Corey turns you over to him. Unless you give me a good reason not to, of course.”

  Esta schooled her expression to give nothing away. Not a blink to tell the woman that the idea of being at the large man’s mercy was more than repulsive. Not a twitch to give away the panic of not being able to call on her magic.

  “You think you’re so brave? That you can protect yourself from the likes of him?” the woman scoffed. “Here, let me show you. . . .” The fire in her outstretched hand grew, danced, as she brought the flame up closer to her face and pulled down the high collar of her dress with her other hand. Beneath the lace, her skin was scarred in a gnarled mass.

  Esta couldn’t stop from wincing.

  “I was pretty once, like you. You go on with your determined eyes and stiff spine, but the strongest spine will snap easily with a boot pressing down on it. Murphy has eyes everywhere in this city. Magic or no, you’d not last two days without help or protection.”
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  “You can give me protection from Murphy?”

  The woman nodded. “If you can make it worth my while. You’ve caused a right mess for Mr. Corey, and his messes always become mine. I hate messes, girl, so if you’re not worth more than the problem you’ve caused, I’ll hand you over to Mr. Murphy wrapped in lace and tied with a bow of the finest silk.  And I won’t think twice about whether you ever see daylight again.”

  Esta started to protest, but the woman raised her hand. There was no sign of burns or scarring from where she had held the fire, and Esta’s skin tingled again from the magic that seemed to saturate the air in the room.

  “However . . . Murphy isn’t one of us. And I’d just as soon he go hang than get one bit of pleasure he hasn’t rightly paid me for. If you prove to be a smart girl, perhaps I know of someone who could protect you . . . so long as you remain useful, that is.” The woman stepped closer. “Tell me, why did you come to be in my ballroom when you clearly weren’t looking for the company of a man?”

  “I came to find Bridget Malone.”

  The woman didn’t react, save for a small muscle that ticked near her eye. She studied Esta a little longer, and then she exchanged a glance with Werner, who gave a subtle shrug.

  “Bridget Malone, you say?” the woman asked. Her voice, if it was possible, had gone even rougher.

  “I was told that she finds places for people with certain . . . abilities,” Esta said, never once breaking the stare with the woman. “People like us.”

  “And what abilities do you claim?”

  Esta tried to focus again. The cloud of opium was already starting to dissipate, and its power over her was starting to wane. “I’m a thief,” she said simply, sticking as close to the truth as was possible.

  “A thief ?” Even through the rasp of the woman’s voice, Esta could hear her doubt. “There’s already enough of those in the city to fill all the cells in the Tombs thrice over. Why would anyone have use of another?”

  “Because I’m the best of them. I can steal a diamond, an elephant, or anything in between. No one can stop me”—Esta leaned forward as though sharing a secret—“because no one can see me.”

  Werner laughed, but the woman simply watched Esta, searching her face for some signs of the lie.

  The woman’s mouth made a pinched shape of disbelief. “You can prove this?”

  Esta took a breath, closed her eyes, and in the split second it took for Werner and the woman to exchange another, more doubtful glance, Esta had pulled time to a stop, crossed the room, and plucked the brooch from the neckline of the woman’s dress. Before the woman’s suspicious eyes returned to where Esta had been sitting, she was gone.

  When Werner came barreling through the door, the woman wide-eyed behind him, Esta was waiting, leaning against the wall outside the room with a bored look on her face. Using her affinity through the remaining haze of the opium had all but drained her. She couldn’t have done anything more to escape if she had wanted to, even if  Werner hadn’t immediately gone on the attack.

  The second Werner saw her, she felt her chest go tight and her throat begin to close, but this time she was ready for the unsettling feeling of being suffocated. She’d never felt magic quite so powerful before, which was worrisome enough. But worse, from the way he was taking orders, Esta understood that he probably wasn’t all that powerful, not relative to others. Professor Lachlan had tried to warn her, but now she understood—magic was different there. Like nothing she’d ever experienced.

  But she didn’t have time to worry about that fact. If the two knew how little strength she had left, Esta would lose her upper hand, so she pretended a calm confidence she didn’t feel. When the woman saw she hadn’t escaped—hadn’t even tried to get away—she slapped Werner’s arm.  A heartbeat later, Esta could draw air into her lungs once more.

  “A fair trick,” the woman said, her face not betraying any hint of surprise or anger or even interest. “But you wouldn’t have gotten very far. Not with Mr. Murphy looking for you.”

  “Who said I was trying to leave?” Esta said, holding up the brooch so the fake stones glinted in the light thrown by the ball of fire in the woman’s hand. “I was only proving how useful I could be. Besides, why would I run from the very person I’m looking for? Miss Malone, I presume?”

  The woman blanched a little, but managed to hold on to her composure as she reached out and took the brooch Esta was holding. “Please,” Esta said. “I need a place to stay. I’m a hard worker, and I will be loyal to any who help me.”

  “The city doesn’t need any more thieves.”

  “I can make it worth your while.” Esta ran her fingers along the edge of her bodice until she found the small pocket sewn into the lining. Relieved that they hadn’t found it, as they had her knife, she pulled out the diamond she’d taken in Schwab’s mansion. “Here,” she said, offering Bridget the stone. “This is all I have.”

  After a long moment, Bridget took the stone and examined it, then eyed Esta again as she tucked the diamond into her pocket. “Maybe I know somewhere you could go. . . . Where are your people?”

  Relief coursed through her, but she tamped it down. It was too soon to celebrate. “Dead. There was a fire. . . .” She let her voice trail off, and she glanced away, sinking the hook into the lie.

  Werner shifted uneasily on his feet at the mention of the word. No doubt he’d had his own experiences with the fires that were so were common in this city. She’d learned from Professor Lachlan about the “accidental” blazes that consumed whole buildings filled with magical refugees while the fire brigades—controlled by and dependent on the Order—stayed away.

  Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no one to come looking for you?”

  “No one except your Mr. Murphy,” Esta told her.

  In the long moment that followed, it took every bit of strength Esta had left not to falter. If Bridget refused to help now, she wasn’t sure what she would do. The Professor’s plan hinged on Esta exposing herself and Bridget seeing something of interest in Esta’s talent, but they hadn’t planned on Esta making an enemy of Bridget. If the madam turned her away, or worse, turned her over to Murphy, Esta had already used every ounce of her strength on the desperate bid to prove herself. She had nothing left, not even the diamond. And if they drugged her any more, she’d be beyond helpless.

  “How did you know who I was?” Bridget asked.

  “I’m good at recognizing a tell,” she explained with a shrug. “A good thief knows how to read a mark.”

  Bridget’s features registered her understanding of what Esta’s words implied—that she had been the mark—but she didn’t address the insult.

  “You hesitated when I said your name.”

  Bridget frowned. “I didn’t—”

  “It wasn’t much. And then there was the tiniest tick of a muscle in your cheek. If I hadn’t been looking, I wouldn’t have seen it at all.” Esta conveniently left out the fact that she was always looking, always aware. Professor Lachlan had trained her too well not to be.

  Bridget’s mouth went tight. Then she spoke to Werner. “Take her to Dolph Saunders. He should be at the Strega this time of night.”

  At the mention of the name, Esta felt a surge of victory, but she tamped it down. She wouldn’t get ahead of herself. Not yet.

  “Please . . . ,” she said, hesitating when Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “Can I have my knife back?”

  “What knife?” Bridget asked, her face impassive as flint.

  “The one that was in my boot. The one you took.”

  Bridget’s expression never wavered. “After I’ve saved you from Mr. Corey, after I’ve offered to help you find protection, you accuse me of stealing from you?”

  Esta met Bridget’s steady gaze and weighed her options. She needed the knife—the safety and assurance it represented, the link that it was to her own time. But she also needed Bridget Malone to give her an introduction to Dolph Saunders.

  Dakari
would understand, she told herself.

  She’d come back later. There would be time enough to get the knife back.

  When she didn’t argue any more, Bridget gave her a smug look before addressing Werner again. “If Saunders isn’t pleased with her abilities, bring her back here and we’ll give her to Mr. Corey.” She glanced at Esta, a warning in her expression. “If she tries anything at all, kill her.”

  A NEW AGE

  The Docks

  Jack Grew closed his eyes against the throbbing in his head as the carriage rattled onward. Perhaps that last round of drinks had been a mistake.  Actually, the entire night had been a mistake, from the beginning to the end . . . though the bit of silk who’d managed to walk away with the contents of his wallet had been worth it, he thought with a small smile. It wasn’t like she got away with much anyway. He knew not to bring a heavy wallet to a place like the Haymarket, no matter what the rest of the family currently thought of him.

  He’d show them how wrong they were, eventually. It was only a matter of time before his project would be complete, and then his uncle and his cousins and the rest would forget about that unpleasantness in Greece with the girl and recognize his vision. He’d be back in the Order’s good graces, and they would have no choice but to give him the respect he deserved.

  It wasn’t as though he would have really married the girl. She’d bespelled him. Tricked him with her power.

  Then she’d made off with his grandmother’s ring, proving his entire family—including Junior—right. Which, truly, was the one sin he could never forgive her for.

  Most days he tried not to think of her—or of the whole mess—but as the carriage rattled on, he couldn’t stop the direction of his thoughts. Maybe it was the last round of whiskey, or maybe it was the disaster of the evening, but the memory of his mistakes pulled at him, and he couldn’t help but wallow in the past.