The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  “Esta. Esta Filosik.”

  “Filosik? I don’t know that name. Where are your people?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, giving him the truth. “I never knew them.”

  Dolph clenched his jaw and studied her. “If you bring me any trouble—”

  “I won’t,” she interrupted.

  He waited a second longer, and the whole barroom seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for his final pronouncement.

  Dolph motioned for one of the boys to come forward, a ginger-haired guy who was dressed in a red shirt that clashed with his pale, freckled skin. The boy’s tightly fitted vest emphasized his broad, stocky shoulders, and a ridiculous-looking cravat was tied in a complicated knot at his throat. His outfit made him look like he was playing at being a gentleman, but a winding tattoo barely visible at the top edge of his collar contradicted the look. The mark on his neck looked like the top of a circle—a wide, ornate arc that clearly had more to it—but Esta couldn’t make out any detail in the dimly lit barroom.

  “Mooch here’ll show you to your room,” Dolph informed her when he was done speaking to the boy. “Tomorrow you start working the Dead Line. Don’t make me regret it.”

  THE DEAD LINE

  The next morning Esta was already awake and dressed in the same green velvet she’d worn the day before—the only clothing she had left—when the dull thump sounded at the door. She opened it to find a familiar silver knife sunk into the wood and the girl with dark hair—and an even darker expression—waiting in the hall.

  The barmaid from the night before stepped forward and pried her knife from the door. She was about a head shorter than Esta and dressed in a simple skirt and plain-fronted blouse instead of the low-cut gown she’d been wearing when Esta had stolen her stiletto. Her eyes were the most startling shade of deep violet, and a mass of wavy hair was pinned into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Her wide, soft mouth was pulled down into a disapproving frown.

  “My name is Viola,” she said with a low, throaty voice that still carried the faintest hint of her native Italian. She made a show of cleaning the tip of her blade and didn’t bother to look at Esta when she spoke. “I don’t like you. Dolph, he tells me not to kill you for taking my knife, so I won’t. This time.” She finally lifted her violet gaze, pointing the razor-sharp tip of the blade at Esta as she spoke. “But don’t test me again. Capisce?”

  Esta raised her hands to signal her understanding.

  Viola slid the knife back into the slit in the side of her skirt before handing her a worn wool cloak and giving a jerk of her head. “Come. We’ll get you something to fill your belly. Today you work the Dead Line.”

  Viola took her downstairs to the Strega’s kitchen and introduced her to Tilly Malkov, a girl with mouse-brown hair. Tilly offered Esta a hunk of hard, crusty bread, a cup of burnt coffee swimming with cream, and a welcoming smile that crinkled the corners of her soft green eyes.

  Esta took the seat at the large kitchen table that Tilly offered her, but as she picked at her bread, she kept a watchful eye on Viola.

  After a few minutes, Tilly surprised Esta by touching her hand. “Don’t worry so much,” she said. As she spoke, a tingling warmth spread like sunshine on a summer’s day over Esta’s skin. She gave an amused nod toward Viola. “That one isn’t so bad. She’s all honey and no sting,” she said with a wink.

  Esta pulled her hand away, feeling unaccountably better, more relaxed, but also more on edge.

  “Don’t listen to her. Libitina here stings just fine,”  Viola told her, spinning the point of her stiletto knife on the tabletop with a menacing look in her eyes.

  “You named your knife,” Esta said, amused even as Viola glared. “Of course you named your knife.”

  The mouse-haired girl only smiled and shook her head, dismissing them both as she wiped her hands on her apron and went back to work at the stove.  Viola continued to scowl as she polished her blade, but Esta didn’t miss the way Viola’s eyes followed Tilly’s every move. Or the way her cheeks flushed anytime Tilly glanced up with a warm smile.

  When they were finished eating, Viola led Esta out the back entrance of the saloon, onto Elizabeth Street. The snow from the day before was starting to melt, leaving the streets and sidewalks a murky mess that already smelled of the manure and garbage the banks of snow had covered.

  “So . . . ,” Esta began, in an attempt to break their awkward silence. She pulled the borrowed cloak around her, glad for its warmth. “You and Tilly . . . ?”

  Viola turned on her sharply, her expression fierce.

  “Sorry,” Esta said, realizing her misstep. “It’s just . . . the way you watched her,” she tried to explain. “I thought maybe—”

  “We’re friends,” Viola snapped, but her cheeks had gone pink again, and Viola wasn’t the type of girl who wore a blush well.

  “Of course you are,” Esta corrected. “My mistake,” she said, feeling a sudden ambivalence. She knew better than to let her own modern sensibilities affect her on a job. It was sloppy of her, dangerous. But behind the censure in Viola’s eyes was fear . . . maybe even sadness?

  Viola stomped off again without another word on the matter.

  It was easy enough to keep up with Viola’s shorter strides, but harder to let it go. After a block of walking in silence except for the crunch of the snow beneath their feet, Esta couldn’t stand the rigid set of Viola’s shoulders anymore. “For what it’s worth,” she said softly without slowing their pace, “she seems wonderful.”

  Viola stopped short. “Yes,” Viola agreed, tossing a wary look toward Esta. “She is.” She waited another two heartbeats, as if daring Esta to push again, before she turned and continued down the bustling sidewalk. But this time her steps were softer and her expression didn’t have the same wariness as it had moments before.

  Unlike the wide boulevard that was the Bowery, Elizabeth Street was a narrow jumble of redbrick buildings all butted up against one another. The shops were opening for the day, and the shopkeepers had already started rolling carts of merchandise out to the sidewalks. Above their cluttered display windows, fire escapes clung to the sides of the buildings. Long underwear and shirts fluttered from them like invisible people who had decided to stop to lean against the railings and watch the scene below.

  “The first rule,” Viola said, drawing herself up as though the whole conversation about Tilly had never happened, “is you don’t take from our own. You work the cars or the streets north of Houston. You work the Line and the banks, but you don’t dip into pockets Dolph protects. The second rule, you don’t cross any of the other bosses. Dolph works hard to keep Paul Kelly and Monk Eastman off his people. He don’t need you messing that up.”

  “How will I know who’s who?”

  Viola gave her an impatient scowl. “You’ll figure it out. One way or another.”

  The two went a couple of blocks farther and then cut over a block to where a horse-drawn streetcar rattled to a stop at a curb nearby. Viola opened the door at the back of the bus-shaped vehicle and directed Esta inside. After Viola placed a couple of coins into a battered metal box at the front of the car, they found seats on the two narrow wooden benches along the length of the smudged windows. With the windows closed against the cold, the car smelled strongly of the tobacco spit that stained the floor and the sharp, metallic reek of motor oil.

  Outside, the bright signs of the dance halls and glittering windows of cheap jewelry stores gave way to more sedate shops, each piled with canned goods and household items. Then they turned onto Canal Street, past the legendary prison built to look like an Egyptian tomb.

  “Have you been with Dolph long?” Esta asked.

  Viola glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Long enough,” she said, turning her attention back to the street passing outside the window.

  “And you like working for him?” Esta tried again.

  At first Viola seemed to ignore the question, but then, just when Esta tho
ught she wouldn’t answer, she turned. “Look. We’re probably not gonna be friends, you and me. I don’t need any more friends. I don’t need the chitchat the ladies make with each other over the weather or the price of meat. I work for Dolph because I want to work, and he lets me. Do I like it?” she said with a shrug. “I’m not married to some fat idiota, having his babies one after another, am I? I work hard, maybe, but I’m good at what I do. Dolph gives me that much. What else is there to like?”

  “Nothing,” Esta murmured her understanding. She knew what it was to need to feel useful. If Professor Lachlan hadn’t found her, she’d probably be unaware of what she was, what she could do. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to never feel the deep, echoing satisfaction of a job well done.  To simply be ordinary—or worse, a freak in her world, where magic was nothing more than a bedtime story. Maybe Professor Lachlan had never been what anyone would call an affectionate father, but he’d given her that much.

  About fifteen minutes into the jarring ride, the streetcar slowed next to a curb, and Viola gestured for Esta to get out.

  “We’re at City Hall,” Esta said, recognizing the building.

  Viola made a dismissive sound in her throat. “We gonna walk a little farther, and then you go on your own.”

  “On my own?” Esta blinked, surprised at this pronouncement. She’d assumed Viola had been sent to watch her.

  “You told Dolph you’re a good thief, no?”

  “Yes . . . ,” Esta said slowly, not liking where this was going.

  “The tricks you did last night don’t prove nothing.  You want Dolph’s protection? Then you earn it by working the Line.” Viola pointed down the street they were walking. “It used to be good pickings down on Wall Street with all the bankers. Fat wallets. Lots of gold and jewels. Easy items to fence. But a few years back, Inspector Byrnes drew the Dead Line.

  “Byrnes is gone, but the Line’s still there. Downtown, they pick up any known pickpocket on sight. Dolph loses a lot of his boys that way. But you’re new, and you say you can steal anything?” She shrugged. “So you’ll work the Dead Line. Maybe you won’t get caught.”

  “And if I do?”

  Viola glanced at her, indifferent. “My advice? You don’t get caught. The Tombs isn’t a place for a girl, not even a big girl like you,” Viola said, cocking a mocking brow toward Esta.

  They walked on down Park Row, past the towering double turrets of a castlelike building looming above them, and then on past a lonely-looking cemetery, its tombstones like broken teeth sticking out from the remaining snow. When they rounded the corner, Esta found herself staring up at the brownish-gray exterior of St. Paul’s.

  “This is as far as I go,” Viola said, coming to a stop near the deep covered portico of the chapel. “They know me there, but you keep walking, three, maybe four blocks thataway, and you’ll find the bankers. Should be easy to make your quota if you’re half as good as you claim. If you don’t come back . . .” She shrugged. “You’ll find your way, or we won’t have to worry about you no more.”

  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

  Viola was right. South of Fulton Street, the city’s financial district was heaven for a thief. Bankers and lawyers with fat wallets and jeweled pins. Women with purses filled with coins. Easy pickings.

  And a complete waste of time.

  Even without using her affinity, it didn’t take her long to get her quota and then some. Less than an hour later, she’d found her way back to a streetcar heading north and was on her way uptown.

  She still wore the empty silver cuff under the sleeve of her gown, a reminder of what was at stake, of what she had to do. All night, she’d tossed and turned in the narrow, musty-smelling bed—if you could even call it that—thinking about her missing stone. Planning her next move.

  Professor Lachlan had warned her it was too much of a risk to change anything about the heist, but he hadn’t known—or hadn’t warned her—that Ishtar’s Key would basically incinerate. She hadn’t planned on being trapped in the past.

  She was already working blind when it came to Dolph Saunders. She needed more information, more options in case things didn’t go as planned, because nothing could stop her from getting Ishtar’s Key. Not when the future held Dakari, shot and possibly dying. No one would come looking for him, not until he didn’t return and it was too late.

  According to the clipping she’d lifted from Professor Lachlan’s notebook, Khafre Hall was located on Park Avenue. In her own time, that part of Park Avenue was an elevated road leading into Grand Central, but in 1902, the gleaming white facade of the terminal didn’t exist. If the world of lower Manhattan felt eerily familiar earlier that morning, the streets of Midtown looked like a completely different world.  The soaring skyscrapers that would one day box in the sky weren’t even a dream yet. Instead, the avenue was lined by shorter, ornately decorated buildings—stately homes and large hotels, and just north of Forty-First Street, the enormous edifice that was Khafre Hall.

  The Order’s headquarters might have been named for one of the great pyramids, but with its four stories of white marble, it looked more like a transplanted villa from the Italian Renaissance. Esta didn’t have any doubt she’d found the right place, though. High atop the roof, gold statues of various gods glinted beneath the winter’s sun. Above the building’s main entrance, the cornice was carved with the words AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, a phrase supposedly coined by Hermes Trismegistus, the mythic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Toth that the Order saw as its precursor. The heavy bronze doors were inscribed with a symbol Esta recognized easily as the Philosopher’s Hand—an alchemical recipe depicting the secrets of unlocking occult powers.

  Professor Lachlan had taught her all this as part of her training. He’d shown her the different representations of the hand to teach her about the theories of alchemy, to explain how the Order misunderstood and perverted the very notion of magic by trying to divide existence into neat parts in their efforts to control it.

  The building was impressive, a declaration of the Order’s beliefs and a demonstration of their power in this city.  The fact that they never rebuilt after the theft of the artifacts was evidence of how much they’d been weakened. But the building as it was now served as a reminder of all she would have to face. Of all she still had left to lose. Even from her vantage point across the street, it looked impenetrable.

  The street was quiet, so she took the clipping from its hidden pocket to look over it again for some clue of what had happened. But when she unfolded the delicate paper, the once-clear type looked blurred, smudged. The individual letters seemed to wriggle and writhe on the page, like they were trying to transform themselves into other letters, to rearrange themselves into other words.

  Esta blinked hard and rubbed at her tired eyes, sure that she must be seeing things, but when she looked back, the words remained stubbornly unreadable. It was as though the future that had once been an established fact was no longer clear or determined. The heist was no longer an established fact.

  “No,” she whispered to herself as she brought the paper closer to her eyes. Like she didn’t have perfect eyesight. Like getting closer would do something to stop the words from swirling and shifting on the page.

  She hadn’t done anything wrong . . . had she?

  “You!” The voice came from so close that she barely had time to turn before the man from the night before had ahold of her wrist. His face was blackened and bruised from her brutal attempt to escape, but now a hideously gleeful expression lit his features. “I thought that was you.”

  She tried to jerk away, using her erratic motions as a cover for the way she crumpled the clipping and slipped it into her sleeve. “Let me go,” she demanded, struggling against him. “I don’t want to hurt you again.” And the last thing she wanted was to draw attention from anyone inside Khafre Hall.

  Charlie Murphy only laughed and started tugging her across the street. “You won’t have the chance to hurt me ag
ain, not when I’m through with you.” He laughed again, and his grip on her wrist tightened as he wrenched her arm painfully, pulling her close enough that she could smell the sourness of his breath.

  “Let me go,” she said, refusing to plead.

  “I know what you are. I recognized what you did at the Haymarket,” he said with an almost unholy anticipation lighting his face. “I’d planned to hunt for you. I was looking forward to seeing the fear in your eyes when we found you.”

  “So sorry to disappoint,” she snarled, grabbing the arm he held her wrist with. Calling on every one of the techniques Dakari had taught her, she twisted violently.  The move caught him by surprise, as she’d intended, and he released her with a yelp of pain.

  But it only slowed him for a moment. The look of anticipation he’d worn moments ago was now transformed to seething hate. She needed to get away, but before she could pull time to a slow, Murphy’s eyes went wide. He went completely rigid before collapsing hard and motionless to the ground.

  The way his body had jerked and then fallen had jarred her enough that she’d lost her hold on time, and before she could regain it, her arms were pinned to her sides and she was surrounded by an earthy, spicy scent that reminded her of patchouli. A soft, disembodied voice whispered in her ear to be still, and Esta realized that maybe Dolph hadn’t let her go off alone after all.

  THE CURRENCY OF SECRETS

  Dolph had been right to be suspicious of the new girl. What business could she possibly have here at Khafre Hall?

  With her arms wrapped around her, pinning her in place, Jianyu could practically hear her thinking. Her whole body had gone tense and ready to fight, and he was not so stupid as to underestimate her. He’d seen the way she’d dispensed of Murphy, and he didn’t doubt she had something equally unpleasant in mind for him. She was no innocent, fresh off the boat and adrift in a dangerous city. She was too well trained.