The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  “I thought you’d appreciate the surprise,” he said, confused by her reaction. “After all, this is where we first met.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, trying again to tug away from him. “People in there . . .” She hesitated as though searching for the right word. “They might recognize me. It could ruin everything.”

  Ignoring the stiffness in her posture, he held her out at arm’s length and took a moment to look her over. She was wearing the dress he’d picked from the ones she’d bought—or taken. He never knew for sure with her. It was a golden color with beads that caught the light no matter how she moved. Strings of more beads were all that covered her shoulders, and the neckline dipped dramatically to showcase the gentle slope of her chest and the garnet collar that sat around her throat. She looked like a living flame.

  She’d argued that something more inconspicuous would be better. In the end, though, she’d agreed with him that Jack needed to be impressed by her and had worn the dress. But seeing it in his apartment was different from seeing the gown in the moonlight. And knowing that he’d picked it for her, that she’d willingly worn it for him, was another thing altogether. And he didn’t want to think too much about how that made him feel.

  “They won’t recognize you,” he said, giving her a smoldering look meant to tease as much as to assure her. “No one would—not looking like that.”

  The compliment had the effect he’d intended, and she snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know a line when I hear one, Darrigan.”

  He met her gaze before he spoke. “Then you should know that wasn’t a line.”

  She gave him her usual scowl, but her shoulders relaxed a little and she looked more like herself.

  He took her hand and tucked it through his arm. “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “This will work. Just stay close, and you’ll be fine.” He started to lead her toward the Haymarket, but when they were almost to the door, he stopped, remembering something. “If anything should happen tonight—”

  “You just told me everything would be fine.”

  “It will be,” he assured her. “Whatever you do, though, no magic once we’re inside. Corey’s security is trained to detect it, and they won’t hesitate to act if they sense you using it.  You’re lucky you got out without them catching you last time.”

  Esta stopped in her tracks and looked up at him. Her mouth was slightly open, and she was looking at him as though she’d never seen him before.

  “You were trying to help me,” she said. “That night when we first met. You had a reason for manhandling me, didn’t you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he told her, and before she could press him about it any more, he led them toward the dance hall’s entrance.

  Inside, the band was playing a ballad—Harte recognized the melody as one of the songs Evelyn belted out onstage each night. He led Esta through the crush of people and around the main floor of the ballroom. “I want a table upstairs, where we can see the whole floor. I don’t want to miss Jack when he comes in.”

  Fastening an aura of ease and charm around him like armor, Harte made his way through the room slowly, knowing exactly how uncomfortable she was with being paraded around and introduced to various people they encountered. She smiled and said all the right things, but every time he stopped to chat with someone, her posture grew more rigid and her smile more strained. He’d been around her long enough now that he was starting to learn the subtle shifts in her mood. Esta might always act as though nothing touched her, but tonight her eyes were giving her away. She was still on edge.

  Eventually he found them an empty table at the balcony railing with a clear view of the first floor. Below, the Haymarket was alive with color. Women in brightly colored gowns swirled around the dance floor, while pink-faced men leaned against the central bar, laughing too loud as they held their tumblers of whiskey. Across the table from him, Esta was quiet, watching the room with guarded eyes.

  After a few minutes of silence, she spoke, startling him from his thoughts. “You love all of this, don’t you?”

  “What?” He took his eyes from the door to look at her.

  She was sitting with her elbows propped on the table, her chin against her folded hands, a question in her eyes. “The attention. The way so many people know who you are and want to talk with you. You pretend to be indifferent, but underneath you’re like a cat with cream.”

  He shrugged off his discomfort at how clearly she’d seen through him. “I’m not going to complain,” he said. “There are a lot worse ways to spend an evening.” Like starving in a gutter. Or trying to stay clean when the whole world is determined to make you filthy.

  “What were you thinking about just now?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter, her eyes focused completely on him now. “Your whole expression just . . . closed up.”

  She was too perceptive by half. “Nothing,” he told her, feigning ignorance about her concern.

  It was clear she didn’t believe him. She was still staring at him as though he’d give up all his secrets if she were patient enough. But that couldn’t happen. He called over a server and ordered a bottle of champagne, avoiding her eyes and her expectations as the waiter poured two glasses.

  “To our new partnership,” he said with his practiced, pleasant smile as he raised a glass to toast her.

  She only watched him with those serious eyes of hers, and didn’t bother to lift her glass or take a drink. “It’s an impressive mask you wear,” she said. “Even knowing it’s there, I can barely see a crack.”

  He placed his glass on the table, untouched as well. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said stiffly. “I am exactly what I appear to be.”

  “That’s probably more true than you know.” Still not taking the champagne, she turned to watch the room below.

  After a few minutes, he missed her attention and wanted her to turn back, if only to spark at him again. That, at least, was more amusing than this sullen silence. But Esta’s attention was on the floor below. She drummed her fingertips softly against the base of her champagne flute as if waiting for something to happen.

  Or maybe she was waiting for someone, he thought with a sudden unsettling jolt of unwelcome jealousy.

  It all served to remind him that they weren’t really there together by choice. She wasn’t really his or even on his side. They were sitting on opposite sides of the board, playing each other in hopes of gaining the same prize. But he had so much more at stake, and if push came to shove, he wouldn’t let her be the victor.

  He stood and held his hand out to her. “Dance with me,” he said, not allowing himself to think about the motivation behind his impulse.

  She looked up at him, her eyes betraying her surprise. But she didn’t make any move to accept his invitation.

  Now that he was standing, he felt like an idiot. “I think our mark arrived,” he lied, when he started to fear that she would refuse him and he’d be forced to sit down, humiliated.

  “Oh?” Still, she didn’t reach for his hand.

  His neck felt hot. The people at the table next to them laughed at something—probably him—and he had to fight the urge to tug at his collar and adjust the cuff links at his wrists. “We should make sure Jack sees us,” he pressed.

  “Of course,” she murmured, but there was no pleasure or anticipation in her eyes as she finally took his hand and allowed him to lead her down to the dance floor.

  Harte recognized his mistake almost immediately. He’d never been one for waltzing, usually preferring instead to work the edges of the room or the men near the bar. So he’d forgotten how it felt to take a girl by the waist, to hold her smaller hand in his and pull her close as he spun her around the room. He’d forgotten the way his head could spin as the music wrapped the couples in its hypnotizing rhythm, the way the entire world could narrow to one pair of golden eyes.

  He felt drunk, suddenly, even
though he hadn’t touched the champagne either. Off-balance. Inexplicably swept away by the song, by the moment, and against all his better judgment, by her.

  One glance at her face showed that she didn’t feel the same. She moved gracefully, allowing him to lead her across the floor, but she wasn’t really with him. Her concentration was on the room around them, not on the small, private world they were creating within the span of their arms and the rhythm of their steps. The realization was like water on a fire, and by the time the song wound down to its close, Harte had sobered. Convenient, because as Esta made her final curtsy to him, he caught sight of Jack Grew over the top of her head.

  He offered his arm to escort her off the floor, and when she accepted it, he bent his head toward hers. “Are you ready?”

  She gave a small nod as she met his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he saw there now—determination? Resignation? It worried him that he couldn’t read her, didn’t know what she was thinking. Not without using his affinity, and doing that would mean losing the one ally—however tenous that might be—that he had. But the time for delaying was over. They had work to do.

  TO SINK THE HOOK

  The orchestra at the Haymarket had just finished a cloyingly sentimental waltz that had grated against Jack’s already-raw nerves. He was at the end of his rope. He’d put everything he had left—and a lot that wasn’t his to take—into rebuilding his machine. The new machinists had been working day and night to restore the hunk of metal and wire, and it was nearly ready to try again. But trying it again was pointless unless he could figure out how to stop the blasted thing from exploding.

  He was running out of time—his father’s ship would leave from London in another week. When he arrived in New York, his men of business would tell him about the emptied accounts, and Jack would be on a one-way train to Cleveland, or some other godforsaken uncivilized place in the wilds of the Midwest. He wouldn’t be around for the Conclave, much less to make his triumphant return to the Order’s good graces.

  But at least the Haymarket stocked passable scotch.

  He raised the glass to his lips, anxious for the numbing burn and the taste of smoke and fire, but when he tilted it back, he found it empty. He peered down, wondering when he’d finished the drink. Then he lifted the empty glass to signal the barmaid to bring him another while he waited for Darrigan and his doxy to show up.

  The thought of them arriving buoyed him a bit. The demonstration they’d done the night before had been remarkable. Impossible. He could use a little of the impossible on his side right now.

  Over the racket of the crowd, he heard his name and lifted his head to find Harte Darrigan walking toward him. On his arm was the girl from the night before. Tall and lean, she could have been an Amazon in another life, but in this one she was a vision in a gown spun from gold. If the dress wasn’t enough to convince him that she was different from the usual theater types, the jewels at her neck would have been. No chorus girl had jewels like that.

  “Thanks for the invitation tonight,” Darrigan said as he closed the distance between them, offering Jack his hand as he approached with the girl.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” Jack said, taking Darrigan’s hand. Damn if it isn’t good to see him again, he thought suddenly. Everything is going to be fine.

  Darrigan made a small flourish with his hand as he brought the girl forward. “May I present Miss Esta von Filosik.” Harte smiled warmly at the girl. “Esta, this is a good friend of mine. A very important man in our city, Mr. Jack Grew.”

  Jack couldn’t help but preen a bit under the praise. “Miss Filosik,” he said, with a slight nod of his head. This close, he saw that his original impression had been right. Her face was free from any paint and her clothes were so well fitted that they must have been custom-made.

  “You must call me Esta,” she told him, offering her hand. She spoke with a foreign lilt to her voice, but it wasn’t the gutteral sound that filled the saloons of lower Manhattan. Instead, it had the refinement of someone well bred and educated. “Any friend of Harte’s is one of mine.”

  “Esta it is, then.” He took her hand and bowed low over it, lifting his eyes to take in the shapely bodice of her gown, the creamy expanse of her chest.

  She gave him a slow smile, peering up at him through her lashes, but then her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened in a soft oh.

  Well, well, he thought with anticipation as the girl stared at him as though she appreciated what she saw. . . .

  “We arrived a bit early and were taking a turn around the floor. There’s a table waiting upstairs,” Harte told him. “If that’s all right with you?”

  Jack released the girl’s hand. “That sounds fine.”

  “Wonderful.” The girl gave him a slow, encouraging smile. “I believe the champagne should still be cold.”

  “Champagne, you say?” He looked down at his empty glass, feeling that much better about the days ahead. “That sounds as perfect as you look, my dear.”

  DÉJÀ VU

  Esta cringed inwardly at Jack’s obvious come-on. A hundred years, and men never figured out that lines like that didn’t work.

  As Harte led her back to their table, it took effort to keep her features relaxed. She was still unsettled from the premonition she’d had when Jack had looked up as he bowed over her gloved hand. She’d been overwhelmed by the memory of those same eyes in a darkened hallway, when he was pointing a gun at her before he turned it on Logan.

  If Harte hadn’t started talking again, she would probably still be frozen. But she reminded herself that there was no way Jack could know her or remember her: She’d first met him in 1926, some twenty-four years from now. She would be fine. She’d get through this.

  Ten minutes later, though, she regretted having him at their table. Harte was a different person around him, condescending and dismissive of everyone, including her. It was a part of their plan, she told herself. He was only giving Jack an opening, using her—the mistreated mistress—as bait. But it was still an ordeal to sit through.

  He was even worse than Logan, Esta thought as she listened to the two men bluster at each other. Logan had a sort of natural charm he used to disarm his victims, but Harte’s was something more. Whatever charm he came by naturally had been cultivated and honed with the precision of an artist. It was so overwhelming that his mark had no choice but to be taken in by it.

  She did know better, and she’d almost been taken in by it, she admitted, thinking of the warm fluttering in her belly as they’d danced. The moment he’d taken her in his arms, she’d felt trapped and protected all at once, and she hated herself for almost liking the feeling. Hated that she’d had to focus on something—anything—else during the dance, because he was looking at her with an intensity that made her cheeks warm.

  The whole ordeal had made her feel things she didn’t want to examine too closely. Unnerved. Unbalanced. And maybe most dangerous of all, unsure.

  All part of his game, she reminded herself—a game she had to win.

  As she kept half of her attention on the conversation at their table and the other half on the ballroom, she couldn’t help but think that Dakari’s knife might still be somewhere in that building. It grated at her, the knowledge that she was a thief who couldn’t even steal back something that belonged to her. And it worried her, going back to her own time without that bit of proof about what once had been.  After the way the clipping had changed, who knew what future she’d be going back to?

  Jack was nearly through the first bottle of champagne when a flash of coppery hair caught her eye. Down on the floor, Bridget Malone was making her way along the edge of the room.

  Esta was on her feet before she realized what she was doing.

  “Sweetheart?” Harte asked, a warning threaded through the endearment.

  She didn’t care about his warnings, though. He had Jack well enough in hand. She had to try. “Would you gentlemen excuse me?”

  “Where are you going?” Harte
asked through his clenched teeth.

  She could still make out Bridget’s fiery hair moving through the crowd. “Just to powder my nose, darling,” she said with a shy smile. “It will only take a moment. . . . If one of you could direct me?”

  “Back behind the bar,” Grew told her as he reached for the bottle again. His face had turned blotchy and red from the warmth of the room and the amount of wine he’d consumed.

  She could tell Harte wanted to protest, but she promised to return quickly before he could, and then made her way through the crowd. At first she went in the direction Grew had pointed, but when she was out of view, she cut beneath the overhang of the balcony and headed in the direction Bridget Malone had taken.

  When she reached the corner of the room, she found that Bridget had vanished.  There wasn’t a door or hallway for the madam to have gone through, but the woman was gone. Confusion settled over Esta as she searched for some answer to Bridget’s disappearance.

  She found it a moment later when a portion of the wall slid open and one of the waiter girls emerged carrying a tray of clean barware. Before the panel slid shut, Esta picked up her pace and slipped through the opening into the dark silence of an empty hallway.

  At the end of the passageway, Esta could just make out the glow of the flame Bridget held in her hand. From the smell of roasting meat that filled the air, the passage was also connected to the kitchens, but Esta wondered where else it might lead and whether it was connected to the lower floors. The room Bridget had kept her in before was below, in the cellar of the building.

  The light wavered, and then the woman turned a corner and the passageway fell into shadow. Beams of light filtered through small holes in the wall, and Esta went to one and peered through to find a private dining room. From the looks of it, the passage was lined with more openings, probably so the management could keep tabs on their patrons without their knowledge.

  She peered through the next set of openings and found another room, this one filled with men smoking cigars and talking in voices amplified by alcohol and a sense of their own invincibility. Among them was the man who had assaulted her weeks ago, Charlie Murphy. His nose was still crooked, but the bruises on his face had healed. Not that it improved his looks any. She watched them, trying to follow the flow of their conversation. They were discussing some event—a gala to celebrate the spring equinox, from what she could understand. That was when it hit her—they were all members of the Order.