The Devil's Thief

by Lisa Maxwell

  “You okay?” Harte asked, turning toward her with worry shadowing his features. His eyes searched over her, as though he was waiting for the moment he would need to catch her again when she collapsed.

  But she wouldn’t collapse. She wouldn’t allow herself to be that weak. And she hated his hovering. “I’m just a little jumpy.”

  She thought Harte was about to reach for her. Before he could, she straightened and pulled back a little. If they were to be partners, they would be equals. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow her current weakness to be a liability.

  Harte frowned and kept his hands at his sides, but Esta didn’t miss the way his fingers curled into fists. Skilled liar that he was, he couldn’t hide the hurt that flashed across his features any more than he could completely mask the worry etched into his expression every time he glanced at her.

  Esta forced herself to ignore that, too, and focused on staying upright. On making herself appear stronger than she felt. Confident.

  Harte gave her another long look before finally turning back to watch the land recede into the distance. She did the same, but her concentration was on what waited for them when the ship finally docked.

  They had an impossible task ahead of them: to find four stones now scattered across a continent, thanks to Harte. Like Ishtar’s Key—the stone Esta wore in a cuff around her upper arm—the stones had once been in the possession of the Order. The Dragon’s Eye, the Djinni’s Star, the Delphi’s Tear, and the Pharaoh’s Heart. They had been created when Isaac Newton imbued five ancient artifacts with the power of Mageus whose affinities happened to align with the elements. He’d been trying to control the power in the Book that was currently tucked into Esta’s skirt, but he hadn’t been able to. After Newton had suffered a nervous breakdown, he’d entrusted the artifacts and the Book to the Order, who later had used them to create the Brink and establish their power in the city—and to keep Mageus trapped on the island and subjugated under the Order’s control. But Dolph Saunders and his gang had changed that.

  Still, even if she and Harte managed to navigate the far-flung world, to find the stones and retrieve them, they still had to figure out how to use them to get the Book’s power out of Harte and to free the Mageus of the city without destroying the Brink. Because, in the greatest of ironies, the Brink also kept the magic it took. If they destroyed the Brink, they risked destroying magic itself—and all Mageus along with it.

  Esta was jarred from her thoughts when the boat lurched as it came up against the dock. Another blast of the horn, and the engines went silent. The few passengers around them began making their way toward the stairs.

  “Ready?” Harte asked, his voice too soft, his eyes too concerned.

  That worry sealed it for her. She took another moment to look at the skyline in the distance before turning to him. “I was thinking—”

  “A dangerous proposition,” he drawled. But his eyes weren’t smiling. Not like they should have been. He was still too worried about her, and she knew enough to know that fear like that was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Especially with all that was on the line.

  “I think we should split up,” Esta said.

  “Split up?” he asked, surprised.

  “I can’t get us tickets to Chicago with you in the way. You keep looking at me like I’m about to fall over. People will notice.”

  “Maybe I keep looking at you like that because you look like you’re having trouble staying upright.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.

  “You think I don’t know that you’ve been leaning on that railing like it’s some kind of crutch?”

  She ignored the truth—and the irritation—in his statement. “I can’t lift a couple of tickets with you following me around.”

  Harte opened his mouth to argue, but she beat him to it.

  “Besides, you’re supposed to be dead,” she reminded him. “The one thing we have going for us is that the Order isn’t looking for you. We can’t afford for someone to recognize either one of us in there, and that’s more likely to happen if we’re together.”

  He studied her for a moment. “You’re probably right—”

  “I usually am.”

  “—but I have one condition.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, not at all liking the crafty expression in his eyes.

  He held out his hand. “Give me the Book.”

  “What?” She pulled back. The Book was the reason he’d planned to double-cross Dolph’s gang in the first place, and for a moment she wondered if she’d been stupid to think there was something between them.

  “You want to split up, fine. We’ll split up. But I get to carry the Book.”

  “You don’t trust me,” she said, ignoring the flicker of hurt. After all she’d risked for him . . . But what had she expected? He was a con man, a liar. It was part of what she admired in him, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t have wanted him to be anything else.

  “I trust you as much as you trust me,” he told her, a non-answer if ever there was one.

  “After all I did for you . . .” She pretended to be more irritated than she felt. In truth, she couldn’t blame him. She would have done the exact same thing. And there was something comforting in falling back into their old roles, that well-worn distrust that had kept them from falling too easily into each other.

  “You have the cuff with the first stone,” he told her. “If I’m holding the Book, we’ll be even. Plus, if either one of us runs into trouble, we won’t be putting both of the things we have at risk.”

  She could argue. She probably should. But Esta understood implicitly that agreeing to his demand would be a step toward solidifying their partnership. Whatever she might feel for Harte paled in comparison to all that they had left to do. Or so she told herself. Besides, if he already had the power of the Book inside of him, he didn’t really need the Book itself, did he? What he needed was the stone she wore in the cuff beneath her sleeve, and he wasn’t asking for that.

  “Fine.” She brushed off her disappointment as she slipped the Book from where she’d kept it within her cloak and held it out to him.

  A small tome of dark, cracked leather, the Ars Arcana didn’t look like much. Even with the strange geometric markings on the cover, there was nothing overtly remarkable about it. Maybe that was because the power of it was no longer held within its pages. Or maybe that was just the way of things—maybe power didn’t always appear the way you expected it to.

  Harte took it from her, and the moment his long fingers wrapped around the leather binding, she thought she saw the strange colors flash in his eyes again. But if they’d even been there at all, the colors were gone before she could decide.

  He tucked the Book into his jacket and then adjusted the brim of his cap again. “You go first. I’ll follow in a minute.”

  “We should decide on a place to meet.”

  “I’ll find you.” His eyes met hers, steady. “Get us a couple of tickets and wait for me on the platform of the first train to Chicago.”

  To keep the artifacts out of the hands of Nibsy Lorcan, Harte had sent most of them out of the city. To keep the Order from finding them, he’d scattered the artifacts. The first stone waited in Chicago, where one of Harte’s old vaudeville friends, Julien Eltinge, was performing. They would be one day behind it, and there was a small chance they might even be able to get it before Julien received the package.

  But Chicago was only the first of their stops. After Chicago, there was Bill Pickett, a cowboy in a traveling rodeo show who had the dagger. The crown had been sent to some distant family in San Francisco, which was an entire continent away. Worse, she and Harte weren’t the only ones after the Order’s artifacts or the only ones who needed the secrets of the Book. They would never be able to find them all before Logan appeared in New York in a week, where Esta had left him, and told Nibsy everything—about the future, about who Esta really was, and about every one of her weaknesses.

>   But they would go as quickly as they could. When they had the four, they would return to the city, where the last stone waited, protected by Jianyu, and then they would fight alongside those they’d left behind.

  If there’s anyone left.

  “I guess I’ll see you in a bit, then?” God, she hated how the rasp in her voice betrayed every worry that was running through her head and every hope that she was unwilling to admit.

  Esta didn’t do worry. She didn’t do nerves or second-guessing or regrets. And she wasn’t about to start, no matter how pretty Harte Darrigan’s gray eyes might be or how weak she still felt from whatever had happened to her as she’d crossed the Brink. The only way through was through—and she didn’t need anyone to carry her.

  Proving that much to herself as well as to him, she started to go, but he caught her wrist gently. She could have pulled away from him if she’d wanted to, but the pressure of his hand gripping hers was reassuring, so she allowed herself the moment of comfort.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Esta,” he told her, his eyes serious. “Not until we finish this.”

  And then he’ll be gone.

  The unexpected sentimentality of the thought startled her. She couldn’t allow herself to become so soft. Hadn’t Harte just made that much clear? All that could matter now was fixing her mistakes—or the mistakes that she could fix, at least. The others—and there have been so many—she would just have to learn to live with. She would free the Book before its power could tear Harte apart, and then she would use it to destroy the Order, the rich men who preyed on the vulnerable. Esta would finish the job that Dolph Saunders had begun, even if she had to sacrifice herself to do it.

  And before it was over, she would make Nibsy Lorcan pay—for Dakari, the one person who had always been a friend to her. For Dolph, the father she had not been allowed to know, and for Leena, the mother she would never know.

  The first step was getting the stones back, and they would start in Chicago. One step at a time. Nothing is more important than the job.

  Esta cringed at how quickly Professor Lachlan’s words had come to her. No, she corrected herself. Nibsy’s words. They were the words of a traitor, not a mentor and definitely not a father. She didn’t have to live by them any longer, and she certainly didn’t want them in her head.

  Pulling her hand out of Harte’s without another word, Esta set off across the upper deck. She kept her head down as she quickened her steps to catch up to the meager stream of early morning passengers making their way from the docks into the larger, busier train terminal. She glanced back just before she stepped through the wide doors, but Harte was nowhere in sight.

  THE ARS ARCANA

  1902—New York

  Harte Darrigan had watched plenty of people walk away from him over the course of his brief life. He’d watched stage managers shut doors in his face and audiences stand up and leave when his act failed to impress them. He’d watched the guys he’d run wild with when he was just a kid turn away and pretend they didn’t know him when he’d been forced to take the Five Pointers mark. He’d even watched his mother turn her back on him when he wasn’t more than twelve . . . though he wouldn’t deny that he’d deserved it. But somehow, watching Esta walk away made him want to howl, to run after her and tell her he’d changed his mind.

  It was an impulse he didn’t completely trust.

  Yes, he admired Esta—for her talent and her determination. For the way she always met his eyes straight on, shoulders back, unafraid of what might come. His equal—his better, perhaps—in every way.

  Of course, he liked her as well—for her sharp sense of humor and the flash in her eyes when she was angry. He liked her steadfastness and loyalty to those she cared about. And he liked that even when she was lying right to his face, she never pretended to be anything other than what she was.

  He wouldn’t say he loved her. No . . . He had seen what love had done to his mother and to Dolph. To Harte, the very word was a con—a lie that people told themselves and others to cover the truth. When people said love, what they really meant was dependency. Obsession. Weakness. So no, he would not say he loved Esta, but he could admit that he wanted her. He could maybe, maybe even admit that he needed her. But he would only ever admit it to himself.

  Now, though, that desire he felt for her—the wanting and needing—was a craving stronger, darker than it had ever been. Harte trusted it even less, because it wasn’t entirely his own. In the furthest recesses of his mind, he could feel the power that had once been contained in the Book gathering its strength and pressing at his very soul, like some beaked and taloned creature about to hatch.

  As Esta walked away from him, Harte’s hands gripped the railing of the boat. He had to hold himself steady as he felt that power lash out within him, because it had already discovered the truth—it had already learned that she was his weakness.

  If he released his hold on the railing, he would follow her, which was what the power trapped within him wanted more than anything. If he followed her as he wanted to, it would be that much harder to press the power down, to keep himself whole . . . and to keep Esta safe. Because if the power took hold of him, if he allowed it to reach for her—for all that she was and all that she could be—its razor-tipped claws would claim her. And it would destroy her.

  Had Harte known what the Book was, he wouldn’t have been so eager to get his hands on it. When Dolph Saunders had tempted him with the prospect of a way out of the city, he hadn’t imagined that his own body and mind could become a prison more absolute than the island he’d been born on. He certainly hadn’t expected the Book they stole from the Order to be a living thing—no one had. Because if any of the others—Dolph or Nibsy or the rest—had any idea of what the Book really contained, they never would have let him near it.

  Days ago, everything had seemed clearer, simple even. In the bowels of Khafre Hall, his plan had been straightforward. If he took the Book from Dolph’s gang, he would have the freedom he’d wanted for so long, and Nibsy Lorcan—the double-crossing rat—wouldn’t be able to use it for his own ends. He’d seen Nibsy’s plan, the way he would use the Book to control Mageus and use the Mageus under his control to eradicate Sundren. It would be a world safe for the old magic, but the only one with any freedom in it would be Nibsy himself.

  But it hadn’t only been Nibsy that Harte had been worried about. Stealing the Book from the Order also meant that Jack Grew would never be able to use it to finish the monstrous machine he was building, the one that could wipe magic from the earth. Too bad that the moment Harte’s hands had brushed that crackled leather, all those plans had changed.

  He was used to keeping himself away from others. Most people didn’t realize how much of themselves they projected, so Harte had long become accustomed to pulling his affinity inward and keeping himself closed off. He hated being caught off guard by the onslaught of jumbled images and feelings and thoughts that most people shoved freely into the world. But he hadn’t thought to prepare himself for the Book.

  When his skin had made contact with the ancient, cracked cover, he’d realized his mistake. He’d felt a hot, searing energy enter him—a magic with a power like nothing he had ever experienced.

  Then the screaming had started.

  It had taken only seconds, but those seconds had felt like a never-ending barrage of sound and impressions, an incoherent jumble of languages he should not have been able to understand. But Harte never needed to know the words to understand a person’s heart and mind, and touching the Book had been like reading a person.

  Actually, it had been far easier. It was as though the power within the Book had been waiting for that moment—waiting for him to become its living body. He’d understood almost immediately that the Book was more than any one of them had predicted. It was power. It was wrath. It was the beating heart of magic in the world, and it wanted nothing more and nothing less than to be set free. To become. To consume.

  And what it wanted most to
consume was Esta.

  Fortunately, the power he’d unwittingly freed was still weakened by centuries of imprisonment. Harte could still push it down and lock it away when he focused. But the power was growing stronger every day, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to suppress it forever. He hadn’t planned to.

  Harte had planned to die. He hadn’t known for sure whether throwing himself from the bridge would silence the clamoring voices, but he’d figured that at least it would mean they couldn’t use him as their pawn. But then Jianyu had shown up at the docks the night before the bridge and offered him another way.

  By then Harte had already scattered the artifacts, sending most of them away from the city to keep them out of Nibsy’s reach. He hadn’t realized until it was too late that he could have used them to control the Book’s power. He certainly hadn’t expected Esta to return.

  Now stopping Nibsy and the Order and keeping Esta safe depended on controlling it. To do that, they needed the artifacts. But retrieving them meant leaving people behind—his mother, for one. Jianyu, for another. And maybe most worrisome of all, it meant leaving one of the stones.

  He’d given one to Cela because he didn’t have any other way to repay her for what he’d done when he’d forced his dying mother upon her with his affinity. The ring had been the least obtrusive of the Order’s pieces, other than maybe the cuff that he’d given to Esta. Harte had known even then that it wasn’t a good enough trade, but now that Esta had returned, he truly understood the danger he’d put Cela in—especially if the boy Esta had brought back with her could find anything. He could only hope that the command he’d planted in her mind with his affinity would be enough to help Cela evade danger until Jianyu could protect her and the stone.

  Harte waited a while before he released his hold on the railing, long enough that Esta was out of sight and the crewman on the ferry was beginning to pay more attention to him than was safe.