The Devil's Thief

by Lisa Maxwell

  “What about that?” she asked, pointing out a smaller door on the far wall. It was square, about halfway up the wall, and when she opened it, he could see it was some kind of chute. The space was just large enough for a person to fit through. “Looks like it goes down to the basement. Maybe it’s the laundry?” she offered, indicating the carts filled with linens.

  “It could just as easily be a trash chute leading to an incinerator.” He walked over and poked his head into the dark opening for a moment.

  Outside the door, the voices were growing louder. “I think we should risk it,” she said, already lifting a leg to wedge herself into the chute. “If we get down to the basement, there has to be a way out.”

  “Esta, no,” Harte said, pulling her back as they heard another door in the hallway bang open. “We don’t know how far the drop might be or what’s down there.”

  “But—” He scooped her up before she could finish her protest.

  “We can’t risk breaking a leg or something,” he said as he carried her, squirming, over to the laundry bins.

  He saw her eyes widen as she understood what he was about to do. “Harte, don’t you even think about—”

  But he was already dumping her into the rolling bin. “Cover up.”

  Esta struggled to right herself amid the slippery piles of fabric. “But—”

  “We don’t have time to argue,” he said, pulling extra linens from one of the other bins. Whoever those women in the ballroom were, they’d bought Harte and Esta some time with their distraction. At least Harte hoped they had. “I trusted you in the elevator. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Harte—”

  “Get down and stay down,” he snapped, and then piled another load of linens on top of her before she could argue any more.

  Harte tied one of the white tablecloths around his waist, approximating the aprons he’d seen the servers wearing earlier. He wasn’t dressed in one of the white jackets the other hotel workers wore, but he had to hope it was like Esta had said: No one ever noticed the help.

  “Ready?” he asked the cart, and he got a string of muffled curses in reply. He figured that was as good as a yes.

  Carefully, he backed out of the room, pulling the cart behind him. Turning away from the voices and trying to figure out where he was, Harte tried to look natural as he maneuvered the cart down the hall. He was nearly to the first turn when he heard someone calling out behind him.

  “Hey! You there!”

  Pretending that he hadn’t heard them, Harte kept his pace brisk but steady as he headed for where the hall branched into a T.

  “Hey!” The shout came again. “Stop!”

  He took the first right and then broke into a run. He didn’t bother to slow down for the set of swinging doors ahead, but instead took them at full speed and plunged into the kitchen. Surprised chefs raised their heads, pausing their work to watch him rush through. On the other side of the kitchen was an empty service hall. He didn’t look back to see how close their pursuers were, but tore down the hallway and then out another set of doors that led to the lobby.

  The front door of the hotel was ahead of them—just a few more yards and they would be out into the night—when the shrill screech of a whistle split the air, causing the tinkling of the piano to cut short and people all throughout the lobby to stare. And in front of him, blocking the one exit he had left, two uniformed policemen stepped into his path to stop him.

  In that moment Harte knew they were done. There would be more police outside, and even if he got them through the front doors, they’d have no place to go. Not that he would go easily.

  “Hold on,” he told Esta as he picked up his speed.

  “Harte, what are you—”

  He’d expected the two men to move out of the way, but they held their ground, bracing for impact, so when the cart plowed into them, they all went over. Esta tumbled out of the cart, disoriented and with her hair falling from her hat, but Harte was already on his feet, taking her by the hand.

  “Run!” he shouted, half dragging her as he sprinted toward the exit, but suddenly there were three more men blocking their way. He pulled up short as he realized there was no way to get through them—not without magic.

  “Esta—” Her name was a question and demand all at once.

  She tightened her hold on his hand as though she understood, but at first nothing happened.

  “Any time now,” he said as the men started to close in on them.

  She blinked over at him. “Right—”

  Harte almost stumbled when the men chasing them seemed to halt in midstride, and Esta let out a shaking breath. Together they wove through the men and out the front doors of the hotel. He’d been right: There were police wagons and a row of dark-suited police standing along the front of the hotel, waiting for them.

  The storm that had threatened all evening had started, and the cold drops of rain, suspended midfall, felt needle-sharp against Harte’s face as he and Esta continued to run from the hotel. Above, the sky glowed from a flash of lightning, the bright forks of the electric bolts frozen like cracks in an iced pond. They lit the night with their brilliance.

  Next to him, Esta’s breath hitched as she stumbled, nearly pulling him down with her. But he caught the two of them in time. “Esta?”

  “I can’t—” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s too much.” She was trying to pull away from him.

  He realized then that where their hands were clasped, ribbons of energy, like miniatures of the lightning bolts that hung in the sky, were winding about, binding them together. These weren’t frozen in time, though, like everything else around them. This energy was alive—hot and dangerous and creeping up her arm. The voice inside of him was howling in victory.

  “We’re too close,” he said, looking at what was happening with a numb sort of horror. The hotel was still in sight. The police were still a danger. Everything they’d risked, everything they’d done to escape, would have been for nothing if they didn’t get away. “I need you to hold on for just a few more minutes.”

  Esta’s face was twisted with the effort of what she was doing. “It feels like fire.” But she nodded, and without pausing or asking for permission, Harte scooped her over his shoulders, in a fireman’s carry, and threaded his way through the now-still traffic. He ignored the needlelike cold of the raindrops. The power inside of him surged again, pulsing with satisfaction, but he gathered all his strength and pushed it down.

  He was barely across the street, just out of view of the hotel, when Esta gasped and the world around them righted itself. Above, the sky went dark, and a moment later thunder crashed over the steady patter of raindrops. He ran for the cover of a doorway and lowered Esta to the ground.

  “Did we make it?” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said, brushing back the hair from her face. “We made it. We have to keep going, though. I need you to help me here. You’re going to have to walk.”

  She wasn’t listening. Her gaze was glassy and unfocused as she stared up at the night sky. “Can you see that? It’s like the darkness is eating the world.”

  Harte didn’t bother to look. His attention was on Esta as her eyes fluttered closed and her limbs went limp.

  AN UNEXPECTED CHALLENGE

  1904—St. Louis

  Ruth waited beneath the cover of the brewery’s wagon, across from the Jefferson Hotel, watching for some sign of what was happening within. Along the street near the front entrance, the dark bodies of police wagons blocked her view of the front door. She had more Antistasi stationed at the other entrances, just in case.

  She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. Ever since the legend of the Devil’s Thief was born after the train accident two years before, Ruth had always assumed it was a lie perpetrated by the Order and the other Occult Brotherhoods to stir up anger against her kind. Ruth had never really believed that a girl, a simple girl, could have done what the reports claimed she had. Which had not stopped Ruth and the ot
her Antistasi leaders from claiming the Devil’s Thief as their own, or from using her name to unify their cause.

  All across the country, there were pockets of Mageus who lived quiet lives, but something changed after the Defense Against Magic Act was passed. Ordinary people who were happy living ordinary lives suddenly realized they had never been safe. They began to look to the Thief for the promise of a different future, and groups like Ruth’s had been more than happy to provide them with hope.

  When other deeds—small and large, across the country—were done by people claiming to be the Devil’s Thief, Ruth had always assumed that it was simply a group of Antistasi like her own. She’d never thought that the same girl could have been involved. The Devil’s Thief was nothing but a myth, a folk hero like Paul Bunyan or John Henry. Maybe she’d been a real girl at some point, but the Thief had become something so much larger than any single person. She’d become an ideal. A calling.

  But then, earlier that night, North had seen the girl, the one whose face had been in papers across the land, and Ruth had to accept the possibility that she’d been wrong. She also had to face the possibility of a challenge to her own power in St. Louis. After all, stories are often easier to tame than actual hearts.

  Ruth had no idea who this girl was or what she wanted. She didn’t even know if the girl was the Thief, though the police and the Guard certainly were treating her as such. At best, the girl’s appearance was a minor distraction. At worst, the girl might have come to the city to take control of it. Ruth had worked too hard, had far too much planned, to allow that.

  Still, it wouldn’t do for the girl to be caught now. If she was, the specter of the Devil’s Thief would be useless as a shield against any retaliation that Ruth’s Antistasi might incur. There was too much at stake, so she’d brought her people to the Jefferson. They would provide a distraction for the girl to escape, and if possible, they would bring the girl to Ruth. As a competitor, the girl could be a problem, but as an ally—or better, a subordinate . . . Well, that idea held a certain attraction.

  It had been too long. With North and his watch, time was flexible, but waiting was still interminable. As long as her people were inside, Ruth would worry.

  She didn’t have to worry for much longer, though. Lightning flashed in a brilliant arc overhead, illuminating the street and the facade of the hotel, and before the thunder could break, a pair appeared out of nowhere. Ruth squinted through the rain as the taller of the two scooped the other up and ran. And she felt the crash of warm magic sift through the air, unusually strong. Impossibly pure. Ruth hadn’t felt power like that in her entire life.

  A moment later four masked figures dressed in gowns appeared just out of the beam of the streetlamp nearby. They ran toward the wagon and were inside before anyone could see them. The back door of the wagon closed, and a window slid open near the driver’s perch.

  “Did you run into any problems?” Ruth asked, peering back into the darkness of the wagon’s covered bed. North had already taken the mask from his face and was stripping out of the dark gown.

  “Not one,” North told her. “Maggie’s devices worked like a charm.”

  “They usually do,” Ruth said, a spark of pride for her youngest sister glowing within her.

  “We didn’t find the Thief inside. Do you think she got out?” Maggie asked, pulling her own mask from her face. It was always a moment of shock to see Maggie dressed in scarlet, when Ruth was used to the girl wearing more sedate colors. From the look on North’s face—the open longing—Ruth suspected that he felt the same.

  She looked back in the direction where the two people had appeared in the rain. “I think she did,” Ruth told them. “But North was right. She’s not alone.”

  “Do you want me to follow them?” North asked.

  Ruth considered his offer—and the way her sister’s expression filled with worry at the mention of it. With the power the Thief clearly had, having her on their side might be a boon, but she knew that if Maggie was worried about North, she would not be able to focus on the work necessary to complete the serum. Thief or no Thief, they were running out of time. “We have eyes enough in the city. If they surface again or cause any problems, we’ll know. For now, I need you close.”

  RESPONSIBILITIES

  1902—New York

  As the streetcar rattled north toward Fifty-Second Street, where her uncle and his family lived, Cela couldn’t stop her voice from cracking as she told Jianyu about how Abe had been killed in their own house. Tears fell down her cheeks as she explained how the theater workroom that had been her pride—her sanctuary—had been turned into her prison.

  “I knew you were there,” he said.

  She nodded. “I heard you, but I didn’t know who you were. With the night I’d had . . . Then you went on about Darrigan, and I didn’t think it was smart to reveal myself, not after everything else.”

  “It is understandable after what happened to your brother and your house,” Jianyu said simply, an acknowledgment that Cela didn’t quite understand.

  “I didn’t say anything about my house,” she told him, her stomach suddenly feeling like she’d swallowed molten lead.

  “You do not know?” His expression faltered. “When I came to find you, it was burning.”

  Even sitting down as she was, it was her turn to sway and his turn to steady her. That house had been her daddy’s pride and joy. It was his mark in the world, and if Jianyu was right, it was gone. Just like her brother. Just like everything she’d loved. All in a single night.

  The vines around her heart grew thorns, and her breath felt like it was being pressed from her.

  Has it already been two days?

  Cela pulled away from the comfort of Jianyu’s hand over hers.

  He let her go, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “What?” she demanded, her very soul raw and weeping from the losses that had been piled one on another.

  “Harte Darrigan lied about many things, but he did not lie about you,” he told her softly. “He chose well.”

  “Well, he should’ve chosen somebody else,” she told him, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

  Jianyu let out a ragged breath, a sigh that Cela took for agreement. They rode in silence for a while longer, but eventually he turned to her again. “Darrigan’s mother?” he asked gently. “He told me that he left her with you. She was not in the house?”

  “She died before I left,” she assured him. Before it burned.

  “Who was it that killed your brother?”

  “I hoped that you would know,” she said. “I was in the cellar when it happened. I heard the gunshot, and I ran. I don’t even know why I ran. It’s like I couldn’t stop myself. I left Abe there. I left him like some coward.”

  Her voice hitched, and the memory of Abe—his laughing eyes and his strong features that were so much like their father’s—threatened to overwhelm her. Threatened to pull her down so she’d never get back up.

  “You are far from a coward, Cela Johnson.” Jianyu reached over and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. It was a strangely intimate gesture, a liberty that he didn’t have any right to take with her. But she didn’t stop him. She simply accepted his comfort as the gift she knew he’d intended.

  “It’s because of Darrigan, isn’t it? Everything that happened to me—to Abe—it’s all because I took his mother in and accepted that damn ring as payment.”

  “I cannot be sure, but . . .” He inclined his head, wincing a little at the movement.

  “It’s why Evelyn locked me in my workshop. She wanted the ring Darrigan left me,” she told him. Cela still didn’t understand how the stupid wench had managed to get it out of the seam of her skirt, or why she had given it up without so much as a fight.

  “Do you still have it?” Jianyu asked, his eyes cutting to her and his voice suddenly urgent. “Did Evelyn get the ring?”

  “She must’ve taken it,” Cela said.

  “No�
�”

  “Good riddance to it, too. Evil old thing didn’t bring me anything but bad luck.”

  Jianyu was looking paler than he had before. His skin had golden undertones before, but now the color all but drained from his face. “It’ll bring worse luck if we do not retrieve it.”

  “We. There isn’t gonna be any ‘we,’ ” she told him. The streetcar was pulling to the curb and she wasn’t going to continue on this ride. “This is my stop. I’m going to go to my family, heaven help them, and you can go wherever you’d like, but I don’t want anything to do with that ring, or Harte Darrigan, or anything else. Now, I freed you, and you freed me, so I think we’d better call things even and part ways right here and now.”

  Jianyu frowned, but he didn’t argue.

  “I can’t exactly say it was a pleasure, but it was interesting.” She held out her hand. “God go with you, because lord knows that if you go after that ring, you’re gonna need every bit of his protection.”

  He reached for her hand, but Jianyu’s skin barely touched hers before she registered how cool it felt—too cool—and then he was collapsing as though the life had gone right out of him. It was only her quick reflexes that kept him from hitting his head a second time.

  She hadn’t realized he was in such bad shape. He’d seemed fine a moment before. Well, he wasn’t her responsibility. Cela propped Jianyu back up onto the seat and then started to go. But she got only about four steps away before she turned back.

  She couldn’t leave him there. She should, but she couldn’t.

  With a sigh, she jostled Jianyu until he was conscious again, just enough to get himself up. Even then she had to support his weight—his arm draped over her shoulder—to get him down the aisle and off the streetcar, apologizing to the folks who were watching her with clear disapproval as she went. Once outside, Cela took a moment to get her bearings. Jianyu was barely conscious, but he was at least on his feet.

  “Come on,” she told him, heading deeper into the neighborhood. “Let’s get you somewhere before you go and pass out again.”