by Lisa Maxwell
Torrio leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his expression menacing. “Well, what are we supposed to do now?”
“We wait?” she offered, even though the last thing she wanted to do was spend another minute sitting across from Torrio in that oppressive restaurant. “Maybe the girl will leave. Or maybe it would be better to go.”
“You want to go?” Torrio’s brows flew up. “That ain’t happening. This gets done tonight. We can do it your way and make your brother happy, or we can do it mine, and you can deal with Paul later,” he told Viola, his tone sharp.
“No,” she said, backtracking. She knew full well what was at risk if Paul was unhappy. “I only meant that we could wait and catch them outside. We don’t know when they’ll come out of there, and if we stay too much longer, we’re gonna draw attention.”
Torrio frowned. “We’ll wait a little while longer.” Then he barked at a passing waiter to get him another drink, and as he waited for it, he studied her from across the table. For most of the dinner, he’d ignored her, but now Viola felt the full weight of his perceptiveness. She could see exactly why Paul had selected Torrio and why Paul was also stupid for trusting him. It didn’t matter that fancy ladies uptown prized the soft fur of the fox—Viola knew well enough that foxes were just overgrown rats.
“It must sting,” Torrio said, leaning back in his chair.
Viola didn’t take the bait his comment was intended to be.
“Being back under your brother’s thumb, I mean.”
“I know what you meant,” she said, leveling her gaze at him so he would know she didn’t care.
Amusement flickered across his expression, but on Torrio it only made him look like he was up to something. “What was it like working for the zoppo?”
Viola’s skin felt hot, and she was struggling to keep her temper from erupting. But Torrio kept pushing.
“I hear Dolph let you lead him around like a dog on a chain.”
“You mean like Paul leads you?” she retorted, keeping her voice flat, bored.
Her words hit their mark. Torrio’s mouth twisted with a look of utter disgust.
“At least I wouldn’t let a boy get the best of me.”
“What boy?” Viola said.
“You didn’t know?” Torrio laughed. “The one with the occhiali.”
“Nibsy?” she said, and the moment the boy’s name was past her lips, it felt like the first time she’d cut herself on Libitina’s blade. At first she’d felt nothing at all, and then the bite of pain began to throb and ache. It was like that now. Numbness followed by a sharp, cutting pain.
But it made sense—the way Nibsy had taken over the Strega when the rest of them had been too shocked, too broken, to do more than make it through the next day. The way he’d attacked Esta on the bridge. Of course it had been Nibsy.
Dolph couldn’t have known, and yet Viola didn’t doubt that he had suspected. He’d been even more guarded in the weeks before the Khafre Hall job. He’d pulled away from her, but she hadn’t been the one to betray him. If Torrio spoke the truth, it had been Nibsy.
“Face it, Viola. You chose the wrong man to follow. Dolph was as weak as his leg. Or maybe it wasn’t only his leg that was weak, eh?” He leaned toward her as he laughed.
Her temper snapping, Viola reached for her steak knife, but Torrio didn’t notice. His attention had been drawn by something else, and he jerked his chin, signaling her to look. “She’s leaving.”
The girl in the blush-colored gown had just exited the booth. “Where’s she going?” Viola asked, balling her hand into a fist so she wouldn’t take the knife and teach him the lesson he deserved.
“How should I know? But this is your chance,” Torrio told her.
“My chance for what? Reynolds is still behind the curtains,” she told him.
“Then you should get your pretty little ass behind the curtains too,” he said, the impatience clear in his voice.
“You think nobody’s gonna notice if I just walk into a private booth and leave a dead man when I walk out? You’re pazzo, Johnny. Stupid and crazy.”
Torrio ignored her use of the nickname. “I’ve been called worse, cara. Too bad I’m also the one in charge right now. I’ll create a diversion,” he told her. “I’ll make sure nobody in this room is looking at you when you get close to Reynolds’ booth.”
“That is a terrible idea,” Viola said through clenched teeth.
“It’s not an idea. It’s an order.” John Torrio leaned over the table again. “Unless you want me to tell Paul that you aren’t going to work out, you don’t really have a choice in the matter. Now go.”
Viola wanted nothing more than to spit at him. But she was dressed as a lady, so she decided to act the part. Letting her affinity unfurl, she found the slow beating of his heart, and she tugged—just a little. Torrio gasped, and Viola answered his strangled breath with a sharp-toothed smile.
“We need to get something clear, Johnny.” She lowered her voice until it was the throaty purr that she knew men liked. “I always have a choice. For instance, I could choose to take your life right now, you miserable excuse for a man, but I won’t because I promised my brother, and I’ve chosen my family. Now, I’m gonna do what you say, but not because I have to. Not because you talk to me like I’m no better than some dog. I’m gonna go take care of Reynolds because right now I don’t want to look at your ugly face no more. And once I’m done, I’m gonna tell my brother to keep you the hell away from me.”
With a swish of her silken skirts, she released her hold on Torrio’s life and started to walk toward the booth. It was a risk, she knew, turning her back on a rat like Torrio, especially after she’d embarrassed him. She wasn’t so stupid as to think that he wasn’t carrying a gun or to believe that he wasn’t crazy enough to shoot her here, in front of the entire world and the reporter they were supposed to kill, just to prove what a man he was. But even if she had to lower herself to wallow in the muck of her brother’s dealings, she wasn’t ever going to crawl. Not for someone as pathetic as Johnny the Fox.
She took her time making her way past the white-topped tables glowing with candlelight and filled with the stomach-turning scents of roasted meat. But the sight of the rare beefsteaks only reminded her of flesh and of the life she was about to take. Of the promise to herself she was about to break.
REASONABLE
1904—St. Louis
Esta clawed her way back to consciousness, scrabbling up through the murky darkness that had pulled her under. Slowly, she became aware of the rattling movement of her seat. Vaguely, she realized that she wasn’t alone. Her head was cushioned by a warm lap, and someone’s fingers were gently stroking the hair at her temples. Harte.
Not again . . .
Swatting away his hand, she struggled to sit up.
“Careful,” Harte said when she bobbled. His hands caught her before she could tumble over onto him, but she pulled away. She could damn well sit up on her own.
“What happened?” she asked as she rubbed at her eyes, blinking away the last of the darkness as she willed her vision to clear. She remembered the strange events in the ballroom and escaping the hotel, but the last thing she recalled was her vision fading behind a heavy fog of inky black and a sense that the world itself was flying apart. And then . . . nothing.
“You fainted,” he told her. “Again. Don’t worry, though. I managed to get us away safely while you took your little nap.” But the lightness of his words didn’t mask the worry in his voice. “You can show your appreciation later.”
She bristled. She didn’t need his worry. Didn’t want it either. “In your dreams,” she said, shooting him a dark look.
But he didn’t throw back a reply, as she’d expected him to. Outside the carriage, lightning flickered, illuminating the planes of his face and exposing the concern in his eyes. A few moments later, farther off now, thunder rumbled, echoing in the distance. When the sound faded, the carriage descended into an uneasy silence.<
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“For a minute back there, I thought I’d lost you,” Harte said softly.
“I’m fine,” she said, brushing aside the emotion in his voice. She did not tell him that for a minute she had felt lost. That there was something about the darkness—the absoluteness of it—that made her think that if it gained too much ground, there wouldn’t be any going back.
His eyes were steady. “You’re lying.”
The certainty in his voice struck a nerve. “I’ll stop when you do.”
Esta made sure that Harte was the first one to look away.
“Those people in the ballroom,” she said, testing the silence that had grown between them.
“The Antistasi?” Harte said, frowning. “If that’s who they were . . .”
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she told him. When she’d seen the first figure appear, the one dressed in red, she’d been shocked, but as more appeared, she’d felt a thrill coursing through her blood that she’d only ever felt before she lifted a diamond or cleaned out a safe.
“They’re a damn menace,” Harte said darkly.
“What?” She turned to look at him, confused. “They were amazing. The way they stood up to the police and the Guard.”
“They were performing,” he said, his tone skeptical. “That was a show.”
She shrugged. “Well, at least they weren’t cowering or hiding what they were.”
“They were using your name,” he said.
She crossed her arms and tried to figure out what his problem was. “I thought you didn’t even like the name.”
“I don’t. But whether I like it isn’t the point,” he said, clearly frustrated. “Look at how easily Julien recognized you, Esta. What if other people recognize you as this Devil’s Thief too? If these Antistasi are using your name, it means that more people will be looking for you. It makes everything we have to do more dangerous.”
He was right. She knew he was right, and yet the sight of those four women, strong and powerful and unafraid? They’d sparked some small fire in Esta. She’d been running and hiding for so long—her whole life, covering up who and what she was. To have that kind of freedom? She would gladly take the danger that went along with it.
“Well, I think these Antistasi, whoever they might be, are admirable,” Esta said. “If magic’s illegal, like Julien told us, they’re at least trying to do something.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Harte looked like he was about to say something more, but the carriage was slowing. “We can argue later,” he said, peering out of the window as the cab rattled to a stop. “We’re here, and I don’t have any money to pay for this taxi. We’re going to have to run for it—if you’re feeling up to it?”
Esta gave him a scornful look. “Thief, remember?” She slipped a wallet from the inside pocket of her stolen jacket.
“In the ballroom?” he asked.
“I figured we’d need it eventually,” she told him, giving him a couple of damp bills.
While Harte handed over the money and made sure that the driver forgot them, Esta dashed for an overhang to get out of the rain, and to prove to him—and to herself—that she could.
The lightning was more sporadic now, and the rain itself seemed to be slowing, but Harte was still damp by the time he made it to where she had propped herself against a wall to catch her breath. As he approached, she straightened a little to hide just how unsteady her legs actually felt, but from the expression on his face, she knew he understood.
Her hair had fallen, wet and lank, around her face, and Harte reached to brush one of the sodden clumps back. He let his hand cup her cheek, and for a second she forgot how annoyed she’d been with him and marveled at the warmth of his fingertips. She considered closing the distance between them to prove just how okay she was.
A step closer and it would be so easy to press her mouth against his, to let herself go. So much had happened in the last two days. So much had changed in the last two years. Esta only wanted one moment in the stretch of their past and future to put aside all that lay ahead—to forget the sacrifice she would make to ensure that this future, the one where magic was illegal and Guardsmen hunted Mageus, wouldn’t be the one that lasted.
Harte pulled back from her, and the possibility that had been between them evaporated into the humid air of the summer night.
“We need to find somewhere to get dry,” he told her, tucking his hands back into his pockets and making it clear that he hadn’t felt the same as she had. “Your skin is like ice.”
They found a boardinghouse a few blocks farther into the neighborhood. It was a run-down, semi-attached building about three blocks from King’s Saloon. The matron who answered the door was dressed in a clean, plain shift, and her gray hair was tucked away under a dark kerchief. At first she eyed them suspiciously, her gaze lingering on Esta’s disheveled hair and the suit she was wearing, but when Esta produced a stack of bills from the stolen wallet, the woman’s eyes lit. She waved them inside and didn’t ask any questions or bother with their names.
There was only one room left, the woman told them, leading them up the dark, narrow staircase and opening a door at the top. It was small, with a narrow bed and a desk with a rickety chair. A second chair stood near a squat stove in the corner. It certainly wasn’t the plush luxury they’d had at the Jefferson, but at least it seemed clean. Sort of. The coverlet on the bed was stained, but the linens seemed to be freshly washed and the furniture was free from dust and grime.
The woman lit a small fire in the stove before she left them alone, closing the door behind her.
“We need to get you warmed up,” Harte said.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to hold herself still so he wouldn’t see her shivering.
“You’re not fine, and it’s only going to get worse if you don’t get those wet clothes off.” He went to her and helped slip the wet dinner jacket from her shoulders before she could argue. Turning his back to give her some privacy, he draped her jacket over the edge of the second chair and moved it so the warmth of the meager fire could dry it out. “Give me the rest.”
“Harte,” she warned.
“I won’t look,” he told her before she could argue any more.
She didn’t really care, but it was clear he wasn’t going to give in, so she unbuttoned the shirt she was wearing and took it off. She rolled it in a ball and threw it at the back of his head. “There.”
“The pants, too, and then get into bed,” he told her.
“We’re supposed to be meeting Julien soon,” she argued. But he was right about her clothes. They felt clammy and uncomfortable, so she stepped out of the soaked pants.
“We’re not doing anything. You’re going to stay here and warm yourself up before you end up sick. I’ll go meet Julien alone.”
His words chilled her faster than the rain had. “Excuse me?”
He turned then. “You heard me, Esta.”
“You are not going without me,” she said, but as she took a step toward him, her legs went out from under her.
He rushed to catch her before she hit the ground. “How are you planning to meet Julien when you can barely keep yourself upright?”
“Get off,” she said, and he let her go willingly and watched her stagger back from him. “I’m fine. I’m going with you.”
“Esta, please. You have to be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” she said, not caring about the edge in her tone.
He didn’t move any closer. “You need to rest.”
“I should be there too,” she argued. She took a step toward him and then another, testing her own strength. “I need to be there.”
“Why?” he asked. “Unless you still don’t trust me.”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. She did—or she wanted to.
He pulled away from her. “There are people looking for you,” he reminded her. “Those people in the ballroom didn’t help with that.”
“They think the Devil
’s Thief is a girl,” she reminded him.
“A pair of trousers doesn’t make you look any less like a girl.” Harte let out a ragged breath when she glared at him. “Look at you,” he said, pointing at her. “Your hair is . . .” His voice faltered. He started again. “And your eyes . . .”
“What about my eyes?” she asked, narrowing them at him.
“They’re pretty!” he gasped in exasperation.
“They’re just eyes, Harte.”
“And you . . . your . . .” He waved his hand in the general direction of her whole body.
“My what?” She glared at him.
He groaned with frustration, his cheeks and the tips of his ears pink. “Look. Please. Just let me do this. I can run over to King’s and wait for Julien. He should be bringing the stone with him,” he said, and before she could interrupt, he added, “You can be here, warm. Resting. Getting stronger, so we can leave town before anything else happens.”
“For the last time, I don’t need to re—”
“Please,” he said softly before she could finish. “I need you to. You saw what the Antistasi are capable of tonight. You saw the police and the Guard. We have no idea what might be waiting for us out there, and I can’t keep you safe when you can hardly stay on your feet right now.”
Esta flinched at the emotion behind his words. “It’s not your job to keep me safe. I’m not some liability, Harte.”
“I never said you were.”
“You just did,” she told him, not bothering to disguise the hurt and anger in her voice. “We’re supposed to be in this together.”
“We are.” He picked up the pants she’d left on the floor. “But this time, for once, just stay put and let me handle it.” And without another word, he scooped up the rest of the damp garments she’d taken off—the only clothing that she had—and walked out the door.
KING’S SALOON
1904—St. Louis