The Devil's Thief

by Lisa Maxwell

  He waited until every pair of eyes was looking only at him—seeing him for what he truly was. And then he waited a moment longer, just because he could.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we come to our final tableau. Tonight the Order has presented a veritable bounty of beauty and wonder. You have been transported to the alchemist’s laboratory and witnessed the moment when man began to take control of the dangerous powers that surround us. You have seen art come to life, revealing the long and tortured history of feral magic, of those unwilling to control the dangerous power inside themselves for the good of a just and enlightened society. But now our evening is nearly at an end.”

  He paused, let the anticipation grow in the room until he could practically feel their desperation for the curtain to be pulled back . . . until he had them in the palm of his hand.

  “I present to you Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare. . . .” With another flourish of his hands, the curtains opened and the final tableau of the night was revealed.

  Evelyn, clad in a blond wig and a wisp of a gown, was splayed out on a low couch, just as the woman in Fuseli’s famed painting. Her arms arched gracefully to the floor and her eyes were closed in a semblance of sleep. Just as in the painting, sitting on her chest was a creature meant to represent the embodiment of nightmares. Jack had created the figure himself, a gargoyle-like incubus that looked like the image of the one in the painting.

  The audience rustled in wonder and in fear. He could tell it was fear from the way the air seemed to go out of the room. It was the most exquisite of the tableaux, the most horrible and beautiful all at once, and it was about to be more so.

  “Those who cling to the old ways, who lurk in the shadows of our streets, are a mark upon the perfection of our union. They represent a danger. Like the darkness that creeps into our dreams, those with feral magic lie in wait until we are at our weakest. Like nightmares come to life.”

  At his words, the incubus began to move, turning its head to stare out at the crowded ballroom, and Jack was more than gratified to hear the audience gasp. The incubus was, of course, no ordinary carving. It was a sort of golem, an impressive piece of magic that had been revealed to Jack during one of the long, morphine-filled nights when he woke with no memory of parsing the Book’s secrets. That he’d been given this particular secret was a gift, and he considered it nothing less than a divine sign of what he was meant to do. Evelyn’s feral power might affect the flesh and blood, but he doubted it would do much to the misshapen creature he’d fashioned out of clay.

  “But nightmares are meant to be tamed, just as those who cling to the old ways must be tamed.”

  He could feel Evelyn’s fear even from where he stood, and that along with the singing of the morphine in his blood only emboldened him.

  “Tonight you have seen the wonders of the alchemist’s discovery, sirens, and witches, but now I present a true siren. A witch who would try to destroy the Order.”

  At his words Evelyn seemed to sense the danger she was in. She tried to sit up, but the moment she began to move, the incubus caged her with its arms and pressed her back to the couch. Even as she screamed, he could feel the heat of her magic brushing at him, trying to tempt him and sway him from his path, but it didn’t touch him. She couldn’t touch him. He’d learned too much since that girl in Greece. He’d learned too much from the Book.

  “Evelyn DeMure pretends to be a simple actress. Perhaps you’ve seen her at Wallack’s Theatre?” From the rustling among the men, Jack assumed that some had more than seen her. “But she, like so many of their kind, is not what she pretends to be. She intended to fell us all. She was there the night that Khafre Hall burned. She thought she could enrapture me with her evil ways, but as you can see, her power is weak compared to the secrets of enlightened study.”

  He was close—so close—he thought as he lifted his hand, and the clay figure did the same. He brought his fingers together in a fist, and the creature mirrored his action over the tender skin of Evelyn’s throat.

  By now people were starting to come to their feet. Some were calling for him to stop, but Jack was calm. Allowing the golem to do his bidding, he turned back to the crowd. “But Miss DeMure, as charming as she pretended to be, isn’t the only snake in our midst tonight. There is another, one who pretended to be an ally but in truth was doing the bidding of the very people we are trying to protect ourselves from.”

  He found Paul Kelly in the audience, the low-life bit of Bowery trash who had pretended to befriend him. Kelly had not only allowed Jack’s enemy to live but had also aligned himself with one of the people responsible for Jack’s greatest embarrassment.

  “You all might have noticed that Mr. Kelly is here with us tonight. I’m sure you wondered why someone of his ilk had been invited to besmirch our event,” Jack said, watching Kelly’s eyes narrow at him. But he dismissed the threat.

  This was his room, his moment.

  “Officers,” Jack called. “If you would be so kind, please escort Mr. Kelly and his colleagues to a more appropriate venue, where they can be dealt with.”

  A scream went up in the crowd, and Jack turned to see that some of the waitstaff had dropped their trays and were pulling pistols from their dark dinner jackets and taking hostages. Kelly’s men. No. They can’t— They are ruining everything, he thought with a burst of rage.

  The Book felt warm against his chest as Jack watched victory slip through his fingers. Kelly simply smirked and darted into the crowd, which had broken down into complete madness.

  THE FLASH OF A KNIFE

  1902—New York

  The room around Jianyu had churned into chaos at the sight of the Five Pointers in their midst. It did not take magic, it seemed, to drive fear into the Order’s hearts. A few snub-nosed pistols did the trick just as well. The crowds of the ballroom were trying to shove through a single, narrow exit in an attempt to flee, but Jianyu had his sights set on one thing: the ring.

  It was still on Evelyn’s finger, but Evelyn was being guarded by the strange beast. From his own vantage point, the cold magic that surrounded the creature was telling. It was not natural, but that was no surprise coming from Jack Grew and the Order.

  With light opened around him, Jianyu ignored the noise and the confusion and crept steadily closer to the beast sitting on top of Evelyn. She no longer seemed to be breathing, but the beast still had its clawed fingers gripped around her throat, her sightless eyes staring off into the room beyond.

  He was nearly there when he saw Cela moving through the crowd with a single-minded determination. While everyone else was trying to flee, she looked like a koi struggling upstream as she worked her way toward the stage and Evelyn. With his affinity, she had not realized that he was already there.

  Before he could warn her, he noticed a flash of dark hair and plum silk and saw Viola coming in the same direction. From the look of fury in her eyes, Viola had seen Cela too.

  He had not taken the time to explain earlier, when he could have, he realized with a sick sense of dread. Viola would not know who Cela was. She would only see a stranger after the treasure she had told Jianyu not to take.

  It felt as though the moment was suspended in amber and he was viewing everything from outside of it. The flash of Viola’s knife coming from the folds of her skirt, the fury in her expression as she screamed at Cela to get away from Evelyn—to leave the ring.

  Cela glanced over her shoulder, but she ignored the warning.

  Because she did not understand who Viola was. Because she could not have known what would happen.

  But Jianyu did—he could see it playing out before it occurred. Viola would launch her knife through the air. She would aim for Cela, and she would not miss.

  Letting go of the light, Jianyu did the only thing he could do. Without considering the consequences to himself, he leaped in front of Cela, just as the knife slipped from Viola’s fingertips.

  The room narrowed to that moment, but even knowing he had been hit, Jianyu did not fe
el any pain when the knife cut through his tunic and pierced his skin, tearing past sinew and bone to lodge in his shoulder. He felt nothing at all but relief when he landed hard on the floor at Cela’s feet.

  She was there, standing over him with an expression that told him just how bad it was. Her hands were on his face and her mouth was moving, but he could not hear the words she spoke. When he looked up at Viola, he saw only horror in her eyes. They were rimmed in red as though she had already been crying for him.

  Pulling himself up, he took the handle of the knife and pulled it from his arm.

  Finally, he felt the pain, the sharp stinging of the blade as it slid from the place it made through his skin. Even with Cela holding a part of her skirt to his wound, trying to stop the blood, he knew that he had to reach Viola . . . had to make her understand.

  “We have to get out of here,” Cela told him, trying to get him to his feet, but he had to speak to Viola. He had to tell her one, essential thing.

  “Come with us,” he said, offering her the knife, which was still coated with his blood. His voice sounded far away, even to himself, but he repeated the offer again. “We need you.”

  But Viola was shaking her head and backing away.

  And then Abel was there, hoisting him up to carry him out.

  Jianyu didn’t know where the ring was, or who had it, but in that moment he knew that it didn’t matter as much as making Viola understand. “Come with us,” he repeated, knowing that nothing would be possible as long as they were divided.

  A MONSTROUS CHAOS

  1904—St. Louis

  Julien ran from the Festival Hall without looking back. Outside, the crowd that had once been milling about the rotunda was gathered, the women holding one another and the men blustering like fat capons. The Prophet was there, as were others from the Society, all standing and watching as the lights flashed within the Festival Hall and the eerie smoke began to creep from beneath the doors.

  He was standing apart from them, unsure of how he got there or what he was supposed to do now that he was outside. He wasn’t onstage, so the gown he was wearing and the weight of the wig felt uncomfortable and out of place. Part of him thought that he was supposed to stay, to make sure that Darrigan and Esta were okay, but there was a deeper impulse to slink off into the night. He began to back toward the darkened fairgrounds, out of sight from anyone who might be looking for someone to blame, when an earsplitting scream erupted from the center of the crowd.

  It was the debutante he’d met just moments before, the one who’d been selected as the Queen of Love and Beauty. They’d taken the decoy necklace from him and had given it to her, but now a thick, dark cloud of smoke was pouring from where the necklace still perched around her neck. She was tearing at it, trying to get it off, but it was clearly stuck.

  I did this, he thought, horrified. He’d only wanted to clear his name, to get Darrigan out of town before anyone knew, and instead, he’d helped them create this monstrous chaos.

  People were backing away from the poor girl, terrified of the darkness blooming from the jeweled collar, but Julien found himself walking toward her—toward the danger.

  He was there before he could fully think through the consequences. Taking hold of the necklace, he wrenched his arms apart and broke it in two. The girl ran, probably back into the arms of her mother, and Julien hurled the necklace as far as he could, to spew its poison far, far away from the crowd.

  But not before he’d breathed in some of the dark fog himself.

  NEVER ENOUGH

  1904—St. Louis

  Margaret Jane Feltz had done quite a lot of things in her life that she wasn’t proud of at the moment. Most of those she’d done because she’d believed at the time it was the right thing to do, because Ruth had told her that it was, and because she’d wanted Ruth’s warm approval more than she wanted the discomfort of standing against her sister.

  Maggie might have had an uncanny knack for mixing chemicals and powders—a gift of the kitchen magic that seemed to run in her family—but she hated it just the same. Still, she was grateful for the one incendiary she’d held back just in case. When she saw Ben grab Esta by the throat, she felt the air in the rotunda go electric, hot and bright like she’d never in her life felt it. She pulled the small canister from her satchel and activated the fuse before she rolled it toward them, placing it between the angry blond man in the tuxedo and the two she’d come to think of as friends.

  It popped with a violent burst of light, throwing Ben from Esta and knocking him unconscious to the floor.

  She ran to where Esta was lying, prone and still on the polished marble floor, and a moment later North was there. They gathered the two of them, and then with a click of North’s watch, they were gone.

  Between the crowds from the parade and the news that was beginning to spread about the attack on the ball, the streets were in chaos. All of the Antistasi’s planning, and for what? The Mageus would now be even worse off than before. Ruth had been wrong—about everything. Maggie had suspected all along, but now she understood.

  As they made their way through town to reach the train station, Maggie tried not to think about the fact that she was leaving behind her sister and the Antistasi, who had become her family. But she knew that she’d done all she could here, and now there was somewhere else she was needed more.

  She’d tried so hard to do one small bit of good. But it hadn’t been enough. It wasn’t ever enough. This time, she vowed, it would be.

  THE DAGGER

  1904—St. Louis

  Jack woke sometime in the depths of the night with only a hazy memory of everything that had happened at the ball. Darrigan and Esta had managed to get away. They’d taken the necklace, but they had not been able to retrieve the Book. Instead, they’d exposed themselves, and now the entire country knew about their evil intent. Those mistakes would only help him in the future.

  After he’d returned to his room, he’d pored over the Book, looking for some answer, but he didn’t recall the words he’d read or how the pages had begun to glow or how he had reached through them, knowing that they would open for him, knowing that his fingers would be able to sink through the paper itself to find the object he’d placed there some months before.

  He turned to the vial of morphine and instead found something more. On the table next to the bedside was an ancient artifact—the same one he had hidden inside the pages of the Book for safekeeping so many months ago. He picked it up and turned it in the light, marveling at its appearance as he reveled in the weight of the stone it contained, a sign of the power held within it.

  Jack had obtained the artifact itself ages ago—not long after he’d taken the Book from Darrigan. After the Conclave, he’d begun to worry that someone might find it. He’d used one of the spells in the Book to conceal the object within its pages, turning the Book itself into a container for the artifact so that he could carry both with him at all times.

  But once concealed, the Book had not willingly given the artifact back. For more than a year now, he’d nearly driven himself mad with the work of trying to force the Book to reveal its contents, all to no avail.

  Now, it seemed, his luck had turned. It was as though the Book understood the crossroads he was at, as though it knew that he would need all the power he could harness in the days and weeks to come, and it had given up its contents like an offering. A benediction for the journey ahead—a journey that he was well aware would be difficult but that was his very destiny to fulfill.

  SLEEPWALKING

  1904—St. Louis

  Esta didn’t know how they got away from the fair. She remembered pain and a chilling burst of power, and then, little by little, she surfaced from the fog of what had happened. Seshat. Thoth. And the dangerous reality of her own affinity. By then North had taken them forward in time, to long after the fair had cleared out and everyone had gone back to the safety of their own homes.

  She moved like a sleepwalker, barely seeing or hea
ring as Maggie and North led them through the fairgrounds back to the waiting wagon. She almost didn’t remember to retrieve her stones—the cuff and the necklace—but Maggie helped with that. Then it was a dash to the station, and before she could process everything, she found herself in a Pullman car, resting next to Harte on the narrow bottom bunk.

  Even with everything that had happened, even with her world feeling like it had fallen apart, the sun still managed to come up the next day. It warmed Esta’s face through the window of the train, waking her. There was a moment just as she came out of sleep when she forgot where she was—what she was. In that moment between sleep and waking, she did not yet remember the night before. She did not think of the mistakes she’d made or the lives those mistakes had taken. She did not yet remember the terrible truths that had been revealed and the heartbreaking reality of what lay before her. Instead, she thought that she heard a woman’s voice singing to her, and she thought she could almost remember the words of the song. It must have been a memory from somewhere long ago, when she was nothing but a child with no guilt, only innocence. With the world in front of her, wide and open as a promise.

  But the softness and safety of the state between sleep and waking lasted only a moment. The ache in her bones and the pain echoing in her skull returned soon after, reminding her of what she’d been through. She felt soiled and wrung out, like an old rag not worth cleaning to keep. Even her bones felt like they would shatter if she moved the wrong way.