The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  “It didn’t last long enough,” a bald man was arguing as he pounded on the surface of the table, causing the stemware to shake.

  “Nearly a year,” another said.

  “In the past it was more like a decade. The stones are dying.”

  The stones?

  “They aren’t dying,” the bald man insisted. “But I agree there’s something fundamentally wrong. I can’t believe it’s the artifacts themselves, though. Maybe there was a problem with the ritual?”

  “I’d like to see you tell the Inner Circle that.” Murphy laughed. “More likely it’s a problem with the maggots we’ve been able to find. My father used to say the Irish were bad, but these newest arrivals? Dirty and uneducated, and don’t even get me started about the Jews and Catholics.”

  “You’re probably right. What power could possibly be derived from rabble like that? I’ll tell you what needs to happen—”

  A waiter entered carrying trays of food, and the men seemed to take it as a signal to change the topic. Dolph had talked about people going missing. She wondered if this was connected to it in some way.

  The end of the hallway beckoned as the server made a show of carving the roast. In his presence, the men turned their conversation to mundane topics. Sports and stocks and the damnable traffic that was growing every day. Anything but magic.

  Esta was growing impatient. Too much time had passed already. If she was going to get Dakari’s knife, she had to go now. If only she could use her affinity . . . If she could slow time, she could be done in a blink. But she couldn’t chance that. She had to make a choice. Did she go for the knife or stay and see what more she could discover? Dakari or Dolph’s crew? Her own past or her new present? There wasn’t time for both.

  She had one job—to get the Book and to get home. Nothing was more important than that, not even Dakari. But the men on the other side of the wall were talking like there was a problem, like the Order had a weakness. Which was a fact that could only help them. Dolph and Professor Lachlan—all the Mageus.

  Dakari would understand.

  She peered through the openings and listened again, but before she could catch the thread of their conversation, she heard a familiar voice.

  “What are you doing here?” Bridget Malone was suddenly there, next to her in the darkness, and looking none too happy to see her.

  A TRAP IN A TRAP

  Harte glanced over the dance floor below, looking for some sign of Esta’s return. She’d been gone too long. Had she run into trouble? Or was she up to something?

  “So tell me, Darrigan, how did you really meet the lovely Miss Filosik?” Jack tipped what was left of the bottle into his glass. The champagne fizzed and foamed over the edge of the bowl, dampening the white cloth on the table. “Are you and she . . . ?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  “We’ve been friends since we were children,” Harte said, leaving his answer open enough for Jack to make his own assumptions.

  “Really?” Jack smirked.

  “Yes. Believe it or not, the story I told onstage was true. I know Esta from my travels abroad. Her father was one of my first teachers. Perhaps you’ve heard of him . . . Baron von Filosik?”

  Jack’s face bunched, and Harte could practically see his alcohol-soaked mind trying to place where he’d heard that name. It took a moment, but then Jack’s bleary eyes widened a fraction. “Not the Baron Franz von Filosik?”

  “The same,” Harte said easily, relieved that Jack had finally made the first step toward entering his little game.

  “You knew the baron?” Jack asked.

  He pretended he didn’t notice Jack’s surprise. “I was lucky enough to have lived with the baron when I was just beginning my quest for knowledge about the mysteries of the elemental states. He saw some talent in me and admired my drive to understand the secrets of the occult arts. It was he who directed me to the Far East and provided me with the introductions I needed to finish my studies. This was all before his untimely death, of course.”

  Jack frowned, puzzled. “I didn’t know he had any family.”

  “Few did. Franz never married Esta’s mother. It’s maybe the only thing that saved her when his estate burned to the ground. I’m sure you’ve heard about that, the great tragedy it was. All of his breakthroughs were lost. His vast knowledge, gone.”

  “It probably set us back fifty years, maybe more,” Jack agreed.

  Harte leaned forward, his voice low. “Except, I don’t think everything was destroyed.”

  Jack’s brows went up, and even though his eyes were barely focusing, Harte saw interest in them. He could practically feel Jack’s willingness to be convinced, to believe. It wouldn’t take much more to push him the rest of the way.

  “Esta has a trunk she keeps under lock and key. Won’t tell me what’s in it, won’t let me see what it contains.” Harte glanced to the left and right, making sure it looked like he was worried about being overheard. He lowered his voice. “I think it might be some of her father’s papers.”

  “You don’t say?”

  Harte nodded. “You know what he was working on when he died, don’t you?”

  Jack looked momentarily thrown off. “Oh, yes. Wasn’t it the . . . ?” He hesitated. “The, um . . .” He snapped his fingers, as though the words were on the tip of his tongue.

  “The transmutation of basic elements,” Harte supplied helpfully.

  “Of course,” Jack agreed. Then he blinked through his alcoholic haze like someone just surfacing from sleep. “You’re not saying he created the philosopher’s stone?”

  “Rumor had it that the good baron was very close to a breakthrough.” Harte leaned forward. “In his last letters to me, he hinted that he’d been successful at isolating quintessence—”

  “Aether?” Jack whispered, excitement clear despite the glassiness of his eyes.

  Harte nodded. “But he died before he could answer any of my questions or tell me anything more.”

  “Right,” Jack agreed. “Terrible tragedy.”

  “It was.” Harte hesitated, like he wasn’t sure if he should share a secret. “More so if, as Esta believes, his death wasn’t the accident it appeared to be.”

  Jack blinked. “She believes it was foul play?”

  Harted leaned closer. “She believes someone found out what the baron was doing, how close he was to unlocking the secrets of divine power. Imagine what might be possible with that information. You could make the elements bend to your will.”

  “Yes.” Jack licked his lips. “Imagine that. . . . But who would want to stop him from such a great discovery?”

  “When I studied with him, the baron had suspicions he was being watched. He confided in me once that he worried there were those in the local village—Mageus—who didn’t want him to succeed. He’d made arrangements so his work wouldn’t be lost in case anything happened. If that trunk of hers contains what I think it might, it would be a discovery of amazing importance, Jack.”

  “You think she could be convinced to share it with us?” Jack asked, his expression unabashedly hungry.

  “That’s my problem.” Harte frowned. “We’re old friends—more than friends, really,” he said, imbuing his voice with a lecherous note, “but she hasn’t let me see what’s inside. I think she’s still testing me to see if I can help her. She’s tired of living on the edges of society. She’s the daughter of a baron, and while her father was alive she lived like one. But with his death, she lost her income and any standing in her town. So she’s come to this country, like so many come, to start again. She wants her old life back, to live like the daughter of a baron is entitled to live, and whatever’s in that trunk, she believes it’s enough to gain her entrance to the highest society.” Again he glanced around and then lowered his voice. “She’s been implying she wants to get the attention of the Order. Of course, I thought of you. With your help, with your connections, she might be willing to share her father’s work with us.”

  “Sh
e might not have anything, though,” Jack said, frowning. “She could be leading you on. It’s in a female’s nature to be manipulative and deceitful.”

  “It could be that she’s lying,” Harte acknowledged, “but she was the one who designed the effect you saw last night. It’s quite extraordinary what she’s able to do.”

  “Designed it herself ?”

  “As much as it pains me to admit it, she still won’t tell me how she accomplished it. I think she’s been teasing me, withholding that information to get what she wants.”

  “Well, we can’t let her get away with that, can we?” Jack said with a roguish grin.

  “You have an idea?”

  “Maybe with the right enticements, I could soften her up, find out if she’s being honest about what she has.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Harte said, pushing down an unexpected jolt of jealousy.

  “Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we, Darrigan?” Jack took another long drink. “And it’s not as though it would be a chore to breach her defenses.”

  Harte’s hands clenched into fists beneath the table, but he kept his expression the picture of eager appreciation. “I’d be awful grateful. I’d hate to be made a fool of, but if she does have her father’s secrets, she could be very useful to me.”

  “To both of us. Miss Filosik and her secrets don’t stand a chance,” Jack said, raising his glass.

  “Not a chance at all,” Harte agreed pleasantly as he watched Jack finish off the last of the champagne. He couldn’t have scripted the evening any better himself. Jack had fallen for the bait just as they’d planned for him to, but Harte couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d made a misstep somehow. He just wasn’t sure what it was, or how it might come back to bite him later.

  Still, successes should be celebrated, so he pasted on his most charming smile and was about to call for another bottle when a shadow fell over his table. Harte looked up to find Paul Kelly standing over him.

  “Hello, Darrigan,” Kelly said genially. He was dressed impeccably, as usual, in a crisp suit, but his eyes held a warning. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  A moment of silence passed, where Harte was too shocked by Kelly’s appearance to utter a word. It was as if he’d awoken to discover all those months of freedom had been nothing but a dream. He was thirteen years old again, looking at his certain death.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce us?” Kelly asked expectantly, shaking Harte from his stupor.

  Jack glanced at Kelly and then looked to Harte. “Do you know this gentleman?” he asked, and Harte could see the confusion in Jack’s bleary gaze as he took in Kelly’s well-cut clothes and his long-ago broken nose.

  He was stuck. Kelly was making enough of a name for himself that Jack might recognize it, and if he did, it might destroy all the work Harte had done to make himself seem respectable. But if he refused, Kelly was sure to make a scene.

  “This is an old acquaintance of mine, Jack. Paul Kelly, Jack Grew. Jack, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Kelly.”

  Jack, who thankfully showed no sign of recognizing the name, shook Kelly’s hand, and then to Harte’s horror, he asked Kelly to join them. “We were just celebrating a mutually beneficial opportunity we stumbled upon,” he told them.

  “Were you?” Kelly asked, taking the seat Esta had left open. He eyed the waiting glass of champagne. “I’m a bit of a businessman myself,” Kelly told him.

  Jack sputtered a bit, making some excuses and trying not to reveal what they’d been talking about as Paul Kelly sat on the other side of the table with his usual cold-eyed stare.

  Harte felt as though he couldn’t breathe. He’d risked everything—including his mother’s life—to keep Kelly away from Jack, and now they were sitting at a table together. He needed to get out of there, he thought as he glanced again to the floor below, hoping for some sign of Esta’s return.

  “You have somewhere to be?” Kelly said as he took a slim cigarette from a silver case.

  “No,” he lied. “Nowhere at all.”

  Before Kelly could call him on his lie, a whistle sounded from the floor below. Harte turned in time to see a squad of helmeted policemen making their way into the ballroom, the beginning of a raid on the prostitutes that strolled the floor and the illegal gambling that often took place in the back rooms.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Kelly, who didn’t seem the least bit surprised at the raid. “I think it’s time we make our exit.”

  THE MISSING KNIFE

  Bridget’s face was shadowed, but Esta could still make out the remains of a purplish bruise across the side of Bridget’s cheek.

  “I came for my knife,” Esta said, realizing as the words tumbled from her mouth how absolutely stupid they sounded.

  “What knife?” Bridget asked, looking both harried and confused at the same time.

  “The one you took from my boot,” Esta insisted.

  “I didn’t take anything,” Bridget said, glancing beyond Esta, toward the entrance of the passageway. “You’re mad if you think I did, and you’re mad for coming back here after I went to the trouble to get you away.”

  “There was a knife,” Esta said as ice settled into her veins. There had to be. Because if there was no knife, there might be no Dakari. But Bridget didn’t seem to be lying.

  “I’m not a thief . . . unlike some,” Bridget snapped. “You need to get out of here. Do you have any idea what will happen to you if Corey sees you here?”

  She took hold of Esta’s wrist and tugged her toward the ballroom. But when she eased the panel open to enter the barroom again, the room on the other side had erupted into a riot. Women screamed and men tumbled over each other to avoid the clubs that the police were using on the heads of anyone who struggled to get away. “We have to go,” Bridget said. “Come on. If they see us without escorts, they’ll assume we’re working girls. It’s the whole point of the raid. They’ll arrest us for sure.”

  But Esta had an escort. She looked up toward the balcony, but with the mess of people tearing at one another to get away, she couldn’t tell if Harte was still there.

  “Where are you going?” Bridget shouted as Esta pulled away and began shoving her way through the crowd, pushing against the flow of people. She was so intent on searching for Harte that she didn’t notice the policeman behind her until she heard the shrill scream of his whistle. And she didn’t notice the baton he held until it came down on her head.

  THE WATER’S EDGE

  The ballroom was in chaos. As soon as the whistle sounded, Harte felt paralyzed by the memories crashing into him. He was eleven again, cornered in the alley where he’d made his bed that night, unable to escape.

  “Darrigan!” Jack was pulling at him, saying something.

  But the sound of the whistles and shouts drowned out everything but the memory of being dragged from his sleep and into a Black Maria packed so tightly with filthy men and women that he couldn’t move. Couldn’t get away from the stink of them. Couldn’t get away from their hands. Grabbing at him, pulling at him . . .

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Jack’s voice came to him from somewhere far off. “This way, Darrigan.”

  Harte let himself be led, panicked confusion keeping him from processing what was happening until they stepped out into an alley that reeked of rotten meat and piss, the smells of his childhood. It took everything he had not to retch.

  When the cool night air hit his face, he gasped, sucking the air into his lungs. He was barely aware of Jack shaking Paul Kelly’s hand, thanking him for the help getting out of the hall.

  “Good seeing you again, Darrigan,” Kelly said with a rough slap on his back, before he hailed a cab and disappeared into the night.

  As he came back to himself, Harte had the sudden—and delayed—realization that he was no longer inside the Haymarket.

  “What are we doing out here, Jack?”

  “We’re not getting swept up in the raid, that’s what,” Jack said. His hair
was sticking up at an odd angle and the shoulder of his jacket was torn, but he looked pleased with himself.  Almost exhilarated from their escape. “Damn nice of Kelly to help us out of that mess.”

  “We can’t leave without Esta,” Harte said, starting to go back.

  Jack caught him by the arm. “Are you insane? The girl will be fine. All those jewels? They’ll let her go. Hell, they’ll probably escort her home. Come on. I can’t be caught up in this, and I can’t imagine you’d want to spend a night in the Tombs either.”

  He pulled his arm away from Jack, but Harte didn’t move. He couldn’t be taken to the Tombs, he thought as the wave of panic crested over him again. Not again.

  “Are you coming or not?” Jack asked, tugging at him.

  Harte looked back at the rear door of the Haymarket. “But Esta—”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  He turned on Jack. “You can’t know that.”

  Jack gave him a shrug. “You’re right. I can’t. Think of it this way: If she gets caught up in the mess, at least she won’t be keeping the baron’s journals from us anymore.” He elbowed Harte as he laughed at his own joke.

  Harte’s fingers closed into a fist and it took everything he had not to drive it into Jack’s pretty white teeth. But to do that would destroy the con and any chance of ever getting the Book.

  “Come on,” Jack insisted. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  He couldn’t leave Esta, but he also couldn’t let Jack get away. Not when he was so damn close.

  “Well?” Jack asked, impatient.