by Lisa Maxwell
The gambit worked. The woman’s eyes widened slightly, and she sputtered a hurried apology.
Harte gave her an appraising look. “Yes, well . . . mistakes do happen, don’t they? I’ll be sure to tell my father how dedicated his employees are to the theater’s well-being, especially you, Miss . . .” He paused, waiting for her to supply her name.
“It’s Mrs., actually, though my husband’s been gone these past three years now. Mrs. Joy Konarske.”
“Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Konarske.” He offered his hand again. “I’ll be sure to tell my father how dutiful you’ve been. He’ll be pleased to know his theater is being well looked after.”
The woman’s cheeks went a little pink as she paused to shift her burden of fabric so she could grasp Harte’s outstretched hand. Her palm was rough and calloused from the work of laundering the costumes and tending to the performers’ wardrobes each night, and Harte felt a flicker of guilt as he focused on pushing his affinity toward her, pulsing it gently—just a little—through the delicate boundary of flesh and into the very heart of who and what she was.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away. They never do, he thought.
When Harte finally released the woman’s hand a moment later, she had a slightly dazed look in her eyes. Giving the two of them a shaky smile, she wandered off, and Harte knew she would leave them be. She would forget having ever seen him—because he had ordered her to. And the moment she heard or saw a description of either Esta or himself, Mrs. Joy Konarske would feel a wave of such revulsion that she would do anything necessary to escape the person asking.
“Did you . . . ?” Esta asked, her voice low.
He met her eyes, expecting judgment but finding instead only worry. Or perhaps that was sadness? “Would you rather she tell someone she saw us here?” he whispered.
“Of course not,” she whispered. “It’s just . . . do you think it’s safe? With the Book’s power in you?”
He hadn’t considered that. Why hadn’t he considered that?
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t like he’d had much choice. He’d done the only thing he could do, unless they wanted to be discovered before they even began.
Luckily, they didn’t run into anyone else before they found Julien’s dressing room and let themselves in. Despite the number of women’s wigs and gowns that filled much of the room, it was a masculine space. Which, considering Julien, wasn’t surprising. On the dressing table, an ashtray contained the remains of multiple cigars, and the cloying ghost of their smoke still hung thick in the air.
“How long do we have?” Esta asked.
“Maybe another ten minutes or so.”
“I’ll look here, if you check the dressing table,” Esta said, turning to the large upright steamer trunk in the corner.
Harte knew it couldn’t hurt to look. If they found the necklace, they could avoid Julien altogether. But he didn’t really expect the necklace to be in the dressing room—Julien wasn’t stupid. Even if Julien didn’t know about the power the stone contained, he would be more careful than to leave it in an unlocked dressing room in a crowded theater. The heavy platinum collar was set with a turquoise-colored stone shot through with glittering veins of some silvery substance that made it look like a sky full of stars. It was singular, and clearly valuable, and Julien would keep something like that somewhere safe . . . especially with the note Harte had sent along with it.
But Esta was right. It wouldn’t hurt to look while they were there.
Before he’d even managed to sit at the dressing table, Esta had pulled a pin from her hair and popped the lock of the trunk. Harte paused to watch her as she began sorting through the drawers inside of it, and then he turned back to the dressing table.
For a moment he felt the shock of recognition. How many times had he sat at the same sort of table, the glow of the electric light over the mirror illuminating the familiar planes and angles of his own face? There were pots of stage paint and kohl on the tabletop, and their familiar scents came to him even beneath the staleness of the full ashtray, teasing at his memories and inspiring a pang of longing and loss so sharp, it surprised him.
He was never going to sit at a dressing table like this again. He was done with that life.
Even if he managed to get out of this mess alive—even if they could exorcise the power lurking beneath his skin and get away from the Order and stop Nibsy—Harte was supposed to be dead. He couldn’t just resurrect himself. There would be no more applause, no more footlights. He would never again have the quiet solitude of a dressing room to call his own.
Maybe he would find a new name, a new life that he could be happy with, but it wouldn’t be on the stage. And he would miss it—the rush of nerves before and the thrill of the applause after. He hadn’t realized just how much until that moment.
“Find anything?” Esta asked, still rustling through papers in one of the trunk’s drawers. It was enough to shake him out of his maudlin bout of self-pity and get to work.
“Not yet,” he told her. He opened the first of the drawers, one filled with small pots of rouge and the powdery smell of talc. He didn’t have to search through the items to see that the necklace wasn’t there.
“What is all of this?” Esta murmured, and Harte turned to see what she had found.
She was holding a leather box, trimmed in gold and stamped with a gilded filigreed emblem that was inscribed with a stylized monogram of the letters VP. Harte came over to look as Esta pulled out a small golden medallion that hung from a green satin ribbon. It was the kind of medallion important dignitaries or generals wear when they dress for a parade. Odd . . .
He took the medal from her and examined it. Like the box itself, it was inscribed with an ornate VP, but the surface bore the portrait of a long-faced man with a full beard. The figure might have been a crusader or a saint, with his sharp cheekbones and solemn expression, but his face seemed to be partially obscured, as though a piece of fabric was hanging over it. Around the edge of the medallion were markings that could have been simple decorations or an unknown language—it was impossible to tell.
“I don’t know,” Harte said, frowning at the piece. The Julien he knew hadn’t been involved with anything but the theater, and that medallion didn’t look or feel like a prop.
“There’s more,” Esta told him, carefully lifting out a piece of scarlet silk that had been neatly folded into a square. It was a sash of some kind, and it, too, was pinned with another medallion. At the bottom of the box lay a small silver tray, ornately wrought with more of the strange symbols around the edges of an even more elaborate rendering of the same two letters—VP.
The light over the dressing table dimmed for a moment before returning to its normal brightness. “Put it away,” he told Esta, handing back the medal. “That’s the signal for the next act. Julien will be back any second now.”
Esta worked to put the trunk back together and relocked it. She was just slipping the pin back into her hair when the dressing room door opened and the painted songstress from the stage entered the small confines of the dressing room.
It was always a shock to see Julien up close when he was dressed for his act. Even without the distance of the audience and the glare of the lights, he had mastered his art. His impersonation didn’t rely on any of the camp that other female impersonators used. His stage persona wasn’t a caricature of a woman. It wasn’t clownish or overdone to get laughs. No, Julien’s art—his true talent—was in his ability to become the thing itself. Had Harte passed Julien, dressed as he was now, on the streets, he wouldn’t have seen anything other than the woman standing before him.
Not seeming to realize that he wasn’t alone, Julien pulled off the perfectly coiffed blond wig and placed it on a wooden mannequin’s head. Then he walked over to sit in front of the mirrored dressing table. Before he bothered with the makeup or the dress, Julien took a thick black cigar from a small tabletop humidor and lit it. He took a deep drag, allo
wing the smoke to wreathe his head as he reached for the decanter next to the ashtray and poured himself two fingers. He took a long drink before he put the cigar back between his teeth and began removing the elbow-length gloves he was wearing.
“You know, Darrigan . . .” Julien looked up and caught Harte’s eye in the mirror. His deep, husky voice was completely at odds with the bright crimson paint on his mouth. “You’re looking damn good for a dead man.”
Harte gave a careless shrug. “I can’t say that I feel all that dead.”
Julien turned, a half smile curving at his mouth around the cigar as he shook his head. “I can’t believe you are standing here. I can’t believe you’re in my dressing room.”
“It’s good to see you, Jules,” Harte said, stepping forward to extend his hand in greeting.
Julien stood and took Harte’s outstretched hand. “It’s damn good to see you, too, Darrigan.”
“Glad to hear it,” Harte told him as he sent a small pulse of his affinity toward Julien.
Harte never saw thoughts clearly, just impressions and feelings. The most immediate of Julien’s memories came first—the glare of the lights, the roar of the applause Julien had just received, the hot, sharp satisfaction that Julien had felt. Harte ignored his own yearning for those lights and for the warm rush that applause had always given him and concentrated instead on his purpose—some hint of the stone’s fate. It came in an instant, the clear image of the necklace with its fantastical stone, and latching onto that image, Harte focused everything he was and sent another burst of magic toward Julien, transgressing the thin barrier between him and his friend and sending Julien a simple message. A single command.
Julien’s expression faltered, his eyes slightly dazed and his brows creasing together momentarily. But then Harte released him, and Julien’s expression cleared. Unaware of all that had just transpired, Julien turned back to his mirror and reached for his large jar of cold cream. He ignored Harte and Esta both as he spread the cream over one half of his face and then started wiping away the light base and bright rouge.
Esta had been watching all of this without saying a word, so Harte gestured for her to come forward. “Jules, I want you to meet someone,” Harte said.
Julien’s eyes lifted to Esta’s in the mirror, and Harte knew exactly what his old friend was seeing—the way the silk gown she wore clung to every curve and the way she’d painted her mouth a subtle pink and pinned her hair into a style that looked artful and careless all at once. She looked like she came from money, proper and polished. But with her height and her confidence, she also looked dangerous, like a debutante on the verge of something more exciting.
A look of appreciation flashed over Julien’s face as he examined Esta through the reflection of the mirror.
Mine, a voice inside Harte whispered in response, but he couldn’t tell if it came from his own thoughts or that other power. Not caring all that much at the moment, he took Esta by the hand, so there was no mistaking who she was with.
“This is—”
“Oh, I know exactly who this is,” Julien interrupted, turning Janus-faced to look at them both once again.
“You do?” Esta asked, glancing at Harte with a wary expression.
“Of course, Miss Filosik.” Julien picked up the stub of the cigar again and gestured toward them before raising one brow in their direction. “I knew who you were the moment I walked into this room. After all . . . you’re infamous.”
THE ANTIDOTE FOR GOSSIP
1902—New York
Jack could hear the commotion in his mother’s parlor long before he made it to the bottom of the staircase. By the time he reached the lower steps, a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead and he wanted nothing more than to sit down, but the rumble of his uncle’s voice told him that he should keep moving.
Thank god the mousy little maid had gotten over her initial fear of him. Without her mentioning his uncle’s sudden arrival, Jack might have slept through the visit, completely unaware of how his family was arranging his future. It didn’t matter if his head was swirling with the morphine he’d just taken or that his body still felt like . . . Well, it felt like he’d been hit by a train, didn’t it? He would walk into the parlor under his own power and take the reins of his own fate.
“. . . someone got to him,” his uncle was roaring, waving a crumpled handful of newsprint at his mother.
“No one has been here,” his mother said, her voice shaking as it often did when she was overwrought. “I think I would know if a newspaperman came into my home.”
“How else would they know any of this?” Morgan waved the paper at her again.
“Pierpont, dear—” His aunt Fanny was sitting next to Jack’s mother, and her tone had a warning in it, not that his uncle seemed to care.
Jack’s cousin was there as well, standing off to the side with his arms crossed and the same scowl on his face that he had worn the entire voyage back from Greece last year. It truly was a family affair, which always meant trouble for Jack.
It took a moment before any of them realized that he’d arrived. His mother saw him first, and she leaped to her feet at the sight of him. “Darling, what are you doing out of bed?” She wasn’t three steps toward him before his uncle stepped in her path and waved the newspaper he’d been brandishing in Jack’s face.
“What is the meaning of this, boy?”
The room was spinning a little, but Jack forced himself to stay upright. “The meaning of what? I’ve been abed for—” He looked to his mother. The days had all run together. “How long have I been up there?”
“Three days, dear,” she said, a small, sad smile on her face as she beamed at him. “You should sit down. You’re not well.” She went over to the tufted chair closest to him and began arranging the pillows.
He couldn’t stand her constant fussing, like he was still a child. It was how they all saw him, he knew. And they were all wrong. “I’m fine,” he said, waving her off.
He wasn’t fine, but he damned sure wasn’t going to admit it in front of his uncle and his cousin. The last thing he would be was weak in front of them. “I’ve no idea what you’re referring to,” he told Morgan, meeting the old man’s gaze. “Perhaps if you’d stop shouting and explained it, I could offer a response.”
Morgan glared at him. “Who did you talk to?”
“Recently?” Jack asked. “No one but my mother and the ever-present parade of doctors and maids who insist on constantly intruding on my rest and recovery.”
Most of the maids were pretty enough, but all the doctors had been a nuisance, constantly checking on him and telling him to rest, when all he wanted to do was study the Book he’d hidden beneath the mountain of pillows and blankets the maids piled onto the bed. Day and night, he wanted only to pore over the pages and unlock its secrets.
“Then how did the Herald manage to publish this story?” Morgan thrust the paper at him.
Jack swayed a little on his feet, but he opened the crumpled page to find a headline about himself. He let his eyes skim over it. “What of it?” he asked. Nothing seemed amiss. “None of this is untrue. Darrigan and the girl were on the train before it derailed. The authorities said that there wasn’t a bomb, so it might well have been magic that caused the accident.”
“None of that matters,” Morgan said. “I don’t care about some damn train derailment. I care about the fact that this reporter knows what happened at Khafre Hall—that the fire wasn’t an accident of faulty wiring. Do you know what lengths the Inner Circle undertook to ensure that the truth of the Khafre Hall disaster did not become public? It was a delicate thing, to steer the press away from the real cause of the fire, and yet here it is, a full-page spread that reveals not only that we were robbed of our most important artifacts, but that we were robbed by common trash. This article knows everything. Who did you talk to?”
The past few days were a haze of pain and morphine . . . and the thrall of the Book. Jack could have talked to Rooseve
lt himself, and he wouldn’t necessarily have remembered. Not that he would admit that now. “No one,” he said instead. “I’ve no idea how this . . . Reynolds, whoever he is, knows any of this.”
“Well, he does, and it’s made a damn mess of things,” Morgan said, ripping the paper from Jack’s hands. “Do you know how weak this makes the Order look? We’re already getting word from the other Brotherhoods that they’re concerned about the state of the Conclave—about the Order’s ability to host it. After all, if I can’t control my own family, how can we possibly think to arrange an event as important as the Conclave?” He tossed the paper aside.
“I don’t know why you assume it was my fault,” Jack said, bristling at his uncle’s tone.
“Because it usually is your fault,” his cousin said. “It’s one scheme after another with you, Jack, and none of them are reasonable. You don’t think things through. Are you sure you didn’t give this interview?”
Jack clenched his jaw to keep from railing at the snideness in his cousin’s tone. Across the room, his mother was still looking at him with a sadness in her eyes that made him want to smash his fist into her precious collection of figurines. When he spoke, it took effort to make his words measured and calm. “This is the first I’ve even been out of bed.”
But his cousin wasn’t listening. “Maybe we should give Jack something of a holiday, to recuperate,” his cousin suggested to his uncle. “Until this all blows over.”
“It’s not going to blow over,” Morgan spat. “This isn’t a private family matter, like the problem in Greece last year. That damn article is everywhere, and the other papers are picking up the story as well. If we send him off now, it’s going to look like we have something to hide. That’s the last thing we want—it would give credence to the story.”
“What else can we do with him?” his cousin asked.
