The Devil's Thief

by Lisa Maxwell

  Jack Grew.

  Jack stepped onto the stage and shook the High Princept’s hand, and then he took command of the stage. Harte Darrigan had told Jianyu all about the upstart nephew of J. P. Morgan. He was reckless and dangerous. And he could not be allowed to get the stone.

  But even knowing what he knew about Jack Grew, even with the mission before him, Jianyu could think of only one essential thing: Viola is here.

  THE RIGHT TIME

  1904—St. Louis

  While North drove them toward the fairgrounds, Esta finished stripping off the Egyptian gown to the men’s pants and shirt she was wearing beneath it. She was grateful that she hadn’t given in to Julien’s pleas for her to leave off the clothing beneath the costume. Using the strips of white linen she tore from the gown, she scrubbed as much of the makeup as she could from her face as the carriage rattled on.

  North parked one street over from the fair’s entrance and tied up the horses as Esta and Harte climbed out the back.

  Maggie, who had ridden up front with North, was frowning, her eyes worried.

  “Are you okay?” North asked, looking like he wanted to reach for her.

  “Just thinking about Ruth—about how she looked when I walked away.”

  North’s expression softened. “You did the right thing, Mags.”

  “She’s my sister, Jericho,” Maggie said, her tone dull and hollow. “She’s my family, my flesh and blood, and what’s more, she raised me like her own daughter.”

  “She’s used you,” North said, lowering his voice as he took Maggie’s chin gently in his hand.

  Harte glanced at Esta, his expression impatient as the two talked, but Esta could only shrug. If Maggie didn’t make up her mind now, she’d be a liability inside.

  “I know,” Maggie was saying to North. “I know all that, but it doesn’t change what we are to each other.”

  North took Maggie into his arms for a moment. “Sometimes blood’s not enough, Mags.”

  Maggie’s face crumpled. “I know.”

  Esta understood the emotion in Maggie’s voice—the hurt that simmered below the confidence in the words. A betrayal like Maggie’s sister’s was one that would haunt her, just as Professor Lachlan’s betrayal haunted Esta, following her with dogged footsteps. But it had also urged her on—to be better, smarter . . . stronger.

  “Let’s go,” Harte told them, apparently done with waiting. “We need to get in there. We don’t know how much time we have left. There’s no telling when the Prophet is going to switch the necklaces.”

  But in the distance, the wailing of a siren erupted. The night was suddenly alive with sounds as bells clanged and more sirens droned.

  “We’re too late,” Esta said, as the four of them paused to listen.

  “The Festival Hall is on the other side of the fair,” North told them. “Even without the crowds, it’s nearly a mile from here. But maybe, if we hurry, we can still get some people out—”

  “Once the acid hits the serum and the vapor forms, there will be no way in,” Maggie said, her voice a strangled whisper.

  Esta thought about her cuff and how useless it was in that moment. She couldn’t risk using it now, because going back to stop everything meant crossing Ishtar’s Key with itself. If it were only her life in the balance, she could have done it to make up for her part in all of this, but it wasn’t only her life. She’d been so blinded by her own anger, so determined to be strong that she hadn’t realized how far she’d veered from what they were supposed to be doing.

  Harte had been right—about Ruth and about the Antistasi. They should have stuck with their own plan. They should have grabbed the cuff from Ruth and found the necklace on their own instead of getting tied up into the Antistasi’s plot for vengeance. Maybe if she hadn’t been so set on being strong—on being ruthless—the Antistasi would have had more trouble with their attack. Maybe the innocent people in the ball wouldn’t be suffering right now.

  She would carry the guilt of her part in the attack with her always, but she would not risk her cuff to change it. Not now. She couldn’t—Nibsy was still out there, and if they didn’t collect the stones, he would. She needed Ishtar’s Key, not just for herself, but to stop him from controlling the Book’s power.

  But North was already taking out his pocket watch. “It’s not too late yet,” he told them, opening the cover and adjusting it. “They’ll have guards all over the place during the ball, but before it starts, we might have better luck. I don’t like to go back, myself. Nothing good usually comes from trying to fix what already happened. But I think this warrants it.”

  “Go back?” Harte asked.

  “In time. My mama always used to say I had a knack for being in the right place at the right time,” North told him. “I could be out in the streets running wild with the other kids and somehow know that dinner was on. In a blink, I’d be there at the table, right where I was supposed to be, before she’d even called me. If trouble was coming, I’d be out of the way before it ever arrived. Of course, I learned later on that it wasn’t just a knack. It was a touch of magic. But I never could control it until I got this.” North showed the two of them the watch.

  It looked like any pocket watch: brass casing with a scratched crystal cover over the face. The minute and hour hands might once have been painted black, but the paint had rubbed away where North had touched them to change the time. The second hand stood still, and the watch itself didn’t make so much as a tick, but Esta could feel the pull of it—the tug in the energy around her that marked it as having an unseen power.

  Harte frowned at the watch. “Ritual magic?”

  “I don’t know about any ritual, but magic it’s got,” North told him. “I’ll just adjust this back a bit. An hour maybe?”

  “They might already have the Guard in place by then,” Maggie said, worrying her lip.

  “Right. Let’s go back a few then. Once we’re in, I can set us to the time we need,” he told her. “If we can get into the building while it’s still daylight, we can go forward again, until just before the Prophet arrives. That way, we can be ready for them.”

  Esta caught Harte’s eye. “It will be fine,” she said, understanding his reluctance.

  But his jaw was tense and his eyes wary. “What about the stones we have?” he asked in a low voice so the others couldn’t hear.

  “I’ll have to leave them here. In the wagon?” she asked.

  “You really think that’s wise?”

  She didn’t. It felt like abandoning part of herself to think about leaving the stones behind. But if North could take them back without her risking the cuff . . . “I don’t see that we have any choice if we want to save Julien. We have to try to stop this if we can.”

  “What about in the wall?” he asked. “They’ll be less likely to be found if Ruth comes for the wagon.”

  He was right. While Maggie was gathering her supplies from the back of the wagon, Harte and Esta found a place close to the wall of the fairgrounds to hide the stones. They buried them, and then Harte used one of Maggie’s devices to set a trap. Anyone who might disturb it would get an unpleasant surprise.

  “Come on over here.” North motioned them around the corner from the gates. “Now hold on.” Maggie reached out to take his arm first, and then Esta did the same. Harte hesitated, clearly dreading the thought of traveling through time again.

  “If you’re afraid . . . ,” North teased.

  Harte took hold of North, who only smirked as he clicked the watch shut.

  THE ALCHEMIST

  1902—New York

  Jack took a minute to accept the applause as his due. It rolled over him, a benediction for all he’d suffered and all the plans he’d worked so diligently to put in place. The lights of the ballroom twinkled and shone, winking at him as the morphine coursed through his veins, clearing his mind. Opening him to the possibilities this moment held.

  He lifted his hands, gratified to see the crowd follow his directive
as he took control of the room and began the evening’s festivities.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot tell you what it means to me to be here tonight, honoring the Order’s essential work and marking our commitment to the city we love so dearly. I know that for some of us, the past weeks have been a trial. Our newspapers have not always been kind to our esteemed organization or the work that we do to keep our city safe. But tonight we prove the naysayers wrong. Tonight we show that the power of logic and science, the enlightened study of hermetic arts, will always be far superior to the craven wildness of the old magic, which once threatened the very essence of civilization.

  “Tonight, on behalf of the Order and their Inner Circle, I am honored to present our tableaux vivants.”

  The orchestra started into their first series of chords, a minor-key piece that sounded as dangerous as Jack himself felt, and the attention of the audience only bolstered him more.

  “Without further ado, our first tableau, a painting by the esteemed Joseph Wright, The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorous.”

  With a flourish of his arms, the curtains on the first of the stages pulled back, revealing the dimly lit scene. Two men sat in the background, leaning over a desk as though doing calculations. In the foreground, J. P. Morgan himself played Wright’s alchemist. His uncle was wearing a false beard and his expression was enraptured over the enormous glass flask held on an iron pedestal. Genuflecting before the altar of science, Morgan was dressed in an ancient-looking robe, tied with a sash.

  The audience applauded politely, murmuring with amusement to see who was in the first tableau.

  “A charming scene, to be sure,” Jack told them, anticipation racing alongside the morphine in his blood. “But we can do better, don’t you think?”

  The crowd murmured and rustled, but he ignored them as he walked over to the tableau. His uncle and the other actors kept their positions, frozen as though they were living, breathing statues. He hadn’t warned them, hadn’t told them what he would do, because he wanted their shock as well.

  “Those who live in the shadows of our city, like rats infesting the very structure of the society we have built here, depend upon feral magic. Weak, unruly power. But see what an enlightened study of the occult arts can accomplish.” He lifted his hands and sank into the looseness of the morphine in his veins, and the words he’d practiced in the privacy of his room came from his lips as though he had been born to say them.

  The orchestra went silent and the crowd tittered, but Jack barely heard them. He was calling to something bigger, something deeper. Against his chest, the Book felt positively hot.

  Suddenly, the chandeliers flickered and the lights wavered. Then, as though they were some sort of fairy creatures, the light from the chandeliers flew toward the dark liquid in the flask his uncle knelt before and set it aglow.

  The audience went completely silent as the room went dark except for the glowing flask in the tableau, and then, all at once, they burst into thunderous applause. His blood thrummed, hot and sure. And he had only just begun.

  A BRUSH OF MAGIC

  1902—New York

  The lights flickered back on, and Viola felt the chill of the unnatural magic seep out of the air. She shuddered slightly. “We need to get her now,” she repeated to Theo.

  He didn’t need to tell her that it was impossible. She could see for herself that there was no way to get through the crowd and behind the curtain without everyone seeing her, including Paul and Torrio. When the curtain opened, Ruby would be exposed. Torrio would know the truth of Viola’s duplicity, and neither of them would ever be safe again.

  Vaguely, she felt the warm brush of magic nearby. At first she dismissed it as more of Jack’s tricks, but when it didn’t immediately dissipate with the cold power that had flooded the room, she had another thought. Her hand went instinctively to the slit she’d made in her skirts, to take her knife from its sheath and, in a single fluid motion, she held it up to the empty air. “Show yourself.”

  “Viola?” Theo sounded as though he thought she’d lost her mind, but she ignored him and moved toward the warm energy until it grew denser.

  She pressed her knife forward, and in an instant Jianyu was there.

  “Viola,” he said, his voice every bit as nervous as he should have been.

  She didn’t lower her blade. Nibsy had indicated that Jianyu could have been one of the traitors, and while she didn’t trust the conniving rat, she also didn’t trust Dolph’s spy, who’d been suspiciously absent for these long weeks. “So you return. Where have you been?”

  Jianyu glanced down at the blade at the same time that Theo stepped toward her. But she glared at Theo and then turned her attention back to Jianyu. “You were there on the bridge,” she said.

  “I was—”

  “You weren’t any help at all then.” She moved the blade closer.

  “I was with Darriga—”

  The blade went to his throat. “That traitor?”

  “He’s not the traitor you believe him to be,” Jianyu told her.

  But she only huffed out a sound of disbelief. She’d been in the Mysterium. She’d been the victim of his treachery. “You expect me to believe that? Where is he now? I’ll kill him myself.”

  Theo made a worried sound, but she ignored him.

  “He’s with Esta—”

  “Esta?” She’d helped the girl escape. Had she been wrong in trusting her, too?

  “It is a very long tale, and not one I have time for now,” Jianyu said. “One of the artifacts is here.”

  “I know—the ring. Nibsy told me you would be after it.”

  Jianyu frowned. “We cannot let him have it.”

  “I have no intention of letting either of you have it.” She lifted Libitina’s blade until it was squarely under Jianyu’s chin. “Where is it?”

  “I know who has it—she is backstage. I was on my way to get it when I saw you and—”

  “Backstage?” Where Ruby is. “You’ll take me.” It was not a request.

  “As long as you promise that you will listen to reason when this is all through. There is much I need to tell you.”

  “You’ll take me,” she repeated. She wouldn’t make promises or submit to Jianyu’s demands. But she would get the stone, and she would see Ruby safe—whatever it took.

  THE VEILED PROPHET’S BALL

  1904—St. Louis

  Esta’s vision went white, but she kept hold of North’s arm until she could see again. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her, and her skin was clammy from the magic of the watch.

  When the brightness faded, the night had turned to day. In the distance, the sirens had been replaced with the echoes of the Exposition—the hum of the crowd and the far-off melody of a brass band.

  Harte let go of North first and shuddered as he stumbled and tried to keep himself upright. “That just feels wrong.”

  “What does?” North asked, putting the watch back into his pocket.

  “You don’t feel it?” Harte shivered again. When North shook his head, Harte tried to explain. “Magic usually feels warm, like something you’d want to blanket yourself with. But that? It feels like a shard of ice went straight through me.”

  “I’ve never felt anything warm,” North said with frown. “And I don’t feel any ice either. You, Maggie?”

  The girl shook her head.

  Esta caught Harte’s gaze. North was Mageus—she could feel the warmth of his affinity mingled with the prickling iciness of the watch’s magic—but he didn’t seem as attuned to his affinity as she and Harte were. Maybe it was because, without the watch, his affinity wasn’t all that strong. Or maybe there was something to the stories of the Brink—the stories of how it worked to keep magic whole. If she really thought about it, all the power she’d felt on this side of the Brink had been off, mixed with that strange, cold warning that spoke of ritual and decay.

  Done with the conversation, North gave a nod, and they were moving. The four of them ente
red the fair without any problem and then made their way back toward the lagoon. It was still midafternoon and the fair was open, filled with visitors who were there to take in the sights. Boats trailed in lazy paths across the calm waters, unaware that in the span of a few hours everything would change. The lights would turn the water into a glimmering mirror of stars, the white marble of the buildings would glow, and if they couldn’t fix this—if they couldn’t stop the necklace from detonating or the people from being at the ball when it did—people would die, including the president. Esta shuddered at the thought of what a change like that could do to the future.

  The ball was being held in the Festival Hall, the white domed building at the head of the enormous lagoon. Other than the boats, which would have taken too long, there was no direct route there. They had to cut around the buildings that held exhibitions of metallurgy and liberal arts, following the broad paths filled with people until they came to the Festival Hall.

  From the gilded dome to the lavish curlicues of marble and plaster, the Festival Hall was a testament to excess. In a city where many of the streets remained unpaved and workers gathered in warehouses to plan their rise, it was unnecessary, this impractical bit of beauty. Everywhere, lush flowers bloomed in perfectly manicured gardens, fountains threw water into the air in elegant looping patterns, and ornate gazebos provided shade from the afternoon sun. It was beautiful and frivolous with its sculptures and carvings. It should have seemed utterly charming and beautiful and feminine, but it was also imposing.

  The building stood two stories above the fair on its man-made hilltop like a citadel, with a double row of columns that ringed it like the bars of a cage. Blocking the main entrance was an enormous fountain, THE TRIUMPH OF LIBERTY carved into its base, and on three of its sides were smaller but no less ornate fountains, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and TRUTH, which all cascaded down to the main lagoon below. And on the top of its gilded dome, the goddess Victory had been wrought in the image of a man. Of course she had. Esta wasn’t even surprised. The entire building was a statement of the city’s power, as though St. Louis could claim its place in the country with marble and water. It was also a statement of the men who’d commissioned it—the Society, filled with the city fathers who ruled from their mahogany boardrooms and marbled halls.