by Lisa Maxwell
But inside, the hall was mostly a hollow, cavernous space. Though the Guard was everywhere around the grounds of the Exposition, it was too early in the day for them to have taken up their posts for the night, so Esta and the others were able to enter the rotunda of the building, blending in with the other tourists who gazed up to where the daylight streamed in through spotless windows as an enormous pipe organ played a hymn.
They didn’t waste time listening the way the other visitors did, though. Esta took stock of the building—hiding places and weak points. The Guard would do the same, and so would the president’s security, but it didn’t hurt to be aware of the exits in a place.
North led them through the rotunda and then to a small service hallway near the far side of the building. The door to the service hall was almost unnoticeable because it blended in with the ornate details and the scrollwork of the rest of the building. Once they were in the safety of the hall, they were able to snake through the building unseen.
“The ball will be held in the main rotunda out there,” North said, leading the way. He must have seen plans for the building to have such a clear sense of his direction.
“They’ll be bringing the parade down the avenue and then around the back, past the Palace of Fine Arts,” Esta told them, remembering where the Prophet’s float had stopped long enough for the Guard to pull Julien out of the hidden chamber beneath it and lead him away.
“That’s just on the other side of this wall here,” North said. “When the Prophet’s float arrived, did you see where they took Julien?”
Esta shook her head. “They grabbed him and left me behind. By the time I climbed out of the float, he was gone. They made the rest of us leave the fairgrounds from the back entrance, and then I came straight to you all. I don’t know where they took Julien.”
North considered the question, his eyes unfocused for a second. “The east wing of the building is mostly maintenance and workers, but on the west side, there are some rooms for offices and meetings. They’ll want privacy, so I expect that they’ll set up for the Prophet there.”
With a nod, North pulled them into a broom closet barely big enough to hold them. “The ball starts at ten, when the parade arrives, so we’ll need to be a little early to get into position.” He adjusted the dial of his watch, moving the minute hand ahead so that it dragged the hours along with it. Then he looked up at them, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “Ready?”
They each took hold of his arm, and once again, the world flashed white.
HUNGRY
1904—St. Louis
If Harte never again had to feel the creeping sense of unease he got when North used that magical watch of his, it would be too soon. He’d thought it was bad when Esta had pulled him through the years, but North’s magic was worse. When the world went white, he felt like it disappeared completely and like a shard of ice had stabbed him in the chest. Even once he got his vision back, the cold ache in his chest was still there, like the shard was still melting in the center of his heart.
The voice inside of him didn’t like it any better than he did. He could hear it screeching in the hollows of his head, blocking out everything for a moment and reminding him of the vision he’d had of the woman—the demon—in the temple.
But he pushed that voice down until it was a low, constant rumble in the back of his mind and shook off the lingering discomfort of the ice in his chest as he tried to focus.
“We’ll need clothes,” North was telling them. “Uniforms or something. We don’t want anyone to notice us, if we can help it.”
“We just need to get Julien and cause a big enough disturbance to get everyone out,” Harte argued. “The faster we do this the better.”
“We can create a disturbance,” Maggie said, taking North’s hands.
“Are you sure?” Esta asked her.
Maggie patted the pockets of her dress. “I’ve got some things with me. Nothing that will do any real harm. Just some smoke and flares to put on a little show, but everyone’s already going to be on edge after the attack on the parade. It shouldn’t be a problem to clear the ballroom before they get into it. You two get that friend of yours.”
North opened the door, and the sounds of the evening came through the crack—the murmuring of voices, the clattering of plates and silver being set, and farther off in the distance, the music of an orchestra. “We’ll meet back at the wagon,” North told them. “Good luck.”
Once they were gone, Harte was alone in the narrow space with Esta. If it had been a challenge before to keep the power inside of him in check, it felt impossible now. Beneath the scent of dust and the sharp bite of some cleaning solvent, he could smell her—the soft scent of sweat, clean and pure on her skin, and the power she carried within.
The thought startled him. It wasn’t he who could smell her power. Magic didn’t have a smell . . . did it?
Her eyes found his in the gloom of the closet, and the power surged again.
“We need to get going,” he said, his voice sounding almost unhinged. She heard it too. Her brows bunched over her whiskey-colored eyes.
“Are you okay, Harte?”
He wanted to shake his head. He wanted to tell her to run. But he could only stare numbly at her for a moment, his voice silenced by the effort of keeping the power inside of him in check.
North was right. “We’ll need clothes,” he said finally, choking the words out like a man drowning. “Something that doesn’t stand out.”
She studied him a moment longer, a question in her eyes. But she didn’t ask it. “Leave it to me,” she said.
He didn’t argue for once. He didn’t want her to go alone, but he needed to get away from her to get the power inside of him back under his control. But a moment was all that he had. She was no sooner out the door than she was coming back, her arms filled with two sets of dark suits and crisp white shirts.
“Do I even want to know?” he asked, trying to make light of the moment. But his voice was too tight, and the words came out as a reprimand he didn’t intend.
She cut him a sharp look. “It’s not half as exciting as you’re thinking. They have a rack of uniforms for the waitstaff tonight.” She gave him a shrug as she started unbuttoning the rough-spun shirt she’d been wearing. Beneath, her breasts were bound with wide strips of linen that contrasted with the expanse of tawny skin that was the color of the desert sand at twilight.
He shuddered, knowing exactly where that image had come from. Seshat was hungry. She was tired of his hesitation and his refusal to take what he wanted.
What she wanted.
It was easier to turn away from her, to not watch her long, lithe arms disappear beneath the cover of the new clothing. But he could still feel her. Every particle of his being was attuned to her—to the warm magic that was wound into the very center of her being.
Soon, the voice hummed. So very, very soon.
They finished dressing, and when he turned back to her, she was wearing a look of determination so quintessentially Esta that he could barely breathe. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to pull her to him and press his lips against hers, but he knew that he’d grown too weak beneath the constant onslaught of the power that dwelled inside of him. If he touched her now, he would not be able to stop, and they would both be done.
“Esta—” Her name came from his lips like a plea, and he could not tell if he was warning her or calling for her or simply girding himself against the power inside with the talisman of her name.
“Not now,” she said, her eyes dark with understanding. “Not until we’re out of here.”
They left the safety of the broom closet and followed the hallway back to where the guests were already gathered in the rotunda. The orchestra was still playing its soft melody from the loft where the enormous organ loomed above them. On the far side of the room, a group of people had crowded around a mustached man with a pair of pince-nez perched on his nose. Roosevelt. The dark-suited men near him must have been part
of his security detail.
Everywhere Harte looked, he saw the life he would never have. The silks and the jewels, the tinkling laughter. The champagne and the stiff upper lips and the freedom these men had to walk through the world as though they owned it.
He could not even bring himself to hate them for it, because he didn’t know, if the tables were turned, that he would be any better. They were, all of them, only what life had carved them out to be.
“I don’t think the parade has arrived yet,” he told Esta.
“We should figure out which doors they’ll use,” she said.
“Not those main ones.” He nodded to where they had come in earlier and where a steady stream of elegantly clothed people was arriving.
“Maybe in that maintenance hall?” she asked. “There’s got to be some kind of delivery door, where they brought all of this in earlier.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
He straightened his shoulders to match the posture of the other servers, and then the two of them started across the center of the rotunda. At the edge of his vision, movement caught his eye, and he glanced up to see Maggie on the catwalk high above them. At least that much will work.
They found they were right. In the east wing, there was a door where various workers came and went. “They’ll probably bring them through there,” Harte figured. The Prophet still had to make the switch from Julien, who’d worn the necklace in the parade, to the real debutante, whose reputation depended on her not displaying herself so publicly in the city streets. The transfer had to be seamless, though. When the Queen of Love and Beauty was introduced to the ball in the rotunda, she would already be wearing the Djinni’s Star.
They found a cart laden with stemmed champagne bowls just across from the doorway, and they each took up one of the cloths and pretended to polish the crystal as they watched for the Prophet’s arrival. They didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, the staff around them seemed to noticeably adjust themselves, picking up their pace and attentiveness, and not long after that, the Veiled Prophet came through the door. Behind him, two of the Jefferson Guard had Julien—one holding each of his arms.
Harte ducked his head, pretending to study the glasses, but he used the motion to watch as the group entered one of the unmarked doors in the hallway. Other Guardsmen took up posts on either side of the door.
“You there!” a voice said from behind Harte. “What are you doing? Those have already been polished.”
Harte glanced up to find one of the waiters staring at them, his hands filled with a tray of canapés and a scowl on his face.
“Water spots,” Esta told him, holding up one of the glasses.
The waiter scowled even more. “You don’t both need to take care of water spots,” he grumbled. “We need more men on the floor.” He came over and thrust the tray toward her. “Take this out there. Roosevelt wanted some of the pâté.”
Esta glanced at him. She didn’t have much choice but to take the offered tray and head into the rotunda.
“Finish that up and get out there,” the man snapped at Harte before he hustled off to reprimand someone else.
Harte kept his head down and polished the spotless champagne bowl in his hand, keeping his eye on the door where the Veiled Prophet had Julien. A few minutes later the door opened and the veiled man exited with a girl on his arm.
No. The debutante must have been waiting in the room. She was already wearing the decoy necklace, and now she was being escorted into the rotunda.
He would get Julien out of there, and then he would go after them.
Harte put the crystal back on the cart and started toward the Guardsmen. He moved fast, pushing his affinity outward as he grabbed one. The other attacked, but not fast enough. A moment later they were both staring, dazed, and making their way like sleepwalkers toward the exit of the building.
Carefully, Harte eased the door open and saw that there was one Guardsman left, looming over Julien.
“I told you, I had nothing to do with the attack.” Julien’s voice was filled with more irritation than fear, so that was something, at least. “Those barbarians came after me, too. Do you see this? Does this eye like something I did to myself?”
Harte slipped into the room and used the element of surprise to his advantage. He launched himself at the Guardsman and in a matter of moments had wrangled him to the floor. Pushing his affinity through the tenuous layers of skin and soul, he sent the Guardsman a single command. The man went limp beneath him, his eyes open, looking to the ceiling above.
“We need to go,” Harte told Julien. “Now.”
But Julien was staring between Harte and the incapacitated Guardsman. “You’re . . . Dammit, Darrigan. You’re one of them,” he said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it.
“You can hate me later if it means that much to you,” Harte told him. “If you don’t move now, you can stay here and deal with the Prophet on your own. But I’m leaving.”
Indecision flickered in Julien’s expression. Finally, he sighed and stepped over the prone Guardsman. “You should have stayed dead,” he muttered, but there was no hatred and no heat in the words.
“There are days I feel the same way, Jules.” And today, with Seshat already clamoring inside of him, was definitely one of them.
The hallway was empty now, and they had a clear path to the door. They were nearly there when Harte heard the laughter behind him. He turned to find Jack Grew leaning against the wall, his eyes bright with hatred.
“Harte Darrigan,” he said, stepping toward them. “Back from the dead . . . again.”
Harte stepped in front of Julien, shielding him from Jack. “Go,” he urged. “Get out of here, now.”
“But—”
Harte turned and pushed him through the exit, thankful for the gown Julien was in as he pressed a command into the bare skin of Julien’s exposed back. Leave. Now, he ordered. Don’t look back.
Then he turned to Jack.
“I knew you would come to me,” Jack said, his voice rough.
Harte frowned. “I didn’t come for you.”
“Didn’t you?” Jack stepped toward him.
“No, I—” But his words died in his throat. There was something shifting in Jack’s eyes. Something dark that was looking out at him from inside. The skin on Jack’s face flinched, twitching like he’d been struck, and then something beneath it rolled, creeping under the surface like a snake.
Harte reached for the cart of crystal and pushed it over, sending the glasses crashing to the floor as he turned and ran.
The voice inside of him was screeching, and it was all he could do to keep his feet moving as his shoes slipped on the broken glass coating the hallway. He was nearly to the rotunda when Jack spoke again.
“Did you think you could evade me forever, Seshat?”
At the sound of the name, the voice unleashed itself, rising in its force until Harte could not fight it. Until he was nothing more than a shell of skin and bone, directed and moved by some unseen power.
THE CURTAIN PULLED BACK
1902—New York
Under the warm blanket of Jianyu’s affinity, Viola watched as a second curtain opened, revealing a scene with a boat and sailors, their faces a picture of horror as they tried to escape from three watery maidens dressed in flowing robes who seemed set on capsizing them.
“Hurry,” she told Jianyu as he carried her on his back around the edges of the crowd, careful not to disturb anyone and give away his position.
Jack Grew was droning on as they walked, and as much as she would have liked to shut him up, Viola prayed he would keep talking. Four scenes had been on the program, which meant that Ruby could be revealed at any moment.
“Evil creatures, designed and forged to bring men to their knees. Their feral power was once a danger, once unchecked in the face of helpless man. But as time passed, as man learned and cultivated an enlightened view of magic, their time came to an end.”
“If you leave with the ring, I’ll find you,” Viola promised. “And when I find you, it will not be to talk.”
Her words didn’t seem to have the desired effect, though. Jianyu’s mouth curved up at the corners. “We leave here together,” he promised. “As Dolph would have wanted.”
It didn’t take long for Viola to find Ruby, who was sitting on a mirrored throne in front of the closed velvet curtains, wearing a long, dark wig and looking for all the world like she was terrified of what was about to happen. She was dressed in a bit of nothing: a garment that was almost the exact color of her flesh and a scrap of material draped around her that matched the deep blue of her eyes.
For a moment Viola froze. It seemed that her feet wouldn’t move and her voice wouldn’t make a sound, because all she could do was stare at Ruby, who looked so forlorn and lost and absolutely perfect that Viola could barely breathe. But her hesitation was a mistake. By the time she’d pulled herself together, the curtain was already opening.
CIRCE
1902—New York
Ruby lifted the chalice and the wand and raised her chin as the curtain opened, revealing her—so much of her—to the audience of Morgan’s ballroom.
