Canon in Crimson (Symphony in Red Book 1)

by Rachel Kastin

  “That I should give you his name and that you’d help me get started,” I said, still holding back the heat of my anger. “And he gave me this for you.” I handed her the money and the card. As she took it and counted the money, she started to smile grudgingly. Then she flipped over the card, and the smile took over her face.

  “I must apologize, darling,” she said, her voice transformed. She looked back at me. “This is exactly the amount he owed me when he disappeared. And this,” she held up the card with her address, “is the card I gave him, long before that.”

  “Okay,” I said graciously, my blood cooling. “So what now?”

  “Now,” she told me enthusiastically, taking my hand and dragging me towards the back door, “we make you even more exquisite.”

  She led me to a back room filled with bolts of cloth, ribbon, buttons, bits of anything shiny you can imagine, and an army of buzzing seamstresses. She extended her arm, presenting the scene.

  “You’re welcome to all of it,” she pronounced. “Did you have anything in mind?”

  Looking around the battleground of fabric and thread, I was pretty overwhelmed. But then a corner of something caught my eye, and a not-so-distant memory surfaced in my mind. It reminded me of you, he’d said…

  I turned back to Marie.

  “Well,” I said, “how about something red?”

  A hurricane of measurements, sewing, fittings, readjustments and trimmings later, the ordeal was done. Evening had come by the time it was all over, and we were finally leaving, laden with armfuls of dresses in every shade of red from deep garnet to bright scarlet, and an invitation to return in a couple of days for the custom designs. As I gathered the twins to head out the door, I thanked Marie for the thousandth time. Our initial disagreement long forgotten by then, she kissed me on both cheeks. And then she leaned forward so only I could hear her.

  “Give him my best,” she whispered. “And may you have better luck with him than I did.”

  And then she turned and walked back inside before I had a chance to answer.

  The moon had risen well into the night sky when we got home, and my weariness was all that kept me from running inside; I couldn’t wait to show Alger the fruits of the day’s labor. He laughed at me when I dumped the pile of red clothing on the table, but he didn’t seem to disapprove.

  “I suppose I sent you to the right place,” he said. “Did she have anything to say?”

  I considered my response carefully.

  “She said to give you her best,” I finally told him.

  “I see,” he answered, mercifully deciding not to ask what I wasn’t spilling. “And did you decide on a name?”

  I nodded. Actually, I’d been racking my brains about it while I was waiting at the shop, and all the way home. I’d thought up something I liked, but I wasn’t sure about it. It’s a tough thing, deciding on your own identity. But I had to tell him something.

  “It’s ‘Crimson,’” I said at last, watching for his reaction. At first, something I couldn’t put my finger on seemed to cross his face, but it was quickly replaced with a dry smile.

  “Well. I applaud your consistency, anyway,” he said lightly.

  “You don’t like it,” I translated, dropping my eyes.

  “No, I do,” he reassured me, tilting my chin back up with one finger to keep me from looking away. “It’s a bit dark, but whimsical. Romantic. I think it suits you.”

  I let myself smile back at him before I had to turn away again, this time because I was blushing again. I muttered something like a thanks, and then ran off to finish unpacking. But after that comment, Marie’s parting words kept echoing in my mind.

  Maybe I would have better luck.

  Chapter 18—You Don’t Know What Love Is

  June 17, 1921--A theft occurred at the Gallerie dell’Accademia two days ago between ten o’clock and midnight. At least twelve paintings have been reported missing, but it does not appear that there were any injuries or other property damage. Police have not yet identified any suspects, but most believe this to be the work of Algernon Slade and his gang.

  I smiled to myself behind the newspaper as I read the article in the Gazetta di Reggio in my hotel room in Venice. Maybe I shouldn’t be so pleased that everyone just assumed that it had been us, but then again, becoming famous had been the point of all this, right? So I let myself enjoy it, sipping my brandy and reading on.

  Last night’s theft is the latest in a long series of high-profile heists attributed to Slade’s gang by authorities in Italy, Germany, and Spain this year. The group is notoriously unpredictable in their methods, targets, and choice of stolen goods. They have taken art, jewels, money, and documents from public and private art collections, storefronts and warehouses, bank vaults and basements. Descriptions of Slade himself are equally inconsistent, with no two witnesses giving the same account of his appearance.

  I snickered, knowing the real reasons for that. Of course, Alger practically never showed up to a place looking the same way twice, and half the time, he introduced himself as someone else, and Shifty said he was Alger Slade. Shifty complained about it sometimes, but I knew he secretly enjoyed it—and his impression of Alger’s accent was top notch.

  Perhaps the only consistent report about Slade’s operation is the description of his female associate: a tall woman with dark hair in a red dress. Sources often report seeing her or even having extended interactions with her immediately before discovering that they have been robbed. Seen as Slade’s most valuable and dangerous asset, she is popularly nicknamed the “Queen of Spades.”

  My smile deepened at that. Alger didn’t seem to be very happy about either the moniker or my growing notoriety, and it was probably because being so visible made me a target, but I assumed (or at least hoped) that it was because the job he’d given me made him at least a little bit jealous. I’d come a long way since the auction house in New York, and my distractions had become much more involved. While I never let things get too out of hand, “interactions” with me, as the article put it, sometimes included more than loaded conversation. Over time, I’d stopped being nervous and started enjoying myself, seeing how easy it was for me to wrap a rich, arrogant, unsuspecting jerk around my finger. I might not be calling many shots myself yet, but my nickname always reminded me that I’d become far more than a lookout to the Gang. Just as I’d wanted, I now had my very own specialized role, and I was just as good at it as they were at theirs.

  Due to the skill involved in their heists, a reputation for accomplishing those heists without violence, and a tendency to choose extremely wealthy, unpopular targets, many see Slade’s gang as heroes, with Slade himself as a Robin Hood figure. But authorities caution that the full extent of the thieves’ actions is not yet known, and they are to be presumed dangerous. Anyone believing they have seen any members of the gang, they say, are asked to report that information as quickly as possible.

  Report us. Sure. No one ever even knew they were missing anything until at least a couple of days after we’d hit them, and as the paper said, enough people liked us that even the people who might’ve been able to help track us down didn’t seem to be very interested in trying.

  Still smiling, I drained the rest of my brandy, folded the newspaper, and hopped off the bed to go show it to Alger. At one in the morning, everyone else was sleeping off the last job, but excitement was keeping me awake, and Alger never really seemed to sleep anyway. So when I rapped on the door of his room across the common area of our suite, I wasn’t surprised to hear him tell me to come in without missing a beat.

  “Victoria,” he said, looking up from a writing desk as I slipped through the door. He was still mostly dressed, polished shoes and all, but he’d loosened his tie and hung the white jacket up in the closet. “All’s well, I hope?”

  I nodded, suddenly shy. For all the time we’d spent working together in the last few months, virtually none of it had been just the two of us.

  “I just thought you
might want a look at this,” I told him, offering him the copy of the Gazetta.

  He took it with a raised eyebrow, and his quick eyes flitted over the article. He sighed as he finished it, folding it and tossing it onto the desk.

  “I suppose this was inevitable,” he said.

  “What? Getting attention?” I asked, watching as he slid open the desk drawer and closed his fingers around something. The bright metal of the notched coin from St. Charles glinted in the candlelight before he closed the drawer again. “Wasn’t that the idea? Fame leads to the Baroness, and the Baroness leads to Kingston, and Kingston leads to your box?”

  His mouth quirked into that gorgeous, maddening half-smile.

  “Indeed. But fame and infamy are two sides of the same coin,” he said. “And both come with their share of danger. Which is why I believe it’s time you had this.”

  He opened his hand with a flourish, revealing a polished ebony hair clip, long and slightly curved like a claw. Blood rushed to my face, and my chest suddenly felt stuffed with cotton.

  “Um…It’s pretty?” I said, looking at it uncertainly and then searching Alger’s face for clues.

  He didn’t give me any, but he did flip over the clip with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Now watch closely,” he instructed.

  He pressed on the bottom of the clip and flicked his wrist slightly, and a slim steel blade sprang out. I cried out in surprise, and his smile grew with his satisfaction.

  “I…” I swallowed as my heart tried to climb out of my chest into my throat. “But, I thought…you didn’t want me fighting.”

  “I don’t,” he confirmed, “but I’d prefer that you have a way to defend yourself if necessary. And in the likelier event that it isn’t necessary,” he added, standing up and putting his free hand on my shoulder, “it should make an excellent addition to your social armory.”

  While I ransacked my mind for something to say, he turned me toward the full-length mirror on the opposite wall. Standing behind me, he gathered up my hair and twisted the clip into it, burying the sharp end in the thick coil of hair and leaving the trigger end accessible. I could feel his breath on the nape of my neck, and I was sure I could hear his heartbeat. Was it getting faster, or was that just mine?

  “There,” he said when he was finished, admiring his handiwork. “What do you think?”

  But I didn’t think; I reacted. Timing and confidence, right? Before I could second-guess myself, I did exactly what I’d been practicing for six months: I saw my opening, and I took it. My heart now slamming into my eardrums, I turned around to face Alger and slid my arms around his neck.

  “I think we make a good team,” I whispered.

  But he didn’t respond the way I’d hoped. Instead, his muscles tightened, and the humor and concern vanished from his face, replaced by the mask he showed everyone else. He disentangled himself from my arms with stiff efficiency.

  “I’m not a mark, Victoria,” he said, his voice cold as the steel blade inside the hair clip. “So you really ought not to use that particular maneuver on me. I’ve seen it done better a thousand times, and I’m not interested.”

  I recoiled as if he’d slapped me, but he just turned to sit back down at the writing desk, picking up his pen and scribbling notes again as if I’d never been there. As the heat of my excitement broiled into an inferno of shame and rage, I stared at him for a moment through the red haze bleeding into my vision, clenching my fists and hungering to hit him back, to say something just as cruel and dismissive—but my fury wouldn’t resolve itself into words. So instead, I grabbed the shreds of my dignity and stalked out of the room, feeling the door yield and crack as it slammed shut behind me.

  Hours later, I stood on my balcony staring out over the Grand Canal, wrapping myself in humid night air, humiliation, and anger. All of them soaked in down to the bones as I replayed those moments in Alger’s room over and over in my mind. I just couldn’t believe I’d read him so wrong after thinking I knew him better than anyone else. I couldn’t believe he’d worked so hard to make me into the person I’d become, only to tell me flat-out that he didn’t appreciate it. After everything I’d done for him—for the whole Gang—I couldn’t believe he’d treated me like a child playing dress-up.

  By the time the sun’s vigilant eye began to peek over the horizon, I knew I had to make a decision: I could disappear, try to find my own way, and never have anything to do with Alger again, or I could tuck my tail between my legs and go crawling back. I couldn’t see how I could just keep working as usual after this. I didn’t even know how I could stand to be in the same room with him now.

  But in the end, no matter how little I could bear the thought of being around him, the thought of living without him was even worse. So in the still hours of dawn, I showed up in the hotel lobby, barely in time for us to get to the station. No one asked me what had happened, and I certainly wasn’t talking, but I did make sure I had a cabin to myself. As the train roared to a start, carrying us towards home, I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 19—Bad Reputation

  The El Fey Club looked surprisingly normal, given that its roof had been smashed in yesterday. The robots’ damage was obvious, and G3’s grenades had left huge holes in the sidewalks, but the walls and missing sections of the roof had been patched with two-by-fours, the detritus had been cleared away, and a cheerful Open sign hung on the makeshift door. They sure didn’t waste time, R7 thought, turning the sign around to Closed as she walked in. But she really needn’t have bothered—it was obvious that only mobsters, rather than real customers, were drinking there tonight.

  “Hey, boys,” she said, standing in the doorway with her arms folded. “Remember me?”

  Clinking glasses quieted at the bar, creaking steps stilled next to the tables, and cigarettes hung suspended in mid-pull throughout the room as a dozen wiseguys turned to look at her. A lot like the Agency office, she thought, smiling ferociously at them, only she didn’t have to hold back here.

  “So you do recognize me,” she said. “Anybody feel like chatting?”

  When no one answered, she swept the room with her gaze until she found a man sitting next to a pair of crutches leaned against the bar, with bandages over a broken nose, whose blackened eyes widened even more when she met them. The others might’ve seen her work from a distance the day before, but he’d experienced it personally in the alley weeks ago. She winked at him, and he flinched. The others looked to each other for direction, leaning collectively away from her in unease, but still no one spoke.

  “Oh, come on, boys,” she said with a feigned pout. “First one to talk to me gets to leave with all his teeth.” And she took a step forward.

  Like surface tension breaking on water, the step shattered the wiseguys’ taut paralysis, and they scattered. R7 crossed the room in two bounding steps and pounced on the man from the alley, slower than his friends to scramble for the theoretically secret back door. Grabbing him by his lapels, she shoved him up against the end of the bar, spilling a tragic amount of ten-year-old scotch over the varnished wood.

  “Here’s how this works,” she growled, as the other rats abandoned ship. “You answer my questions, and I don’t break any more of your bones. Sound like a deal?”

  The mook nodded, swallowing frantically. She could feel his panicked breath and racing pulse through his shoulders.

  “Good,” she said. “So are you sticking to the story that you don’t know why Tony’s interested in the robots?”

  “The—the what?”

  “The big metal men,” R7 said impatiently. “Still no idea why Tony’s having kittens over them?”

  “Uh—no. No idea,” agreed the wiseguy, his voice pinched from fear and the broken nose.

  “Alright,” said R7. “Then tell me what so special about this place that someone sent those things to hit it?”

  “I...” the mook tried to shrug, but R7 was maintaining a steady grip on his jacket. “I’m not sure. It’s just a juice
joint.”

  “A juice joint with a safe, until yesterday,” R7 reminded him, shaking him a little for good measure.

  “R-right,” he said. “It—it must’ve been after the safe.”

  R7 growled and shoved him against the bar a little harder. His breathing rose into panic again, loud to her ears in the now-silent room.

  “That’s the part I knew already, you sap,” she said. “What was in the safe?”

  The wiseguy’s panic became tinged with confusion.

  “In it?” he asked. “I...I mean why—”

  “‘Why’ is my department,” R7 cut him off. “‘What’ is yours. So are you going to tell me what was in the damned safe, or am I going to make your left leg match your right?”

  “I never looked in it myself,” he said. “But, but—!” he went on hastily, when R7 menaced him with another shake. “Word is it was some stuff Tony was collecting.”

  “Collecting?” R7 pressed. “What—”

  But as much as she wanted to know exactly what “stuff” was in Tony’s collection, she broke off mid-sentence when she heard the faint but distinctive sound of wood creaking above her. Her head snapped up, and she spotted a figure in red perched in the ceiling’s remaining rafters. What the—

  “The Red Death!” the mobster cried, following R7’s gaze up to the vigilante lurking in the gloom.

  Finally finding something he was more afraid of than her, the mook thrashed in her grip. The Red Death swore under his breath, pulled two grenades out of the inside of his coat, and dropped them. R7 released the wiseguy, who slumped whimpering to the floor while smoke poured out of the grenades.

  R7 tried to hold her breath as smoke blossomed rapidly through the air. Abandoning the mook, she hopped up onto the bar and leapt for the rafters, both hands outstretched to grab the vigilante by his dangling red coat tails. But a bright flash seared her vision, and she grasped wildly for the rafters as her eyes squeezed shut involuntarily.