by Lindsey Duga
Best to take the first train and get out of the city as quickly as possible. From Philly, I could jump on another train and truly disappear.
“Please give me one ticket.”
The ticket man’s hands hastened to print out the ticket, rip it, and pass it to me under the glass. Before he had time to realize what he’d done, I’d slipped out of line and headed for the right platform. With every step and every person whose gaze I avoided, my anxiety mounted. It clawed and chewed through my stomach like a hungry stray.
Perching myself on a lone bench, I threaded my fingers through my waves to hide my face behind them and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. A newsie strolled by, hollering about the upcoming mayoral election with some Irish fella as the front-runner. I tuned out the boy’s voice—it was easy with all the worries running through my head.
What if there were more monsters among this very crowd? Could they smell other monsters? Were they searching for me?
Then there was the fact that I was leaving the only home I’d ever known. Although I hated the booze and spirits, the drunks on a bender, and the men who’d ask me to run away with them while flashing their fancy suits and pocket watches—as if wealth was the only thing a girl could want in a husband—I would miss The Blind Dragon. Madame Maldu’s special brand of gaspers whose smoke I’d come to know so well, or Stan’s strong, quiet presence, or David’s sax, Marv’s laughter, and Francis’s dependable piano accompaniment—the best little band a canary could ask for.
Quickly, I wiped a few tears from my lashes with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. The whistle went off—the signal to board.
A flood of people converged toward the train and I was almost swept off with them as I stood. The sheer amount of people heading for one small door was overwhelming. I’d only been on a train once in my life, and many years ago, so I’d forgotten what it was like—the feeling of drowning in a sea of bodies.
With my ticket clenched tightly in one hand, I fell into step behind a woman who reeked of fancy perfume. A man with a fedora and dark gray coat shouldered past me, squeezing in front while another man came right up behind me, pressing against my backside.
My vision flashed red with anger, and I started to twist around, to tell him to back off when his hand came around and grabbed my mouth, covering my lips with his sweaty fingers. Pure shock had me frozen, and before I could try and wrestle myself away, his other hand grasped my arm and tightened me to his chest. Then the man in front pivoted around, pressing a blade against my belly, and grabbing my free wrist. I let out a muffled whimper while tears sprang to my eyes thanks to a combination of fear, panic, and sheer exhaustion. Not again.
Meanwhile, people shuffled past us, absorbed in their papers and their own belongings, trying to heave them on board. Completely oblivious to the knife at my stomach.
“Don’t say a word, siren,” the man with the knife leaned in and hissed, his breath carrying the acrid stench of an ashtray. “Be a good girl and come back to our boss. Do what we say and you won’t get a scratch on you. Keep her lid shut, Robby.”
I sniffled under the hand of the man named Robby. It was so tight I couldn’t even move my jaw.
“Now back up slowly. Nice and easy, that’s it…” As they forced me to inch back on the train platform, I considered dropping to my knees, but with the way the man had the knife pressed up against my stomach, I worried about falling into the blade, gutting myself.
Taking another tiny step, I tripped over Robby’s feet. He had slowed for some reason, his hand limp and sliding down my chin. The man with the knife stared at me, lips parted, terrified. For a moment I thought his fear was due to the fact that I could now instruct him to do whatever I wished, but then I saw that he was actually staring just past my shoulder where Robby had been.
Robby had backed away, clutching his side. Red was now blooming on his shirt, and his face was the color of fresh snow. Colt stood behind him, panting, covered in sweat and remnants of his own blood. Something silver glinted in his right hand but it vanished into his sleeve and, in one quick movement, Colt wrapped an arm around my waist, pinning me to his side, and twisted the man’s wrist to plunge his own knife into his own stomach.
Then, side-stepping the two stabbed men like it was the most natural thing in the world, Colt guided me up to the train door behind a young family, and slipped the train ticket out of my hand. I was in such shock that I could only watch as he passed it to the conductor with a smile that said he hadn’t just left two men to bleed to death.
“Apologies, ole sport,” Colt said in a dead-on imitation of a high-society egg man. “The missus here seems to have misplaced her ticket.”
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t lose anything—the rat bastard stole my ticket. Though, it’s not like I had purchased mine, either.
“Ain’t that right, doll? Tell the gentleman you’d dearly love to get on the train with your husband.” Colt’s eyes bored into mine, a clear warning of what was to come if I said anything that made the conductor turn on him.
Maybe, with just a shout, I could have the entire crowd turn on Colt. But I didn’t know what would happen after that. Surely other innocent bystanders could get hurt because of me. And then there was the possibility that my siren magic was zapping energy from me like a car on a tank of gasoline. If I tried to use my voice on so many people at once I could just pass out then and there.
Licking my lips, I moved my gaze to the conductor, who regarded me skeptically. Dark brows furrowed under his cap and his mustache twitched with annoyance.
“Yessir, mister,” I said, then layered on sweetly, “please let me on through.”
The man stepped aside immediately. He was still blinking in confusion as Colt half-pushed, half-carried me through the train door and into the first spare compartment.
I fell into one of the seats after Colt released me and locked the door behind us. He had dropped something onto the opposite compartment seat—a silver scalpel, shiny red with blood. It was that instrument of healing that I’d seen flash in his palm earlier when he gutted the man.
Pressing himself against the door, Colt looked down at me with wild, furious eyes. “Just who the devil is after you?”
Chapter Ten
The Agent
“You mean besides you?”
The siren scowled up at me, one hand against the glass compartment window while the other gripped the edge of the seat. Her knees and toes were turned inward, and her shoulders were hunched as she regarded me warily.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
She shrugged. “For as long as I’ve been in hiding only the BOI has been able to find me. Perhaps it’s possible your supervisor doesn’t have as much faith in you as you thought.”
“You think I’d stab men on my side?” I growled. Given the goons on the platform, I was actually glad I’d snagged the scalpel from the doc’s place when I’d had the chance.
She stared at the thick crimson liquid that dripped from the blade into the fabric of the seat. “Frankly, I don’t know what you’d do.”
That shouldn’t have affected me, but it did. My fingers curled into fists, and I felt that heat inside my chest billow through me like the clouds of steam from the trains. “I’ve saved your life three times now. So trust me when I say that me bringing you in isn’t personal. You’re just my job.”
“Just your job,” she echoed, and, for the first time, I detected a hint of tears. Her eyes turned glassy and her chin trembled, but then she straightened her spine and pushed her feet together into a proper position. “So it was your job to…to flirt with me, then?”
I hated how easily I could detect hurt in her voice. She was not good at masking her emotions. They were all as clear as day. For any grifter that was one of the first things you learned. Hide your real emotions and put on fake ones. But with her, from the very beginning, I�
��d been able to read her so well. So incredibly easily.
She seems to be as honest as they come.
“Yes,” I answered, returning her honesty with my own, “I had to get you to talk. I had to hear your voice to make sure you were the siren.”
To that, she said nothing and dropped her gaze.
I took the seat opposite of her inside the small train compartment. “Look, if you know of anyone after you, you need to tell me.” Still she didn’t reply, and during the silence, I searched through our previous conversations back in my hotel room. “Didn’t you mention there had been a bad man after you? Wasn’t it why Madame Maldu took you into hiding?”
Once more, I could read her thoughts on her face. She bit her bottom lip and her eyes darted from one side to the other, like she was debating something.
This “bad man” had to be the one who sent those other men after her—the minotaur and the two on the platform.
Just then, the train issued another high-pitched whistle and smoke streams drifted by the window, obscuring the view of the retreating platform. As the rattler lurched forward, she almost toppled off her seat, her knees bumping into mine. I caught her from falling and winced as a jolt of pain raced down my side.
Immediately, she shrank away from my touch, but her gaze jumped to my left shoulder. “Did you even get yourself sewn up?” she asked.
“I’m fine.” I gingerly touched my fresh stitches.
“You don’t look it,” she said quietly.
Ignoring her, I glanced out the window. Philadelphia. That’s where this train was bound. It wasn’t that far away from DC, but we’d have to switch trains at the station, which meant another opportunity for this girl—this monster—to slip through my fingers, whether it was by her own Harry Houdini maneuvers or via these mysterious henchmen that seemed to know her exact location wherever she went. But how? And how had she remained undetected so long if she could now be tracked so easily?
Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I struggled to find clues. This was turning out more complicated than I’d ever imagined. I knew people would be after the lost siren, but so quickly?
I looked up to find her still watching me warily. “So you have no idea who those men on the platform were? What did they say to you?” I asked.
“They wanted the same thing you want,” she said, her words coming out in one long sigh. Her gaze went to the window and it stayed there. “They wanted to take me to their boss.”
I almost pointed out that my boss wasn’t a crime lord, unlike theirs who probably was. But to her, I supposed there wasn’t much of a difference.
So who was this mystery boss? Could it be her creator?
Mysteries surrounding the lost siren were vast and difficult to unravel. Everything I knew was from the stories McCarney told me. Eight years ago, one year after prohibition began when organized crime escalated, three siren pearls made their way to America. They had to have been smuggled, of course, but the rumors as to how were extensive and imaginative. Some claimed that a senator’s wife wore the pearls in a necklace on her way back from a European trip. Two of those pearls were located. One had been surgically added into the mouth of a twenty-year-old woman, but she had died shortly following the surgery and the pearl’s magic had died with her. The second pearl was recovered during a gunfight between a crime lord who ruled the Bronx and the BOI. But its magic, too, had been lost due to a crack within it. And the third? The third had vanished.
Eight years later, it’s sitting across from me.
“Did they mention a name? Anything?”
“The man with the knife—the first one you stabbed…his name was Robby,” she said, hugging her arms, keeping her gaze locked outside the window. “Do you think he’ll live?” she asked quietly.
I wanted to tell her it didn’t matter—that they were the enemy. Who cared if they lived or died? Instead, I said, “I didn’t hit any vital organs. And the cuts were shallow.”
She nodded, and I pressed, “What about the minotaur? Did he say anything?”
She rubbed her wrists, red from my rope and purple from the minotaur’s grip. “No.”
I sighed, massaging the corded muscles in my shoulder where the ache was the worst. She wasn’t going to be helpful, and I guess I couldn’t blame her. But if I could figure out who was after her, I could let McCarney know the name of another crime boss, maybe one whose name and connections weren’t even known.
“Are you sure there wasn’t anything you noticed?”
“I was too busy looking at the horns on his head,” she snapped. “And the knife at my stomach. Besides, I don’t have to give you anything. Why should I help my kidnapper?”
At that, I leaned forward so close that she was forced to look away from the window and meet my eyes. She smelled of blood. Metallic and coppery. My blood.
“Because you’re a monster. Don’t tell me that man’s screams in The Blind Dragon weren’t because of you.” My gaze drilled into hers, concentrating on her dark pupils and ignoring those soft blue irises. “But what I don’t think you understand is that there are men out there who are monsters without horns, or fangs, or claws. There are men who create monsters like you, all for the purpose of wealth, status, and power. And blood.”
For a long moment, she just stared at me in response. Her hands curled into fists on her thighs. Her eyes were no longer the soft tone of a sky, but the scorching shade of a fire’s hottest center.
“I don’t understand?” Her voice was a fierce whisper. “I know men are monsters. I have watched time and again a sister walk into my bar, sit at one of my tables and flinch when her fella raises his hand. I’ve seen countless bruises pathetically covered by makeup, and busted lips in rouge. Those so-called men aren’t just monsters, they’re demons. And they need to be punished for it.”
Slowly, too slowly, her words became clues, and the clues told a story. A reason.
“The man in the bar,” I said, each word tasting a bit more like ash in my mouth, “that’s why you used your voice on him.”
She turned toward the window, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. All that anger and rage vanished as her slim shoulders seemed to sag with the weight of what she’d done.
It had been out of protection. Not for herself, but for some poor dame from nights and days of abuse—fists, broken bottles, and gin-soaked breath.
“Eris.”
Her name broke free as my heart splintered and cracked. Damn it all.
At her name, she looked back at me, her eyes soft again.
“That’s why, isn’t it?”
She didn’t reply.
“Eris, had he been hurting another girl? What did you do to stop him?”
Her eyes were shiny, full of unshed tears. Then she glimpsed at the scalpel on the seat, and my hands on the door, and her gaze turned steely.
“Why does it matter? You’ve decided what I am,” she muttered, her words oddly rough. “What does the why have to do with it?”
She was absolutely right.
The why shouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter to McCarney, or Sawyer, or anyone else at the BOI, but…it mattered to me.
When she had used her voice to torture that man, I’d felt betrayed by this girl with a sweet smile and an honest heart. But now that I knew why she’d done it, it didn’t seem so monstrous.
“I’ll…be right back. Stay here.” I stood and fumbled with the door latch, and escaped into the train’s narrow hall. I had one more glimpse of Eris’s raised brows and parted lips before I closed the door on her.
No, no, no. I wasn’t supposed to be having second thoughts about this girl. I wasn’t supposed to be questioning this mission. So what if she protected abused women with her powers? So what if she refused to talk to ensure people lived with their free will?
She was a threat to national security
. She could convince men to kill themselves, or give up their property, or help smuggle dope, guns, and booze from city to city.
Whether or not she had actually done any of those things shouldn’t matter, simply because she had the power to do them. At least, that’s what I’d been trained to think.
Grimacing, I leaned against the wall and felt it vibrate under my wounded shoulder as tons of coal propelled the train forward. Pinpricks of pain danced down my arm and spiraled through my chest and spine. I breathed out long and slow.
The heat inside my chest burned its way through my lungs and nose. The escaping air came out in a column of white smoke and my mouth tasted like ash. I tried to push it down, but the inferno was damn near impossible to restrain.
Unable to stop myself, I looked back at the door that blocked Eris from my view.
Dammit. The name I’d tried so hard to get, and then tried so hard to dismiss, was branded into my mind. Singed on my tongue.
The name of a goddess, not a monster.
Chapter Eleven
The Siren
There were two possibilities. One, Colt thought I was submissive enough to just sit in this compartment and wait for him to return, or, two, he was arrogant enough to believe he’d be able to catch me again if I escaped.
Whichever one was correct didn’t matter. What did matter was that I had another chance to get away from him.
Colt made me feel drunk. I’d never had a drop of liquor in my life, but surely it had to feel something like this—lightheaded and woozy. Feverish.
Was it because of the way his expression had changed? And the way he’d said my name so tenderly?
It hadn’t escaped my notice that he’d refrained from calling me by name since The Blind Dragon. Instead, he’d just called me “siren,” so cold and so distant-like. And yet, when he’d guessed my reason for using my powers on that man, he’d looked confused, then troubled, then frustrated.
