The Devil's Thief, Page 3

  If asked, they would say it had been too late. They would tell the people weeping and wringing their hands that the fire had already consumed too much, that it was too dangerous even to try entering the building. Their lives could not be wasted on lost causes.

  It didn’t matter whether their words were true. The effect was the same. Even now, the men simply leaned against their wagon, their hands crossed over dark uniforms, impassive as the rows of brass buttons lining their chests. Their shining helmets reflected the light of the blaze, as the pale-faced men with long, narrow noses watched a home transform itself into ash. It had happened countless times before, and in the days to come, Jianyu knew that it would happen again.

  Still under the cover of his magic, he approached the group of people slowly, listening for some indication that Cela was among them. For years now Jianyu had been Dolph Saunders’ eyes and ears in the Bowery. It wasn’t only that he was able to evade notice with his affinity. No, he also had a talent for understanding people and reading the words that remained unspoken, a skill he’d picked up when he’d traveled through Gwóng-dūng, before he was caught. He had wanted to start anew and to leave that life behind him, but because he hoped that the Brink could be destroyed, Jianyu had agreed to use his ability for Dolph, to warn him when danger was coming or to find those who needed help but didn’t know where to ask.

  He used that skill now, listening to the group that had congregated to comfort the family.

  “. . . saw her take off like the hellhound was on her tail.”

  “Little Cela?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “No . . .”

  “You don’t think she started it?”

  “She certainly didn’t stay around to help, now, did she? Left the Browns upstairs without so much as a warning.”

  “Always thought there was something strange about that girl . . . Too uppity for her own good, if you ask me.”

  “Hush. You can’t be telling lies about people like that. She was a good girl. A hard worker. She wouldn’t burn down her own house.”

  “Abel wasn’t in there, was he?”

  “Can’t be sure . . .”

  “She wouldn’t do anything to her brother. Say what you want about her, but Abe doted on that girl.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a bitch bit the hand that fed her. Big house like that? She could sell it and go wherever she wanted.”

  “Abel never would’ve sold.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. . . . They paid the insurance man, same as everyone.”

  “Carl Brown said there was a gunshot. . . .”

  Jianyu turned away from the bitterness and jealousy that dripped like venom from their words. They knew nothing except that Cela was not inside the house.

  The gunshot, the burning house. It could have been Cela’s doing, but from the way the fire brigade stood silent and watchful rather than putting out the blaze, Jianyu thought otherwise. It was too much like what had happened in other parts of the city. It had the mark of the Order.

  Which meant that someone, somehow, might already suspect that Cela had the Order’s artifact. As long as she was alone in the city, without protection, she was in danger.

  They all were.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT POWER

  1902—New York

  From the table at the back of the Bella Strega, James Lorcan balanced the stiletto knife on its tip as he surveyed the barroom. The knife had once belonged to Viola, but considering that he’d found it lodged in his thigh, he’d decided he’d earned it. He watched the light flash off its deadly blade—a blade capable of slicing through any material—as he contemplated everything that had happened.

  He was no longer relegated to a seat off to the side, as he had been when Dolph Saunders was alive. Now James occupied the head of the table—the space reserved for the leader of the Devil’s Own—where he had always belonged, and Saunders occupied a small plot of land in a nearby churchyard, where he belonged. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  At the table next to him were Mooch and Werner—Bowery toughs who had once taken Dolph Saunders’ mark and pledged their loyalty to the Devil’s Own. Now they, like the rest of Dolph’s gang, looked to James for leadership. They were playing a hand of cards with a few others. From the way the Aether around them wavered and vibrated, one of them was bluffing about the hand he held—probably Mooch—and was about to lose. From what James could read, the others knew and were driving up the pot on purpose.

  They hadn’t invited James to join in, not that he would have anyway. He had never cared for games—not in that way. Take chess, for instance. Simpleminded people thought it was a challenge, but in reality the game was far too predictable. Every piece on the board had specific limitations, and every move led the player to a limited number of possibilities. Anyone with half a brain between their ears could learn the simple machinations to ensure victory. There was no true challenge there.

  Life was so much more interesting a game. The players were more varied and the rules constantly changing. And the challenges those variables presented? They only served to sweeten the victory. Because there was always victory, at least for James Lorcan. People, after all, were not capable of untold depths. He didn’t need his affinity to understand that at their heart, humans were no more than animals, driven by their hungers and fears.

  Easily manipulated.

  Predictable.

  No, James didn’t need his affinity to understand human nature, but it certainly helped. It sharpened and deepened his perceptions, which gave him an advantage over every other player on the board.

  It wasn’t that he could see the future exactly—he wasn’t a fortune-teller. His affinity simply allowed him to recognize the possibilities fate held in a way most people couldn’t fathom. After all, the world and everything in it was connected by Aether, just as words were connected on the pages of a book. There was a pattern to it all, like the grammar of a sentence or the structure of a story, and his affinity gave him the ability to read those patterns. But it was his intelligence that allowed him to adjust those patterns when it suited his needs. Change one word here, and the overall sentence adjusted. Cross out a sentence there, and a new meaning emerged. A new ending was written.

  Just the day before, the future he had envisioned and planned for had been within his reach. With the Book’s power, he could have restored magic and shown those like him what their true destinies were supposed to be—not cowering from ordinary, powerless Sundren, but ruling them. Destroying those who had tried to steal that power to make the world theirs. And he would have been the one to lead the Mageus into a new era.

  But the Book was lost. He’d expected that Darrigan would fight—had even planned for the magician to run—but he hadn’t predicted that Darrigan would be willing to die.

  He hadn’t predicted Esta’s role either, though perhaps he should have. She’d always been slightly hazy to him, her connections to the Aether wavering and unsettled from the first. In the end, James had been wrong about her. In the end, she’d been as vulnerable and worthless as any of the other sheep that followed Dolph Saunders.

  Without the Book, perhaps that particular dream could never be, but James Lorcan wasn’t finished. As long as the future still held possibilities for anyone smart enough to take hold of them, his game was not at an end. Perhaps he could not take control of magic, as he’d once dreamed. Perhaps magic would fade from the earth, but there were so many other ways for him to win. So many other ways to make those who had taken his family—and his future—pay. So many ways to end up on top of them all.

  After all, power wasn’t always about obvious strength. Look what happened to James’ own father, who had wanted nothing more than fairness for other workers like himself—safe conditions, a good wage. He’d tried to lead, and they’d crushed him. They’d burned James’ house, killed his family, and taken everything from them. James had seen too many times what happened when you stepped up to lead.

&
nbsp; You made yourself a target.

  He didn’t have any interest in following Dolph’s fate, so he would do what he always did. He would bide his time. He would look to the long game while the small-minded tried to jump from space to space, knocking one another off the board while he watched from afar. It wouldn’t take much—a suggestion here, a whisper there, and the leaders in the Bowery would be so focused on snuffing out one another over the scraps the Order left them that they wouldn’t bother with James. Which would leave him free to focus on more important matters.

  No, he certainly was no fortune-teller, but he could see the future on the horizon. Without the Book, magic would fade and the Brink would become nothing more than an antiquated curiosity. What power would the Order have then, especially without their most treasured possessions?

  As their power waned, James would be moving his own pieces, preparing to meet them with a language they understood—the language of money. The language of political influence. Because he understood that without the Book, it would not be those like Dolph Saunders, trying to reclaim some lost past, who would win, but those willing to take hold of a brave and dangerous new future. People like Paul Kelly, who already understood how to use the politicians as his tools. And people like James himself, who knew that power—true power—didn’t go to those who ruled by force but instead belonged to those who held the strings. True power was the ability to bend others to your will while they thought the bending was their own idea.

  Perhaps James could no longer depend on the Book. Perhaps there was no way to save magic, but his game wasn’t over. With a tug here and a push there, he would tie up the powers that be so securely, they would never realize where the true danger was coming from. And when the time was right, James Lorcan had a weapon of his own—a secret that Dolph had never known about.

  A girl who would become the Order’s undoing and the key to James Lorcan’s final victory.

  SANCTUARY

  1902—New York

  As she climbed aboard the late-night streetcar, Cela pulled her shawl up around her head to hide her face as she swallowed down a sob. The memory of the gunfire, a sound that had been so stark and clear and unmistakable in the quiet of the night, was still ringing in her ears. She couldn’t forget how she’d felt the thud of a body slumping to the floor. It had echoed in her chest, and she felt like she would always hear that sound and feel the emptiness that had accompanied it.

  Abe. She didn’t know how she managed to find a seat when she couldn’t hardly draw breath, and as the streetcar rumbled blindly on, it felt like her body would crumble in on itself to fill the gaping hole left in her chest.

  She needed to go back. She couldn’t leave Abe there, her brother and the closest family that she had left. She had to take care of his body and protect the property that her daddy had worked himself to the bone for . . . but she couldn’t. Every time she thought about turning around, a wave of such utter fear would rise up in her that she felt physically ill.

  As the streetcar rumbled on, she thought of going to her mother’s family. They’d moved up to West Fifty-Second Street a few years back, but they’d never liked Cela’s father all that much. Her uncles had always looked at him like he was beneath their sister—something the dog dragged in. Now that her grandmother had passed, there wasn’t much buffer between the family’s judgment and Cela’s feelings. She’d end up there eventually—they’d have to be told, after all—but she didn’t think she could handle them yet. Not while everything was so raw. Not while it was still too hard to think the words, much less say them out loud.

  Especially not to people who would be thinking that Abe’s death was his own fault, which was what they’d said about her father. Her uncles didn’t know that Cela had been listening when they whispered to each other after the funeral, so they hadn’t censored themselves. They’d complained that her father should’ve stayed inside the house where he belonged, instead of standing watch on the front porch for the angry mobs who had taken to the streets. They believed that her father should have known better than to stand up to them.

  Her father had been trying to protect their family, just as Abe had been trying to protect her. Cela knew that she wouldn’t be able even to look at her family at that moment without hearing the echoes of those insults. Not now, when her own guilt and grief were vines around her heart, piercing and alive, growing with each passing second.

  Besides, as much as her family might have hurt her in the past, they were still her blood. She couldn’t risk putting them in danger. Maybe the men who’d come pounding on their door that night weren’t after anything more than their property. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone thought they had a right to the house just because they wanted it. People had come with pretty promises and drawn up papers plenty of times, and first her father and then her brother had turned them away.

  But they’d never come with guns.

  And she’d never had a white lady up and die in her cellar before. Maybe those two things weren’t at all related, but she had a feeling they were.

  She should go to her family.

  But it was too late to be waking people up.

  But there was no way her uncle would open his door and not ask what the problem was, and there was no way Cela would be able to say the words, the ones that would make what just happened true. Not yet. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really be ready, but she figured it would be a damn sight easier in the light of day. Though she was probably wrong about that, too.

  Cela got off the streetcar at her usual stop, letting her body carry her along the streets through a combination of exhaustion and memory. The theater at least was a safe enough space, since it belonged to some rich white man. Nobody was gonna come and burn his property down, and she knew the ins and outs of the world behind the stage to get herself out of there if trouble did happen to find her again.

  She let herself in through the back-alley stage door that nobody ever really used, except the people who kept things running from day to day. Inside the theater, it was silent. Even the last janitor would have gone home by now, which was fine. She didn’t need to run into anyone anyway.

  Her costume shop was in the basement, and since that was her domain, that was where she took herself. She was no stranger to working late to finish a project, but if she didn’t want to break her neck on one of the ropes or props, she needed light. She decided on one of the oil lamps that they kept backstage in case of power outages rather than turning on the electric bulbs. The lamp threw a small halo of golden light around her, illuminating a step or two in front of her, but not much more than that. It was all she needed.

  Down the stairs she went, counting as she always did so she could skip over the thirteenth riser. It was a habit of hers, but she felt the vines around her heart squeeze a little this time, remembering how Abe had made fun of her for it. She walked through the silent darkness of the cellar, wiping away the wetness on her cheeks before she unlocked the small storage room that had become her costume shop.

  Inside, Cela set the lamp on the worktable and sat in the straight-backed chair in front of her heavy sewing machine, the one she spent most of her days in, sewing and cutting and stitching the masterpieces that made the stage come alive. For a moment she didn’t feel anything at all—not fear or relief or even emptiness. For a moment she was just a breath in the night surrounded by the warmth of a body. But then the grief crashed into her, and a cry tore free of her throat.

  My brother is dead.

  She let the pain come, let it take her under into a dark place where not even the light of the lamp could reach her. All she had were the clothes on her back and a ring too fancy to fence without getting herself arrested or worse.

  And her job . . .

  And herself . . .

  She wanted to stay down in that dark place, far below the waves of grief, but those thoughts buoyed her up, up, up . . . until she could feel the wetness on her cheeks again and see the oil lamp
glowing softly in the small, cramped workshop room.

  Abel would have hated to see her wallowing. After their father had been beaten and shot for trying to protect his own home, hadn’t Abe been the one to put his arm around her and make her go on? She’d gone numb from the loss. The city she’d known as hers had become an unrecognizable, ugly place, and the life she’d once dreamed of had been buried with her father’s body. But Abe had pulled Cela aside and told her that the choices their father had made needed to be honored with a life well and fully lived. It was the reason she’d gone out to look for work as a seamstress and then had pressed to get a position in one of the white theaters, where the pay was better, even if the respect from the performers was less. She’d earned their respect, however begrudgingly, because of her talent with a needle. Abel had pulled those dreams of hers out of the grave and handed them back, forcing her to carry on with them.

  She still had that job, the one he’d been so proud of her for getting, and she still had herself. She had family in the city who would take her in if she really needed them, whatever they might think. And she had a ring, a gorgeous golden ring with a jewel as big as a robin’s egg and as clear as a teardrop. It wasn’t glass, Cela knew. Glass didn’t glow like that or shine like a star when the light hit it. And glass wasn’t that heavy. Even seated, she could feel the weight of it, tugging on her skirts from the secret pocket she’d stitched to hide it.

  But her brother . . .

  The vines tightened around her heart until they felt as though they would squeeze it down into nothing. But before she could let grief overtake her again, Cela heard something in the darkness: footsteps coming down the stairs. It was too late for anyone else to be around.

  She picked up her shears. They weren’t much of a weapon, true, but they were sharp as any blade and could cut just as deep.

  “Hello?”

  It was a woman’s voice, and now that Cela really stopped to listen, she realized they were a woman’s footsteps, too. Not that she put down the scissors.