The Devil's Thief, Page 5

  It had been three years since Viola had spoken to her mother or had even seen any of her family, though they lived no more than a few blocks from the Bella Strega. But in the streets of the Bowery, a few blocks were the difference between the safety of home and crossing the wrong gang. Not that Viola worried too much about that . . . She could take care of herself and anyone else who might think to bother her.

  Her mother’s sturdy hands fluttered like birds as she spoke to the woman who walked beside her. Those hands could strangle a chicken or make the most delicate casarecce. They could wipe away a tear . . . or leave a mark that stung for days.

  I should leave her be. She would find another way.

  Without thinking, Viola reached for the blade she always kept at her side, the stiletto she’d named Libitina after the Roman goddess of funerals . . . and found it missing. She had launched it at Nibsy Lorcan the day before to protect Esta, the girl she had begrudgingly come to like. But in the confusion of the bridge, Viola had not been able to retrieve it. Now Esta was gone—the girl had disappeared as though she’d never existed—and so was Libitina, into Nibsy Lorcan’s keeping. Viola was on her own, without friends or allies, but it was the absence of the knife she felt most acutely, as though she’d lost a part of herself.

  She would get back her blade . . . eventually. For the time being, Libitina’s replacement was secure in the sheath strapped against her thigh. It wasn’t the same, though. The steel of this blade didn’t speak to her in the same way, and the unfamiliar weight of the knife felt wrong, as though a matter of a few grams could leave Viola herself unbalanced.

  But Viola had needed something to protect herself. The Bowery was in chaos. The already-corrupt police force had become more emboldened in the past few days. Under the direction of the Order, they’d been ransacking the lower part of Manhattan to find the Mageus who had stolen the Order’s treasures from Khafre Hall. Viola had been part of that team. Led by Dolph Saunders, they had been on a mission to take the Ars Arcana, a book with untold power. Dolph had believed the Book could restore magic and free them all from the Order’s control—and from the Brink.

  Now Dolph was dead, and the thought of him laid out, pale and lifeless, on the bar top of the Strega still had the power to rob Viola of breath. He’d been a true friend to her, and she’d come to trust him—to depend upon his steadiness—even after her life had taught her never to trust. But Dolph was gone, along with the Book and any dream of freedom or a future different from the present’s drudgery.

  That double-crossing cazzo of a magician, Harte Darrigan, had ruined everything when he’d taken the Book from her in the bowels of Khafre Hall, leaving Viola looking the fool. Because of him, the Devil’s Own had viewed her with suspicion shining in their eyes after they’d discovered that the sack she’d carried contained nothing of value. And there was no way to fix her mistakes. Darrigan had taken any hope of recovering the Book with him to his watery grave when he’d jumped from the bridge.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, on the bridge, Viola had made everything worse. She’d known that Nibsy suspected Esta of being in league with Darrigan. She had specific instructions to make sure neither of them got away, but when Nibsy raised a gun to Esta’s throat, Viola had acted without thinking. She’d attacked the boy to save Esta—because it was what Tilly would have expected of her. And because it was what her own instincts screamed for her to do.

  But her actions meant that she couldn’t return to the Strega, not so long as Nibsy Lorcan had the loyalty of Dolph’s crew.

  Without Dolph, Viola had no one to stand between her and the dangers of the Bowery. Without the Book, she had no leverage with the Devil’s Own. She certainly couldn’t trust Nibsy to forgive her for skewering him.

  Not that she particularly cared. She’d never liked the kid anyway.

  But the Strega had been her home. The Devil’s Own had been a family for her, one that had respected her skill and accepted her as she was. Perhaps the Book was gone, but she would do what she must to prove that she had not betrayed their trust. Even without the Book, she could finish what Dolph started. She would do everything in her power to destroy the Order.

  To do that, she would need help. There was only one person she could think of who could protect her from the patrols—her older brother, Paolo. Going to Paolo had an added benefit: There were whispers in the streets that the Five Pointers were doing the Order’s bidding now as well as Tammany’s.

  Paolo wasn’t likely to forgive Viola for abandoning the family, and especially not for escaping his control and working for Dolph, a man he considered an enemy. Still, if her dear brother could help her get closer to the Order, she would suffer what she must. Which was why she had come to this place, to wait for her mother, the one person who might be able to protect her from Paolo’s wrath.

  Viola handed the pear she’d just purchased to a dirty-looking urchin on the corner and ran to catch up to her mother. “Mamma!” But the title was tossed around the streets of the Bowery so often that her mother didn’t react, not until Viola used her first name:

  “Pasqualina!”

  Her mother turned then, at the sound of her name being shouted over the din of the street. It took a moment before her mother’s dark eyes registered understanding, and Viola could read every emotion that flashed across her mother’s face: shock, hope, then realization . . . and caution.

  After murmuring something to her companion, who gave Viola a brooding, distrustful look before heading on her way alone, Viola’s mother frowned at her. But she stopped walking and waited for Viola.

  Her throat tight with a tenderness she thought she had long ago killed as surely as any life she’d taken with a blade, Viola approached her mother slowly until the two of them were standing an arm’s distance apart.

  “Viola?” Her mother lifted a hand as though to caress her daughter’s cheek, but she did not finish bridging the distance between them. A moment passed, long and awful, and then her mother’s hand dropped, limp at her side.

  Viola nodded, unable to speak. For all her family had done, for all the anger Viola still felt, she’d missed her mother. Missed them all. Missed, even, the girl she had once been with them.

  Her mother’s expression faltered. “What do you want?” Spoken in the Sicilian of Viola’s childhood, her mother’s words sounded like a homecoming. But her mother’s tone was like her eyes—flat and cold.

  Viola had expected this. After all, she had committed the cardinal sin—she had abandoned her family. She had betrayed her brother and refused his authority, and maybe worst of all, she’d dared to claim a life that was more than any good woman would want for herself.

  It didn’t matter that Viola had long since considered herself a good woman. Her mother’s judgment still stung. She had been on the receiving end of that same expression a hundred times as a girl, but she, who had learned to kill without regret, had never grown immune to it.

  Viola dropped her eyes, forced herself to bow her head in the show of the submission expected of her. “I want to come home, Mamma.”

  “Home?”

  Viola glanced up to find her mother’s thick brows raised. “I want to come back to the family.”

  At first her mother didn’t speak. She studied Viola instead with the same critical eye she often turned on a piece of bruised fruit at the market right before she haggled for a lower price.

  “I was wrong,” Viola said softly, keeping her head down, her shoulders bowed. “You were right about me—too headstrong and filled with my own importance. I’ve learned what it means to be without your family.” The words tasted like ash in her mouth, but they were not a lie. Under Dolph’s protection, Viola had learned what it meant to be without the expectations, demands, and restrictions her family imposed upon her.

  “More like you got yourself in trouble,” her mother said flatly, glancing down at Viola’s belly. “Who is he?”

  Viola frowned. “There is no man.”

  “I don’t beli
eve you.”

  “You see what’s happening, no? The fires, the brawling in the streets? I see now how stupid I was to think I could go without my family—il sangue non é acqua.”

  Her mother’s mouth pinched tight, and her eyes narrowed. “I tell you that your whole life, and now you listen? After it’s too late?”

  “I’m still your blood,” Viola said softly, forcing a meekness into her voice that felt like a betrayal to everything she was.

  Viola hadn’t understood the truth of that phrase until she’d tried to leave her family behind. No matter the life she’d tried to claim for herself, she was always Paul Kelly’s sister—and she always would be.

  No, blood wasn’t water. Blood left a stain.

  “Why do you come to me? Why not go to Paolo, as you should? He’s head of the family now,” her mother said, crossing herself as she looked up to the sky, as though Viola’s father might appear sanctified on the clouds above. “You need his blessing, not mine.”

  “I want to go to him,” Viola said, twisting her hands in her skirts, making a show of nerves, and hating herself for it—not for the lie, but for the display of weakness when she had promised herself to always be strong. “But I’m not sure how to make amends for what I’ve done. Paolo listens to you, Mamma. You have his ear. If you tell him to forgive me, he will.”

  Her mother’s jaw tightened, her face flushing red. “I see. . . . You come back to me because you need my help? After all you’ve done to us . . . to me—” Her mother’s voice broke. “You make me a disgrace.” Shaking her head, Viola’s mother turned to go, but as she took a step down from the sidewalk into the street, she gasped and nearly tumbled to her knees.

  Viola caught her mother before the older woman could hit the ground and pulled her to her feet. Pasqualina Vaccarelli was a stout, sturdy woman, but Viola could feel her mother’s fragility, the aging that had taken some of her mother’s vitality over the past three years.

  It was a risk to use her affinity here, in the open—especially with how dangerous everything had become—but Viola pushed her power into her mother, feeling for the source of the pain and finding it immediately. The gout in her mother’s joints had grown so much worse, and without hesitation, Viola directed her affinity toward it, clearing the joints that had gone stiff.

  Her mother gasped, the old woman’s dark eyes meeting her daughter’s as Viola finished and withdrew her hands. Viola’s blood felt warm, her skin alive with the flexing of her magic. This was what she had been meant for. Her god had given her this gift for life, not for the deaths her brother had forced upon her.

  With a look of mingled surprised and relief, her mother raised a hand calloused by years of work and laid it against Viola’s cheek. Her mouth was still turned down and her eyes were still stern, but there was gratitude in her mother’s expression now as well. “I could have used you these past years.”

  “I know, Mamma,” Viola said, placing her hand atop her mother’s as she blinked back the prickling of tears. “I missed you, too.”

  This, at least, was no lie. She did miss the mother she’d once known, the woman who used to sing as she hung out the wash, who had tried to teach Viola how to knead dough until it became supple, and how to press linen with her bare hands until it was smooth. Those lessons had never stuck. No matter how she tried, Viola hadn’t been built for that life. Her hands had been made to hold a blade, to wield magic. Her family had done everything they could to force her into the mold they believed was right. In the end, their expectations had just forced her away.

  But now she was back. She would bend to their expectations, but she was older now. Stronger. She would not let them break her.

  Her mother withdrew her hand. “I’ll talk to your brother.”

  “Thank you—”

  Her mother held up a hand to stop Viola’s words. “Don’t thank me. I make no guarantee. You’ll have to be ready to take whatever penance Paolo gives you . . . whatever he demands of you.”

  Viola bowed her head to hide her disgust. Her mother had no idea what her darling Paolino was capable of. Viola’s mother knew only that he ran a boxing club called the New Brighton and a restaurant called the Little Naples Cafe. She understood that he knew the big men in the city, but she had no idea that her son was one of the most powerful and dangerous gang bosses on the Lower East Side or what sins Viola’s brother had demanded that Viola commit.

  Viola wondered if her mother would have cared had she seen the split lip and blackened eyes she wore the first time she found her way into the safe haven of the Strega.

  “Come.” Without another word, Viola’s mother began walking.

  “Where are we going?” Viola asked, picturing the cramped rooms she had grown up in. But her mother was not heading in the direction of her childhood tenement.

  Her mother turned back to her. “I thought you wanted me to speak with Paolo?”

  “We’re going now?”

  Her mother gave her a dark look tinged with suspicion. “You want we should wait?”

  Yes. Viola needed time to prepare, time to ready herself for whatever her sadist of a brother had in store. But it was clear that her mother would offer only once. “No. Of course not, Mamma. Now is perfect.” She ducked her head in thanks. Submissive. “Thank you, Mamma.”

  “Don’t thank me so quickly,” her mother said with a frown. “You still have to talk to Paolo.”

  MOTHER OF EXILES

  1902—New York

  The early morning sky was heavy with clouds, and a thick mist coated the water as the ferry slouched through the Upper Bay that separated Brooklyn from New Jersey. At the stern of the ship, Esta Filosik looked like any other passenger. Her long, dark hair had been pulled back in an unremarkable style, and the worn skirt and heavy, faded traveling cloak were the sort of garments that encouraged the eye to glide past without noticing their wearer. She’d torn the hem out of the skirt to lengthen it, but otherwise the pieces fit well enough, considering that she’d liberated them from an unwatched clothesline that morning. But beneath the coarse material and rumpled wool, Esta carried a stone that could change time and a Book that could change the world itself.

  She might have appeared at ease, uninterested in the far-off city skyline, now no more than a shadow in the hazy distance behind them, but Esta’s attention was sharp, aware of the few other passengers. She had positioned herself so that she could watch for any sign of danger and also so that no one could tell how much she needed the railing behind her for support.

  The ship churned through the dark waters, coming up alongside Liberty Island—though it wouldn’t be called that for another fifty years—and the lady herself loomed over them, a dark shadow of burnished copper. It was the closest Esta had ever been to the statue, but even this close, it was smaller than she’d expected. Unimpressive, considering how much it was supposed to symbolize. But then, Esta knew better than most that the symbolism was as hollow as the statue. For those like herself—those with the old magic—the lady’s bright torch should have served as a warning, not a beacon, for what they’d find on these shores.

  She wondered if her disappointment in the statue was an omen of things to come. Maybe the world she’d never thought to see would be equally small and unimpressive once she was finally in it.

  Somehow, she doubted it would be that easy. The world was wide and vast and, for Esta, unknown. She knew everything about the city, but beyond it? She’d be working blind.

  But she wouldn’t be alone.

  Standing beside her at the railing was Harte Darrigan, one-time magician and consummate con man. His cap covered his dark hair and shadowed his distinctive storm-gray eyes, making him look ordinary, unassuming . . . like any other traveler. He kept it pulled low over his forehead and turned his back to the other passengers so that no one would recognize him.

  Without letting Harte know she was studying him, Esta watched him out of the corner of her eye. When the bottom had fallen out of her world, she’d made t
he choice to come back because she’d wanted to save him. Yes, she needed an ally, someone who would stand with her in the battles to come. But she’d come back here, to this time and place, because she’d wanted that ally to be him. Because of who he was and what he’d done for her. And because of who she was with him.

  But his mood was as unreadable now as it had been ever since she’d woken in the early morning to find him watching her. He must have waited up all night, because when she’d finally awoken in that unfamiliar boardinghouse room in Brooklyn, he was sitting in a rickety chair at the end of the narrow bed, his elbows propped on his knees and his eyes ringed by dark circles and filled with worry. How he had managed to get them both through those final few yards of the Brink, she still didn’t know.

  She wanted to ask him. She wanted to ask so many things—about the darkness she had seen on the bridge, the way the inky black had seemed to bleed into everything. She wanted to know if he’d seen it too. Most of all, she wanted to lean into him and to take what support and warmth she could from his presence. But the way he had been looking at her had made her pause. She’d seen admiration in his eyes and frustration, distrust, and even disgust, but he’d never before looked at her like she was some fragile, broken thing.

  At the moment he wasn’t looking at her at all, though. As the boat churned onward, Harte’s eyes were trained on the receding horizon and on the city that had been their prison for so long. Every lie he told, every con he ran, and every betrayal he’d committed had been to escape that island, yet there was no victory in his expression now that freedom was his. Instead, Harte’s jaw was taut, his mouth pulled flat and hard, and his posture was rigid, as though waiting for the next attack.

  Without warning, the somber note of the ferry broke the early morning calm, drowning out the noise of the rattling engines and the soft, steadily churning water. Esta flinched at the sound, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering a bit from the brisk wind—or from the memory of that darkness bleeding into the world, obliterating the light. Obliterating everything.