“Good, good,” Harte said, clapping Jack on the shoulder and giving him a bit of a shake. “Should we go in?”
Jack looked suddenly less sure, but he nodded and then led them through a short antechamber lit by torchlike sconces mounted to the wall. There, he gave their names to a man sitting in a caged room that reminded Harte of the ticket booth at the theater. ?After the man checked over his list and was satisfied, the click of a latch echoed and the wall directly in front of them began to part, allowing the golden glow of the room beyond to spill into the small space.
On the other side of the wall, the building was transformed. Gone were the wood-paneled walls and marble floors of the typical gentleman’s club. Instead, walking through the opening in the wall was like stepping into an ancient Egyptian tomb. Gold glinted on the walls, highlighting borders of bright indigo and aquamarine symbols carved into sandstone pillars. Even with the size of the building, Harte hadn’t expected anything like this. It was a room meant to inspire, to overwhelm, and Harte hated to admit that it had worked.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Jack said to Esta, who nodded and looked fairly awed herself.
She smiled at Jack, a secret smile that had Harte’s stomach going sour. “It’s as beautiful as you told me,” she murmured.
“This way. We have your demonstration set up in the amphitheater.”
They followed Jack to another receiving room. ?With jewel-toned silks capping the high ceiling, the room was reminiscent of Arabia. Palm trees claimed the walls, and a woman in a sparkling veiled dress performed a dance, gyrating her hips and torso as she snaked her way through the room. As they passed, her violet eyes met Harte’s.
Good, he thought. At least that much was in place and going to plan.
The next hour was an interminable parade of the richest men in the city. They each took their turns looking him over as they greeted Esta. As they made their way through the room, Harte was well aware that everyone was watching, expecting him to make a mistake and betray his lack of breeding. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Tonight was his, and his alone.
“Well, well,” a familiar voice said from just behind him. “Harte Darrigan. You have quite the busy social schedule these days, don’t you?”
He stopped midstep, closing his eyes long enough to gather his wits—and his patience—as he forced his mouth into a smile. “Sam Watson,” he began, turning to greet the reporter with his usual smile, but he stopped short when he saw who was on Sam’s arm. “Evelyn?”
She was draped in black silk and had a satisfied gleam in her eye. “Harte,” she said, her voice smug. “What a lovely surprise.” The way her mouth curled up told him to be on his guard. She wasn’t any more surprised than she was a natural redhead.
“What are you doing here?” Harte asked. The room felt like it was spinning. Evelyn and Esta. Evelyn here with Sam Watson. At Khafre Hall. On the night when nothing could go wrong.
Looking him up and down, she smiled. “I could ask the same of you.”
“I invited her,” Sam said, wrapping an arm around her bare shoulder. “I’m covering the celebration tonight for the Sun.”
“Are you?” Harte said. “First the Gala at the Met and now this? Why, Watson . . . you’ve turned into a society columnist.”
Fury flashed through the reporter’s eyes, but he managed to keep himself controlled. “I don’t know, Darrigan. I have a feeling that, like the museum debacle, I’ll get a better story than my editors were expecting tonight. Don’t you?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Harte said flatly, refusing to react to the clear challenge. “I’m just the floor show. Speaking of which, we should probably go prepare. If you’d excuse us?”
“Of course,” Sam said pleasantly enough. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you can pull off tonight.” He gave Harte a smile that was all teeth. “Until later?”
Harte gave him a noncommittal nod and then escorted Esta away, toward the doors of the amphitheater.
“What is she doing here?” Esta whispered, once they were far enough away.
“I don’t know.” But whatever Evelyn was doing, it was nothing good.
“We need to get out of here.”
“She’s a friend, Esta. She wouldn’t do anything—”
Esta grabbed his arm, the first time she’d willingly touched him since the carriage ride. “She knows, Harte.”
“What?” He shook his head in confusion.
“That day in the theater . . . when you were showing me the glass casket and she came to find you? I’d bet anything she heard you talking about the lost heir, about our plan with Jack.”
His mouth felt suddenly dry. “You can’t know that for sure. And besides, she’s one of us. What would she have to gain by helping Jack?”
Esta pressed her lips together, impatience flashing in her eyes. “I don’t know, but why is she here? Why tonight? You had to see that look of satisfaction in her eyes. She should be nervous being in a room filled with the Order—we are, and we have a team backing us up. No . . . She’s planning something. Who’s the man she’s with?”
“Sam Watson. He’s a reporter for the New York Sun.”
“Sam Watson?” Her face drained of color.
“She and Sam go way back,” Harte explained, making a show of smiling at the people passing with questioning eyes. “It’s possible he looked her up because I teased him at the museum.” But his instincts were screaming that Esta was right—Evelyn was up to something. And if she did know about the lost heir . . . After all the times he’d turned her down, and then after Esta humiliated her that day in his dressing room, she’d have plenty of reasons to hurt them. Especially if she got something out of it herself.
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
“No,” he admitted. “But she must be mad to come here tonight.”
“But the payoff would be enormous,” Esta said. “She wouldn’t be the first Mageus to betray her kind in the hopes of a better life,” she added, her expression unreadable. She seemed lost in thought and very, very far away from him.
“Are you okay?”
She blinked and, pressing her lips together, gave him a sure nod. “We should go. I can fake sick, and we’ll keep Jack on the hook and try again some other time. It’s too much of a risk with her here, especially if Evelyn knows.”
They probably could get away with calling the whole thing off, but the Order wasn’t the only thing Harte had to worry about. If they didn’t go through with this, he didn’t doubt that Nibs would take it as a reason to retaliate. Harte might be able to save himself tonight, but that would mean damning his mother . . . again.
“We’ve already tossed the dice,” he said numbly. “And now we’re just going to deal with where they’ve fallen.”
“But—”
“Come on.” He tucked her arm securely through his and led her into the cavernous space of the theater, all the while feeling like he was walking toward his certain doom.
A GOLDEN DAWN