The Last Magician

Viola’s eyes met Esta’s. “I’m sorry,” she said, and there was real regret, real pain in them. “I know the two of you had grown close, but I couldn’t let him take this.” Viola reached across the carriage and touched Esta’s knee gently. “If there was another way—”

“I know,” Esta told her truthfully. But she couldn’t stop the burn of tears behind her eyes.

“You truly killed him?” Jianyu asked.

“He attacked me first.”

Jianyu frowned. “Dolph trusted him.”

Viola’s eyes met his. “He shouldn’t have.”

Esta turned away from them both, pretending to stare out of the window of the carriage. Instead, she removed the clipping from the bodice of her dress. Despite everything that had gone wrong, it gave her some relief to see that it had returned to its original form.

No, Dolph never should have trusted Harte Darrigan, but at least he hadn’t won. The past seemed to have been returned to its original path, and the Book was safe in Viola’s care, which meant Esta still had a chance to complete the job she’d been sent to do.

She’d stolen from Viola and Dolph before. She could do it again.

She should have felt relieved, satisfied the job had been salvaged, so she didn’t understand why the ache in her chest when she thought of Harte dead felt as though the night would swallow her whole.





MADNESS IN THE STREETS


Bella Strega

When they made it back to the Strega, Dolph was nowhere to be found.

“We should wait for him,” Viola said when Nibs tried to take the bag she had carried from Khafre Hall. He tugged a bit harder, but Viola refused to relinquish it. “I give this to Dolph and no one else.”

Nibs frowned. “Then I suppose we should send someone to fetch him.”

No one expected that the bowler-hatted boys would return bearing his body instead.

They’d found Dolph shot in the back and already dead, lying across Leena’s grave. The boys carried him in with a quiet solemnity that seemed at odds with the garish shirts and vests, and they placed him on the zinc bar top. Even in death, his skin nearly as pale as the flash of white in his hair, Dolph’s very presence commanded the room.

The motley bunch of men and women he’d unified under his mark stood in an uneasy silence. There was no sign of the usual warmth of magic in the barroom. It had all but drained from the air, as though Dolph had taken it with him as he took his last breath, as though each of them understood that the one thing that had linked them was now gone, and in his absence—in the absence of the power of his mark—a new consensus would have to be negotiated.

“He’d want us to go on,” Nibs said, his voice grave. “He’d want us to finish what we’d started.”

Dolph’s closest crew gathered around his usual table—Viola, Jianyu, and Nibs. Esta hung back at first, but Viola took her by the arm and escorted her back with the rest. Jianyu gave Nibs an encouraging look, and Nibs opened the bag and looked inside.

Esta knew from the way his expression changed that something was wrong. With shaking hands, he dumped the contents on the table. A few misshapen rocks. A small ledger bearing the theater’s logo. And the dried peelings from an orange.

They all stared at the items in a horrified silence.

“No . . .” Nibsy shook his head as he pawed through the items, turning them over, examining them. “No!” he shouted, pushing them from the table with a vicious swipe of his arm. He turned on Viola. “This is your fault,” he said. He had his finger in her face, and his expression was murderous. “You let this happen!”

Viola stared at the now empty table, shaking her head as though denying what they were all seeing. “No. I took the bag from him. I killed him.”

“Are you sure about that?” Nibs’ brows drew together.

“Certo! I know when I kill someone,” she snarled, looking every bit like Nibs would be her next victim.

“Did he touch you?” Nibs asked.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Did he touch you?” Nibs shouted. His face had turned a violent shade of red, and he was up in her face, so close that she could have bitten him.

Viola pushed him back and wiped his spittle from her face. “He fought me for the Book, so yes. He touched me. But he was dead a moment later.”

“If he touched you, he could have altered your mind.”

“What are you talking about? I killed him.”

“It’s what Darrigan does,” Nibs sneered, shaking his head at her. “He can read minds, and he can put ideas into them as well. All it takes is a single touch, skin to skin. You probably wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“He’s right,” Esta said, numb with disbelief.

Viola shook her head. “No. It’s not possible. There was opium—or something like it—a cloud of it filled the room when we took the Book from its place. ?There was no way Darrigan could have done anything, not before I killed him. My knives don’t need magic to work.”

“Where’s the knife you used?” Nibs asked.

Viola pulled out Libitina, her favorite stiletto blade, and held it up.

“Where’s his blood?”

“There should have been blood,” Viola whispered.

“Darrigan was a stage magician, you imbecile. He trained himself to hold his breath longer than anyone should be able to. The opium wouldn’t have affected him if he didn’t breathe it.”

“No . . . ,” Viola whispered, shaking her head. As though she refused to believe that he’d tricked her so easily, that he’d destroyed everything.

Dolph was dead and the Order would hunt them, and they didn’t have the Book.

Nibs only glared at her. “Then where’s the Book? Where are the artifacts?”

Viola didn’t have an answer.

But for Esta, the news was that much more devastating. She’d failed. Harte Darrigan—the Magician—had the Book, and he was gone.

So were the artifacts. So was her stone.

And so was any chance of her ever getting home.

? ? ?

It wasn’t long after that things started to fall apart.

Before dawn broke the next day, an entire block of tenement buildings went up in flames. The fire brigades stayed away, but boys who wore the Five Point Gang’s mark were seen at the edges of the crowd. Watching. Stopping any who tried to douse the fires or rescue their belongings. Their alliance with the mayor—and with the Order—seemed to be growing more complete.

Under ?Tammany Hall’s protection, the members of Kelly’s gang didn’t hesitate to attack anyone they thought might be a threat. Fights broke out over innocent glances. Gunfire rained in the streets, catching anyone nearby in the crossfire.

No one in the Bowery was safe. Not as long as the Order was set on vengeance.

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