The Last Magician

Once he discovered she’d been stashed in a rank basement of a brothel near the docks, it had been hell to wait, but he knew he couldn’t simply take her out of there without Nibs knowing. If Nibs had realized that he’d lost his leverage, he would never have let Harte near Khafre Hall or the Book. So he’d waited, unwilling to chance anything until the night of the heist, when it would be too late for Nibs to do anything to stop him.

But by the time Harte finally got to his mother, she’d been fed so much opium that it would be a miracle if she recovered at all. Still, he got her out, as he’d promised. As he gave the old couple who ran the brothel a stack of bills for their trouble, all he had to do was let his finger brush against their palms. It would have been hardly noticeable to them, especially with the way they were focused on the money, but a moment later they didn’t remember him at all.

His mother was safe now, or as safe as she could be. Now he needed to turn himself to other things.

He’d been watching Jack’s warehouse for two days. There’d been no sign of Jack, or anyone else, and Harte was finally confident that it was safe enough to chance approaching it. He couldn’t finish things until he destroyed the machine and the plans to build another. After all, Harte Darrigan might be a bastard, he might be a double-crossing low-life scoundrel, but he wasn’t so low as to leave a machine like that whole before he made his escape. Not when he knew the danger it posed to hundreds—maybe thousands—of innocent people.

It wouldn’t be enough to stop Jack indefinitely, he knew, but it would set him back for a while. It would maybe even give the rest of them a fighting chance. Especially once Harte—and the Book with him—were gone.

First the machine. The wrench weighing down the pocket of his overcoat should do the trick. He’d destroy Jack’s creation and send the whole damn place up in flames.

Then he’d go after Esta. He’d explain everything.

A shadow stirred near one of the low buildings at his back, and his every instinct came alert. No one could have known he was there. He’d taken every precaution, hidden his tracks twice over. There was no mistaking it, though—the feeling he had of being hunted.

“Who’s there?” he called, but the soft lapping of the water was all he heard in reply. “I know someone’s out there.”

He waited, listening, but the feeling of being watched didn’t go away.

“If you’re thinking of killing me, I’d advise against it. If I’m dead, you’ll never find out where I’ve put the things you’re looking for,” he said, not knowing if it was one of Dolph’s crew or someone from the Order, and not really caring. Let them do the job for him for all he cared. He hadn’t lied—they’d never find the Book or the strange artifacts, not where he’d put them.

“Show yourself!” he called, his hand already wrapped around the wrench in his coat pocket. As though that would offer much protection.

Jianyu stepped into a shaft of moonlight. Maybe he should have been relieved that it wasn’t Viola, but Harte still felt a tremor of fear run through him.

Let me explain, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. Standing in the darkness near the water’s edge was no place for pleading. He stood a little straighter instead.

“Did Dolph send you?” he asked, pretending a confidence he didn’t feel.

“Dolph’s dead,” Jianyu told him, the flatness in his voice confirming his words.

“That’s what I’d heard.” He hadn’t wanted to believe it, though.

“Shot in the back over Leena’s grave,” Jianyu said, even though Harte hadn’t asked. He could almost feel the anger—and the anguish—in Jianyu’s usually calm voice. “The night you betrayed us.”

“I didn’t betray Dolph,” Harte said. “We had an arrangement, and I kept my word to him.” But he knew when he’d heard whispers of Dolph’s death that everything had gone south.

“Then where is the Book?”

“Safe,” he said.

Jianyu’s mouth turned down. “It would be safer with me.”

“If it were with you, Nibs would have it, and we’d all be screwed.”

Jianyu didn’t say anything, simply continued to study him across the narrow stretch between them.

“I didn’t kill Dolph,” he said finally.

“If I thought you did, you’d be dead already.”

He didn’t trust Jianyu’s too-calm demeanor. “If you didn’t come to kill me, why are you here?”

“I’m here because Dolph is dead.” He gave Harte an unreadable look and took a step closer. “But what we do from here . . . that is up to you.”





FOOL ME ONCE


Jack’s Apartment

Jack Grew was packing the last of his suitcases when the message came. An hour later, he would have been on a train bound to Cleveland and his new position as an assistant to the undersecretary of a refinery on the shores of Lake Erie. The message changed all that. Or at least put it on hold for the time being.

Jack held on to the folded slip of paper like a lifeline.

Not that he trusted Darrigan. No, he wouldn’t be taken in by that charlatan again.

Daughter of Baron von Filosik? Like hell she was. He’d had people search Darrigan’s apartment while the pair were putting on their little show at Khafre Hall, and they didn’t find any sign of a trunk, or anything else that would indicate that the girl was who they said she was. The redhead had been right. ?They’d played him, and now Darrigan was going to pay.

I have the Book for you. Come alone, the message said.

Not a chance.

? ? ?

When Jack’s carriage came to a stop at the foot of the bridge early the next day, he found a steady stream of people heading in the same direction. It looked as though the entire bridge had been closed down to the usual streetcar and carriage traffic, so he stopped a man to ask where they were headed. The man didn’t seem to understand what Jack was saying, but he handed him a crumpled flyer.

Beneath the grease stains and wrinkles, Jack saw the image of the bridge and the smirking face of Harte Darrigan.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that he was walking into a virtual circus, considering who he was dealing with. But if Darrigan thought to throw Jack off with this crowd, he was wrong. He’d learned his lesson, and now Darrigan would learn his.

He told his uncle—who had of course told the High Princept—about the note. The Order had taken everything from there.

Jack looked over his shoulder at the row of buildings lining the waterfront. He could just barely make out the glint of the sharpshooter’s sight in a fourth-floor window. If anything went wrong, the Order wouldn’t allow Darrigan to get away. If he tried to come back into the city, he was a dead man. If he tried to make it to the wilds of Brooklyn, Order patrols were already waiting. ?And if Jack himself happened to be in the line of fire . . . the High Princept had already made it clear that no one would care.

A suppressed shudder ran through him.

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