“As long as I want it to.” He gave her a smug look and then set to fastening the buttons on his shirt.
“The same tired tricks can only work for so long.”
“They’re not tricks,” he corrected. “They’re effects. And I can always come up with new ones.”
“Same tired audience, though. Eventually they’re going to want something new. Someone new.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, but his expression wasn’t so sure.
“But if the Brink came down,” she continued, ignoring his outburst, “you could get out of this town.”
“Who says I want to?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that. ?The yearning in his expression was so stark, it was unmistakable. “If you could leave New York, you could have a new town whenever you wanted one. ?A new audience every night. The whole world would be open to you.”
A strange expression crossed his face for the briefest of moments, transforming it. But then he seemed to collect himself, and his usual mask of pleasant indifference snapped back into place. “Who says I need Dolph Saunders to get out of this town?” He finished straightening his collar in the mirror before taking a black silk tie from the hook nearby.
She didn’t like this newfound confidence of his. “He can offer you protection,” Esta said, grasping for some other angle to disarm him. She reached for the information she’d been armed with. “You and your mother.”
Harte went very still. “I don’t take threats lightly.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a threat,” Esta told him, confused at his reaction.
“Considering that very few know I even have a mother, I’m not sure how I could take it as anything else.” He was still tense.
“Everybody has a mother,” Esta said with a halfhearted laugh, trying to appear more relaxed than she felt. Something had changed when she mentioned his mother. Apparently, Dolph and Nibs had given her just enough information to hang herself. Any ground she might have gained had slipped away, taking more with it.
Harte was silent for another long, uncomfortable moment, studying her as though he was looking for some hint at what her game was. In that moment, he looked every bit the Magician she’d expected to encounter. Cold. Ruthless. ?And completely capable of double-crossing anyone.
After a moment, he spoke. “I’ll consider Dolph’s proposal if you tell me something.”
“What’s that?” she asked, wary.
“What, exactly, does Dolph have on you?” He took a step toward her, his head cocked to the side in a question.
“Nothing,” she lied. He was too close and the room felt suddenly too small. She lifted her chin. “I’m useful to him.”
“Is that all you are?” Harte asked, studying her more intently. “Useful? It seems so . . . pedestrian.”
She couldn’t stop the image of Charlie Murphy, red-faced in the street, from flashing through her mind. And she couldn’t help but think of Dolph, sailing to the prison on Blackwell Island, helpless against the Brink.
“Ah, so he does have something on you,” he said, satisfied. “I figured as much.”
“You figure wrong,” she said, but the game had already changed. She’d managed to hold her own at first, maybe even caught him off guard with the handcuffs, but now he was on the offensive.
Harte Darrigan shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Dolph has never been one for charity cases,” he told her. “Whatever help or promises he’s made you, he’ll take it out of you in kind. That’s how all the bosses downtown work, and he’s no different. Once you’re in, it’s impossible to get away.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, lifting her chin. Hadn’t she seen with her own eyes what Dolph was doing, how he was helping the weakest among them?
He ignored her protests. “Tell me, do you already wear his mark?”
“His mark?” she asked before she could stop herself.
She cursed inwardly when Darrigan smiled, because she knew she’d just revealed that there were other things about Dolph Saunders she didn’t understand, things that Harte Darrigan knew about, which gave him an edge she couldn’t afford.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the tattoo he gives those in his crew. It’s always been the price of admission for his protection.” He turned from her then and took a vest from a hook on the wall. “It’s not one I’m willing to pay.” His storm-cloud eyes were steady on her, determined. “Ever.”
She hadn’t been around long, but she had noticed the tattoos that some of those around the Strega wore. She just hadn’t understood what they were. “He may be willing to negotiate that point,” she told him, a bluff if there ever was one.
He tossed a disbelieving look in her direction as he buttoned the vest. “I can’t imagine he would. No mark, no way to control me.”
Just then, his dressing room door opened, and Esta turned to see a woman with aggressively red hair peek her painted face in. “Harte, dear,” she started to coo, but when she saw Esta, her eyes narrowed. “Oh. So sorry,” the woman said, not at all sounding like she was. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining.”
“I wasn’t,” Harte told the woman, who stepped into the room without being invited. “She was just—”
“Having the most delightful chat with a dear old friend,” Esta interrupted, using the woman’s unexpected appearance to her advantage and taking back control. She infused her words with the notes of an Eastern European accent as she offered her hand to the woman. “It’s so lovely to meet one of his leetle theater friends,” she said with a smile that was all smug condescension. “I am Esta von Filosik, of course.”
The woman’s eyes went cold. “You say you’re a friend of his?”
“No—” Harte started to say, but not before Esta spoke over him.
“Of course!” she lied easily. “We met ages ago, in Rastenburg, when he studied under my father. We were but children then, but we became”—she paused dramatically and slid a warm look to Harte—“quite close. Did we not, darling?”
“So this is what you’ve been running off to?” The woman’s mouth went tight.
To Esta’s immense satisfaction, Harte Darrigan—for once—seemed at a loss for words.
“He left to continue his studies, but now we are reunited,” Esta told the woman, sidling up to Harte and slipping her arm through his in a proprietary way. He started to pull away, but she held him tight. “And you are?”
“Evelyn DeMure,” the woman said, making an obvious show of looking Esta over from head to toe.
As she did so, Esta felt the warm energy of Evelyn’s magic wrap around her, and she had the sudden feeling of being drawn to her, the sudden desire to release Harte. She couldn’t seem to stop her arms from falling away. . . .
“Evelyn,” Harte warned.
A moment later, the warmth faded, but Esta had already released her hold on his arm.
“Is there something you needed?” Frustration simmered in his voice.