Evelyn gave Esta a smile that was mostly teeth before she turned to Harte. “A letter was delivered for you just now,” she said, holding out a crumpled envelope. “Next time get someone else to take your messages, would you? I’m not your errand boy.”
“No one could confuse you for a boy, Evelyn,” he said with a grin obviously meant to charm, but the woman didn’t soften. His smile faltered as he took the letter from her outstretched hand. He tore the edge of the envelope, but even once he pulled out the folded sheet of paper, Evelyn didn’t seem in any hurry to leave.
“I thought you weren’t allowing visitors backstage anymore?” she said, glancing again at Esta with a look as sharp as one of ?Viola’s knives.
Harte didn’t seem to hear her. He was too busy reading the note, his brows furrowing over narrowed eyes. Then, all at once, he balled the paper in his closed fist, and when he looked up, the fury in his eyes had Esta wanting to take a step back.
“Usually I wouldn’t,” he said, looking at her with a stony, unreadable expression. “But for an old friend, I had to make an exception.”
Everything in her went on alert. Esta had no idea what was in that note, but something had changed in him. All playfulness was gone. She didn’t know what this new game was, and she had a feeling that she shouldn’t stick around to find out.
“I was actually about to leave,” she told Evelyn. “It was lovely to see you again, Harte. Do think about my proposition?”
He stared at her, his mouth tight. “Perhaps we could discuss it in more detail?” he said flatly. “Soon.”
It was a victory, but she couldn’t help feeling like there was something else happening that she didn’t understand and wasn’t in control of.
“Tomorrow, perhaps?” she asked, hopeful and wary all at once. “We could continue our discussion?”
His gray eyes bored into her. “I’m not sure about tomorrow—I’ve got some things to clear up. It might take a few days,” he told her. His voice carried a curious note of determination.
“I’ll look forward to it,” she told him, trying not to show her unease. Then she pasted on a smile. “Until then? It was lovely to meet you,” she told Evelyn, before turning to take her leave.
Just as she was opening the door, he grabbed her wrist and tugged her back toward him.
“That isn’t any way for old friends to part, now, is it?” he asked softly, almost playfully, but the look on his face didn’t match his tone.
He was already pulling her toward him. “As you said, we were once so very . . . close.”
She had to force herself not to pull away. Esta needed Evelyn, who was still watching with ice in her eyes, to believe that she was who she claimed to be. Within the hour, the entire theater would know about the curious visitor in Harte Darrigan’s dressing room. You couldn’t buy gossip as effective as that. He’d be stuck with her.
But before she could find a way out of his grasp, she was in his arms. All at once she was back in the Haymarket. His eyes held no warmth or seduction, but her stomach flipped just the same at the intensity she saw there.
He gave her a moment to pull away, to refuse him and what she knew was about to happen. But pulling away would mean destroying the cover she was trying to establish. Instead, she looked up at him, met the challenge head-on. Dared him to go through with it.
It’s an act, she told herself, when amusement sparked behind those gray eyes of his, when they softened just a little. Professor Lachlan had warned her about the Magician. Don’t be taken in by him. Get the Book before he does and stop the—
Then his lips were on hers and she felt the warm energy of his affinity wrap around her, sink into her skin, violating the boundaries between them in a way she didn’t have time to prepare herself for and couldn’t protect herself from. His energy was hot, electric, and there was something about it that pulled her in even as she knew that it was a trap.
Despite the heat of his magic, the kiss itself held no passion or warmth. It was over before it had barely begun, but something had happened. He’d gained something more than her embarrassment.
“Until later, then, sweetheart?” he murmured as he released her. His expression was impassive, even as his eyes glittered with victory.
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said, and was glad to hear that her voice trembled only the tiniest bit. It wasn’t fear but fury that jangled through her—fury at him for laying a hand on her, fury at herself for not being ready. Then she let herself out of the dressing room and pulled time around her so that she could get out of the theater without anyone seeing her shake.
THE MESSAGE
Harte stared at the open door, trying to figure out what he’d just heard and seen. The wild thoughts and images twisting through the girl’s mind didn’t make any sense at all.
“Well,” Evelyn drawled, her rouged lips pursed. “That was instructional.”
“Yeah,” he said, more to himself than her. “It was.” And yet he couldn’t help but think he knew even less now than before.
“You two are old friends?” She gave an indelicate snort. “And I’m the Virgin Mary.”
Her words shook him from his thoughts, and he finally realized Evelyn was still watching him. Her bright hair and painted face looked tired and garish in the dim light of his dressing room lamp. It wasn’t only the shadows that it cast over her face that made her seem older, a worn-out shell of who she might have once been. It was that he was looking at her now compared to the girl—to Esta—and seeing their intrinsic difference.
The kiss had left him with more questions than answers, and it had shaken him in a way he couldn’t think too closely about.
From the way she ran out of there, he had a feeling that it had shaken her, too. Rightly so, he supposed. After all, when he took her off guard and pushed past her defenses, he’d sensed that while the girl might have come with a message from Dolph, she’d also come for herself.
“So the note . . . Was it important, or what?” Evelyn asked, nodding toward it.
“Just something I have to take care of,” he told her. He tucked the crumpled paper into his pocket and grabbed his jacket. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
He left Evelyn in his dressing room and headed out with the sinking feeling that he might already be too late.
The paper had been monogrammed with the familiar symbol of the Five Point Gang—a cross with an extra arm that mirrored the legendary intersection of Orange Street, Cross Street, and Anthony Street, which was now the turf of Paul Kelly. It was the same symbol they’d branded into the skin on his shoulder when he’d made the choice to take Kelly’s offer. Seeing it would have been enough to set him on edge, but the address written in a strong, slanting hand—Kelly’s own—was only a block from the apartment he’d rented for his mother last May.
He knew at once the note was a warning about how much Paul Kelly could still control Harte’s future. Certain it would be pointless to go to his mother’s apartment, he went off in search of the address in the message instead.