Reality came sputtering back.
The card tables had slid sideways into the banister, the Artisans hiding beneath stark-faced and looking in every direction. “A bomb?” one of them asked. “An attack?”
But the first to point the finger was the Scribbler named Frederick.
Where the liquor had made him simple, the shatter of a fallen chandelier sobered him. The cracks in the banister and the falling plaster seemed to clearhis head, enough that he looked up from where he cowered on the floor. Enough that he saw the pistol I was holding. “Union!” he shouted, scuttling backward on his arse.“Union!”
“Shit,” Theo breathed, my elbow still in his hand. “Run,” he said.
But the voices were growing, a carousel of contorting faces crying “Union!” “They’re Union!” And before Theodore could shove me farther than a heap of fallen stools and glass, three men came scrabbling through the mess toward us, cornering us, their party attire making them plain but their guns making them coppers, silver barrels lifted.
“Stop where you are!” one said. “Drop the gun!”
There was no way past them, only the drop over the banister to the stage, and one pistol against three.
It couldn’t be over yet.
It rang through me like a struck gong. Desperation, conviction.I’d rather die, I thought, idium screaming in my veins.I’d rather die than go back.
“Nina, it’s over!” Theo said. “Please, they’ll shoot.”
Better than capture. Better than the House and the whip.
“She’s the earth Charmer!” came Polly’s voice, rising from somewhere over my shoulder. “She’s Nina Clarke! Don’t shoot.”
The barrels wavered, confusion marring the coppers’ scowls, the quake of the building taking on new meaning for them. One reached beneath his suit jacket, and the glint of shackles peaked out.
No, I thought, and I lifted the gun. Pointed it straight at him. I’d open a mouth wide enough to swallow a building. Let us see who survived in the rubble.
For the second time, I felt my mind expand, let it sink into the earth beneath the building. Deeper still, to the fault lines. The tremors reawakened. The coppers toppled.
And I spared no thought to any Artisan in this building who might die. I spared no thought at all but for the sheer power coursing through me, the sharp, vicious satisfaction of it.
Shots rang out in quick succession. Orange blasts in the dark. From left to right, the coppers fell, their craniums bursting, legs collapsing.
The quaking ceased, and people shouted, ducked, crawled for exits while they could.
And from the scrummage came an advancing Patrick, his own gun smoking, legs sturdy and sure. He didn’t slow as he reloaded the barrel, stepped over the bodies. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
I saw him as I did in dreams.
More blasts. This time from John, who pointed his gun at the ceiling and shouted, “Party’s over, swanks! Out you get!”
A siren was wailing. I could not discern from where it came. All I saw was Patrick. The apparition of him.
“Nina.” His hands firm on my cheeks, my shoulders. “Nina. Focus. Look at me.”
But he was faded at the edges, tilting sideways. Was that him shaking me? Or was the earth shifting again?
“Come on, darlin’. Don’t collapse on me now, the night ain’t over.”
“We have to run, Colson” came Theo’s voice.
“Nina, eyes on me.” He gripped my chin, and I blinked. Nodded.
Gunshots rang out. John called to the last of the Artisans as though he were rounding up cattle.
“Found the Scribbler,” I tried to say. It was difficult to tell if the words passed my lips.
