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It might have been less trouble to just kill him, but Viola understood that his death wouldn’t be enough. Make me a martyr, Nibsy had taunted, and he’d been right. To break his control over the Devil’s Own, Viola knew she had to expose Nibsy for what he was first, or else the vacuum of his death would destroy everything Dolph had tried to build.
“My loyalty is to Dolph—and to what he stood for,” she told Mooch, lowering her voice. “I’m not your enemy, Mooch. I never was.”
“Yeah, well… that remains to be seen.” Mooch frowned, as though he was suddenly unsure about what he’d promised to do. But he relented a second later, stepping aside to let her in.
Viola hadn’t been inside the private quarters in the back of the Bella Strega since the day when everything had fallen apart on the bridge. She’d assumed then that nothing could be worse than what had happened after Khafre Hall, when they’d realized all had been lost—the Book, the artifacts, and their leader. But a few days later, she’d lost even more. She’d lost her home. Her purpose.
Stepping into the back rooms of the building was like stepping back into a different part of her life. The Elizabeth Street entrance opened into a small vestibule, where the aromas of the kitchen had seeped into the wood. The air from outside brought with it the sharpness of the trash that littered the alley, and the mixture of the two was a scent as familiar to Viola as her mother’s rose water. There was something missing, though. Something was off. Then she realized—she hadn’t been greeted by the warm smell of bread baking, as she had been when Dolph sat in the barroom, holding court, and Tilly stood at the great iron stove making the food that knitted them together.
“You’d better get on with it,” Mooch said. “The place is crawling with the boys, and I can’t keep them occupied all by myself.”
With a sure nod, Viola took the narrow staircase up two floors to the hallway she’d once called home. She didn’t bother to enter the room that had been hers. There was no time, and she had no desire to feel more loss than that which already creased her heart. Instead, she went to the end of the hall, where Dolph and Leena—and then later, Dolph alone—had made a home.
The door was locked, a marked change from when the rooms had belonged to Dolph. He had never feared intrusion, not when his gang wore a mark that could unmake them. Viola doubted that anyone would have dared cross his sanctuary without an invitation, even without the marks. It simply wasn’t done. The Devil’s Own was a gang, yes. A rowdy, dangerous bunch. But Dolph Saunders had given them a place to build a home for themselves, and there was a certain honor among thieves.
A pin from her hair made short work of the lock, and Viola let herself into the quiet of the flat. Once inside the apartment, she paused, allowing the past to wash over her. She’d been Leena’s friend before Dolph’s, and together they’d spent hours in these rooms. How many times had she sat in that chair by the window, learning her letters or talking strategy? How often had the rooms been a haven, free of judgment and shame, filled with something that had felt like hope?
Dolph should still be here. Dolph, who had lied to her… or at least, who had hidden the truth about too many things. About his cane and how it came by the awful power it held. About Libitina.
Why had he not explained how the blade worked and let Viola make her choice?
She knew already the answer. It had been a trick, yes. One that perhaps a true friend should not have played, but then, Viola had not really wanted to know. She’d accepted the knife without question, used its deadly blade without considering, because she’d wanted to believe that an acquired skill was somehow different from the heart of a thing. Viola had wanted to imagine that she could refuse that essential part of what she was—and what she felt drawn to do with her affinity. Healing and death, two sides of life itself. One impossible without the other.
The truth was that her friend had deceived her. The truth was also that he had done her a kindness. Dolph had allowed her to be, without judgment, what she was made to be. If Libitina was only so deadly because Viola was actually channeling her own magic through the knife, then it meant that Dolph had given her a way to use her affinity without wrestling with the shame of it. He had given her a way out of the torture that would have come from holding herself back, from denying her magic.
How many Mageus had Viola watched suffer as they tried to hide what they were? How many turned to Nitewein or worse to dull the ache of unused affinities? Too many. She’d seen them in the Strega and in the streets, desperate and aching. She’d thought she was different somehow—stronger—and she’d pitied them, not knowing how close she’d come to being in their shoes.
Viola looked around the apartment and realized that nothing had changed—not really—but even so, the rooms were different now. The feel of the space was colder, despite the warm breeze that came in through the lace curtains. The oil painting they’d stolen from Morgan’s collection still hung on the wall over the bookshelf, and Viola took a moment to trace the strange design on the book Newton held, remembering the night Dolph had told her why the Ars Arcana was so important. Something about that painting sparked another memory.…
There had been something carved into the cover of the Ars Arcana, hadn’t there? But Viola couldn’t remember whether it had been this design or some other, not with whatever Harte Darrigan had done to her that night.
She would never know for sure. The Book was gone now, along with Esta and the Magician.
Viola turned away from the painting and the questions she had no answers to and focused on what she could find instead. Running her finger across the spines of the books on the shelf, she dismissed some immediately. Voltaire and Kierkegaard wouldn’t have the answers she needed. There was the book they had taken from the Metropolitan, an ancient-looking thing that had once belonged to Newton himself, but the answers she was looking for wouldn’t be there, either. Finally, she came across a simple volume, bound with stitched cloth instead of leather, and she pulled it from the shelf. Thumbing through it, she could not stop the emotion of seeing Dolph’s familiar script from crashing over her—the warmth of the memories and the disappointment as well.
As she flipped through the pages, Viola realized there was too much there: notations about the Brink, notes about the stones and the Book, and pages filled with crude sketches done in scratches of ink. There were notes written in English and Italian, German and French. As she searched for what she needed, Viola heard voices in the hallway, and panic slid down her spine, but… there. A sketch of a familiar shape. It was clearly Libitina, with her thin, sharp blade and ornate handle, sketched onto the page. But Viola could not read the words. They were written in a language she did not know, as though Dolph had been purposely cautious and intended to keep this knowledge from her.
Viola shook off her disappointment as she tucked the notebook into her skirts. It was a risk, maybe even a mistake, but she could not be sure how many of the pages she needed, and she could not leave without the knowledge she’d come for.
The voices were closer now, just outside the door, and even if they weren’t heading for Dolph’s apartment, Viola knew that she could not leave the way she’d come. Without hesitating, she went for the window. The gauzy curtains fluttered in the breeze when she opened the window wider. She pulled herself over the sill to the fire escape, then pushed the window back to where it had been before, and began the climb down. She did not look behind her to see if she’d been spotted, and her heart did not stop racing until she was on the ground and far away from the one place that had ever felt like home.
TIME’S FANGED JAWS
1904—Denver
North and Cordelia didn’t come back that first night—Esta hadn’t really expected them to, but she could tell that Maggie had hoped. They waited up until late, and she helped as Maggie tried to keep herself busy by making more of the Quellant. By the time they finally finished, the city outside their window was quiet, but the thoughts running through Esta’s mind were too loud to let her sleep.
She wondered if Harte had made it to California yet, and she hoped he was having better luck than she was. She still regretted getting rid of the bracelet he’d left her. Even traveling with the two Antistasi, she felt alone, but it was never worse than in the middle of the night, when the world was quiet and endless with sleep. In those deep hours, she would have welcomed the sound of Harte’s voice in her ear, the feel of his lips against her skin. She should have appreciated the bracelet for the gift it was. Once they met up, it was likely they wouldn’t have much time. At least with the bracelet, she could have had the illusion of him.
The sky was already lightening when Esta finally drifted off, but her dreams were not easy. She found herself in a desert where dangerous magic swirled through the air. Beneath the sand, a monstrous serpent slid along, chasing her across an endless stretch of emptiness. Ahead, silhouetted against the blazing sky, she saw Harte standing with his back to her. Her heart leapt at the sight of him, and in response, the serpentine monster changed course, aiming instead for him.
Esta shouted, but Harte didn’t turn. She started to run, but she knew she would never reach him in time. When she reached for her affinity, her magic lay cold and dead, and in the end, the serpent rose from the sand and lunged for Harte, its fanged jaws wide. As the serpent’s teeth clamped shut, Esta woke with a start, the scar on her wrist burning again.
Despite the warm breeze coming in through the window, she felt chilled. Across the room, Maggie snored softly, but Esta didn’t even try to sleep again.
They spent the rest of the next two days keeping themselves busy while they waited for news that never came. Esta watched and helped Maggie when she could, but the days dragged on, and they both grew more impatient and anxious for word from North and Cordelia.
“I think you’ve killed it,” Esta said. She couldn’t take listening to the sound of the pestle grinding against the marble mortar anymore. It was the afternoon of the third day, and she’d been watching out the window, jealous of everyone who was free to go about their business in the streets below as she tried to distract herself, but now she turned back to look at Maggie.
