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“Sure…” Mooch looked more nervous now. “I was just talking.”
“You do that often, don’t you?” James asked. He kept his voice soft and even.
The entire barroom had gone silent to listen. It felt like the Aether itself was holding its breath and waiting for what would come, and then James felt the shift, the telltale nudge that told him it was time.
“What?” Mooch seemed confused now.
“You often say things you don’t mean,” James clarified, allowing a bit more menace to color his tone. “You lie.”
“I don’t—”
“For instance,” James continued, not allowing Mooch to explain. “When you told the others just now that you did everything possible to retrieve the ring, you were lying, weren’t you?” He took another step forward.
“No. I wasn’t lying about that,” Mooch said. “Werner was there. He can tell you. There wasn’t any way to get the ring out of that place.”
Werner was backing away now. Another coward. But there would be time enough to deal with him later.
“You’ve lied to me before, Mooch. Do you think I don’t know? When you told me that the police had released you from the Tombs, it was a lie,” James said. “Wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mooch said, but his voice cracked as he spoke, and his face was drained of color. “They released me, just like I said they did.”
“No, Mooch. You had help. And you repaid your saviors by helping them break into my rooms,” James said softly. “You allowed them to steal from me.”
“No, Nibs—I mean, James,” Mooch said, correcting himself as he stumbled over his words and his lies. “I wouldn’t.”
“But you did. Would you like to tell everyone here who it was that you let into the Strega that day back in May, or would you rather I told them?” James asked.
The silence around them now was deafening, but the Aether, it was dancing. Urging him on.
“You see,” James said—and he was speaking to the room now, not only to Mooch. “It would be so much easier to believe that you’d done everything you could to bring me the ring if you hadn’t let Viola Vaccarelli come into our home, our sanctuary. You helped her—a traitor to the Devil’s Own—steal from me. From us.”
“No, I—”
“Save your lies, Mooch.” He leaned forward a bit, ignoring the boy’s protest. “No one here believes them, just as no one believes you did everything you could at the Flatiron Building.”
“But we did,” Mooch said. “It was impossible to get the artifact like you wanted.” Mooch looked to Werner, who wasn’t by his side any longer. The other boy had already pressed himself back into the crowd.
“Another lie,” James said. He held up his hand, the one bearing the ring, and allowed himself a to feel the satisfaction of seeing the color drain from Mooch’s face. “Logan didn’t walk away from his duty to the Devil’s Own. But you did. Maybe you never wanted us to have this artifact.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe you were working with Viola—and against us—all along.”
“No way, Nib—James. That ain’t it at all,” Mooch said, backing away. But he was blocked by the bar behind him. “That ain’t how it happened at all. Tell ’em, Werner. Explain what it was like up there.”
Werner’s eyes met James’, and they widened slightly. But Werner didn’t speak to help his friend. He just shook his head slightly and then looked away.
James took in every detail of the crowded saloon. There was not a soul there who hadn’t been listening. He stepped toward Mooch. “It seems to me that while the rest of us risked ourselves for what Dolph Saunders built, you were off making nice with those who have betrayed Dolph and the Devil’s Own.”
“No, Nibs—James. No.” He sounded more sober now. “That ain’t how it—”
“I think,” James said, cutting him off before he could finish his protest, “that those of us who are loyal to Dolph’s memory—may his soul rest in peace—should not stand for another lie from the mouth of a traitor.”
He turned to the room and sensed that they were with him, every one of them. And why shouldn’t they be? Hadn’t he led them after Dolph had fallen? Hadn’t he protected them from the Five Pointers and the threat of Tammany’s police?
Jerking up his sleeve far enough to expose the intertwined snakes on his own arm, James looked around the room and met the eyes of those watching. “We all took this mark when we pledged ourselves to the Devil’s Own, but this was never Dolph’s mark alone. These intertwined serpents, life and death, were a promise to something larger than Dolph Saunders. They were a promise to what he believed in. They were a promise of loyalty. Not to a man, but to an idea.”
James turned back to Mooch now. He allowed his affinity to swell through the power in the cane just a little, testing it. Mooch reacted exactly as James had hoped, immediately grabbing his neck where the edge of a snake barely peeked out over the collar of his shirt. He grimaced and rubbed at the tattoo as though he were trying to rub off the ink inscribed into his skin.
“What the hell, Nibs?” Mooch whimpered.
Around them, the saloon rustled with uneasiness. James understood why. He could sense them all there, sense the marks that connected them to the cane he was holding, and he knew they could sense him as well. The Delphi’s Tear might not have revealed the future to him, but the power in the artifact, along with his own connection to the Aether, made the cane he leaned against more powerful—and more dangerous—than it had ever been in Dolph Saunders’ hand.
