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Cela straightened, the hat tipping back enough for him to see the soft curve of her cheek and the sharp line of her hairless jaw. Only a fool would not notice she was a woman beneath the clothes, but the city was filled with fools.
Her eyes were sharp as they searched the night, but it was only when they were standing at the foot of the wagon that Jianyu finally released his affinity enough to allow her to find him in the darkness.
“You made it in time?” she whispered, climbing down from her perch.
“Barely,” Viola told her.
Cela had accompanied them on each of these trips over the last weeks, but even with all she had seen, she gasped when Josef Salzer’s head tipped back and she saw his broken and bloodied face. She rushed over to help them.
“Barely is better than not at all,” Jianyu told them.
Together they lifted Josef into the back of the covered wagon, and then Viola climbed in with the boy. She would need to stay close to keep his heart beating and his moans quiet until they arrived at the safe house far, far uptown.
When Jianyu lifted the gate of the wagon and secured it, Viola turned back, frowning at him. “You aren’t coming with us?”
“I have to tell his mother,” Jianyu told her. “Golde will be waiting for news, and she should not have to see the sun rise without it.”
“We can wait,” Cela said as she climbed back into the driver’s perch.
He considered her offer, but when a shout went up in the distance, he shook his head. It was not worth it to risk more than one life. “Not tonight.”
Cela did not look pleased, but she also did not argue. “Get back to us safe.”
The note of concern in her voice settled deep within him, a reminder that he was not alone—that they were not alone—as he pulled his affinity close, opened what little moonlight found its way through the clouds above, and wrapped his magic around himself once more.
With so many police officers patrolling the streets, it took longer than usual for Jianyu to reach Golde Salzer’s home. Josef’s family lived in a pair of small, lightless rooms on the fourth floor of a tenement not far from the Bella Strega. The building was deep within territory under the control of the Devil’s Own and, consequently, territory currently held by Nibsy Lorcan, so Jianyu kept his affinity close as he walked through the part of the city he’d once called home. No good would come of Nibsy knowing that he had been there.
The building where Golde and her children lived was mostly dark. Its inhabitants had no doubt already turned in for the night to prepare for the long day of work that would greet them when the sun rose. But he knew Golde would be up, waiting for word of her son. When Jianyu reached her door, he tapped the softest of rhythms and waited. When the door inched open, Golde’s drawn, shadowed face appeared. Only then did he allow the light to recede a little, exposing himself. With a small jerk of his head, he motioned that she should follow, and then, wordlessly, made his way to the stairs and then up toward the roof. He did not look back to see if she was behind him.
Luckily, the roof was empty. All around, the Lower East Side fanned out in a jumbled mess of streets. The city felt quieter here. In the distance, he could almost make out the towers of the bridge in the hazy summer night. This close to the stars, the rot of the gutter and the stench of the streets below were barely detectable. Here, he could almost imagine the city was a different place, a better one.
Perhaps one day it would be.
A few minutes later, Golde stepped out onto the roof. She had a shawl pulled up over her hair, another wrapped around her. In her eyes, she carried the same distrust and the same wariness he regularly saw in the eyes of those who had been turned by Nibsy’s honeyed lies. Even when she had come to him for help, she had not quite trusted him.
Golde glanced back at the stairwell once more, as though making sure she had not been followed.
Jianyu understood her nervousness. Golde had told him already that her husband did not approve of her seeking help to find their oldest son. The older man had been injured in a factory accident months before, back when Dolph was still running the Bowery, but the man’s leg still had not healed enough to find work. He depended on his children and his wife to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. They all depended on Josef, who had once worked for Dolph. Which meant that they now depended upon the generosity of Nibsy Lorcan. None of them could risk Nibsy finding out about Jianyu’s involvement.
“You found him, my Josef?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Jianyu nodded.
“Truly?” she asked, stepping toward him. The mistrust and hesitation all but vanished. “Where is he? I want to see him. Take me to my boy.”
“Golde—” He stopped when her eyes flashed. “Mrs. Salzer. You know I cannot.”
Her expression hardened. “I want to see my child. I want to see him with my own eyes.”
Josef was no more a child than Jianyu himself was. The boy had been hardened by the streets like so many others. Still, he understood a mother’s care, even if it had been a lifetime since he had felt it himself.
“Soon,” Jianyu promised softly, hoping to calm her. “When we know for sure that it is safe.”
“When it’s safe,” she said, cursing in German that Jianyu could not understand. “When has life for our kind ever been safe here in this blighted city?”
Jianyu could not disagree, but he did not mistake Golde’s words as including himself in the sentiment. She meant Mageus, to be sure. But that did not necessarily mean that she considered the two of them as anything alike.
Golde looked up at him, her small face lined beyond its years. But that was what came of rooms full of children and only empty cupboards to feed them. “What do you want? Money? I told you already that I couldn’t offer you much.”
