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“There is,” Jianyu said. “There is a key to the Brink—a way for Mageus to pass through it without being destroyed. I have the tools. You saw the sigils Viola stole from the Order? We can use them to create a doorway. A safe passage for our kind.”
Werner shook his head. “That ain’t possible. People would know.”
“People did know,” Jianyu said. “The Order’s Inner Circle knew. Once, long ago, it was information that the highest members protected, even from their own.”
“So if you know so much, why are you sitting here talking to me?” Werner’s eyes narrowed, but his interest was still keen.
“Because I do not yet have the ritual needed to use them,” Jianyu admitted. “Nibsy took some papers from me a few weeks ago, papers I had stolen from J. P. Morgan’s office. In them were the instructions. With those papers, the sigils could become a key to the Brink.”
“You want me to get the papers,” Werner realized. “You really think I’m going to stand against Nibsy for you?” He shook his head, a look of utter disgust on his face. “Maybe I should help him. Maybe I should get those discs back from you.”
“Nibsy will never let you go, Werner,” Jianyu said. “Your affinity is far too useful. Even if he had the discs, he has you by the mark you accepted. You are his. Unless you leave. Unless you go far beyond where he can reach. Help me get what I need, and I will make sure you are free. I can make sure anyone who has the mark can be free of Nibsy’s control.”
Werner was shaking his head, ready to reject the offer.
“Take your time,” Jianyu said. “Ask Mooch what he thinks. Both of you could be gone before Nibsy Lorcan even understood what had happened. We can keep the both of you safe.”
“Mooch is dead,” Werner said, his voice hollow.
That news made Jianyu pause. “The Order?”
“He ran his mouth about what happened the night of the solstice, and Nibsy had enough.” Werner rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “He made an example of him.”
The marks. Nibsy had used them in a show of power.
“I am sorry. But you cannot let yourself be next,” Jianyu told him. “Nibsy Lorcan must be stopped, but Viola and I, we cannot do it alone. We need your help. We need the Devil’s Own to remember what they once stood for, to stand again for what Dolph believed in. Think of it, Werner. Freedom from the Brink. Freedom from this city.”
Werner shook his head. “I saw what Nibsy can do with those marks. I can’t cross him.”
“That is probably the smartest thing you’ve said since I met you.” Logan Sullivan stepped out from around the corner then. His hands were tucked in his pockets, but the expression on his face was anything but relaxed.
Color drained from Werner’s face. “You can’t tell him, Logan. Please.”
“Think about my offer,” Jianyu said.
“He doesn’t need to,” Logan told Jianyu. Then he turned to Werner. “Take care of this. It’s time to go.”
But Jianyu had already pulled the light around himself. Before Werner had time to reach for his affinity, before he could attack, Jianyu was already gone.
A DIFFERENT LIFE
1902—Chelsea Piers
Ruby Reynolds ignored the brisk chill of the late-November breeze tearing at her hair as she studied the Manhattan skyline from the upper deck of the SS Oceanic. It would be a while still before they docked in Manhattan and disembarked. First the ship had to wait at the quarantine checkpoint for smaller boats to pull up alongside and transfer the new immigrants in steerage to Ellis Island.
Looking at the city in the distance, she could hardly believe it had been more than five months since she’d been sent to Europe, exiled by her own family because of what had happened at the Order’s gala in the spring. Not because of the danger she’d been in, but because someone had seen her kissing Viola. Now she’d been summoned home, back to the life she’d trapped herself into. The life she’d trapped Theo into as well. But she was returning a different woman than she had been before.
When her family had decided to send her away early in the spring, Ruby had been furious. But as her sister Clara grew bored with shopping for a bridal trousseau, she’d given Ruby more and more time to herself. Time to write and to think. Time for Paris to change her.
She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular when she’d wandered into the small, cluttered bookseller’s shop on the left bank of the Seine, but behind its leaded glass doors, she’d found another world. Week after week, she’d met women who were permitted to have minds of their own. Women who had made entire lives on their own. While her sister went off to discuss the gossip from back home, Ruby was transfixed by a world where women cared more for art and politics than whose ball was the crush of the season. There Ruby saw that a different future was possible. In Paris, something was beginning, and in those rooms, she had begun to dream.
But as summer eased into fall, her mother had begun to suspect that Ruby was simply avoiding what waited when she returned to the city. Marriage. Duty. And then the endless march of days as a wife.
Theo’s wife, she reminded herself. Dear, sweet Theo. Now trapped as she was in the situation she had created.
Their engagement had been her idea. When the first of her group found happiness in church bells and white lace, Ruby had turned to Theo, because she knew that if she had to marry—and really, there was little choice in her world—he, at least, would be comfortable. He, at least, would not try to press her into the mold that society had provided for a wife and mother. Theo understood her as no one else did. He would allow her to breathe, as much as anyone could breathe in her world.
She could not deny that meeting Viola had changed everything. Marriage to Theo had become less a solution than another weight to bear. But in Paris, Ruby had started to see that if she and Theo must marry, they could still make a life together that suited them.
