The Last Magician Read online

  “He’s right,” Esta said, numb with disbelief.

  Viola shook her head. “No. It’s not possible. There was opium—or something like it—a cloud of it filled the room when we took the Book from its place.  There was no way Darrigan could have done anything, not before I killed him. My knives don’t need magic to work.”

  “Where’s the knife you used?” Nibs asked.

  Viola pulled out Libitina, her favorite stiletto blade, and held it up.

  “Where’s his blood?”

  “There should have been blood,” Viola whispered.

  “Darrigan was a stage magician, you imbecile. He trained himself to hold his breath longer than anyone should be able to. The opium wouldn’t have affected him if he didn’t breathe it.”

  “No . . . ,” Viola whispered, shaking her head. As though she refused to believe that he’d tricked her so easily, that he’d destroyed everything.

  Dolph was dead and the Order would hunt them, and they didn’t have the Book.

  Nibs only glared at her. “Then where’s the Book? Where are the artifacts?”

  Viola didn’t have an answer.

  But for Esta, the news was that much more devastating. She’d failed. Harte Darrigan—the Magician—had the Book, and he was gone.

  So were the artifacts. So was her stone.

  And so was any chance of her ever getting home.

  • • •

  It wasn’t long after that things started to fall apart.

  Before dawn broke the next day, an entire block of tenement buildings went up in flames. The fire brigades stayed away, but boys who wore the Five Point Gang’s mark were seen at the edges of the crowd. Watching. Stopping any who tried to douse the fires or rescue their belongings. Their alliance with the mayor—and with the Order—seemed to be growing more complete.

  Under  Tammany Hall’s protection, the members of Kelly’s gang didn’t hesitate to attack anyone they thought might be a threat. Fights broke out over innocent glances. Gunfire rained in the streets, catching anyone nearby in the crossfire.

  No one in the Bowery was safe. Not as long as the Order was set on vengeance.

  Of course, all the unrest was reported as more evidence of the threat the incoming masses of immigrants posed. After he wrote about the fire at Khafre Hall, Sam Watson turned his daily columns to denouncing the Mageus for the threat they posed to the city. Criminals, degenerates, and thieves were pouring across the borders, he argued, and nothing was being done. If they could destroy an institution as old and important as Khafre Hall, he reminded everyone, they could also threaten the country’s very way of life.

  Near Herald Square, ladies in feathered caps and gentlemen in white gloves pursed their lips and shook their heads as they tsk-tsked the plight of the mayor having to control such a threat.  Above Houston, the people of Manhattan went on about their lives as usual, willfully ignoring the madness that raged in the streets below.

  But the citizens of the areas around Five Points and the Bowery lived on the knifepoint of fear.  They knew the madness wasn’t their own doing. Everyone was running scared.

  Everyone, it seemed, except Nibsy Lorcan, who had somehow stepped into the space left by Dolph Saunders with an ease that surprised Esta. No one had questioned it when Nibs began issuing orders while Dolph’s body was still cooling on the bar. While everyone else had turned inward, becoming silent and wary with the irrevocable evidence of Dolph’s death, Nibs seemed to have grown six inches overnight. He sat in Dolph’s old seat like it had always been meant for him.

  Too soon, she thought. And she couldn’t help but remember Harte’s words—this has everything to do with him.

  No one else seemed to question Nibsy’s rise, though. Or if they did, they were still too dazed with the shock of what had happened to care.

  A week later, they were huddled in the kitchen of the Strega, away from the rest of Dolph’s gang, when a trio of bowler-hatted boys came through the door. The four of them—Nibs, Viola, Jianyu, and Esta—turned as one, already bracing for something worse. The tallest of the three boys stepped forward to where Nibs was sitting and then gave a jerk of his head, like he wanted to speak to Nibs alone.

  Nibs took the boy aside and listened intently, his nostrils flaring and his features going hard as the boy talked.

  “What do you mean his mother’s gone?” Nibs hissed loudly enough for the rest of the room to turn and watch.

  “Just what I told you. They says you ordered her to be moved.”

  “To where?” Nibs asked, his face furious.

  “They says they didn’t know,” the boy said with a shrug.

  “Well, who took her?”

  The boy hesitated, a look of confusion on his face. “They says you did.”

  Viola sent Esta a questioning look from across the table where they were sitting, but Esta shook her head. She didn’t know what the boys were talking about. She glanced at Jianyu, but he was too busy watching Nibsy and the other boy with a quiet intensity.

  “I didn’t do any such thing,” Nibs seethed, barely able to control the volume of his voice now.

  “There’s one more thing,” the boy said. He held himself on guard, like he was about to dodge a punch.

  “What?” Nibs’ chest was heaving.

  The boy held out a folded piece of paper. “They says I was supposed to give you this.”

  Nibs took the paper with a vicious swipe that had the boy startling back. “Get out,” he barked, and he waited until the three boys left before he opened the message and read it. When he was done, he glanced up at Esta.

  Both Jianyu and Viola straightened in their chairs.

  “What?” she asked, not at all liking the look on Nibsy’s face.

  He handed her the paper without a word.

  It was an advertising flyer. On it, the bold block letters proclaimed that the great Harte Darrigan would attempt the impossible by cheating death with a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge. And across the image of the bridge was a message scrawled in a familiar script: If you want the Book, bring me the girl.

  “Harte Darrigan, it seems, isn’t dead after all. Not yet, at least,” Nibs said, meeting her eyes when she looked up from reading. “There’s something I’m missing,” he said, staring blindly into space. Thinking, no doubt. Making connections. Then his eyes rested on Esta. “I can’t believe he didn’t give you any indication of what he had planned.”

  Esta went on alert. Nibs had been watching her for two days now, and every time she caught him looking, it gave her an uneasy feeling. Like he saw something in her that he didn’t like. “He used me the same as everyone,” she said carefully. “If it looked like we were close, it was another part of his game.”

  “No . . .” Nibs stared at her, the expression in his eyes unreadable. “I don’t think that’s the case at all. You meant something to him.”

  She laughed, a cold, hard expulsion of air that she filled with every bit of her disdain. “I assure you, I meant nothing to him. Or maybe you forgot how he left me on that stage without any warning.”

  “So you say,” Nibs said softly.

  “So I know,” she told him. “He left me in a room full of the Order’s members. If it hadn’t been for Jianyu, I’d still be there.”

  Nibs huffed out a laugh.

  “She speaks truly,” Jianyu said. “He left her without any protection. He had no way of knowing that I would be there, waiting. That was something Dolph had arranged.”

  Esta hesitated only a moment at the lie that had slipped so easily from Jianyu’s lips. “See?” she snapped. It took everything she had in her not to glance at Jianyu. “Harte Darrigan can go to hell for all I care.”

  That much was true.

  He’d left her. He’d betrayed them all, but he’d left her. And she hated herself for caring about that, for forgetting—even for a moment—why she was there, in that city. But it wasn’t over yet. She would have one more chance to stop him from destroying the Book—one more c
hance to save them all.

  She would not fail again.

  ONE FINAL NIGHT

  The Docks

  Once night had cloaked the city, Harte watched the boat carrying the Order’s artifacts glide from the docks, its engines off. When it was out of reach of the shoreline, the great boilers fired up, and the squat craft began to move faster, cutting a path through the starlight reflected in the dark water. He stayed where he was until the boat was no more than a dot on the horizon, knowing for certain now that he would never have the chance to make that trip, would never know what those other shores held in store.

  Nibs Lorcan had overplayed his hand by warning Harte. It had taken some doing—late nights and secrets kept from Esta—but in the days leading up to the heist, Harte had managed to grease the right palms for word of where his mother might be. In the end it had been easy enough, especially with the right kind of touch.

  Once he discovered she’d been stashed in a rank basement of a brothel near the docks, it had been hell to wait, but he knew he couldn’t simply take her out of there without Nibs knowing. If Nibs had realized that he’d lost his leverage, he would never have let Harte near Khafre Hall or the Book. So he’d waited, unwilling to chance anything until the night of the heist, when it would be too late for Nibs to do anything to stop him.

  But by the time Harte finally got to his mother, she’d been fed so much opium that it would be a miracle if she recovered at all. Still, he got her out, as he’d promised. As he gave the old couple who ran the brothel a stack of bills for their trouble, all he had to do was let his finger brush against their palms. It would have been hardly noticeable to them, especially with the way they were focused on the money, but a moment later they didn’t remember him at all.

  His mother was safe now, or as safe as she could be. Now he needed to turn himself to other things.

  He’d been watching Jack’s warehouse for two days. There’d been no sign of Jack, or anyone else, and Harte was finally confident that it was safe enough to chance approaching it. He couldn’t finish things until he destroyed the machine and the plans to build another. After all, Harte Darrigan might be a bastard, he might be a double-crossing low-life scoundrel, but he wasn’t so low as to leave a machine like that whole before he made his escape. Not when he knew the danger it posed to hundreds—maybe thousands—of innocent people.

  It wouldn’t be enough to stop Jack indefinitely, he knew, but it would set him back for a while. It would maybe even give the rest of them a fighting chance. Especially once Harte—and the Book with him—were gone.

  First the machine. The wrench weighing down the pocket of his overcoat should do the trick. He’d destroy Jack’s creation and send the whole damn place up in flames.

  Then he’d go after Esta. He’d explain everything.

  A shadow stirred near one of the low buildings at his back, and his every instinct came alert. No one could have known he was there. He’d taken every precaution, hidden his tracks twice over. There was no mistaking it, though—the feeling he had of being hunted.

  “Who’s there?” he called, but the soft lapping of the water was all he heard in reply. “I know someone’s out there.”

  He waited, listening, but the feeling of being watched didn’t go away.

  “If you’re thinking of killing me, I’d advise against it. If I’m dead, you’ll never find out where I’ve put the things you’re looking for,” he said, not knowing if it was one of Dolph’s crew or someone from the Order, and not really caring. Let them do the job for him for all he cared. He hadn’t lied—they’d never find the Book or the strange artifacts, not where he’d put them.

  “Show yourself!” he called, his hand already wrapped around the wrench in his coat pocket. As though that would offer much protection.

  Jianyu stepped into a shaft of moonlight. Maybe he should have been relieved that it wasn’t Viola, but Harte still felt a tremor of fear run through him.

  Let me explain, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. Standing in the darkness near the water’s edge was no place for pleading. He stood a little straighter instead.

  “Did Dolph send you?” he asked, pretending a confidence he didn’t feel.

  “Dolph’s dead,” Jianyu told him, the flatness in his voice confirming his words.

  “That’s what I’d heard.” He hadn’t wanted to believe it, though.

  “Shot in the back over Leena’s grave,” Jianyu said, even though Harte hadn’t asked. He could almost feel the anger—and the anguish—in Jianyu’s usually calm voice. “The night you betrayed us.”

  “I didn’t betray Dolph,” Harte said. “We had an arrangement, and I kept my word to him.” But he knew when he’d heard whispers of Dolph’s death that everything had gone south.

  “Then where is the Book?”

  “Safe,” he said.

  Jianyu’s mouth turned down. “It would be safer with me.”

  “If it were with you, Nibs would have it, and we’d all be screwed.”

  Jianyu didn’t say anything, simply continued to study him across the narrow stretch between them.

  “I didn’t kill Dolph,” he said finally.

  “If I thought you did, you’d be dead already.”

  He didn’t trust Jianyu’s too-calm demeanor. “If you didn’t come to kill me, why are you here?”

  “I’m here because Dolph is dead.” He gave Harte an unreadable look and took a step closer. “But what we do from here . . . that is up to you.”

  FOOL ME ONCE

  Jack’s Apartment

  Jack Grew was packing the last of his suitcases when the message came. An hour later, he would have been on a train bound to Cleveland and his new position as an assistant to the undersecretary of a refinery on the shores of Lake Erie. The message changed all that. Or at least put it on hold for the time being.

  Jack held on to the folded slip of paper like a lifeline.

  Not that he trusted Darrigan. No, he wouldn’t be taken in by that charlatan again.

  Daughter of Baron von Filosik? Like hell she was. He’d had people search Darrigan’s apartment while the pair were putting on their little show at Khafre Hall, and they didn’t find any sign of a trunk, or anything else that would indicate that the girl was who they said she was. The redhead had been right.  They’d played him, and now Darrigan was going to pay.

  I have the Book for you. Come alone, the message said.

  Not a chance.

  • • •

  When Jack’s carriage came to a stop at the foot of the bridge early the next day, he found a steady stream of people heading in the same direction. It looked as though the entire bridge had been closed down to the usual streetcar and carriage traffic, so he stopped a man to ask where they were headed. The man didn’t seem to understand what Jack was saying, but he handed him a crumpled flyer.

  Beneath the grease stains and wrinkles, Jack saw the image of the bridge and the smirking face of Harte Darrigan.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him that he was walking into a virtual circus, considering who he was dealing with. But if Darrigan thought to throw Jack off with this crowd, he was wrong. He’d learned his lesson, and now Darrigan would learn his.

  He told his uncle—who had of course told the High Princept—about the note. The Order had taken everything from there.

  Jack looked over his shoulder at the row of buildings lining the waterfront. He could just barely make out the glint of the sharpshooter’s sight in a fourth-floor window. If anything went wrong, the Order wouldn’t allow Darrigan to get away. If he tried to come back into the city, he was a dead man. If he tried to make it to the wilds of Brooklyn, Order patrols were already waiting.  And if Jack himself happened to be in the line of fire . . . the High Princept had already made it clear that no one would care.

  A suppressed shudder ran through him.

  That wasn’t going to happen. If anyone was going to kill that piece-of-shit magician, it was going to be him.

  So Jack ma
de his way with the rest of the crowd, following the long incline that led out over the shoreline and toward the soaring towers of the bridge. He took the entrance to the far right, one usually taken up by streetcars and trains. The farther he walked, the denser the crowd became, but this wasn’t the refined crowd of Broadway. All around him, the clamoring of too many languages assaulted his ears. Guttural and brash, the voices were a noisy babble that made him feel as if he were the one who didn’t belong.

  It only served to make him angrier. After all, his family had practically built this city.

  Still, the crowd would make it that much more difficult for the Order to deal with Darrigan. He pulled the brim of his hat low on his forehead and started on his way toward the arches of the first tower. The crowd had come to a stop there, a motley throng of humanity dressed in the gaudy satins and bright taffetas of people who didn’t know better, people who bought their goods ready-made and three seasons out of fashion. And in the center of the teeming mass, as still as a rock in a current, was the magician.

  ENDGAME

  The Brooklyn Bridge

  It was hard to even pretend confidence with a gun pressing into the small of her back, but Esta did what she could. She couldn’t use her affinity, not with the grip the large boy had on her arm, but she could use the other magic Professor Lachlan had taught her when she was a girl. Confidence is the key to any con. If they see you sweat, you’re dead.

  The morning wind had kicked up by the time they made their way across the span of the bridge to the arches of the first tower that held the monstrous suspension cables aloft. With every step, she sensed what remained of Dolph’s crew becoming more nervous, and who could blame them? Though the day was warm, there was a chill in the air. A cold, malicious energy that whispered of danger. A reminder that ahead was the end of the world for anyone with magic.

  She hadn’t been on this bridge since she was a child.