The Last Magician Read online

  He maneuvered through the still-crowded barroom, cursing himself again for his own curiosity, his stupidity for coming in the first place. Because damn if Dolph wasn’t right—he had listened, and now he was thinking. He was thinking about the possibility of getting out of that godforsaken city. Of being free once and for all.

  Dolph Saunders might need him, but Harte certainly didn’t need Dolph. He’d find a way to do it on his own.

  Harte pushed his way through the crowd and out into the night. He never once looked back, so he didn’t see the knowing smile curve at Dolph Saunders’ mouth.

  BENEATH THE EPHEMERAL MOMENT OF NOW

  Present Day—Orchard Street

  The next evening, Esta sat on the edge of her bed reading over the yellowed news clipping yet again, as though the century-old scrap could tell her something more about what had happened the night of the heist. She probably shouldn’t have taken it from Professor Lachlan’s office, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. He was sending her back, alone this time and for longer than she’d ever been in the past before, and it was all happening too fast. She didn’t feel nearly as confident as she wanted to.

  Someone rapped on the door to her room, and she jumped at the sound of it.

  “Just a minute!” Her fingers shook as she folded the clipping into a small waxen envelope and shoved the packet as far down into her corset as she could manage.

  The knock came again. “Esta?” The voice was muffled by the heavy door.

  Relieved that it wasn’t Professor Lachlan, she opened the door to reveal Dakari on the other side. She looked up into his familiar face. “Is it time?”

  “Not quite. I came to check your arm again.” Dakari had been with Professor Lachlan longer than any of them. The Professor had found him in an illegal fighting club more than twenty years ago. After he made his share of the pot by winning his fights, he’d charge his opponents for the privilege of being doctored by him, so they could go back to their lives without the bruises he’d left on their bodies.

  It wasn’t work he would have otherwise chosen for himself, so when the Professor offered him a position, he took it. Part bodyguard, part healer, Dakari was over six feet of pure muscle, but when he smiled—and he often smiled at Esta—he looked exactly like the kind soul he was.

  “It’s fine,” Esta said, not letting him into the room. He’d already checked it that morning anyway.

  “Humor me.” He gave the door a gentle push and stepped into her room.

  With a dramatic sigh, she unbuttoned the neckline of her dress enough to show him her shoulder. She’d taken off the bandage the day before, and now the wound from the bullet wasn’t anything more than a spot of new pink skin that would one day barely be a scar.

  Dakari took her arm in his hands and pressed his thumb over the spot as he studied it with careful concentration. Her own skin wasn’t exactly pale, but his was darker. His palms were rough from years of fighting, but his magic came as a soft pulse, the warmth that characterized most of her childhood. Those hands could kill a man in 532 different ways, but they had also healed every one of her scrapes and bruises—mostly after he’d put her through a punishing training session. Because of Dakari, she could take care of herself, and because of him, she’d always felt like she had someone to take care of her.

  If she’d lost him the way she’d lost Mari . . .

  “You’ll do,” he said after he was done examining her. “It’s healed well enough that you won’t have to worry about infection. You ready?”

  She nodded.

  “Then why do you look so unsure?” He frowned at her. “You’re never unsure before a job.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, turning away, but he took his hand and lifted her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye.

  “Tell me. Before your worries become the distraction that gets you killed.”

  Esta hesitated, but finally she said, “You really don’t remember Mari?”

  Dakari frowned. “That’s what’s bothering you?”

  She nodded. “Messing up the way I did, it changed things. She was my friend, and she doesn’t even exist now.”

  “You can’t know that your actions were what erased her life.”

  “What if they were? What if I make another mistake? What if, when I come back, other people are gone? Other lives are erased?”

  He thought for a minute before reaching into his boot and pulling out a small pocketknife with an ornately carved bone handle. He offered it to her, and when she took it, he gave her a serious look. “That was my father’s. He gave it to me before I left my country. I would only give that to someone I trusted. Whatever happens, I trust you with my life.”

  The knife was warm from having been snug against Dakari’s leg, and though it was small, its weight was reassuring.

  “Thank you,” she said, her throat tight with emotion as she tucked the knife safely into her own button-up boots. “I’ll bring it back to you. No matter what.”

  “I know you will,” he said, and gave her a wink. “And I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  Esta took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

  • • •

  By the time Esta was in the back of Dakari’s car and heading toward their destination, it was nearly four in the morning on a Tuesday, long after most of the bars had closed. People should have been home, asleep in their tiny apartments, but even this deep in the night, the city glowed. The streets still teemed with life as the car crawled upward, past the low-slung buildings of the village, toward the towers of Midtown.

  Esta rolled down the window, letting the hot breath of summer rustle across her face. With it came the familiar smells of the city, stale and heavy with the metallic choke of exhaust and the ripeness of too many people sharing one tiny piece of land. But it was also enticing—the scent of danger and possibility that lived and breathed in the crowded streets. Dirty and frantic though it was, the city—this city—was home. She’d never wanted to be anywhere else.

  Dakari turned onto Twenty-Eighth Street and then pulled into a narrow parking lot that spanned the block between two streets. The lot had been an alleyway a century before, one of the countless places in the city that hadn’t been built over and changed beyond recognition. A place where she could slip into the past without being seen.

  He stopped just inside the lot and shut off the engine before turning to her. Draping his large forearm across the passenger seat, he looked at her. “You ready?”

  She gave him what she hoped was a sure nod, and they both got out of the car. He leaned against the back of it, eyeing her. “See you in a few?” he asked, turning his usual farewell into a question.

  Despite the heat of the summer night and her layers of linen and velveteen, Esta felt a sudden chill. She made herself shake it off.  This was only a job, she reminded herself. It was her job.

  “You always do,” Esta told him, giving her usual wink. She didn’t let the confidence fall from her face until her back was turned.

  Dakari’s voice came to her as a whisper: “Keep yourself safe, E.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “You doubting me?”

  “Never in a million.” His eyes were still solemn as he raised his chin in a silent salute.

  For a heartbeat, Esta imagined getting back in the car and telling him to drive. Just drive. Dakari had always had enough of a soft spot for her. He’d probably do it, too, no questions asked.

  It wasn’t that she wanted to run from the responsibility the Professor had given her. She didn’t even need that long . . . just another jog around the block to settle her nerves.  Another few minutes with the bright lights and the hurried pace of this city. Her city.

  But she didn’t want Dakari to know she was nervous. It was bad enough admitting it to herself. Wrapping her hand more securely around the smooth handle of her carpetbag, Esta started walking toward the center of the lot, away from the car and from Dakari’s reassuring presence.

  Sh
e didn’t let herself look back again.

  The parking lot was quiet, and it smelled like that combination of piss, garbage, and exhaust that only New York could smell like in the summertime. Something scuttled beneath one of the sleeping cars, but Esta ignored the noise, and as she walked, she let her doubt fall away.

  Or, rather, she shoved it away.

  Trying to find the right layer of time was a little like riffling through the pages of a book. Sometimes she could catch glimpses of what each layer held—the flash of chrome, a bright swirl of skirts. It took all her concentration to find a single image to latch on to, a single date to focus on, before she could slip through to it. And, of course, it took the power held in Ishtar’s Key.

  As she looked past the present moment, the stone in the cuff answered by warming itself, almost humming against her already-heated skin. The tumble of trash and debris along the edges of the buildings, the pallid glow of a yellow security light over a door—all of it went blurry as she searched down through the layered moments of the past. Back, back, back . . . until she found what she was looking for.

  A single day.  A single moment waiting beneath her modern world.

  She reached for it, preparing herself for the unsettling feeling of slipping out of her own time. Her destination was there, well within her ability to reach it, but just as she started to feel the energy of her own magic tingling along her skin, her foot froze in midair and her breath went tight in her chest as an unexpected feeling of absolute dread rocketed through her.

  The image in her mind faltered, and her own world came into focus again.

  “Shit.” Esta dropped her bag and took an actual step backward, away from the glimmer of the past and from what she had to do. Her fingers felt clammy and damp inside the smooth leather of her gloves, but the stone was hot against her skin.

  Above her, the brightly lit top of the Empire State Building looked down, mocking her inability to erase it. To find a time before it had defined the skies of the city.

  Esta didn’t do nerves, but there she was, struggling to shake off her trepidation, forcing herself to gather the courage to do what she’d done a hundred times before. She knew the city, its streets and secrets. Its people, and especially its past. Professor Lachlan had made sure that every minute of her childhood had been devoted to preparing her for this. She was ready.

  So why did it feel so impossible?

  “You okay?” Dakari called.

  She took a breath to steady herself but didn’t look back at him. “I’m fine,” she lied.

  She had to focus. This was what Professor Lachlan had saved her for. This was why he’d rescued her, kept her out of the system, and had given her the only home she remembered. If she couldn’t do this one thing he asked of her, where would she go? Who would she be?

  Esta picked up her bag again and, teeth clenched in determination, expelled another a deep breath through her nose. Her head was pounding, but she adjusted the smooth handle of the bag in her gloved grip and started again.

  There . . .

  The time she was seeking was there, just beneath the ephemeral moment of now. She found the date Professor Lachlan had directed her to waiting for her beneath the layers of years and memories. In that moment, her fear receded a little, and the rightness of what she was about to do wrapped around her.

  Lifting her foot to take a step, Esta could feel the familiar push-pull sensation of simultaneously flying apart and collapsing in on herself. But then the bewildering dread spiked through her again like a warning.

  Something’s wrong.

  But Esta didn’t do nerves. She forced herself through the feeling, through to the past.

  Every cell in her body was on fire as the brick walls on either side of her began to blur and the cars around her began to disappear. The lights of the city dimmed, the tip of the Empire State Building started to fade, and as she began to feel the cold blast of winter from that other time, a barrage of shouts came from the mouth of the lot where Dakari’s car waited.

  Esta hesitated, her body screaming with the effort of keeping hold of her present as the past pulled at her. Her vision cleared, and she saw Dakari struggling against a trio of hooded figures, his expression determined as he fought free of them.

  I have to help him. . . .

  “Dakari!”

  “Go!” he shouted, looking at her with such determination that her hold of the present slipped.

  “Dakari!” she screamed again as gunfire erupted and she watched his large body jerk and slump to the ground. The shock of it knocked her backward, far past the place where the dirty pavement should have caught her.

  Esta couldn’t stop. She lost her grip on her own city, her own time, and was falling into light itself, barely catching herself before she landed hard, in a deep drift of snow.

  SIREN’S CALL

  February 1902—Wallack’s Theatre

  Harte Darrigan brushed a piece of lint from the front of his crimson waistcoat before checking his appearance once more in the cloudy dressing room mirror. Lifting his chin, he examined the edge of his jawline for any place the barber might have missed during his regular afternoon shave, and then he ran his fingertips over the dark, shortly cropped hair above his ears to ensure it was smooth and in place. Stepping away from the footlights didn’t mean he’d stepped offstage. His whole life had become a performance, one long con that was the closest thing to freedom he could ever have.

  A knock sounded at his dressing room door, and he frowned. “Yes?”

  The stage manager, Shorty, opened the door. “You got a minute?”

  “I’m heading out to meet someone in a few—”

  “Good. Good,” Shorty said, closing the door behind him. He had the nub of a thick cigar between his teeth, and as he talked, ash from the still-smoldering tip fluttered to the floor. “Here’s the thing—the management has been talking lately, and—”

  “This again?” Harte let out an impatient breath to hide his nerves. He knew what was coming, because they’d had a similar conversation last week. And the week before. There were too many theaters in the city, and it didn’t matter how good your act was; people got bored too quickly.

  “Yes, this again.” Shorty took the cigar from between his teeth and used it to punctuate his point, jabbing it into the air and sending more ash floating to the floor. “They run a thee-ate-er here, Darrigan,” he said, snapping out the word to emphasize the second syllable. “This is a business, and a business has to make money.”

  “They make plenty of money, and you know it,” Harte said, shrugging off the complaint as he turned to fix the knot in his cravat. “The house was decent this afternoon, and even pretty good tonight.”

  “I know. I know. But decent and pretty good ain’t enough anymore. The owners have been talking about maybe switching some things up . . . changing the acts a little.” Shorty gave him a meaningful look.

  His fingers stilled and the silk around his neck suddenly felt too tight. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I ain’t trying to say nothing. What I am saying is that you’ve gotta do something to get more people in the seats. Something new.”

  Harte turned back to Shorty. “I did add something new, or weren’t they watching? The escape I did tonight was new.  Two sets of handcuffs, shackles, and ten feet of iron chains—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You got yourself out of a locked box. Big deal. Houdini’s been breaking out of things for years now. Nobody cares anymore. You want top billing? You need something bigger. Something with some more flash.” Shorty put the cigar back between his teeth.

  Harte clenched his jaw to keep from saying something he’d regret. “Is that all?”

  “Yeah, kid. I guess that’s it.  Just wanted to tell you what’s what. Thought you’d want to know.”

  Harte didn’t thank him. He stood silent and expressionless as Shorty shrugged and took his leave. Once the door was closed and he was alone, he cleaned up the fallen ash.

  S
till unsettled, he turned to the mirror and took a deep breath before giving himself a smile, his clear gray eyes searching his reflection for any indication that his old life was showing through. There wasn’t room for a misstep or a crack in the carefully cultivated facade he presented to the world. That night, nothing could be left to chance.

  Finally satisfied, he let the smile fall from his face, as heavy and sure as a curtain falling between acts. He pulled on his gloves and coat and took up his hat from where it rested on the dressing table before extinguishing the lamp and letting himself out of his dressing room.

  It was barely past midnight, and already the theater was empty and silent. Playing this house was nothing like the rough-and-tumble theaters of the Bowery, which remained open at all hours of the night, their drunken audiences roaring for more—more skin, more laughter, more of the brittle pieces of self-respect Harte had tried to hold on to night after night.

  Harte had escaped those beer-stained halls well over a year ago, but Shorty’s warning was one more reminder that it wouldn’t take much for him to find himself back there again. With nowhere to go but farther down.

  He wouldn’t let that happen.

  Far-off sounds echoing through the cavernous building told him there were still a few stragglers left. No doubt they were gathered in the chorus girls’ dressing room, drinking Nitewein to burn off the excess energy brought on by the crowd. Or to numb the constant ache of hiding what they were.

  The theater world was filled with Mageus. The stage was a good place for those with magic to hide in plain sight, but for many in the business, using their affinity onstage made them crave it that much more. The rumbling approval of the crowd only amplified that yearning to answer the old call of magic, to embrace what they really were. Many resorted to using the opium-laced liquor to stop the resulting ache. Usually it was enough to get them through to the next performance.

  For Harte it was exactly the opposite—the applause was the only thing that made the ache any better.

  He’d been invited to their after-hours gatherings plenty of times before, but he hadn’t been invited that night. Actually, he hadn’t been invited for quite a while, come to think of it. At some point the others must have given up on their well-meaning attempts to bring him into their circle.