Pressing her ear against the door, she started to rotate the dial. One click . . . two . . . the sound of metal rubbing against metal in the inner cylinders as she listened for the lock’s heartbeat.
The seconds ticked by with fatal certainty, but the longer she worked, the more relaxed she felt. She could read a lock better than she could read a person. Locks didn’t change on a whim or because of the weather, and there wasn’t a lock yet made that could hide its secrets from her. In a matter of minutes, she had three of the four numbers. She turned the dial again, on her way to the fourth—
“Esta?” Logan hissed, disrupting her concentration. “Are you finished yet?”
The last number lost, she glared over her shoulder at him. “I might be if you’d leave me alone.”
“Hurry up,” he snapped, and then ducked back into the hall, closing the door behind him.
“Hurry up,” she muttered, mimicking his imperious tone as she leaned in again to listen. Like the art of safecracking could be rushed. Like Logan had any idea how to do it himself.
When the final cylinder clicked into place, she felt an echoing satisfaction. Now to try the combinations. Only a minute more and the contents would be open to her. A minute after that and she and Logan would be gone. And Schwab would never know.
“Esta?”
She cursed. “Now what?” She didn’t look at Logan this time, keeping her focus on the second, incorrect, combination.
“Someone’s coming.” He glanced behind him. “I’m going to distract them.”
She turned to him then, saw the anxiety tightening his features. “Logan—” But he was already gone.
She thought about helping him, but dismissed that idea and instead turned back to the safe. Logan could take care of himself. Logan would take care of both of them, because that was what they did. That was how they worked. She needed to do her job and leave him to his.
Two more incorrect combinations, and the heat of the room was creeping against her skin, the scent of tobacco and wood smoke burning her throat. She wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve and tried to ignore the way her dress felt as though it would strangle her.
She tried again, dismissing the trickle of sweat easing its way down her back beneath the layers of fabric. Eight. Twenty-one. Thirteen. Twenty-five. She gave the handle a tug, and to her relief, the heavy door of the safe opened.
Outside the room, she heard the low rumble of male voices, but she was too busy scanning the vault’s contents to pay much attention. The various shelves and compartments were packed with canvas envelopes filled with stock certificates and bonds, file folders stuffed with papers, stacks of neatly bound, oversize bills. She eyed the money, disappointed that she couldn’t take even a dollar of the odd-looking money. For their plan to work, Schwab couldn’t know that anyone had been there.
She found what she was looking for on a lower shelf.
“Hello, beautiful,” she crooned, reaching for the long black box. She barely had it in her hands when the voices erupted in the hallway.
“This is an outrage! I could ruin you with a single telegram,” Logan bellowed, his voice carrying through the heavy door. “When I tell my uncle—no, my grandfather—how abysmally I’ve been treated here,” he continued, “you won’t get another contract on this side of the Mississippi. Possibly not on the other, either. No one of any account will speak to you after I—”
It must be Schwab, Esta thought, pulling a pin from her hair and starting to work on the locked box. Schwab had been trying to make his mark on the city for years. The house was one part of that, but the contents of the box were an even more important part. And it was the contents of the box that Esta needed.
“Be reasonable, Jack.” Another voice—probably Schwab’s. “I’m sure this is a simple misunderstanding—”
Panic inched along her skin as her mind caught up with the man’s words. Jack? So Schwab wasn’t the only one out there.
However good Logan might be, it was never optimal to be outnumbered. In and out fast, with minimal contact. That was the rule that kept them alive.
She wiggled the hairpin in the lock for a few seconds, until she felt the latch give way and the box popped open.
“Get your filthy hands off me!” Logan shouted, loud enough for Esta to hear. It was a sign that things were escalating too quickly for him to contain.
She set the box back on a shelf so she could lift her skirts and remove the knife hidden there. Even with the scuffle in the hall, Esta felt a flash of admiration for Mari’s handiwork as she compared the knife from her skirts to the jewel-encrusted dagger lying in the black velvet of the box. Her friend had done it again—not that she was surprised.
Mariana Cestero could replicate anything—any material from any time period, including Logan’s engraved invitation for the party that night and the six-inch dagger Esta had been carrying in the folds of her skirt. The only thing Mari couldn’t completely replicate was the stone in the dagger’s hilt, the Pharaoh’s Heart, because the stone was more than it appeared to be.
An uncut garnet rumored to be taken from one of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the stone was believed to contain the power of fire, the most difficult of all elements to manipulate. Fire, water, earth, sky, and spirit, the five elements that the Order of Ortus Aurea was obsessed with understanding and using to build its power.
They were wrong, of course. Elemental magic wasn’t anything but a fairy tale created by those without magic—the Sundren—to explain things they didn’t understand. But misunderstanding magic didn’t make the Order any less dangerous. Just because the stone didn’t control fire didn’t mean there wasn’t something special about the Pharaoh’s Heart. Professor Lachlan wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise.
Even in the soft light thrown by the fire, the garnet was polished so smoothly it almost glowed. Without trying, Esta could feel the pull of the stone, sensed herself drawn to it, not like she’d been drawn to the diamond stickpin, but on a deeper, more innate level.
After all, elemental magic might be a fairy tale, but magic itself was real enough.
Organizations like the Order of Ortus Aurea had been trying to claim magic as their own for centuries. Schwab had purchased the dagger and arranged the night’s auction in the hopes of buying his way into the Order, but since the only magic the Order possessed was artificial and corrupt ceremonial magic—pseudoscientific practices like alchemy and theurgy—they wouldn’t be able to sense what Esta could. They wouldn’t know that Mari’s stone was a fake until much later, when they were running their experiments and trying to harness the stone’s power. Even then they would assume it was Schwab who had cheated them . . . or that Schwab couldn’t tell the difference to start with. Schwab himself would believe that the antiquities dealer who’d sold him the dagger had swindled him. No one would realize the truth—the real Pharaoh’s Heart had been taken right out from under them.
Esta made the switch, placing the counterfeit dagger into the velvet-lined box and tucking the real dagger back into the hidden pocket of her skirt. It was heavier than the one she’d been carrying all night, like the Pharaoh’s Heart had an unexpected weight and density that Mari hadn’t predicted. For a moment Esta worried that maybe Schwab would notice the difference. Then she thought of the house—his overdone attempt to display the number in his bank account—and she shook off her fears. Schwab wasn’t exactly the type to understand which details mattered.