“I am not a boy,” Jack said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been studying the occult arts, learning everything I can to understand the hermetical sciences and the threats the old magic poses, and still you refuse to recognize the progress I’ve made or to see me as an equal.”
“That’s because you are not an equal,” Morgan said, his voice absolutely cold in its dismissal. “You imagine yourself the hero of some grand drama, but you are not even the fool. Do you honestly believe the Order is not aware of the growing threats? You’re not the only one who has seen that Ellis Island has turned out to be a disappointment, that every new arrival threatens the very fabric of our society. Why do you think we’ve organized the Conclave?” Morgan shook his head, clearly disgusted. “You are nothing more than an insolent pup, too concerned with your own ego to see how little you know. The Inner Circle’s work does not concern you, and yet your own arrogance and recklessness have cost more than you can even imagine.”
“But the Mageus—”
“The Mageus are our concern, not yours. You think yourself somehow more aware, more intelligent than men who have years of experience beyond yours?” he scoffed.
“The Order is too focused on Manhattan. It doesn’t realize—”
“The work of the Order goes far beyond keeping a few ragged immigrants in their place in the Bowery. You imagine me an old man, out of touch with the realities of the world, but you are the one who does not understand. The country is at a turning point. Not just our city, but the country as a whole, and there are more forces at work than you can comprehend, more forces than you are even aware of.”
He leaned forward slightly, a movement more menacing than conspiratorial. “The Order has a plan—or we had one before Darrigan mangled it. The Conclave at the end of the year was to be our crowning achievement, a meeting to bring together all the branches of our brotherhood, and the Order was to prove our dominance—our readiness to lead—and once and for all to wipe the dangers of feral magic from our shores. But you brought vipers into our midst. Now, because of you, everything we have worked for is at risk.”
“So let me stay,” Jack demanded. “I have knowledge that could be useful. Let me help you. My machine—”
“Enough!” Morgan’s bulbous nose twitched, as though he smelled something rotten. “You’ve done more than enough. Go to Cleveland. Keep your head down. Look around and learn a thing or two about how the world really works. And perhaps, if you manage not to make an even bigger ass of yourself, we’ll let you come back and visit for Christmas.”
BLOOD AND WATER
1902—New York
Viola Vaccarelli pretended to examine the produce of one of the Mott Street vendors as she watched the door of the church across the street. The shop’s owner, an older man with his long, graying hair plaited neatly down his back, stood at the doorway watching her warily. She wondered if this was what Jianyu would look like as the years passed. But the memory of Jianyu, who Dolph had trusted to be his spy—and who had abandoned them all on the bridge—made Viola’s thoughts turn dark.
When the shopkeeper took a step back, Viola realized that she had been scowling. To make amends, she pulled her mouth into a feeble attempt at a smile. The man blinked, his brow creasing even more, as though he knew her for the predator she was.
Basta. Let him be nervous. A tiger didn’t apologize for its teeth, and Viola didn’t have time to make nice with some stranger. She offered him a few coins for the ripe pear she’d selected, and he reached out tentatively to take them.
Across the street, the side door of the church opened and the first of the worshippers appeared. Viola stepped away from the old man, not bothering to wait for her change, and watched as a stream of women emerged from the side entrance of the church. They were mostly older, though there were a few younger women whose faces were already starting to show the same lines that mapped over their mothers’. They were the unmarried daughters—girls who had been unfortunate in their search for a husband and who still lived under their families’ roof and rule. Viola had refused that future. She had turned her back on her family and on every expectation they held for her.
And now she would have to pay for it.
The older women wore the uniform of their generation: sturdy dark skirts, heavy, shapeless cloaks, and a fazzoletto copricapo made from lace or plain linen to cover their heads and preserve their modesty and humility before the lord and everyone else in the neighborhood. Viola had also pulled a scarf over her dark hair for the morning, but she had little interest in modesty. Concealment was her aim.
To anyone else, the line of Italian women might have seemed indistinguishable, but Viola could have picked out her mother in a crowd of a thousand such women. The way her mother’s heavy body swayed as she turned west toward the blocks of Mulberry Street had been the rhythm of Viola’s childhood.
It had been three years since Viola had spoken to her mother or had even seen any of her family, though they lived no more than a few blocks from the Bella Strega. But in the streets of the Bowery, a few blocks were the difference between the safety of home and crossing the wrong gang. Not that Viola worried too much about that . . . She could take care of herself and anyone else who might think to bother her.
Her mother’s sturdy hands fluttered like birds as she spoke to the woman who walked beside her. Those hands could strangle a chicken or make the most delicate casarecce. They could wipe away a tear . . . or leave a mark that stung for days.
I should leave her be. She would find another way.
Without thinking, Viola reached for the blade she always kept at her side, the stiletto she’d named Libitina after the Roman goddess of funerals . . . and found it missing. She had launched it at Nibsy Lorcan the day before to protect Esta, the girl she had begrudgingly come to like. But in the confusion of the bridge, Viola had not been able to retrieve it. Now Esta was gone—the girl had disappeared as though she’d never existed—and so was Libitina, into Nibsy Lorcan’s keeping. Viola was on her own, without friends or allies, but it was the absence of the knife she felt most acutely, as though she’d lost a part of herself.
She would get back her blade . . . eventually. For the time being, Libitina’s replacement was secure in the sheath strapped against her thigh. It wasn’t the same, though. The steel of this blade didn’t speak to her in the same way, and the unfamiliar weight of the knife felt wrong, as though a matter of a few grams could leave Viola herself unbalanced.
But Viola had needed something to protect herself. The Bowery was in chaos. The already-corrupt police force had become more emboldened in the past few days. Under the direction of the Order, they’d been ransacking the lower part of Manhattan to find the Mageus who had stolen the Order’s treasures from Khafre Hall. Viola had been part of that team. Led by Dolph Saunders, they had been on a mission to take the Ars Arcana, a book with untold power. Dolph had believed the Book could restore magic and free them all from the Order’s control—and from the Brink.
Now Dolph was dead, and the thought of him laid out, pale and lifeless, on the bar top of the Strega still had the power to rob Viola of breath. He’d been a true friend to her, and she’d come to trust him—to depend upon his steadiness—even after her life had taught her never to trust. But Dolph was gone, along with the Book and any dream of freedom or a future different from the present’s drudgery.