Viola caught her mother before the older woman could hit the ground and pulled her to her feet. Pasqualina Vaccarelli was a stout, sturdy woman, but Viola could feel her mother’s fragility, the aging that had taken some of her mother’s vitality over the past three years.
It was a risk to use her affinity here, in the open—especially with how dangerous everything had become—but Viola pushed her power into her mother, feeling for the source of the pain and finding it immediately. The gout in her mother’s joints had grown so much worse, and without hesitation, Viola directed her affinity toward it, clearing the joints that had gone stiff.
Her mother gasped, the old woman’s dark eyes meeting her daughter’s as Viola finished and withdrew her hands. Viola’s blood felt warm, her skin alive with the flexing of her magic. This was what she had been meant for. Her god had given her this gift for life, not for the deaths her brother had forced upon her.
With a look of mingled surprised and relief, her mother raised a hand calloused by years of work and laid it against Viola’s cheek. Her mouth was still turned down and her eyes were still stern, but there was gratitude in her mother’s expression now as well. “I could have used you these past years.”
“I know, Mamma,” Viola said, placing her hand atop her mother’s as she blinked back the prickling of tears. “I missed you, too.”
This, at least, was no lie. She did miss the mother she’d once known, the woman who used to sing as she hung out the wash, who had tried to teach Viola how to knead dough until it became supple, and how to press linen with her bare hands until it was smooth. Those lessons had never stuck. No matter how she tried, Viola hadn’t been built for that life. Her hands had been made to hold a blade, to wield magic. Her family had done everything they could to force her into the mold they believed was right. In the end, their expectations had just forced her away.
But now she was back. She would bend to their expectations, but she was older now. Stronger. She would not let them break her.
Her mother withdrew her hand. “I’ll talk to your brother.”
“Thank you—”
Her mother held up a hand to stop Viola’s words. “Don’t thank me. I make no guarantee. You’ll have to be ready to take whatever penance Paolo gives you . . . whatever he demands of you.”
Viola bowed her head to hide her disgust. Her mother had no idea what her darling Paolino was capable of. Viola’s mother knew only that he ran a boxing club called the New Brighton and a restaurant called the Little Naples Cafe. She understood that he knew the big men in the city, but she had no idea that her son was one of the most powerful and dangerous gang bosses on the Lower East Side or what sins Viola’s brother had demanded that Viola commit.
Viola wondered if her mother would have cared had she seen the split lip and blackened eyes she wore the first time she found her way into the safe haven of the Strega.
“Come.” Without another word, Viola’s mother began walking.
“Where are we going?” Viola asked, picturing the cramped rooms she had grown up in. But her mother was not heading in the direction of her childhood tenement.
Her mother turned back to her. “I thought you wanted me to speak with Paolo?”
“We’re going now?”
Her mother gave her a dark look tinged with suspicion. “You want we should wait?”
Yes. Viola needed time to prepare, time to ready herself for whatever her sadist of a brother had in store. But it was clear that her mother would offer only once. “No. Of course not, Mamma. Now is perfect.” She ducked her head in thanks. Submissive. “Thank you, Mamma.”
“Don’t thank me so quickly,” her mother said with a frown. “You still have to talk to Paolo.”
MOTHER OF EXILES
1902—New York
The early morning sky was heavy with clouds, and a thick mist coated the water as the ferry slouched through the Upper Bay that separated Brooklyn from New Jersey. At the stern of the ship, Esta Filosik looked like any other passenger. Her long, dark hair had been pulled back in an unremarkable style, and the worn skirt and heavy, faded traveling cloak were the sort of garments that encouraged the eye to glide past without noticing their wearer. She’d torn the hem out of the skirt to lengthen it, but otherwise the pieces fit well enough, considering that she’d liberated them from an unwatched clothesline that morning. But beneath the coarse material and rumpled wool, Esta carried a stone that could change time and a Book that could change the world itself.
She might have appeared at ease, uninterested in the far-off city skyline, now no more than a shadow in the hazy distance behind them, but Esta’s attention was sharp, aware of the few other passengers. She had positioned herself so that she could watch for any sign of danger and also so that no one could tell how much she needed the railing behind her for support.
The ship churned through the dark waters, coming up alongside Liberty Island—though it wouldn’t be called that for another fifty years—and the lady herself loomed over them, a dark shadow of burnished copper. It was the closest Esta had ever been to the statue, but even this close, it was smaller than she’d expected. Unimpressive, considering how much it was supposed to symbolize. But then, Esta knew better than most that the symbolism was as hollow as the statue. For those like herself—those with the old magic—the lady’s bright torch should have served as a warning, not a beacon, for what they’d find on these shores.
She wondered if her disappointment in the statue was an omen of things to come. Maybe the world she’d never thought to see would be equally small and unimpressive once she was finally in it.
Somehow, she doubted it would be that easy. The world was wide and vast and, for Esta, unknown. She knew everything about the city, but beyond it? She’d be working blind.
But she wouldn’t be alone.
Standing beside her at the railing was Harte Darrigan, one-time magician and consummate con man. His cap covered his dark hair and shadowed his distinctive storm-gray eyes, making him look ordinary, unassuming . . . like any other traveler. He kept it pulled low over his forehead and turned his back to the other passengers so that no one would recognize him.
Without letting Harte know she was studying him, Esta watched him out of the corner of her eye. When the bottom had fallen out of her world, she’d made the choice to come back because she’d wanted to save him. Yes, she needed an ally, someone who would stand with her in the battles to come. But she’d come back here, to this time and place, because she’d wanted that ally to be him. Because of who he was and what he’d done for her. And because of who she was with him.
But his mood was as unreadable now as it had been ever since she’d woken in the early morning to find him watching her. He must have waited up all night, because when she’d finally awoken in that unfamiliar boardinghouse room in Brooklyn, he was sitting in a rickety chair at the end of the narrow bed, his elbows propped on his knees and his eyes ringed by dark circles and filled with worry. How he had managed to get them both through those final few yards of the Brink, she still didn’t know.
She wanted to ask him. She wanted to ask so many things—about the darkness she had seen on the bridge, the way the inky black had seemed to bleed into everything. She wanted to know if he’d seen it too. Most of all, she wanted to lean into him and to take what support and warmth she could from his presence. But the way he had been looking at her had made her pause. She’d seen admiration in his eyes and frustration, distrust, and even disgust, but he’d never before looked at her like she was some fragile, broken thing.