THE SIREN
1902—New York
The sun was already climbing into the sky as the streetcar rumbled north through the city. Jianyu kept himself tucked back into a corner, careful not to touch anyone and reveal his presence, until they reached the stop at Broadway, close to Wallack’s Theatre, where Harte Darrigan had once performed. Cela’s neighbors believed she’d fled from the house because she was guilty of the fire, but Jianyu suspected otherwise. He was not sure where she would go, but he hoped she would eventually return here, to the theater where she worked.
Keeping the light around him was easier now, with the morning sun providing ample threads for him to grasp and open around him. When he reached Wallack’s, Jianyu looked up to find familiar eyes watching him from above.
It was only a painting, a large multistoried advertisement for the variety acts to be found inside, but Harte Darrigan’s gaze seemed to be steady on Jianyu—though whether it felt like a warning or encouragement, he could not have said.
Still concealed by his affinity, Jianyu surveyed the theater from across the street. He could wait and watch for Cela to arrive, but he decided that inside there might be some hint of where else she would go. Keeping his affinity close, he crossed the street to the stage door. After picking the lock, he slipped into the darkened theater and began searching for some sign of Cela in the area backstage.
Inside, the theater waited, dark and silent. Jianyu had never set foot in Wallack’s before, or any of the Broadway houses that advertised their shows on bright electric marquees. He had taken in a show at the Bowery Theatre once, when he had first arrived in the city, but it had been a noisy, raucous affair in a house tattered and broken by the usual crowd. Wallack’s was different. It looked like a palace, and Jianyu had a feeling that it would still feel like one, even when the house was full.
He followed the narrow halls back, deeper into the theater, passing dressing room after dressing room. But Cela was not a performer. She would not be given her name on a door. No . . . she would be somewhere else, somewhere quieter. He continued on in the darkness until he came to steps that led down into the belly of the building.
The cellar smelled of dust and mold, of freshly cut wood and the sharpness of paint. It was darker there, but darkness was rarely without some strands of light within it. He took out the bronze mirror disks that helped him focus his affinity and used them to open the meager strands of light, keeping himself concealed as he moved through the cellar.
Jianyu saw the light that flickered behind him before he heard the voice that accompanied it. “Can I help you?”
He turned to find a woman with hair as bright as luck itself staring in his direction.
She cannot possibly see me. . . .
“I know you’re there,” she said, her eyes steady. Her face was pale as a ghost in the darkness. “I can feel you. You might as well show yourself before I call for someone.”
Jianyu stayed still and quiet, barely allowing himself a breath as he considered his options.
“Just so you know, this staircase is the only way out.” Her expression never shifted. “I know what you are,” she told him, her eyes still not quite finding him. “I can feel you.”
Without any warning, he felt the tendrils of warmth—of magic—brushing against him. She was Mageus, like him. He could try to escape as he was, but if she had magic, who knew what she was capable of? Better to face her now than to find himself trapped. Perhaps they might even be allies.
He released his hold on the light and watched as her eyes found him in the darkness of the basement.
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked with a smile.
“I meant no harm,” he told her, keeping his chin tipped down so that the brim of his hat would keep his features shadowed.
“You’re here awful early,” she said. Her magic was still brushing at him, like warm fingers running down the length of his neck, caressing his cheek and making his blood burn with something that felt suspiciously like desire.
“I am looking for someone,” he said, trying to block the temptation of those warm tendrils.
“Well, it looks like you found someone,” she said with a too-welcoming smile as she came the rest of the way down the stairs toward him.
He swallowed. Hard. “I am looking for a Miss Johnson . . . a Miss Cela Johnson,” he said, fighting the urge to go to the woman. From the looks of it, she was wearing nothing more than a silken robe, and each movement she made threatened to expose more of the creamy flesh beneath.
“Who is it that’s looking?” she asked, taking another step toward him.
The warm tendrils of magic were growing stronger now, and in the back of his mind Jianyu registered their danger. “She would not know me,” he said, fighting the pull of the woman. “But we have a mutual friend.”
The woman took another step toward him, her eyes glittering and her dark lips quirking with something that looked like amusement. He imagined it was the same sort of expression a mouse saw just before a cat pounced. “Does this mutual friend have a name?” she asked, taking yet another step. She was on the same level as he was now.
“I would prefer to keep that between Miss Johnson and myself,” he said as she continued to walk toward him.
“Would you?” The woman tsked at him. “Well, that’s a crying shame, seeing as there isn’t any Cela Johnson here.”
“I see. . . .” It was a lie. He could see it clear as day on the woman’s pale face. In another two steps, she would be close enough to touch him, and he knew somehow that he could not let that happen. “Then I suppose I should take my leave—”
She lunged for him, but he pulled the mirrors from his pockets and, in a fluid motion, raised them as he spun away from her. The weak light wrapped around him and he ran, leaving the red-haired woman trying to catch herself as she tumbled to the floor.
If Cela Johnson was not there, the red-haired woman knew something about where she had gone, he thought as he took the steps two by two and sprinted for the theater’s exit. He would retreat for the moment, but he would not leave until he searched the theater again. And he would not give up until he found her.