THE RETURN
1902—New York
Cela called again from her hiding place in the alleyway across from Evelyn’s building, hooting into the night like some sort of deranged owl to warn Jianyu about the boy who’d gone into the building looking like all kinds of trouble. But the building across the street was dark and quiet. There was still no sign of Jianyu.
Maybe the boy was simply going home. Maybe he wasn’t a danger after all. But Cela had been around long enough to know that her feeling about him was probably right. He was with a small group of other boys, a ragtag bunch that looked like they belonged on the streets of the Bowery—their brightly colored outfits and cocky strutting were out of place in the neighborhood where Evelyn lived.
Cela waited a moment longer and then made up her mind. She didn’t want to return to her uncle’s apartment with its cramped rooms and the family in it looking at her as though Abel’s death had been her fault. Just the thought of the way they traded glances when they didn’t think she was looking made her chest feel hollow, but it was nothing compared to the twisting vines of grief around her heart. If that boy was trouble, as she suspected, it might mean danger for Jianyu. She wasn’t going to let the people who killed Abe have even one more victory.
Resolute, she took a breath and started out from her hiding place, but she hadn’t even made it to the halo of the streetlight’s glow before she was grabbed from behind and pulled back into the shadows.
Cela tried to scream, but a broad hand was clamped over her mouth, just as tight and unyielding as the one that was wrapped around her waist.
“Shhhhh,” a voice hissed, close to her ear. “It’s me.”
If she hadn’t been supported by the strength of the arm that held her, Cela would have been on the ground. Her legs went liquid beneath her, because she recognized that voice. And it was impossible.
“I’m gonna let you go now, but keep quiet, okay?”
She nodded, tears pricking her eyes. A moment later, the hand came away from her mouth and she spun to find her brother, Abel, standing there behind her, alive and whole and every bit as real as he’d ever been. For the first time in days, it felt like she could actually breathe.
Her arms were around his neck in an instant, and she couldn’t stop the sob that welled up from inside of her.
“Shhhh,” he repeated, his strong hands patting her back. “I told you, you have to keep quiet.”
She pulled back and looked at him again, just to be sure he wasn’t some terrible trick her mind was playing on her. Her hands cupped his cheeks. “Abe. You’re dead.”
“Do I look dead?” he asked, giving her the same doubtful look he’d given her a hundred times before when she’d tried to follow him and his friends through the city, nothing but a tiny girl tagging after boys who didn’t want her.
“But how?” Her head was spinning and the vines around her heart were trading thorns for blooms. “They shot you.”
Abe gave her a look like she should have known better. “Nobody shot me, Rabbit.”
Her heart nearly broke to hear that stupid nickname on his lips again. “But I heard them,” she said, her voice cracking without her permission. “I heard the gunshot, and then your body hit the floor.”
“They tried awful hard, but I wasn’t the one who got himself killed,” he said, his expression going dark.
Abe isn’t dead. Which meant . . . for the last week, he hadn’t been dead. “Then where have you been?” she asked, realization hitting her. She’d been at her uncle’s for nearly a week, and he’d never once come for her. He’d left her to think the worst. He’d left her to deal with their family on her own. He’d left her. She smacked at his chest. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been crying myself to sleep every night over you.” She slapped his chest again. “And every morning I woke up not remembering for a second, and every morning I had to re-remember,” she said, her voice breaking. And then, because it hadn’t felt half as good as she’d wanted it to, she raised her hand to slap him again.
He caught her wrist gently. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come, but I didn’t want to lead the people who were after me to Desmond’s place,” he said, taking her by the hand. “I’ve been watching, though. Waiting for you to get far enough away for me to talk to.”
“What do you mean, the people after you?” she asked, hesitating. “They were after me. Because of Darrigan’s mother.” And the ring.
Abe shook his head. “They were from the railroad.”
“Why would the railroad come after you?” she asked.
“They were just trying to scare me off. A few of us guys have been talking with the Knights of Labor about unionizing the Pullman porters so they’d have to pay us a better wage and give us better shifts. That’s about the last thing the company wants, so they thought they could convince me to stop, but their convincing looked an awful lot like forcing.”
“So you shot them?” she asked, not understanding how the person in front of her could also be the brother she knew would never have hurt anyone intentionally.
“Things got heated, and they threatened you,” he told her, his voice as dark as the shadows around them. “Look, I have a safe place uptown to stay with some guys from the Freeman. It’ll be okay. We can talk about all the rest later.”
“Abe—”
“I promise I’ll tell you everything, but right now we have to go,” he said, starting to tug her back toward the alley.
She took three steps before she stopped and pulled her hand out of his. “But Jianyu is still in there.”
Abe nodded. “Which is why we need to go now, before he comes back.”
He reached for her again, but she held her hand out of reach. “You don’t understand. He’s a friend of mine, and—”
A carriage had just rattled to a stop across from the alley, and with a sinking weight in her stomach, Cela recognized the woman who got out of it. She walked to the mouth of the alley as Evelyn started toward the building.
No. As soon as Evelyn had closed the entry door behind her, Cela stepped out of the alleyway and started hooting again. Abe tried to pull her back, but she shrugged him off.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking at her like she had lost her mind.
“If that woman who just got out of the carriage finds him, there’s gonna be trouble. I’m not going to just leave him.”
“His trouble doesn’t concern us,” Abe said, putting his arm around her.
“It concerns me,” she said, allowing herself a moment to enjoy her brother’s warmth and strength. Abe. Alive. “Jianyu saved my life when you were off hiding without sending me so much as a word,” she told him, her voice clipped and her nerves feeling like live wires. Abe is alive. He was into more than she’d understood, but he was alive.
He was quiet a moment before he let out a long-suffering sigh. “Then I guess we’d better go in after him.”
Cela let Abe take the lead, since she knew they’d waste time arguing about it otherwise. They didn’t run into anyone or any trouble in the building, but they stopped just down the hallway from Cela’s open apartment door. She could hear someone talking, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. From the voices, she knew that Evelyn and Jianyu were still in there, and that Evelyn wasn’t happy.
“Let me go first,” Cela whispered.
“No—” Her brother was adamant.
“Evelyn knows me,” Cela explained. She didn’t tell Abe how the bitch had also locked her in a room and stolen the one thing of value Cela had left. “I can distract her long enough to get an advantage.”
“I’m not letting you—”
But Cela was already walking away from him. She didn’t really have a plan, except that she’d lost her brother once that week. She’d lived through that pain, that horrible knowledge that he was gone, and she’d do whatever she could to make sure she never had to feel that again—even if it meant putting herself between Abe and that red-haired she-devil.
She didn’t bother to knock or make any sound to introduce herself—the bigger the distraction, the better as far as Cela was concerned—but when she stepped into the open doorway and took in the scene unfolding, she realized she was in over her head. Evelyn’s eyes were lit with some unholy light and she was holding a handful of the blond boy’s hair as he knelt next to her, but across from her Jianyu had a knife to his own neck. The strain on his face was clear and his hands were shaking, like he was fighting to keep himself from pressing the blade into the soft skin of his throat.
Magic, she realized. Evelyn was one of them too. Her whole life she’d lived in the city and thought that the old magic had never touched her. She’d known it to be a dangerous force, a fearsome thing that the ordinary person had to be protected from, so it had come as an unsettling realization to know that she’d been living side by side with it all along. First Jianyu and Darrigan and now Evelyn. And while Evelyn was a dangerous hussy, Cela didn’t figure it was the magic that made her that way.
Evelyn glanced up and saw Cela standing in the doorway, and her expression turned dark and thunderous. “Ah, Cela, I’d wondered where you’d scurried off to, and here you are.” The corners of Evelyn’s painted mouth curled up to reveal her teeth. “What an unpleasant surprise. But since you’re here, do come in.”
Cela felt herself softening, wanting to move into the room even though she knew it was a bad idea. She took a step toward them without meaning to, and then she fought against taking another.
“I was just entertaining a couple of unexpected guests,” Evelyn told her. “Or rather, I should say, I was just teaching a couple of thieves a lesson. Perhaps you’d like to join us?”
“I’m just here for my friend. And what you took from me,” Cela said, gritting her teeth against the strange pull she felt. Even though she knew what Evelyn was, what the woman was capable of, Cela felt drawn to her, enticed by her.
“You mean this?” Evelyn lifted her hand, and the ring that Darrigan had gifted Cela flashed in the light. “You’re welcome to try to take it from me.” She laughed. “Though I doubt a Sundren like you could manage.”
Cela’s feet were inching toward Evelyn. One and then the other, no matter how she fought. Abe. I need Abe.
She got the burst of a gunshot in answer.
The sound echoed through the cramped room as Evelyn crumpled to the floor with a gasp, grabbing her right arm. At the same moment, Jianyu dropped the knife he’d been holding and collapsed to his knees, his breathing heavy, and the boy Evelyn had been holding by the hair fell to the floor. He seemed too dazed to get himself up.
Abe was standing in the doorway, a pistol sure in his hand. “Let’s go,” he said.
“You shot her,” Cela said, the shock of it still fresh and numbing as she watched Evelyn grab her arm, writhing in pain. The brother she’d known wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Who is this man who looks so much like him?
She’d been content to see him through little-girl eyes for so long that she hadn’t realized how strong and certain he’d become. But she should have. For two years Abel had taken care of her and protected her after their father had been killed. For two years he’d been her rock. She should have known that he would have had their father’s sureness and their mother’s stubborn strength inside of him, just as she did.
Cela turned back to the scene behind her. The blond boy lay there, not moving, as Jianyu climbed to his feet and went to Evelyn. He took her hand and tried to pull the ring from it, but even with her injured arm, she lashed out at him. He drew back, out of her reach.
“We have to go,” Cela told him.
Jianyu glanced at her, his expression still slightly dazed and his forehead damp with the exertion of what he’d been through. “We can’t leave without the ring.”
“Then you’d better get it fast,” Abel said. “Somebody will have heard the shot.” He had Cela by the hand, but if her feet had moved on their own a moment before, it seemed like she couldn’t move them at all now.
Evelyn was struggling up from the floor, her eyes glowing again with that strange, unholy light. “Come and get it,” she purred, taunting Jianyu. “If you can . . .”
But Jianyu’s face had gone slack, and his body was suddenly deathly still.
“Jianyu?” Cela asked, ignoring how her brother was trying to pull her from the room.
Jianyu was on his feet and his eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
Even as blood pooled beneath her, Evelyn was laughing, a deeply maniacal cackling that twisted into the pit of Cela’s stomach. She took a step back.
“That’s right,” Evelyn said to Cela. “Run away. Run far, far away, little Cela.” She laughed again, her face pale and her voice ragged. “The boys are mine.”
“We can’t leave them here.” She ripped herself away from Abel and went to Jianyu, whose gaze was on some unseen thing in the distance. He wasn’t listening to her, but she could tug him along. “Get the other one.”
With a ragged grumble, Abe released Cela’s hand long enough to scoop up the blond boy from the floor. “Now can we go?” he asked. “Or is there anyone else you want me to collect and carry for you?”
Evelyn was on the floor, trying to pull herself up as she grabbed her bleeding arm, and everything was chaos, but Cela felt a laugh bubbling up. With all the mess they were in, Abe was alive. As long as she had him, the rest didn’t matter.
By the time they were in the stairwell, Jianyu had come back to himself and was walking under his own power. “The ring,” he said, when they reached the bottom of the steps. He started to turn back.
“No.” Cela tugged at him.
“We can’t let her have it,” he argued, trying to break loose from her grip, but she could feel how gently he treated her.
“You go back there now, you’re going to be arrested for trying to kill a white woman,” Abe told him.
From the expression on Jianyu’s face, he wanted to argue.
“Can you get back in without her knowing?” Cela asked.
Jianyu met her gaze, and she saw the calculations play out in his mind. Finally he shook his head. “Even if she can’t see me, she could sense me.”
“Then you can’t go back,” she told him. “Not now.”
“But the ring—”
“It won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead,” Cela said. “We’ll come back for it. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Abe snapped. “We can’t be here when the police arrive.”
The blond didn’t stir, so Abe didn’t put him down. They ran into the night, leaving Evelyn howling behind them.