A BIDDABLE GIRL
1902—New York
Viola was mad at her for sending the note. Viola hadn’t said anything specifically, but Ruby knew that the fire in the other girl’s eyes had everything to do with being summoned. It wasn’t what Ruby had intended to do, and yet now she could see that it was what she’d done just the same. She’d summoned Viola, the way she might call for her maid or ring for the cook to make her some tea. And somehow Theo had just made it worse by suggesting that they take one of the rowboats out onto the lake.
But Ruby found that no matter how quick her brain or how smart her tongue might be in any other situation, whenever she was around Viola, they both failed her. With Viola’s violet eyes glaring at her, she hadn’t been able to do much more than nod weakly.
“This is a terrible idea,” she whispered as she walked next to Theo, with Viola trailing behind them.
“Why’s that?” Theo asked, glancing over at her.
“Because she hates me,” Ruby said, soft enough that Viola couldn’t hear.
“She’s a source, Ruby. Treat her like any other source. She doesn’t need to like you. She needs to help you.”
He was right, of course, but it certainly didn’t feel that way.
Things didn’t improve when the attendant who prepared the rowboat for them suggested that their servant could wait on the bench near the boat shed.
“No,” Ruby said, her cheeks heating with absolute mortification. “She’s coming with us.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Viola’s head whip around at her. “I mean to say, she’s not my servant—our servant. She’s our . . .” What, exactly, was Viola?
“Our friend will be coming along,” Theo said, breaking in to rescue her.
Not that it stopped the heat that had already climbed up Ruby’s neck and into her cheeks. Her skin would be blotchy and red. It was mortifying. Really, it was.
Viola was silent as they clambered into the boat and the attendant pushed them off into the water. Theo began rowing in long, slow pulls, causing the boat to glide away from the shore and into the center of the lake.
It was a beautiful day, just as Theo had said. Any other time, Ruby might have enjoyed the outing, floating on the water far from the worries and responsibilities that she usually carried with her. Weightless and serene. When she was just a girl, she had positively loved it when her father would bring her and her sisters down to the park, especially on early spring days like this one, when it seemed like the city would be in bloom at any moment.
But that was before everything happened. Theo had brought her a couple of times last summer, trying to cheer her up, but nothing worked for that better than work itself.
This was work, she reminded herself. But with Viola glaring at her, Ruby found it decidedly uncomfortable.
Viola was just so . . . much. It wasn’t that she was large. She was even shorter than Ruby herself, and she certainly wasn’t fat or even plump. But Viola’s body had the curves and softness that Ruby’s did not. She wasn’t any older than Ruby, but somehow she looked like a woman rather than a girl. There was experience in her eyes. Knowledge.
Oh, but her poor face.
Viola noticed Ruby staring again and hitched her shawl up farther to cover her bruise.
Someone had hit her. Someone had hurt her, and it made Ruby want to destroy them in return.
Theo was whistling some unnameable melody as he moved them in slow, looping circles around the lake.
“Yes, well . . .” It was an inane thing to say. “We should talk.”
Viola didn’t reply. She simply waited expectantly, and Ruby, who always knew what to say, didn’t know where to begin. It was vexing the way Viola stared at her as though she could see right through her, down to the parts that she hid from everyone except Theo—to the parts she hid even from Theo. In all the ballrooms she’d been in, swirled about in the arms of countless beaus, Ruby had never felt half as unsure of herself as she did with Viola’s eyes on her.
Ruby took out her small tablet and pencil. It was a simple enough action, but it helped to center her a bit. “What do you know of your brother’s association with John Torrio, Miss Vaccarelli?”
“Torrio is one of his guys,” Viola said. “Paolo, he’s grooming Torrio to take a stake in his businesses. He likes him,” she said with no little disgust. Her nose wrinkled, a clear indication that she thought differently.
“And your brother,” Ruby said, focusing the notes she was writing so she wouldn’t have to look into Viola’s eyes again. “What can you tell me about his businesses?”
“He has the New Brighton and the Little Naples Cafe, which are the ones our mother knows of, and then he has the Five Pointers.” She listed out a few more things, a couple of brothels and other connections that Paul Kelly had, but they weren’t anything Ruby didn’t already know. “My brother is un coglione . . . how do you say? He’s not a nice man. A bastard not by birth, but by choice.”
Ruby believed every word of what Viola was telling her, but other newspapers had already dealt with Paul Kelly’s connections to the underbelly of the city. It wasn’t what Ruby was interested in.
“He sent John Torrio to kill me, didn’t he?” Ruby asked, finally looking up from her paper. But this time it was Viola who wouldn’t look at her. “It’s okay,” she told Viola. “I know you were there, but I know you didn’t want to hurt me.” She laid her hand on the other girl’s knee.
Viola’s eyes flashed up to meet hers, and, embarrassed and suddenly too warm, Ruby drew her hand away.
“Do you know why Torrio was sent to kill me, Miss Vaccarelli?”
Viola shook her head. “You wrote something they didn’t like so much.”
“Exactly. I wrote a story about a train accident, and it had nothing at all to do with Paul Kelly or any of his Five Pointers.” Viola’s brows had drawn together, but she didn’t speak. Her eyes instead seemed to urge Ruby on. “The story was about a derailment outside the city, nine days ago. There was a man on that train, a friend of Theo’s from school—”
“I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend,” Theo said dryly. “Especially not now . . .”
“They were acquaintances,” Ruby corrected, trying to keep her own temper from erupting. “He told the medics who rescued him that he saw a man on the train who should have already been dead. When they pulled him out, he’d hit his head pretty badly, but he was talking about Mageus—about a magician named Harte Darrigan and a girl.”
Viola’s eyes widened slightly. “Harte Darrigan?”
Viola knows that name. But Ruby didn’t know what that meant. “And a girl,” she repeated. “I talked Theo into getting me access to this man, Jack Grew. He either didn’t know who I was or he didn’t care, because he told me everything that happened. It was a monumental scoop. And the Order did everything they could to kill it, up to and including trying to have me killed. So you see, I have a very personal stake in all of this. I will not be silenced, Miss Vaccarelli. I will not go be the good, biddable girl that they want me to be. I will expose them, and I will do everything I can to destroy the Order’s power in this city.” She paused, forcing her anger and impatience back down. “But this is bigger than the Order.”
“It is?” Viola asked, her expression thoughtful and serious.
Ruby nodded. “If Jack Grew was right—and I think he was, considering the lengths the Order has gone to, all to shut me up—that train derailment wasn’t an accident. It was an attack. And it was done with magic.”