DRAGGED UNDER
1902—New York
Even from her place far back in the crowd, Ruby Reynolds could feel the heat of the strange flames that were consuming the engine house. Now that she was standing amid the rabble and the crowd, she could tell for herself that what was happening had everything to do with magic. A moment before something had changed, and the water that had been streaming from the hoses began to have an effect on the flames.
The crowd had not liked that, not at all.
“We need to go,” Theo said, using his body as a shield against the restlessness of the crowd.
“Just a minute more,” she pleaded. “If we could only get a little closer . . .”
“We’re not going any closer,” he told her in a tone he rarely used on her.
“But, Theo—”
She barely had his name on her tongue when the crowd surged and she stumbled with it to the left. Suddenly, she was aware that what had been avid interest colored by excitement when she and Theo arrived had quickly turned to frustration, maybe even anger. Once, when she was younger, her father had taken her and her sisters to Coney Island to play in the surf, and she had ventured too far into the waves and had been dragged under. Being caught up in the suddenly raucous crowd reminded her of that moment, and she felt the same pang of betrayal she’d felt as a child when the water had turned against her.
At the time, her father had caught her up under the arms and set her back on her feet as though nothing had happened. Now Theo did what he could to shield her from the other bodies that were pressing and shoving against them, the dear, but it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
It was unbearably exciting.
From the look on his face, Theo didn’t feel the same. The poor dear. He always had been so buttoned up and careful. But he’d also been her truest friend, through everything—her father’s breakdown and the embarrassment it had caused her family and her mother’s meddling to get all her daughters married off after his death. And then there was society’s constant judgment. Not that she cared a fig for their judgment, but society made things so much harder than they needed to be. And through all of it, Theo had been there.
She was the worst sort of person to put him through this, and yet, if she could just figure out how the fire started—
“Ruby!” The voice cut through the noise around them. “Theo!”
Ruby turned and realized it was Viola, her violet eyes blazing with something that looked incredibly like fear. “Viola?”
She barely had time to recognize a warmth flush through her that had nothing to do with the fire before the crowd surged, pushing them to the left. Ruby staggered away from Theo, losing her balance, and fell into Viola. She had a moment to appreciate the other girl’s strength. Viola was shorter than Ruby herself, but beneath the softness of her curves, her body was sturdy and strong enough to keep Ruby on her feet.
For a moment the connection between them felt absolutely undeniable. Her stomach fluttered as her chest went tight, and she felt the entire world narrow down to the piercing violet of Viola’s darkly lashed eyes.
Viola froze, her arms going rigid around Ruby, and in that moment, the crowd fell away and there was a roaring in her ears as she was sure, sure that Viola had felt the same energy between them. But Viola simply set Ruby upright again and stepped back.
“Come on,” Viola told them, taking hold of Ruby’s wrist. “You need to get out of here. This way.”
The warmth that had coursed through Ruby just a moment before cooled, but her skin was still hot where Viola’s fingers circled her wrist. She tried to jerk away, but Viola held firm and turned to her.
“We need to go. Now,” Viola commanded, glancing to Theo for support.
“She’s right,” he told her, his expression apologetic. “It’s not safe here.”
Safe? What was safety but a cage? Her whole life had been designed to keep her safe—away from trouble, away from harm—away from anything real or important. No. She’d made the decision that she wasn’t interested in “safe” the day they found her father in his study, driven mad by his own obsession with safety. He’d tried to master magic, just as the men in the Order had instructed, and it had mastered him instead. No, not just mastered him, destroyed him—and it had nearly destroyed her entire family along with him.
Now Ruby was interested only in truth, and the truth was that no male journalist in her position would run because of a little scuffle.
“I can’t leave now,” she told her. “I need to find out what happened. The story—”
“It’s not safe here for you,” Viola said, pulling at her arm.
“I don’t care,” Ruby said, her face creased in frustration.
“Ruby—” Theo tried.
“No, Theo. We came to see the fire, and I’m going to see the fire.” She turned to Viola, her veins warming with her determination. “If the flames weren’t natural, I need to know. Don’t you see how important this is?”
“It won’t be important if you’re dead,” Viola said, struggling to stay upright in the tumultuous crowd.
There were worse things than dying, Ruby thought, thinking of her father in the sanitarium upstate before he died finally and her sisters, who sometimes loved their husbands but often did not. And of herself, forced to live stuck in a narrow slice of a life that should be so much bigger, so much wider.
“I think we should listen to Miss Vaccarelli,” Theo told her. The traitor.
But Ruby shook her head and pushed her way farther into the crowd.
She hadn’t gone more than three steps when a man nearby threw a punch that transformed the crowd into a cascading wave of violence. The people around her shoved, some diving into the fray and others desperately trying to retreat, and in that moment, she had the first inkling of fear. She stumbled back, and Theo was there, just as he always was.
Please, his familiar eyes pleaded, and as much as she wanted to be stronger, as much as she wanted to stand firm, she couldn’t deny him. She gave him a nod, and together they followed the path that Viola was cutting through the crowd.
They were nearly there, nearly to the edge of the madness. A few steps more, Ruby thought, and they would be safe. But they’d barely reached the edge of the crush of bodies when the sound of sirens erupted through the air—the police were coming. In response, the crowd surged again, and as Ruby tried to regain her balance, a gunshot exploded over the noise and Theo’s hand let go of hers.
She looked back in time to see him falling, the brightness of his blood blooming like a carnation tucked into his lapel.