SURFACING
1902—New York
When Jack opened his eyes, the light in the room was lavender. It was like being inside a damn flower. And he felt heavy . . . impossibly heavy, especially his left arm, which had been pinned across his abdomen with some sort of binding. He couldn’t seem to move his fingers, but with the lavender light, he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. Even if his head felt like it would split in two.
They must have given him something—some drug to dull the pain—because the room around him felt very far away, as though he were seeing it through a tunnel. But how did he get there?
There had been the ambulance. He remembered the bone-aching bumping of the carriage as it carried him to the hospital. . . . But this was not the hospital. Slowly but surely the room started to come more into focus. The walls were covered in a floral brocade, and above, the canopy of the bed dripped with lace.
It came to him then where he was—this was one of the spare guest rooms in his mother’s house. Not ideal and yet also not terrible. Considering the temper his uncle had unleashed—how long ago had it been?—his family could just as well have left him alone in a cold, public hospital. Or worse, they could have kept to their word and shipped him westward, injured or not. It seemed that he’d been given a reprieve. A second chance of sorts. He would damn well use it.
Just as soon as he could move . . .
Jack lay there for a long while, his gaze tracing the looping patterns of the lace above his head, his brain feeling thick and heavy. Little by little, the events that had brought him to his mother’s spare bedroom began to come back to him.
The train . . . Darrigan and the girl . . .
He remembered suddenly the moment when the medics had given him the coat that was not his and he had realized what was contained within its pocket. The Book.
With a start, he tried to sit up, but the smallest movement had his head splitting and his whole arm aching. He groaned and allowed his body to slump back into the softness of the bed. Jack couldn’t remember the hospital or whatever had happened to him there, so he couldn’t be sure of what had happened to the Book. Did they find it in the coat? Did they take it? He needed to know.
The door opened, and a young maid poked her head into the room. She was a bit skinnier than he usually preferred, but her skin was clear and her brown hair would probably float down over her shoulders if he unpinned it from the severe bun she wore.
Considering the state of his head and his arm, that would have to wait, he supposed.
“Mr. Grew?” The girl hesitated before she stepped fully into the room. When he didn’t respond, she stepped closer to him. When she called his name again, he allowed his eyelids to flutter open, pretending that he was only just waking. “Are you awake, then? You’ve got visitors, if you’re up for it today?”
“Water?” He was surprised at how hoarse he sounded.
“Of course,” she said before she scurried off to get him a cup of water. When she returned, she held the cup out at arm’s length, but he didn’t bother to reach for it.
“My arm,” he rasped. “If you could just . . .”
She regarded him warily, but stepped closer to the bedside to help him with the water. He could tell she was nervous, and it warmed something in him to know that even laid out on the bed as he was, she still understood him to be a threat.
Jack took his time sipping the water and enjoying the girl’s nearness. She smelled of the soap they used on the bed linens and of the sweetness of fear. As he sipped, she kept her gaze trained on the glass she held in her slender fingers, refusing to meet his eyes. When he finished the last bit, just before she could pull the glass away, he used his free hand to grasp her wrist and was gratified to hear her sharp intake of breath.
Her wrist was as delicate as the rest of her. It felt temptingly fragile beneath his fingers, and he had the strangest idea that he could crush it as easily as the bones of a bird without much effort at all. But he did not tighten his grip, and she did not try to pull away. Instead, her cheeks flushed an attractive pink as her wide eyes met his.
“You must be feeling better if you’re already accosting the help,” a voice said from the entrance to the room.
The maid took the opportunity offered by Jack’s momentary distraction to free herself from his grasp and scurry back from his bedside. Her movement revealed the source of the voice—it was one of the Barclay boys, the younger one, whom he’d been in school with. Thaddeus or Timothy or Theodore. “Theo . . .”
From Theo’s flash of a smile, Jack had guessed right. Yes, it was Theo Barclay who had entered the room like they’d been friends all along, instead of bare acquaintances. And with him was a girl who put the maid completely out of Jack’s mind.
“Glad to see that you’re not half as bad as everyone made it sound,” Theo said, stepping aside so the maid could get by. “You remember I told you about my fiancée?”
Jack didn’t, of course, but even with the drugs leaving his mind heavy and dull, he still had enough social graces to lie. “Of course,” he murmured, wondering why in the hell any man would bring his fiancée to another man’s bedside.
“Theo heard that you’d been hurt, and he simply had to come see you,” the girl said, her voice a soft fluttering thing, as utterly female as she was. “I hope you don’t mind that I came along.” She licked nervously at pink lips. “I know we haven’t been formally introduced yet. . . .”
Jack decided that he didn’t care why Theo had brought his fiancée, because the girl was a sight to behold. The purple light of the room complemented her creamy complexion and fair hair, as though it had been drawn just for her. She was dressed in what might have looked like an ordinary day dress on anyone else, but the high neck was made of a pale lace that looked so delicate, it was nearly sheer.
“I’m not overly interested in formalities,” Jack said, wishing like hell he knew what he was wearing under the bedsheets. “I can’t offer you any refreshments, since my maid seems to have absconded with the water glass, but feel free to have a seat anywhere you’d like.”
“We won’t be staying that long,” Theo said with another good-humored smile. “We just wanted to check in on you. You had quite the luck, didn’t you?”
“Did I?” Jack wondered aloud. Considering that he was stuck in a bed, his arm and head hurting like hell, he didn’t feel particularly lucky.
“I’d say,” Theo told him with a sure nod. “I’ve seen the pictures in the papers—the destruction was just incredible. After the stories that have been going around town, I half expected you to be at death’s door.”
“Stories?” Jack asked, trying to piece together the missing parts of his memory from Theo’s words. There was a train.
“Rumors,” Theo amended. “You know how our mothers can be when they sit around and gossip over tea.”
Jack could only imagine what his mother and the other women who sat around clucking over the news of the day might have said about him. “I’m fine,” he grumbled, trying to sit up again. But another sharp pain jolted through his arm, and he hissed as he sank back into bed. Like some feeble old man. Weak.
The girl took a step forward. “Is there anything we can do—”
“No,” he growled, and then, realizing how her eyes had widened at the force of his tone, he softened his voice despite the pain that throbbed through his head. “No. I’m fine. The train derailed?” he asked, trying to remember.
“The authorities aren’t entirely sure what happened,” Theo said. “But from the pictures, it looked like the earth itself opened up. You’re damn lucky—your car was turned on its side, but intact. The car after yours? It looked like the explosion ripped right through it. The tracks and everything else were just . . . gone. Some of the papers are calling you a hero for making it out alive.”
“And the others?” Jack asked. Because there were always others.
“One of the papers got ahold of the doctor who treated you at the site of the wreckage,” the girl told him. “He said that you had been conscious when they pulled you out and that you told him you knew who caused the derailment.”
“I did?” Jack asked, trying to recall the moments after the crash. It was a blur of pain and confusion, but he did remember one thing more clearly now. Darrigan and the girl. Then it came to him—
“They disappeared,” Jack said, talking to himself more than them. Which was impossible. People don’t just disappear, unless . . .
No. How could he have missed it? But it made sense—a sick sort of sense. How else could Darrigan have duped him so easily? How else could the girl have fooled him with her lies? How could either of them have escaped from Khafre Hall without some sort of feral power? They’re Mageus.
“Disappeared?” the girl asked. “Who disappeared?”
“Harte Darrigan and the girl,” Jack said, his voice rough with the hatred he felt for them. They had taken his free will and used him, just as the witch in Greece had.
“Harte Darrigan . . . the magician?” the girl asked, stepping closer.
“He was on that train,” Jack told them. “He was in the car with me before everything happened. I saw him. And the girl.”
Jack saw the way Theo and his girl traded questioning glances. They didn’t even bother to hide their skepticism. It was the same type of look people had traded when he’d been dragged back from Greece. They’d thought he’d simply been a lovesick fool then. He’d tried to explain that he hadn’t been lovestruck but bespelled. There had been one night of drinking that he couldn’t quite remember, and then . . . he hadn’t been able to break apart from her after. Not until his cousin had shown up to remove him.
Jack’s embarrassment had burned through any gratitude he might have felt for the rescue. Now his anger at being abused again was the glue holding him together.
“They’re con artists and thieves, both of them,” Jack told Theo, growing more and more agitated. “They ruined me when they destroyed Khafre Hall and took the Order’s most prized treasures, and now they’re trying to ruin me again.”
“You do know that Darrigan is dead, don’t you?” Theo asked, his voice careful. “It was all over the papers—he jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge the day before the accident.”
“Did anyone find his body?” Jack asked.
“I’m not sure,” Theo said, uncertain.
“Then how can you know he’s dead?” Jack asked.
“They didn’t find his body in the wreckage, either,” Theo pointed out. “If he was in the same car as you, he would have been located.” But his tone was too patient, too condescending, and it made Jack bristle.
“I told you,” Jack said, his patience fraying. “He disappeared. They both did. There wouldn’t have been a body to find.”
The two traded glances again, and Jack felt fury building.
“I know what I saw—Darrigan and the girl were on the train with me. I’d just cornered them and was about to apprehend them. Ask the station police. . . . There was one of them on the car as well.”
Theo frowned. “There was an officer on the same car as you, but he didn’t make it.”
“You truly think that Darrigan and this girl caused a massive train derailment?” the girl asked. There was less doubt than interest in her voice now. “And then you think he disappeared. The only way that could be true is if he were—”
“Mageus,” Jack said, supplying the word.
“But the Brink,” she pressed, taking yet another step toward Jack’s bed. “There haven’t been any verifiable reports of feral magic outside the city borders for years. If Darrigan is Mageus, he wouldn’t have been able to pass through it.”
“I told you, he stole the Order’s artifacts. . . .” Jack considered this, turning the problem over in his mind as his head pounded. “Or the girl did.”
“Who, exactly, was this girl?” Theo’s fiancée asked.
“A con artist named Esta Filosik . . .” He hesitated. “Or that’s what she said her name was. She was there the night Khafre Hall burned. She helped Darrigan then, and she helped him on the bridge.”
“And the Order allowed the two of them into Khafre Hall?” the girl asked. “They didn’t realize what Darrigan and the girl were—”
“No,” he snapped, before she could finish her question. He glared at her, daring her to ask anything else. Daring her to judge him.
“We should be going, dear,” Theo said to the girl, pulling her back.
“But I have more—”
“Now,” Theo said more forcefully. “Can we get you anything before we go, Jack? Anything at all?”
He needed the Book.
“Pardon?” Theo said. “What book is it that you’d like?”
He hadn’t intended to speak, and his voice broke as he tried to cover his mistake. “My coat,” he corrected. “I meant that I’d like my coat.”
“Are you cold?” the girl asked, her expression transforming itself again, this time from avid interest to concern. “I could stoke the fire a bit, or perhaps I could bring you another blank—”
“No,” he said, not caring that she flinched. He didn’t need her pity. “I don’t want any damned blankets, and I’m not cold. I want my coat.”
“Hold on there, Jack,” Theo told him. “There’s a pile of your things over here by the chest. Give me a moment to look.”
Jack closed his eyes against the lavender light and the concern in the girl’s eyes and the pain that still throbbed through him. But behind the darkness of his eyelids, all he could see was his own failure and impotence. He’d been a fool.
“Is this it?” Theo asked, and Jack opened his eyes to see Theo holding the rough woolen overcoat that Harte Darrigan had been wearing when he escaped.
Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes . . .
“Bring it to me,” Jack demanded, not caring how he sounded. He didn’t know where the sudden force in his voice came from or why he felt such an overwhelming desperation to hold that cracked leather in his hands once more.
Jack had to know if they had found it. He was in his mother’s home, and there was a chance that someone from the Order would have gone through his things. There was a chance that they could have taken the Book before he had an opportunity to discover all its secrets.
“Would you like us to call someone?” Theo offered as he draped the coat over Jack’s torso. “Or maybe I could get you something for the pain. There seem to be some bottles here on the bedside table. . . .”
“No—if I could just rest,” Jack said, allowing his eyes to close again. Willing the two of them to leave already.
As the weight of the coat settled over him, Jack felt very far away from himself. He felt so drowsy and tired, and yet at the same time, unbearably alert. It must be the drugs they’d given him, the morphine the doctors must have used to set his arm.
“I’m glad to see that you’re okay, Jack,” Theo said. “Take care of yourself, now, won’t you?”
“It was lovely to meet you,” the girlish voice echoed.
Jack never opened his eyes. He pretended sleep until he heard the door latch when they closed it behind them. When he knew they were well and truly gone, he used his free hand to turn the ugly garment over. Ignoring the pain it caused, he searched for the opening to the pocket and then . . . there.
He held the Ars Arcana up and examined it in the soft light as victory coursed through his veins. It was difficult to flip through the pages while he was reclined, but sitting upright hurt too much. Grimacing from the effort it took to look, he found the small bottle of medicine that Theo had mentioned being on the table next to his bed. He reached for it, but the pain that shot through his arm was nearly blinding. For a moment he considered calling the maid back, but he couldn’t risk her seeing the Book.
Bracing himself, Jack tried again, and this time his fingers brushed the glass bottle, knocking it within reach. He unstoppered it and took out two cubes without bothering to read the instructions. They dissolved into bitterness on his tongue, but the pain didn’t immediately subside. He could still feel his heartbeat pounding in his very bones. So he tossed two more of the cubes into his mouth, grinding them between his teeth this time.
Slowly the pain started to recede, and as soon as he could breathe again, he opened the Book. The pages were brittle and not at all uniform. They looked like they had been taken from a number of different sources and then somehow bound seamlessly into the small tome. On their surface, they were filled with faded notes and writing—some in Latin, others in something that looked like Greek. Still others were in languages Jack had never seen.
He let his thumb run over the edges of the pages, and Jack couldn’t tell if the warmth he felt was coming from the Book itself or from the morphine settling into his veins. After a moment he found that he didn’t care, and he began to read.