THE HANDS OF JUSTICE
1904—St. Louis
Thunder crackled in the sky as Jack Grew’s carriage made its way through the streets of St. Louis. He’d come to this shithole of a city as part of the president’s entourage to visit the world’s fair, and also as the Order’s representative for the meeting of the Brotherhoods that the Society was hosting in a couple of weeks. For the past two days, he’d been annoyed at being away from New York for so long, but now it seemed the trip had suddenly become more promising. Word had come only moments before. They found her.
Two years. Two years without a trace of her, and now Esta Filosik would be his.
Jack had been waiting for this moment long enough that he’d already run through many possibilities for their first reunion. He’d considered a quick sneer and a cold laugh as he watched her dragged away to rot in prison. But he’d also considered doing something she wouldn’t expect—perhaps he would thank her for what she’d done, for what he’d become.
Of course, she hadn’t been the one to give him the Book—Darrigan had done that. But the train accident that had left his arm broken had, ironically enough, created a new future for him. The girl had been a very convenient scapegoat, a target for the public’s anger and evidence of the continued need for the Order and their like.
Once, the Order had been seen as a curiosity, unimportant to the average person. Since the day on the train, though, the tide had turned. If magic had once been a distant fairy tale, the train accident and all the attacks that followed had made it an immediate danger. The entire country was afraid, which worked just fine for Jack. With every new Antistasi attack, with every new tragedy committed in the name of the Devil’s Thief, the Order’s power—and Jack’s along with it—had grown.
As the carriage rumbled along the final few blocks to the hotel, Jack couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. Yes. When he finally came face-to-face with her, she would be in handcuffs, and he would thank her. In his mind’s eye, he imagined her full mouth parting in confusion. She would, most likely, plead with him. Miss Filosik—if that was even her name—wasn’t stupid. She would understand immediately that her life was, for all intents and purposes, finished. Over. But before she met with some untimely accident in the women’s prison, Jack would take the opportunity to thank her for all her treachery. It had, after all, made him a star.
How could his family send him away when he was a hero who had tried to stop a madwoman? They couldn’t. So they had publicly lauded his bravery, the whole lot of them. But despite all his success—all the power he’d attained and all he’d done to ensure the Order remained relevant enough that he could use it to his own ends—they whispered to one another about him. They still wondered if he’d imagined the events on the train or made them up.
But Jack had known he wasn’t mad. He’d known that not only had Esta been on the train, but that she had survived.
He reached into his vest and let his fingers brush against the Book that he carried with him everywhere. He’d had all his clothes altered to conceal it, and he kept it on his person at all times. He would not leave it behind, no matter the event. Nor would he trust servants or safes, not when the Book had opened doors to a consciousness he had only dreamed of.
Unable to resist its call, he took the Book from its home close to his chest and thumbed through the pages. Greek and Latin he could read, thanks to the interminable schooling he’d had as a boy, but there were other, less comprehensible languages mixed with strange symbols that graced many of the pages. Those pages should have been impossible for him to understand, and yet he’d woken in his mother’s house after being dosed with morphine that first time to discover that he’d somehow translated them just the same.
Now his own small, neat hand filled the pages with notes and translations, but looking at the writing in the jarring carriage caused his head to ache. He took a small vial from his waistcoat pocket and placed one of the cubes it contained on his tongue. It took only a moment for the bitterness to erupt, familiar and satisfying, in his mouth, and then only a few moments more before he felt the tension behind his eyes ease.
The notations came into focus as he searched for the page he wanted. A protection charm of sorts, or so he believed it to be. Alone in the carriage, he let the strange words roll from his mouth, filling the cramped space with the cool resonance of the power that would forevermore be his.
He had known the girl was alive all along. And now he would prove it to everyone else.
The carriage pulled up in front of the Jefferson, and Jack tucked the Book back into the safety of his waistcoat as he prepared himself. He would thank Miss Filosik, and if she wanted to beg for her life, he would accept whatever she offered. Then he would toss her back to the hands of justice—hands that were controlled, of course, by his family and others like them.
Jack’s personal servant and bodyguard, Miles, opened the door for him and waited silently with an umbrella in hand. When he stepped from the carriage, Jack noticed the line of dark wagons manned by uniformed officers and smiled. There will be no getting away this time.
“Wait here,” he commanded, brushing past Miles without bothering with the umbrella. What did a bit of dampness matter when Jack was so close to victory? He would have satisfaction. He knew it as surely as he felt the Book in his jacket, its familiar weight reminding him that he held all the cards.