BEWARE THE DEVIL’S THIEF
1904—St. Louis
Harte Darrigan was probably more likely to put on a dress himself than ever admit to Esta that her decision to wear the clothing she’d found in the hotel room was a good idea, even if the ballroom below was filled with nothing but men. For one thing, admitting that she had been right would only embolden her, but more important, maybe, it was taking everything he had not to be distracted by the shape of her legs in the trousers she was wearing. So he shot her a dark look instead and focused on the problem at hand—getting them out of the hotel before they were found.
“The kitchen entrance must be there,” Harte said, ignoring her remark as he pointed toward the far end of the room, where a door periodically swung open as white-coated servers came and went at regular intervals. “There are steps in the corner there, by the stage. Then we’ll keep to the edge of the room until we have to cut across. Stick close, but not too close,” he said, “and try not to sway your hips so much.”
“I do not sway my hips.” She glared at him.
“You do,” he told her flatly. He should know, since he’d just followed her down a hallway. She opened her mouth as if to argue, but he cut her off. “You walk like a woman.” He took a moment to look her over for any other flaw that might give her away. “Pull your hat down lower,” he told her as she stared at him. “Your eyes—they’re too soft. Christ,” he swore, his stomach twisting. There was no way she was going to make it through a room full of men without them noticing what she really was. She might as well have worn just the corset. “We’re dead.”
“We’ll be fine,” she told him. “I’ve been around men my whole life.”
“Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve actually been one,” he grumbled.
“It would have been kind of hard for me to miss.” Her mouth twitched, and he thought he saw something warmer than mere amusement flicker in her whiskey-colored eyes. At the sight of it, the power inside of him flared with anticipation. He was too busy pushing it back down to return her banter, and she let out a tired breath at his silence. “Oh, come on, Harte. Most of the people in here are drunk. They’re not going to notice me.”
“Let’s hope not.” But he didn’t have a lot of confidence.
Once they’d descended to the main ballroom, the sounds of glasses clinking and the rumble of men amused at their own jokes surrounded them. As they skirted the edges of the ballroom, something in Harte’s periphery drew his attention, and he glanced up to see that there were now a few men standing at the edge of the mezzanine, searching the crowd below. They were wearing the same dark coats and white armbands as the Guard outside the theater.
“Don’t look up,” he told Esta. He nodded to a bleary-eyed old man as he lifted a bowl of champagne from a passing tray.
“What—”
“I said, don’t look,” he said through clenched teeth as he raised the glass to his lips. He didn’t drink, but instead used the motion to cover his survey of the room. “There are two men up on the mezzanine now—maybe more.”
“Police?” she asked.
“The Guard.” His gaze slid to her. “We’re running out of time if they’re already looking for us here.”
“For me,” Esta corrected. “They’re looking for the Devil’s Thief.” Her eyes were steady and her jaw tight.
“Well, they’re not going to find her.” Harte glanced at Esta over the rim of the glass. “You could get us out of here right now.”
She shook her head. “You saw what happened in the hallway. I could barely hold on to the seconds. We don’t know what the Guard is capable of. And if they can track magic . . .”
She was probably right. If the Brink or the power of the Book inside of him had done something to her magic—or to his—it was better not to chance it until they knew more. “Let’s go.”
They left behind the relative safety of the mezzanine’s overhang to cut a line across the ballroom floor. Directly across the room, the double doors to the kitchens swung loosely on their hinges every time a waiter appeared with another tray of champagne or canapés. Behind the doors, the light of the service hallway was a beacon, urging them on.
If Harte could have made a beeline to those doors, he would have, but too fast or too direct and it might draw the attention of the men watching from above. As much as everything in him was screaming to Run. Go. Get out, he forced himself to keep the interminable pace as he meandered through the crowded floor, stopping at random intervals to pretend to watch the orchestra or take one of the hors d’oeuvres from the white-coated servers circulating through the crowd.
It felt like they would never reach the other side . . . and then, all at once, they were there, nearly to the edges of the ballroom. Only a few feet more and they could duck into the safety of the back of the house. But just before they could slip through the doors, the orchestra abruptly went silent. All around them, there was a delayed reaction, a ripple of awareness that filtered through the crowd as the men in the room, drunk as they might have been, realized something had happened.
Harte turned too, just long enough to see that one of the plainclothes officers had taken the stage and was lifting his hands, telling the crowd to be patient as the lights on the chandeliers suddenly grew brighter.
“If I could have your attention, gentlemen,” the officer shouted. “I’m Detective Sheehan of the St. Louis Police, and I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but there’s a wanted criminal on the loose. She was spotted entering the hotel a few minutes ago, and we believe she may still be in the building.”
The rustling around them increased as the men craned their necks, searching for a woman among them. Next to him, Esta pulled the hat lower over her brow.
The officer continued. “We just need a moment of your time as my men secure the room and do a quick sweep.”
“I’m here, Officer,” a voice called over the din of the crowd.
Esta—and everyone else in the room—turned to look up at the balcony, where a figure stood dressed in a crimson gown. Her face was half covered by a red porcelain mask tipped with horns, and she stood on the edge of the railing with her arms lifted, as though she were about to dive into the crowd. The Guardsmen started charging around the mezzanine to where she stood. With a swirl of her arms, she took a sweeping bow, and in a sudden plume of scarlet smoke, the figure was gone.
“You’ll have to be quicker than that if you want to catch me,” another voice called from the other side of the ballroom. Again the heads in the room swiveled to find the source of the sound. This figure was wearing the same devilish mask, but she was dressed in a gown of midnight, and standing on the railing above, she looked like a shadow against the gilded walls.
“Or me,” a voice bellowed. This one was dressed in ghostly white, her face masked as well.
“Or me.” Another voice, again from a different corner of the mezzanine.
“Or me.” The woman in red was back.
Their voices echoed off the walls as the sound of thunder rumbled through the ballroom, and the air seemed suddenly charged and electric. A strange, impossible wind began to swirl through the room, eliciting more nervous rustling from the men who’d been having fun only a moment before. A single word circulated through the ballroom, as quickly as a wildfire fed by the air: Antistasi.
The men in the ballroom were already running toward the door, but the police had blocked the exits.
“Who are they?” Esta whispered, her hand on Harte’s arm.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up at the women. Each was balanced precipitously on the balcony. “From the sound of it, we’ve found the Antistasi that Julien told us about.”
“Beware the Devil’s Thief,” they chanted in unison as more smoke billowed from beneath them. “Her enemies, beware her wrath.” With a flash of light, the figures were gone, but the trailing smoke was still moving steadily toward the ballroom floor, like something alive.
“They’re incredible,” Esta whispered, her voice filled with something like wonder.
But Harte didn’t feel the awe that was clear in Esta’s expression. There was something eerie about the apparitions. Something more than unsettling. And it didn’t help that the masked women were using that damned name, the one the papers had pinned on Esta, which could only mean trouble for them as long as they stayed in this town.
Then Harte felt the icy heat of magic in the air and knew it had something to do with the fog of smoke hanging over their heads. He wasn’t about to wait and see what that fog contained. “Let’s go.” He took Esta’s hand and moved in the opposite direction of the rest of the now-panicking crowd.
He didn’t bother to check if anyone noticed them crossing the final few feet toward the service doors. Once they were in the hallway beyond, they began to run.
“This way.” Esta pointed at a narrow staircase that led down toward the first floor.
They took the steps at a sprint, and at the bottom they found themselves in another hall of linoleum floors and cream-colored walls. Harte could already hear noise coming from the stairs behind them. To the right, other voices seemed to be drawing closer. He didn’t know whether it was more police or just the kitchen staff, but they couldn’t stay to find out.
Harte tugged Esta down the hall in the opposite direction and through a doorway.
“It’s a dead end,” she said, looking around for some other exit.
It was a storage room. One wall was lined with gleaming silver serving ware, soup tureens, and domed platters. In the corner, two large wheeled carts were filled with clean linens.
From just outside the door came the sound of voices, and Harte went to lean against it, cracking it open so he could listen. “There’s someone out there,” he told her as he tried to make out what they were saying. “I think they’re looking for whoever those women in the ballroom were. We need to get out of here.”
“What about that?” she asked, pointing out a smaller door on the far wall. It was square, about halfway up the wall, and when she opened it, he could see it was some kind of chute. The space was just large enough for a person to fit through. “Looks like it goes down to the basement. Maybe it’s the laundry?” she offered, indicating the carts filled with linens.
“It could just as easily be a trash chute leading to an incinerator.” He walked over and poked his head into the dark opening for a moment.
Outside the door, the voices were growing louder. “I think we should risk it,” she said, already lifting a leg to wedge herself into the chute. “If we get down to the basement, there has to be a way out.”
“Esta, no,” Harte said, pulling her back as they heard another door in the hallway bang open. “We don’t know how far the drop might be or what’s down there.”
“But—” He scooped her up before she could finish her protest.
“We can’t risk breaking a leg or something,” he said as he carried her, squirming, over to the laundry bins.
He saw her eyes widen as she understood what he was about to do. “Harte, don’t you even think about—”
But he was already dumping her into the rolling bin. “Cover up.”
Esta struggled to right herself amid the slippery piles of fabric. “But—”
“We don’t have time to argue,” he said, pulling extra linens from one of the other bins. Whoever those women in the ballroom were, they’d bought Harte and Esta some time with their distraction. At least Harte hoped they had. “I trusted you in the elevator. Now it’s your turn.”
“Harte—”
“Get down and stay down,” he snapped, and then piled another load of linens on top of her before she could argue any more.
Harte tied one of the white tablecloths around his waist, approximating the aprons he’d seen the servers wearing earlier. He wasn’t dressed in one of the white jackets the other hotel workers wore, but he had to hope it was like Esta had said: No one ever noticed the help.
“Ready?” he asked the cart, and he got a string of muffled curses in reply. He figured that was as good as a yes.
Carefully, he backed out of the room, pulling the cart behind him. Turning away from the voices and trying to figure out where he was, Harte tried to look natural as he maneuvered the cart down the hall. He was nearly to the first turn when he heard someone calling out behind him.
“Hey! You there!”
Pretending that he hadn’t heard them, Harte kept his pace brisk but steady as he headed for where the hall branched into a T.
“Hey!” The shout came again. “Stop!”
He took the first right and then broke into a run. He didn’t bother to slow down for the set of swinging doors ahead, but instead took them at full speed and plunged into the kitchen. Surprised chefs raised their heads, pausing their work to watch him rush through. On the other side of the kitchen was an empty service hall. He didn’t look back to see how close their pursuers were, but tore down the hallway and then out another set of doors that led to the lobby.
The front door of the hotel was ahead of them—just a few more yards and they would be out into the night—when the shrill screech of a whistle split the air, causing the tinkling of the piano to cut short and people all throughout the lobby to stare. And in front of him, blocking the one exit he had left, two uniformed policemen stepped into his path to stop him.
In that moment Harte knew they were done. There would be more police outside, and even if he got them through the front doors, they’d have no place to go. Not that he would go easily.
“Hold on,” he told Esta as he picked up his speed.
“Harte, what are you—”
He’d expected the two men to move out of the way, but they held their ground, bracing for impact, so when the cart plowed into them, they all went over. Esta tumbled out of the cart, disoriented and with her hair falling from her hat, but Harte was already on his feet, taking her by the hand.
“Run!” he shouted, half dragging her as he sprinted toward the exit, but suddenly there were three more men blocking their way. He pulled up short as he realized there was no way to get through them—not without magic.
“Esta—” Her name was a question and demand all at once.
She tightened her hold on his hand as though she understood, but at first nothing happened.
“Any time now,” he said as the men started to close in on them.
She blinked over at him. “Right—”
Harte almost stumbled when the men chasing them seemed to halt in midstride, and Esta let out a shaking breath. Together they wove through the men and out the front doors of the hotel. He’d been right: There were police wagons and a row of dark-suited police standing along the front of the hotel, waiting for them.
The storm that had threatened all evening had started, and the cold drops of rain, suspended midfall, felt needle-sharp against Harte’s face as he and Esta continued to run from the hotel. Above, the sky glowed from a flash of lightning, the bright forks of the electric bolts frozen like cracks in an iced pond. They lit the night with their brilliance.
Next to him, Esta’s breath hitched as she stumbled, nearly pulling him down with her. But he caught the two of them in time. “Esta?”
“I can’t—” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s too much.” She was trying to pull away from him.
He realized then that where their hands were clasped, ribbons of energy, like miniatures of the lightning bolts that hung in the sky, were winding about, binding them together. These weren’t frozen in time, though, like everything else around them. This energy was alive—hot and dangerous and creeping up her arm. The voice inside of him was howling in victory.
“We’re too close,” he said, looking at what was happening with a numb sort of horror. The hotel was still in sight. The police were still a danger. Everything they’d risked, everything they’d done to escape, would have been for nothing if they didn’t get away. “I need you to hold on for just a few more minutes.”
Esta’s face was twisted with the effort of what she was doing. “It feels like fire.” But she nodded, and without pausing or asking for permission, Harte scooped her over his shoulders, in a fireman’s carry, and threaded his way through the now-still traffic. He ignored the needlelike cold of the raindrops. The power inside of him surged again, pulsing with satisfaction, but he gathered all his strength and pushed it down.
He was barely across the street, just out of view of the hotel, when Esta gasped and the world around them righted itself. Above, the sky went dark, and a moment later thunder crashed over the steady patter of raindrops. He ran for the cover of a doorway and lowered Esta to the ground.
“Did we make it?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said, brushing back the hair from her face. “We made it. We have to keep going, though. I need you to help me here. You’re going to have to walk.”
She wasn’t listening. Her gaze was glassy and unfocused as she stared up at the night sky. “Can you see that? It’s like the darkness is eating the world.”
Harte didn’t bother to look. His attention was on Esta as her eyes fluttered closed and her limbs went limp.