BLOOD AND WATER
1902—New York
Viola Vaccarelli pretended to examine the produce of one of the Mott Street vendors as she watched the door of the church across the street. The shop’s owner, an older man with his long, graying hair plaited neatly down his back, stood at the doorway watching her warily. She wondered if this was what Jianyu would look like as the years passed. But the memory of Jianyu, who Dolph had trusted to be his spy—and who had abandoned them all on the bridge—made Viola’s thoughts turn dark.
When the shopkeeper took a step back, Viola realized that she had been scowling. To make amends, she pulled her mouth into a feeble attempt at a smile. The man blinked, his brow creasing even more, as though he knew her for the predator she was.
Basta. Let him be nervous. A tiger didn’t apologize for its teeth, and Viola didn’t have time to make nice with some stranger. She offered him a few coins for the ripe pear she’d selected, and he reached out tentatively to take them.
Across the street, the side door of the church opened and the first of the worshippers appeared. Viola stepped away from the old man, not bothering to wait for her change, and watched as a stream of women emerged from the side entrance of the church. They were mostly older, though there were a few younger women whose faces were already starting to show the same lines that mapped over their mothers’. They were the unmarried daughters—girls who had been unfortunate in their search for a husband and who still lived under their families’ roof and rule. Viola had refused that future. She had turned her back on her family and on every expectation they held for her.
And now she would have to pay for it.
The older women wore the uniform of their generation: sturdy dark skirts, heavy, shapeless cloaks, and a fazzoletto copricapo made from lace or plain linen to cover their heads and preserve their modesty and humility before the lord and everyone else in the neighborhood. Viola had also pulled a scarf over her dark hair for the morning, but she had little interest in modesty. Concealment was her aim.
To anyone else, the line of Italian women might have seemed indistinguishable, but Viola could have picked out her mother in a crowd of a thousand such women. The way her mother’s heavy body swayed as she turned west toward the blocks of Mulberry Street had been the rhythm of Viola’s childhood.
It had been three years since Viola had spoken to her mother or had even seen any of her family, though they lived no more than a few blocks from the Bella Strega. But in the streets of the Bowery, a few blocks were the difference between the safety of home and crossing the wrong gang. Not that Viola worried too much about that . . . She could take care of herself and anyone else who might think to bother her.
Her mother’s sturdy hands fluttered like birds as she spoke to the woman who walked beside her. Those hands could strangle a chicken or make the most delicate casarecce. They could wipe away a tear . . . or leave a mark that stung for days.
I should leave her be. She would find another way.
Without thinking, Viola reached for the blade she always kept at her side, the stiletto she’d named Libitina after the Roman goddess of funerals . . . and found it missing. She had launched it at Nibsy Lorcan the day before to protect Esta, the girl she had begrudgingly come to like. But in the confusion of the bridge, Viola had not been able to retrieve it. Now Esta was gone—the girl had disappeared as though she’d never existed—and so was Libitina, into Nibsy Lorcan’s keeping. Viola was on her own, without friends or allies, but it was the absence of the knife she felt most acutely, as though she’d lost a part of herself.
She would get back her blade . . . eventually. For the time being, Libitina’s replacement was secure in the sheath strapped against her thigh. It wasn’t the same, though. The steel of this blade didn’t speak to her in the same way, and the unfamiliar weight of the knife felt wrong, as though a matter of a few grams could leave Viola herself unbalanced.
But Viola had needed something to protect herself. The Bowery was in chaos. The already-corrupt police force had become more emboldened in the past few days. Under the direction of the Order, they’d been ransacking the lower part of Manhattan to find the Mageus who had stolen the Order’s treasures from Khafre Hall. Viola had been part of that team. Led by Dolph Saunders, they had been on a mission to take the Ars Arcana, a book with untold power. Dolph had believed the Book could restore magic and free them all from the Order’s control—and from the Brink.
Now Dolph was dead, and the thought of him laid out, pale and lifeless, on the bar top of the Strega still had the power to rob Viola of breath. He’d been a true friend to her, and she’d come to trust him—to depend upon his steadiness—even after her life had taught her never to trust. But Dolph was gone, along with the Book and any dream of freedom or a future different from the present’s drudgery.
That double-crossing cazzo of a magician, Harte Darrigan, had ruined everything when he’d taken the Book from her in the bowels of Khafre Hall, leaving Viola looking the fool. Because of him, the Devil’s Own had viewed her with suspicion shining in their eyes after they’d discovered that the sack she’d carried contained nothing of value. And there was no way to fix her mistakes. Darrigan had taken any hope of recovering the Book with him to his watery grave when he’d jumped from the bridge.
If that wasn’t bad enough, on the bridge, Viola had made everything worse. She’d known that Nibsy suspected Esta of being in league with Darrigan. She had specific instructions to make sure neither of them got away, but when Nibsy raised a gun to Esta’s throat, Viola had acted without thinking. She’d attacked the boy to save Esta—because it was what Tilly would have expected of her. And because it was what her own instincts screamed for her to do.
But her actions meant that she couldn’t return to the Strega, not so long as Nibsy Lorcan had the loyalty of Dolph’s crew.
Without Dolph, Viola had no one to stand between her and the dangers of the Bowery. Without the Book, she had no leverage with the Devil’s Own. She certainly couldn’t trust Nibsy to forgive her for skewering him.
Not that she particularly cared. She’d never liked the kid anyway.
But the Strega had been her home. The Devil’s Own had been a family for her, one that had respected her skill and accepted her as she was. Perhaps the Book was gone, but she would do what she must to prove that she had not betrayed their trust. Even without the Book, she could finish what Dolph started. She would do everything in her power to destroy the Order.
To do that, she would need help. There was only one person she could think of who could protect her from the patrols—her older brother, Paolo. Going to Paolo had an added benefit: There were whispers in the streets that the Five Pointers were doing the Order’s bidding now as well as Tammany’s.
Paolo wasn’t likely to forgive Viola for abandoning the family, and especially not for escaping his control and working for Dolph, a man he considered an enemy. Still, if her dear brother could help her get closer to the Order, she would suffer what she must. Which was why she had come to this place, to wait for her mother, the one person who might be able to protect her from Paolo’s wrath.
Viola handed the pear she’d just purchased to a dirty-looking urchin on the corner and ran to catch up to her mother. “Mamma!” But the title was tossed around the streets of the Bowery so often that her mother didn’t react, not until Viola used her first name:
Her mother turned then, at the sound of her name being shouted over the din of the street. It took a moment before her mother’s dark eyes registered understanding, and Viola could read every emotion that flashed across her mother’s face: shock, hope, then realization . . . and caution.
After murmuring something to her companion, who gave Viola a brooding, distrustful look before heading on her way alone, Viola’s mother frowned at her. But she stopped walking and waited for Viola.
Her throat tight with a tenderness she thought she had long ago killed as surely as any life she’d taken with a blade, Viola approached her mother slowly until the two of them were standing an arm’s distance apart.
“Viola?” Her mother lifted a hand as though to caress her daughter’s cheek, but she did not finish bridging the distance between them. A moment passed, long and awful, and then her mother’s hand dropped, limp at her side.
Viola nodded, unable to speak. For all her family had done, for all the anger Viola still felt, she’d missed her mother. Missed them all. Missed, even, the girl she had once been with them.
Her mother’s expression faltered. “What do you want?” Spoken in the Sicilian of Viola’s childhood, her mother’s words sounded like a homecoming. But her mother’s tone was like her eyes—flat and cold.
Viola had expected this. After all, she had committed the cardinal sin—she had abandoned her family. She had betrayed her brother and refused his authority, and maybe worst of all, she’d dared to claim a life that was more than any good woman would want for herself.
It didn’t matter that Viola had long since considered herself a good woman. Her mother’s judgment still stung. She had been on the receiving end of that same expression a hundred times as a girl, but she, who had learned to kill without regret, had never grown immune to it.
Viola dropped her eyes, forced herself to bow her head in the show of the submission expected of her. “I want to come home, Mamma.”
“Home?”
Viola glanced up to find her mother’s thick brows raised. “I want to come back to the family.”
At first her mother didn’t speak. She studied Viola instead with the same critical eye she often turned on a piece of bruised fruit at the market right before she haggled for a lower price.
“I was wrong,” Viola said softly, keeping her head down, her shoulders bowed. “You were right about me—too headstrong and filled with my own importance. I’ve learned what it means to be without your family.” The words tasted like ash in her mouth, but they were not a lie. Under Dolph’s protection, Viola had learned what it meant to be without the expectations, demands, and restrictions her family imposed upon her.
“More like you got yourself in trouble,” her mother said flatly, glancing down at Viola’s belly. “Who is he?”
Viola frowned. “There is no man.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You see what’s happening, no? The fires, the brawling in the streets? I see now how stupid I was to think I could go without my family—il sangue non é acqua.”
Her mother’s mouth pinched tight, and her eyes narrowed. “I tell you that your whole life, and now you listen? After it’s too late?”
“I’m still your blood,” Viola said softly, forcing a meekness into her voice that felt like a betrayal to everything she was.
Viola hadn’t understood the truth of that phrase until she’d tried to leave her family behind. No matter the life she’d tried to claim for herself, she was always Paul Kelly’s sister—and she always would be.
No, blood wasn’t water. Blood left a stain.
“Why do you come to me? Why not go to Paolo, as you should? He’s head of the family now,” her mother said, crossing herself as she looked up to the sky, as though Viola’s father might appear sanctified on the clouds above. “You need his blessing, not mine.”
“I want to go to him,” Viola said, twisting her hands in her skirts, making a show of nerves, and hating herself for it—not for the lie, but for the display of weakness when she had promised herself to always be strong. “But I’m not sure how to make amends for what I’ve done. Paolo listens to you, Mamma. You have his ear. If you tell him to forgive me, he will.”
Her mother’s jaw tightened, her face flushing red. “I see. . . . You come back to me because you need my help? After all you’ve done to us . . . to me—” Her mother’s voice broke. “You make me a disgrace.” Shaking her head, Viola’s mother turned to go, but as she took a step down from the sidewalk into the street, she gasped and nearly tumbled to her knees.
Viola caught her mother before the older woman could hit the ground and pulled her to her feet. Pasqualina Vaccarelli was a stout, sturdy woman, but Viola could feel her mother’s fragility, the aging that had taken some of her mother’s vitality over the past three years.
It was a risk to use her affinity here, in the open—especially with how dangerous everything had become—but Viola pushed her power into her mother, feeling for the source of the pain and finding it immediately. The gout in her mother’s joints had grown so much worse, and without hesitation, Viola directed her affinity toward it, clearing the joints that had gone stiff.
Her mother gasped, the old woman’s dark eyes meeting her daughter’s as Viola finished and withdrew her hands. Viola’s blood felt warm, her skin alive with the flexing of her magic. This was what she had been meant for. Her god had given her this gift for life, not for the deaths her brother had forced upon her.
With a look of mingled surprised and relief, her mother raised a hand calloused by years of work and laid it against Viola’s cheek. Her mouth was still turned down and her eyes were still stern, but there was gratitude in her mother’s expression now as well. “I could have used you these past years.”
“I know, Mamma,” Viola said, placing her hand atop her mother’s as she blinked back the prickling of tears. “I missed you, too.”
This, at least, was no lie. She did miss the mother she’d once known, the woman who used to sing as she hung out the wash, who had tried to teach Viola how to knead dough until it became supple, and how to press linen with her bare hands until it was smooth. Those lessons had never stuck. No matter how she tried, Viola hadn’t been built for that life. Her hands had been made to hold a blade, to wield magic. Her family had done everything they could to force her into the mold they believed was right. In the end, their expectations had just forced her away.
But now she was back. She would bend to their expectations, but she was older now. Stronger. She would not let them break her.
Her mother withdrew her hand. “I’ll talk to your brother.”
“Thank you—”
Her mother held up a hand to stop Viola’s words. “Don’t thank me. I make no guarantee. You’ll have to be ready to take whatever penance Paolo gives you . . . whatever he demands of you.”
Viola bowed her head to hide her disgust. Her mother had no idea what her darling Paolino was capable of. Viola’s mother knew only that he ran a boxing club called the New Brighton and a restaurant called the Little Naples Cafe. She understood that he knew the big men in the city, but she had no idea that her son was one of the most powerful and dangerous gang bosses on the Lower East Side or what sins Viola’s brother had demanded that Viola commit.
Viola wondered if her mother would have cared had she seen the split lip and blackened eyes she wore the first time she found her way into the safe haven of the Strega.
“Come.” Without another word, Viola’s mother began walking.
“Where are we going?” Viola asked, picturing the cramped rooms she had grown up in. But her mother was not heading in the direction of her childhood tenement.
Her mother turned back to her. “I thought you wanted me to speak with Paolo?”
“We’re going now?”
Her mother gave her a dark look tinged with suspicion. “You want we should wait?”
Yes. Viola needed time to prepare, time to ready herself for whatever her sadist of a brother had in store. But it was clear that her mother would offer only once. “No. Of course not, Mamma. Now is perfect.” She ducked her head in thanks. Submissive. “Thank you, Mamma.”
“Don’t thank me so quickly,” her mother said with a frown. “You still have to talk to Paolo.”