NEVER ENOUGH
1904—St. Louis
North had been trying to see past the spectacle of the parade to the Cairo exhibit when everything erupted. As soon as the Jefferson Guard went charging in, he gave up his attempt to follow the Thief and made his exit, working his way through the crowds that were all trying to flee in the same direction. They were Sundren, so they couldn’t tell that the eruption was nothing more than smoke set off by some stupid kids trying to play Antistasi.
He didn’t exactly blame them for trying. He’d spent his whole childhood hiding the bit of magic that flowed in his veins. His daddy had taught him how to keep it still, so that no one would know. But hiding away their magic hadn’t improved their lives any. It certainly hadn’t saved his father.
North had been seventeen and already two years on his own when that train derailed in New Jersey and the newspapers began spreading the fear that Mageus were beyond the Brink. Until then, most Sundren thought magic was something that the Brink had dealt with. They went through their ordinary lives not thinking that Mageus could be among them.
Until then, hiding had to be enough for people like him—a quiet life, a quiet death.
It had never really been enough. And sometimes death wasn’t quiet or easy.
It had not been enough for his father, who’d withered away because of it. He’d done his best to raise North after his mother had run off, but by the time he died in the Chicago slaughterhouses where he worked, he’d become a small man, tired and far older than his years. The day North buried his father, he didn’t have enough money even for the plainest of tombstones, and there was less than a week left before his landlord would knock on the door, demanding the rent. He could have gone to the same plant where his father had worked and died, and they would have taken him on, tall and strong as he was even then. But he’d decided to go west instead, hoping that in the wide-open spaces of the country, he could find some kind of life for himself.
He’d traveled to the endless sweeping plains and realized that no matter how far he went, no matter how big the sky above him, there wasn’t really any way to live free. Not for someone like him.
The first time he’d heard of the Devil’s Thief, North was working at a stockyard in Kansas. He’d looked at the picture of the girl staring up from a crumpled piece of newsprint and had felt a spark of hope that had set him off to search for others who were also tired of never having enough. He’d ended up in St. Louis before he finally found the Antistasi, and once he saw Maggie, that was about it for him.
If he’d been a little younger, he probably would have done something just as stupid as those kids. Had his daddy not been around to keep him in line for so long, he probably would have done something that stupid even without hearing about the Thief.
He wondered for a second if those kids had fathers who would tan their hides for getting caught up by the Guard, or if they were on their own, like so many kids were these days. North supposed he’d have to take care of them later—get them out of the holding cell the Guard were bound to put them in and either get them back to their parents or find them a safe place to go. But before he worried about those kids, he needed to get to Maggie.
Her building was a monstrosity of a thing, flanked by two enormous towers. Inside, a row of some mechanical contraptions helped to keep tiny infants alive. Ruth hadn’t wanted Maggie to bother with working at the fair. They had plenty of people to do reconnaissance, and Ruth thought she would have been better served to keep working on the serum. But small and delicate as Maggie might look, his girl had a spine of steel when she wanted something. In the end, Maggie had won . . . mostly. North still escorted her to and from work, but she tended to the children and watched for any with an affinity all the while.
North moved along with the crowds until he came to the railing and could catch her attention. She looked up from her work and frowned when she saw him. They didn’t need words. From just a look, he understood her point, and he maneuvered his way through the crowd of mostly women to the side hall. A moment later, Maggie was there.
“What is it?” she asked, clearly irritated that he’d interrupted her.
“We might have a problem.” He told her about what he’d seen, about the Thief and the other guys she was with. “There’s only one thing they could want in there.”
“The necklace,” she agreed.
North remembered the first time he’d gone through the Cairo exhibit and had seen the necklace. He’d thought the five artifacts were nothing but myth, just as he’d doubted the Thief’s existence before he saw her, but there one was, real as anything else. He’d known it wasn’t a fake because he’d felt its power. Like the watch he had tucked in his pocket, there was an energy around it—an energy that was eminently compelling. But unlike his watch, the necklace had felt like so much more. He figured that every Sundren in that room felt it, even if they didn’t know why they were all enthralled by the display.
There was no way the Society or any of the Brotherhoods could be allowed to have power like that. Ruth had planned to take the necklace in the confusion of the deed, but maybe that couldn’t wait. “Everything depends upon us having that necklace when the smoke clears,” North said. Without it, there would be little chance of uniting the Antistasi and leading them. Without the necklace and the power it could impart, the deed wouldn’t change who was in control—the members of the Brotherhoods were all rich men, living in a country where money could buy anything at all, especially power. No, the Antistasi needed the necklace so they could stand above the rest with power of their own. “We can’t let her get it first.”
“No . . .” But Maggie was still frowning, her gaze distant like she was thinking through all the implications of this most recent development. Then she blinked and looked up at him. “Or maybe we just can’t let her keep it.”