The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

still when she exposed the small, jagged hole in his abdomen. She looked up at Esta with horror. “He needs a doctor.”

Esta took one glance at the wound, ragged and still oozing blood, and knew the truth—a wound like that? A doctor wouldn’t be able to help. Even if a doctor cleaned and bandaged him, the bullet would still be inside of North, and Esta knew that a shot to the gut like that one wouldn’t heal. Without modern medicine, it would be a painful infection that would take North, rather than the loss of blood.

“No doctors,” North said.

“Hush,” Maggie whispered. “We’ll find someone to get the bullet out of you and stitch you up and you’ll be fine. We’re going to take care of you.”

North’s eyes were steady on Esta, and she knew he understood. But she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell Maggie, so she settled for the other reason. “He’s right,” Esta said. “You saw that posse. They rode out nearly at dawn. Chances are they’re already expecting us. Finding a doctor would only bring them faster.”

“I’d rather be in jail than know I could’ve tried to save him and didn’t,” Maggie told Esta.

Esta saw the determination in Maggie’s eyes, but she knew the truth. “Why do you think we’d even make it to jail?” Esta asked softly.

“No doctor,” North said again through gritted teeth. “No one’s gonna be able to help me anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” Maggie argued.

“I do,” North said, grimacing again. He was looking worse now, paler, and his breathing seemed more ragged. “You two need to go while you can. It’s not much, but six hours should give you a little room to get ahead of the marshals.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Maggie, her voice cracking as she met Esta’s gaze. “I won’t leave him like this.”

“Six hours won’t make enough of a difference anyway,” Esta agreed, her mind already furiously racing.

“You can’t stay here,” North told them.

“I won’t just sit here and watch you die,” Maggie said, stubborn as ever. “And I’m not leaving you behind.” She glared at Esta, daring her to contradict this.

“We’re not going to leave anyone behind,” Esta told Maggie, pacing a little as she tried to think of some way out of the mess they were in. Absently, her fingers went to the scar at her wrist, and as she traced over the words, she had an idea. “We could use your formulations,” she told Maggie.

“I don’t have anything to heal a wound like that,” Maggie said, stone-faced.

“Not to heal the wound,” Esta said. “But maybe with a big enough distraction, we can get out of here and save North all at once.”

“No,” North told them. “You two need to go. It’s too late for me.”

“You of all people should know there’s no such thing as too late,” Esta told him. “But if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll be right on time.”

IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

1902—New York

With a strangled gasp, Viola jerked upright. Her eyes were wide open, but she saw nothing but inky blackness. The dream she’d been having lingered. She could still hear the roar of the crowded ballroom, still feel the beast’s rough weight as it pressed the air from her lungs. Her mouth was dry with panic, and there was a dull roaring in her ears. Within her chest, her heartbeat felt unsteady, and for a long moment Viola did not remember where she was.

As the dream faded, the preceding days came back to her. Viola’s eyes began to adjust, and soon she could make out the familiar slant of the low ceiling above her bed, the shape of the worn furniture, and the cold bare walls of the attic room closing her in. The air was warm and stuffy, but she rubbed her arms where gooseflesh still rose on her skin. Even without a window, Viola knew that it was nowhere near dawn. She also knew that she would find no more rest that night. If she closed her eyes again, she would only see Jianyu—the blood creeping across his shoulder, his lifeless hand dropping her knife—and she would feel the beast pressing down on her throat. She would dream of her bones cracking beneath the pressure of its grip and of her failure, as she had every night since the gala.

Instead of staying abed, Viola dressed quickly and, without lighting the lamp, pulled her hair back into a simple knot. Then she stepped soundlessly across the rough attic floorboards, making sure to miss the ones that would creak and alert her brother that she was stirring before a respectable hour. It would not do to rouse his suspicions, not now, when so much was at stake.

Paolo, he still watched her too closely—they all did—despite his claims that her actions at the gala had proven her loyalty to the family and to him. Since he’d rescued her from the beast’s grip, Viola had continued to make sure that Paolo could find nothing of concern in her actions, even if that meant she had to remain small and meek. It did not matter that the weight of the role she played grew heavier with each passing day. She could not walk away from her brother or her mother or any of this—not until she knew for sure what had happened to the ring.

Though Viola remembered nothing after the great stone beast had crushed her beneath its weight, she was convinced that Paul or one of his men must have taken the artifact. When she’d come to in a carriage rattling toward the Bowery, her brother across from her and John Torrio’s arms pinning her to him, no one had spoken of the artifact. Torrio’s fingers had been rubbing against the underside of her breast, where her brother would not see, as the two gloated over their victory, and she knew it had not been the time to ask.

Viola shook off the memory of Torrio’s wandering hands with