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

terrorizing the poor urchins of the Bowery, but when he attacked the city’s wealthiest men and their wives?” Nibsy shrugged. “They’ve been looking for Kelly for weeks now, and a certain sly Fox told them exactly where your brother could be found today.”

“What of his Five Pointers?” she asked. “You know what will happen to Cela and her brother when Paolo doesn’t call them off.”

“They’ll do whatever John Torrio tells them to do,” Nibsy said. “Which will be what I tell him to do.” He gave her a small, satisfied smile.

“And what is it that you’ll tell him?” Viola asked, her fingers itching for her knife. She wished she could end this farce, but as long as Cela’s and Abel’s lives hung in the balance, she held her tongue.

“That all depends on how closely you stick to our agreement,” Nibsy said easily.

“If anything happens to Cela or Abel Johnson, I will kill you,” Viola promised. After all, if Paul was truly out of the way, she didn’t need Nibsy. She certainly didn’t need his threats. And if Jianyu would have counseled patience? Jianyu was nearly a mile away.

“I have no interest in harming your friends, Viola.” Nibsy regarded her seriously through the thick lenses of his glasses. “Torrio, on the other hand, may not be so generous. Once we have the ring, I’ll release them. But remember, if I die, so will they.”

She could still kill him. She could kill Torrio, too, but Viola could not save Cela and her brother and help Jianyu get the ring. She could not be everywhere in the city at once. She would have to play Nibsy’s game—for now, at least. She vowed, though, that she would not let him win.

“As long as they remain unharmed, you have nothing to fear,” she said easily, refusing to allow herself to betray even a glimmer of the worry she felt churning in her stomach. “If you can’t keep Torrio on his leash—”

“Torrio knows better than to cross me.” Nibsy adjusted his grip on Dolph’s cane. “But we should be going. After all, the Order’s shipments won’t wait.”

It doesn’t matter. Viola tried to tell herself as she continued down the stairs with Nibsy at her back. Even with this unexpected twist, things would work out. Hadn’t they expected trouble from all sides? She would take back the ring, and then she would take her revenge on Nibsy Lorcan. She would stop his scheming before John Torrio could do anything to Cela or Abel. She had to. And if she couldn’t?

She’d argued against Theo’s involvement from the start. She’d tried to persuade him to be on a ship already sailing for the Continent by now, but she found herself suddenly grateful that he’d refused to budge in his determination to help them. If all else failed, Theo was positioned with the Order, there inside the new building, a last resort that they might very well need.

MINOR GODS

1902—New York

Jack Grew stood at the stone railing of the balcony on the eighteenth floor of the Flatiron Building, gazing out across the city. His city. Below, people scurried along like ants, unaware that he watched them like a god from above. The sun was low in the sky. Already it scraped at the tops of the buildings. Already the light was shifting into a golden haze, and soon the streets would glow with the power of the sun’s rays, as they did only twice a year.

The ancients understood the solstice’s importance. Each of the five mystical dynasties knew that the power could be harnessed simply by studying the movement of the stars. Pyramids and standing stones, towers and obelisks, each of the dynasties had their monuments to the sun, so why shouldn’t this, the world’s greatest city, have one as well?

But the men who built Manhattan had not been content to be directed by the stars. They had sought, instead, to bend the heavens to their will. The city’s grid was only one example of the Order’s influence on the island. The grid had been positioned, not along the arms of the compass rose, but with a careful attention to ley lines and numerology. This alignment of the city’s streets was a tool to increase the Brink’s power, but it meant that on the traditional solstice, the streets of Manhattan would remain as shadowed as ever. But on the Manhattan Solstice, dates known only to those in the Order—dates discernible only through careful study and mastery of the occult sciences—the streets would shine like gold, electric with the power of the sun.

On those days, the average citizen would wander on, eyes down and focused on the muck of their own life, as they always did. Most would never look up and notice the phenomenon, much less understand the potential. But Jack understood. When the Order had asked for his assistance, the Book had been only too willing to oblige by revealing even more of its secrets. Thanks to the Book, he knew how to tap into that power—to direct it. It was yet another sign that soon the old men who thought they ruled over him would be completely irrelevant.

Someone cleared their throat behind him, and Jack turned to find Theo Barclay standing with his hands clasped. Anticipation sizzled through Jack’s veins.

“The High Princept said you had some use for me?” Barclay said, amiable as ever, though there was a tightness around his eyes as he stepped into the chamber. He carried into the room a wariness that Jack found more than satisfactory.

There was something about Barclay’s face that always gave Jack the urge to lay a fist into it, to rearrange the other man’s classically handsome features. Now, though, he held himself back. It wasn’t the time. Not yet.

“Actually, yes. I do.” Jack gave Barclay an easy smile, anticipation already building. He stepped back inside, leaving the door ajar so the summer winds could stir the warm air. “Well, what do you think?”

Theo