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

wandered away. He was staring at the wall of windows. “Who is that?”

Viola turned, following the direction of Werner’s gaze, and for a moment it was as though he’d stolen her air. A man was standing on the balcony’s ledge, silhouetted by the setting sun.

Not a man. Theo.

His arms were spread wide, but Viola couldn’t tell if he was bracing himself on the enormous stone pillars or preparing to release them. She raced to the end of the room and grabbed the handle to the balcony door. It was stuck and impossible to open. She jerked at it, so desperate to open it that, at first, she did not feel the cold energy radiating from the latch. Withdrawing Libitina, she positioned the thin blade into the keyhole and pressed, letting the knife slice through the metal until the door swung open.

“Theo!” she said, stepping onto the balcony. “Come down from there! Adesso! ” Her voice was shaking, and so was she as she moved toward him, trying to wave him down. At first he ignored her. “What are you doing up there? Sei pazzo? Theo!”

Theo turned finally at the sound of his name, but his eyes were blank. It was as though he didn’t know her. No. It was as though he didn’t even see her.

“Do you feel that?” Mooch asked, coming up beside her. He shuddered.

Viola did feel it, the cold that seemed to have settled on the small balcony.

“He’s under some kind of spell,” Werner said.

“We have to get him down,” Viola told them. Her heart pounded in her chest. They were so high up. There wasn’t a single building in the Bowery even half so tall.

“We’re not here for him,” Logan said. “We’re here for the ring. It’s up there, and we have to find a way to get to it.”

“The ring can wait,” Viola said, turning back to Theo. She inched closer, careful not to disturb him. Considering the dazed and empty look in his eyes, Viola was afraid that anything she said or did might make him move in the wrong direction. “Theo, please. You have to listen to me.”

“Look, if we get the ring, we can break whatever spell they put on him, right?” Logan asked, his voice betraying an urgency that Viola herself understood. She realized that perhaps his participation was no more voluntary than her own.

Werner frowned at Logan. “We can’t leave him like that. He could jump any second now.”

His words sent a bolt of panic through Viola that she had, until that moment, been keeping at bay. “Shut up,” she told him sharply. “He’s not going to jump.” He can’t jump.

“We don’t have time for this,” Logan told them. His voice was tighter now, more anxious. But Viola could tell that his worry was not for Theo. “The sun is already setting, and any minute now, someone is going to come. We have to figure out how to get that door open.” He swallowed hard, the apple of his throat bobbing. “You know what will happen if we don’t get the Delphi’s Tear for James.”

“You should know what will happen to you anyway if you follow a viper like Nibsy Lorcan,” Viola told him.

“You don’t know anything about James Lorcan,” Logan said. His jaw was tight now, his voice angry.

“I know he’ll put the knife in your back himself if it serves his purposes,” Viola told him. “Ask this one.” She gestured to Mooch, who only looked away. The coward.

“We’re not leaving him up there. There’s time for both,” Werner said to Logan. Then he turned to Viola. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m afraid that if we touch him, he might jump.”

“Can you put him to sleep?” Werner asked. “I could try to take his breath, but that might make him panic. If you could—I don’t know—relax him a bit?”

Viola frowned. “I think maybe, yes. That would work.”

“When he collapses, we’ll have to grab him before he tumbles,” Werner told Mooch, who also inched closer.

“This is insane,” Logan said. “You’re wasting our time over a member of the Order?”

Viola ignored him. “If you’re ready,” she told the other two, aware that Logan was retreating into the empty library.

She closed her eyes and sent a quick prayer to any angel or saint who might be listening, and then she sent her affinity out. There was Theo’s heartbeat, steady and true, and because Viola knew that it belonged to Ruby, she vowed that it would not stop. Then she tugged softly, slowing his pulse until finally he wobbled and started to go limp.

Theo didn’t simply collapse, though. He bobbled, not backward, as she’d expected, but forward, toward the ground below.

A COLD ENERGY

1920—Chicago

Esta turned and saw that the source of the attack on the Nitemarket was a group of men dressed in long leather coats. They were covered from head to toe and were wearing masks and dark glasses that obscured their faces. There were only a handful of them, but three had machines that shot streams of green-tinged fire as they walked. One by one the booths went up in strange, crackling flames. Some of the vendors stayed and tried to rescue their goods, but the masked men ignored them. They continued working their way through the hall, and as they did, they began blocking the various entrances and exits. If they blocked the one to Chicago, Esta wasn’t sure how she and the others would get back.

The heat of the flames and the icy coldness that came from the magic within them was thick in the air as Esta reached for North and Everett—Harte had already grabbed her arm—and yanked time to a screeching halt. The net of Aether that held the world in its grasp tugged uncharacteristically against her grip on it as she struggled to keep hold of three separate people and their affinities. Then she felt something else—an electric warmth that felt too much like Seshat’s power—beginning to