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

a new experience, exactly. When he’d first been sent to New York to work under Professor Lachlan, Logan had suspected—at least at first—that Esta had hated him too. Luckily, she’d wanted the Professor’s approval too much to let anyone know how she felt, and eventually she’d gotten over it. His situation now wasn’t much different. To the Devil’s Own, Logan was an outsider. An uninvited interloper who had moved up the ranks too quickly. He probably would’ve felt the same way in their position.

“If you let him go…,” Mooch warned, straining under the effort it was taking to hold tight.

“Don’t let go of me,” the guy pleaded.

“On three,” Werner instructed. “We’re all going to pull at the same time.”

But the guy was freaking out so much that they were barely able to get his fingertips to the ledge.

“More,” Mooch said. “We have to pull harder.”

“He’s gotta settle the hell down,” Logan said. Sweat had broken out on his back and forehead, and with the gusting breeze, his skin felt clammy and slick beneath his clothes.

“Theo,” Viola called. “You have to stop.”

But Theo—apparently that was his name—wasn’t listening to reason. The guy had already convinced himself he was a goner. “Please, you have to tell Ruby—”

“Tell her yourself,” Viola snapped, sounding more like herself now.

Logan felt a burst of warmth filtering through the air. A moment later Theo’s eyes drooped a little and the fight seemed to have drained out of him. He was deadweight now, but at least he wasn’t actively fighting against them.

It had been a few weeks, but it was still unnerving how much stronger affinities were in this time. Logan had noticed it immediately, the way the old magic seemed to hang in the air, like cobwebs he was constantly surprised to walk into. Now he felt the telltale sign of Viola’s power, and it lifted the hair on the back of his neck.

“One more time,” Werner commanded, and started the count.

They pulled again, and this time they got Theo up and over the railing. He collapsed on the ground, conscious now, but visibly shaking. He might have been crying a little… or a lot, actually. He was gasping, and if he kept it up, he was going to pass out.

“Can’t you do that thing to calm him down again?” Logan asked.

Viola glared at him. “Would you be so calm?”

Logan couldn’t exactly say that he would be, so he didn’t say anything else about the guy’s whimpering. It didn’t matter that he’d put everything on hold to help them save the guy. None of them had softened toward him.

“Fine,” Logan said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

It’s not like I belong here, he reminded himself. He didn’t need to worry about these people or what they thought of him. He only had to focus on what he’d been sent to do—the ring was still beyond his reach. He needed to figure out how to get that door in the ceiling open.

He’d barely stepped back into the library room and was about to head up the winding staircase again to take another look when he heard a grinding noise. The steel door that had trapped them was beginning to move. Slowly, it was retracting back into the wall, and Logan could already see a pair of legs waiting to enter on the other side.

Logan rushed back outside. “Someone’s coming,” he told the others, urging them to get out of view.

“We’re trapped,” Mooch said, his eyes wide.

“Shut up and get down,” Logan ordered, pulling back to hide behind the half wall that ran beneath the windows as he closed the balcony door. Viola was on the other side, holding on to Theo, but he still looked like a mess.

Logan raised his fingers to his lips, and then he eased his head up, just enough to peer back into the library chamber. “There’s only one,” he told them. It was a younger guy with sandy hair, the guy from the gala—Jack Grew.

Jack had been facing toward the balcony the first time Logan looked, but now Logan chanced another peek and saw that Jack was already climbing the steps. He watched as Jack reached the top of the steps, took a pin from his lapel, and pricked his index finger. After he smeared the blood across the tips of his other fingers, Jack pressed his hand against the image of the Philosopher’s Hand that was inscribed on the medallion. It wasn’t even a second later when the heavy metal seal began to move, retracting into the ceiling and leaving an opening. Jack continued up the steps and disappeared into the chamber above.

Logan closed his eyes for a second and sent his affinity out to confirm… yes, the ring was there.

“He’s gone,” Logan said, standing now. He kept one eye on the opening in the ceiling, in case Jack Grew started to descend.

“We need to get Theo out of here,” Viola told him. “Now, while we have a chance.”

“No,” Logan said. “We need to get the Delphi’s Tear. That’s what we were sent here to do, and that’s what we’re going to do. It’s still up there.” The round doorway was still gaping open like a portal, and the ring was right there. It was so close that Logan could not walk away from it—none of them could. Not when it would be so easy to climb the steps to overtake Jack Grew.

He could get the damn artifact, and he could go home.

Viola froze, and her dark brows drew together like she didn’t believe him. “You can’t know that for sure,” she said.

“It’s what I do,” he explained. “If I want to find something, I can find it, especially if there’s any trace of magic to it.”

Werner let out a low, soft whistle. “No wonder Nibs keeps you around,” he told Logan, giving him a newly appraising look.

“It takes some concentration,” Logan admitted, shrugging off their sudden interest. “And I can only focus on one object at a time. But I know the