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

Werner ducked his head a little, meeting Logan’s eyes. “I’m going with them,” he said. “I’ll take my chances with Nibsy. He ain’t that tough, anyway.”

“Come with us,” Viola told Logan. “Jianyu can retrieve the artifact. There’s no need to die here. Not for Nibsy.”

“I don’t have any plans to die,” Logan told her, backing toward the staircase. His expression had hardened now, and his voice was stiff. “And I’m not about to let him walk off with the ring. If you’re going, then go. But I’m staying.” He glared at Jianyu.

Viola turned to Jianyu. “Are you sure about this?”

“I will get the ring,” he told her, as though anything that day had been so easy as that. I will keep it from this one. He didn’t say the words, but it was there in the silent sureness of his expression. “Go. Make certain that Cela is safe.”

Viola didn’t want to leave Jianyu, but they were out of time. Theo was already pulling at her hand, dragging her back into the library. She looked back only once, and Jianyu gave her a small nod. A silent promise. Go, his expression seemed to say. Time is running out.

He was not wrong. If Viola could make it back to the building where Cela was stationed before John Torrio made a move, she would be more than lucky. But she would try. Madonna, she would try.

“We should take the back staircase,” Theo told them, leading the way to the other end of the building.

“The elevator worked last time,” Mooch argued.

Viola hated the idea, but one look at Theo told her that Mooch was right. “Do you know how to work it?” she asked.

“I watched Logan,” Werner said. “How hard could it be?”

In the end, it was Theo who depressed the lever to control their descent. They could still hear alarm bells ringing as the elevator vibrated around them. The small clocklike device above the door counted down to what might be an ambush.

When the doors opened, they were ready, but so, too, were the Order. When they stepped from the small cage, three men were waiting. Viola’s knife was already drawn, but Mooch stepped in front of her. He closed his eyes, and flames erupted from the marble floors, first behind the men, who turned to see what had happened. Then the flames began to encircle them, holding them in place. The men drew guns, but the flames contracted suddenly, causing the men to press together, dropping their arms so they wouldn’t be singed.

Mooch opened his eyes and gave Theo a smug, satisfied smile. “That should hold them.”

Theo looked momentarily taken aback. “If it doesn’t bring the whole building down.”

“It won’t,” Mooch said, lifting his hand to show a small flame dancing at his fingertips. He let it weave between his fingers like a snake, but it didn’t so much as singe his skin. “They do what I say.” Then he closed his fist, extinguishing the flame.

Theo appeared briefly uneasy, but he blinked, and a look of utter concentration came over his face. “This way. We’re close.”

The four of them escaped through a service door. As they exited, Nibsy’s boys started to leave, but Viola snagged Mooch by the arm.

“Nibsy can’t know what happened in there,” she told him. “Not yet. You have to buy me some time.”

He pulled away. “I don’t have to do nothing for you.”

“You’d still be rotting in the Tombs if not for me,” Viola reminded Mooch, but he was already walking away from her.

“We need to go,” Theo urged. “I have to get to the ship if I want any chance of stopping the rumors that Jack has surely already started about me. He’ll try to frame me when the ring disappears—especially if he’s not the one who gets it. I can’t be seen here. And you have to get to Cela and Abel before the Five Pointers can.”

Viola looked up at the impossible building jutting like a blade against the deepening twilight of the evening sky. She sent up a prayer for Jianyu’s safety, and then she and Theo melted into the crowd.

THE MYSTERIUM

1902—New York

Jack Grew stood in the center of the new Mysterium and paused long enough to take in the wonder of his surroundings. The walls of the room were lined with gilded sigils, the names of angels and demons who lent their power to those worthy enough to carry out their will.

As above, so below.

Now Jack Grew was higher than any other—quite literally. The rest of the men in attendance shivered and quaked in fear two floors below him, and the rest of the city was lower still.

It had been almost too easy to reach this point. The old men in the Inner Circle had been so taken with his demonstrations at the gala that they had been more than willing to allow him the privacy to work on the measures he’d proposed to seal the Mysterium—blood magic, as ancient as the Nile itself. Guaranteed not to be corruptible or breakable. They had been so excited about the enchantment, they’d never questioned his truthfulness. Why would they, when they never doubted his desire to join them? Who, after all, wouldn’t want to become one of the chosen?

Only the man who had already surpassed them all.

The Inner Circle—the High Princept, especially—never considered that membership in the Inner Circle meant nothing at all to Jack, so the High Princept never suspected that Jack had also given himself a way into the new Mysterium. A spare key, of sorts, that he had built into the very enchantment he’d devised.

On instinct, Jack patted the place where the Book usually sat in his jacket pocket. His pulse jumped to find the pocket empty, but he reminded himself that this was for the best. He’d left the Ars Arcana back in his rooms, under lock and key in a heavily warded safe. It had