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

his skull. A blunt shove pushed him from behind and sent him tumbling down the steep steps. Harte tried to catch himself, but stars exploded across his vision, and he couldn’t tell if the darkness that surrounded him came from the blow to his head or the lightless tunnels beneath.

COMPLICATIONS

1904—Denver

To Esta’s relief, Cordelia Smith kept her word. The sharpshooter knew her way around the grounds and managed to avoid the marshals as she led them back toward the main entrance, but she didn’t leave them once they were free from the show’s grounds. Instead, Cordelia insisted on accompanying them into the city, where she took them to a small, barely furnished apartment. It was a safe house that she said was sometimes used by Antistasi who needed a place to lie low or meet with locals when traveling through the area. Clearly, no one had used it in a while, though. Dust covered everything, and the air had a kind of closed-up, musty smell.

Once they were inside and the door was secured, North placed the box they’d taken from Pickett on a rickety wooden table. Maggie went to open a window.

“Whatever’s in there must be really something,” Cordelia said, eyeing the box with too much interest for Esta’s liking. “Especially considering the risk y’all took to get it.”

Esta exchanged an uneasy glance with North and Maggie, who didn’t look any more certain about Cordelia than she felt.

“Well?” Cordelia pressed. “Are you gonna open it or what?”

“We will,” North said, clearly hedging. “But there’s no rush.”

Understanding, and then anger, flashed in Cordelia’s eyes. “I think I have a right to know what y’all are up to, considering that you got me wrapped up in it as well.”

“We didn’t exactly ask for your help,” Esta reminded her, which earned her a sharp look from Maggie.

“But y’all needed it, didn’t you?” Cordelia asked. “Without me, you’d’ve been caught up back there in the middle of the raid.”

Esta wasn’t in any mood to admit that Cordelia was right. Maybe with the Quellant thick in her blood, she wouldn’t have been able to slip past the marshals unseen, but she would have found another way out. She always found a way.

“We appreciate all you’ve done for us,” North said before Esta had the chance to argue the point any further.

“But you still ain’t gonna tell me what you’re up to?” Cordelia paused, considering them. “It makes me think maybe the rumors I’ve been hearing were right.”

“What rumors?” Maggie said.

“There’s plenty that think you betrayed more than Ruth when y’all left St. Louis.” Cordelia eyed Maggie, her expression suddenly suspicious. “And then after that train exploded? Seems like y’all should have contacted someone. Instead, you let everyone think the Thief was dead. Makes a body think maybe you’ve got something to hide.”

“We didn’t know who might be sympathetic to Ruth,” North explained. “You said yourself that you couldn’t believe she let Maggie go. We couldn’t risk any of Ruth’s followers coming after us.”

Cordelia’s expression shifted. “There’s other rumors too, you know. Rumors that Ruth stole the real necklace from the Society, and that when y’all left St. Louis, you took the Djinni’s Star right out of Ruth’s grasp.”

Maggie glanced at North, looking every bit as guilty as if she’d taken the necklace herself.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Cordelia asked, excitement brightening her watery blue eyes.

North and Maggie exchanged an uneasy glance, but Esta decided to take control of the situation before the two of them could make things worse.

“We couldn’t exactly let Ruth keep it, could we?” Esta asked, like this was obvious. Denying it would only make the sharpshooter more suspicious. The best she could hope for at this point was to keep Cordelia on their side and buy a little more time. Clearly, the other girl was loyal to the Antistasi. If Esta could make Cordelia believe that she, too, was loyal to the Antistasi’s cause, the sharpshooter might be less of an obstacle. She might even be a help. “After what happened with the serum, we couldn’t risk Ruth using the artifact against anyone else—other Antistasi, for instance. Could we?”

Cordelia turned to Maggie. “So when y’all left St. Louis, you were choosing the Antistasi over your sister?”

“My loyalty to the Antistasi didn’t begin when I left St. Louis,” Maggie told Cordelia, and Esta was surprised to see there wasn’t even a hint of prevarication in her words.

Cordelia considered this for a long, uncomfortable moment before her expression cleared. “Well, where’s it at?” she asked. “I’d sure like to take a look at it.”

Which was, of course, impossible. The Djinni’s Star was with Harte, traveling toward the other side of the continent. Not that any of them needed to know about that.

But North and Maggie looked uneasy, and Esta had the sense that the two Antistasi didn’t want this woman to know they’d lost the necklace. Maggie opened her mouth and closed it again, like a fish gulping for air.

“We can’t show you right now,” Esta said, stepping in to save Maggie from another poorly told lie.

“Why not?” The suspicion returned to Cordelia’s expression. “Y’all ain’t fixin’ to keep it for yourself, are you?”

“Of course not,” Maggie said too quickly.

“Then it won’t hurt to let me have a peek, as a show of good faith.”

“We would,” Esta told Cordelia, trying to draw the sharpshooter’s attention away from Maggie, who apparently couldn’t lie to save her soul. “Of course we would. But we don’t have the necklace with us at the moment. You said yourself what a risk it was we were taking today,” Esta reminded her. “You don’t think we’d take the chance of putting something as important as the Djinni’s Star in that kind of danger, do you?”

Cordelia frowned. She didn’t want to agree with this logic, but she also couldn’t find any fault in it. “Where is it?”

“Somewhere safe,” Esta said. “We wouldn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, would we?”

“And that box there?”