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

whether Pickett still has the dagger, and if he doesn’t, we need to find out if he knows where it is.”

Jericho clearly didn’t feel the same. “I don’t know, Mags—”

“We need the Pharaoh’s Heart, Jericho,” Maggie said, cutting him off before he could give her all the good reasons they shouldn’t. They’d lost everything else. They couldn’t lose this, too. Especially not with the Antistasi sharpshooter looking at them with suspicion.

Jericho didn’t respond at first, and Maggie could see in his expression that he still wasn’t sure. For a moment she worried that he might refuse.

“You promised,” she reminded him gently. “When we left St. Louis, you told me you understood how important this was. You told me I could depend on you.”

He let out a ragged, frustrated breath. “You can. You know that.”

Somehow, though, Jericho’s reluctant acceptance didn’t feel like the victory it should have been.

“I’ve never seen Pickett with anything that could be mistaken for a lost artifact,” Cordelia said.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean Pickett doesn’t have it,” Esta said. “If he’s smart, he wouldn’t have shown it off.”

“A piece that valuable? I’d expect he’d keep it somewhere safer than his tent,” Cordelia said. “Might could be that he left it back with his family in Texas.”

“I’m not going back to Texas,” Jericho said with a frown. “I just managed to get out of that state alive for the second time. I’m not interested in trying for a third.”

“Not unless we have to,” Maggie promised. Then she glanced at Esta. “The first thing we need to figure out is whether Pickett has the dagger with him here in Denver. Then we can go from there.” She turned to Cordelia. Maggie was still unsettled about Cordelia implying she hadn’t been faithful to the Antistasi’s cause, but she figured the best way to neutralize the threat Cordelia might pose was to include her. “Cordelia, you know your way around the show.… How well do you know Bill Pickett?”

“Not well enough to go asking about some priceless lost artifact,” Cordelia said, arching a single brow. “Besides, even if Pickett is sympathetic to our cause, I can’t imagine he’d tell me a thing, not with the marshals prowling around today.”

Cordelia was right. With all that had happened, and with how quickly the news had spread about the theft of the Djinni’s Star and the attack on the world’s fair, it wasn’t likely that Bill Pickett would admit that he was in possession of one of the Order’s other lost artifacts. Not willingly.

The weight of the leather pouch Maggie had carried with her from St. Louis suddenly felt heavier than it had a moment before. If they could get close enough, there was a way to ensure that Pickett revealed everything, but using the concoction she had in mind meant divulging secrets she’d never intended to reveal. At least not like this.

“Maybe there’s a way you could earn his trust?” Maggie said hopefully.

“It would take time we don’t have,” Esta said, dismissing the idea. “With those explosions you set off, someone is bound to start piecing things together. It’s not going to be hard to figure out no one died in the train explosion back in Texas. Once they do, they’re going to know to look for us. The faster we get the dagger and get out of town, the better.”

Esta was right. It had been a mistake to use the Flash and Bangs, and now Maggie had to deal with the consequences. As much as she wasn’t keen on revealing this particular secret, the artifact they were seeking was too important for Maggie to put her own personal worries before her duty to the Antistasi… especially considering that she was mostly responsible for the mess they were in. She wouldn’t allow herself to fail again, even if it meant Jericho might never look at her the same.

“I might have a formulation that could help with Pickett,” Maggie said slowly, knowing that what she was about to reveal would change everything.

North turned to her, clearly surprised. “You do?”

She hesitated, staring at a snag in her skirts because she couldn’t meet Jericho’s eyes. She knew what his reaction was going to be. “If we can give it to Pickett, he won’t have any choice but to tell us the truth about the dagger.”

“What, like a truth serum?” Esta asked, getting to the point far more quickly than Maggie would have liked.

“Something like that,” she admitted.

“You’ve been busier than I realized,” Jericho said with a low whistle. “First the confounding solution you used on that porter, and now this? How many new formulations have you been working on, anyway?”

Maggie could have let the omission lie, but she couldn’t bear one more thing between them. Better to tell him now than have him discover she’d withheld the truth from him twice. “It’s not new,” she told Jericho, finally risking a glance in his direction.

She must have looked as guilty as she felt, because understanding registered in Jericho’s expression immediately.

“You never told me you had anything like that,” he said, an unspoken question looming behind his words.

Maggie knew how he felt about some of the formulations Ruth had directed her to make. Oh, he was fine with the ones that flashed and banged, the ones that they needed for protection against their enemies, but he’d been uncomfortable all along with the idea of the serum, and with any formulation that took away a person’s free will.

“I haven’t used it in a long time,” Maggie told him. That, at least, was the truth.

Jericho looked a little sick. “Well, as long as you’ve never used it on me.”

Maggie didn’t respond. She couldn’t bring herself to lie, but the truth seemed impossible to tell.

Jericho frowned at her silence. “You haven’t used it on me, have you?” he asked pointedly. “Maggie?”

Maggie’s cheeks heated. “It was a long time ago,” she said softly, like that was any excuse at all.

The color drained from Jericho’s face, leaving his freckles stark against his pale skin.