Jack

Seattle, WA—Evangeline’s Workshop

Sunday, July 4, 1909

I WAS GRATEFUL that it wasn’t winter. The workshop was drafty and mostly dry. If I’d had to sleep there during the colder months, I might have frozen into a solid block of ice. As it was, the temperamental Seattle weather made my nights interesting. Some nights it was steamy and warm, other nights a chill breeze blew in with the rain and left me shivering. I was indebted to Lucia for finding me a cot so that I didn’t have to bed down on the floor.

I was sitting at the table nibbling on a hard roll from the day before when Lucia arrived. Normally, she attended Mass on Sunday mornings, so I hadn’t expected to see her so soon.

“Oh,” Lucia said, wrinkling her nose. “You’re here.”

I was sure I looked frightful. Ruth and I had spent the entire day making deliveries for the upcoming Independence Day celebrations. Since the Fourth of July fell on a Sunday, the AYPE would celebrate with parades and fireworks on the fifth, but that didn’t mean that some weren’t planning their own private celebrations, and Ruth and I had made sure they had the libations they needed. I hadn’t even changed out of my clothes before collapsing onto my cot the night before, so I probably smelled as awful as I looked.

“Not sure where else you think I’d be.”

“At the hotel? Enjoying the comforts of a soft bed and fluffy pillows?” She snapped her fingers. “That’s right. Evangeline evicted you.” Her cane thumped on the wood floor as she walked to her drafting table.

“It’s my own fault,” I said. “Because of me, we lost out on hundreds of dollars.”

“And for that, she punished you like a child. I guess you’re lucky she didn’t send you to bed without supper.” Lucia shucked off her coat to reveal trousers and a shirt underneath.

“You know Evangeline hates it when you wear men’s clothes.”

Lucia shrugged. “If she hates it so much then she can build her own illusions.” She eased herself onto her swiveling stool and turned around to face me. “You don’t get it, do you, Jack? She needs us more than we need her.”

“Why are you so angry at her lately?” I asked. “Ever since we left Paris, you’ve been withdrawn. You hardly do anything but work.” I gave up on the roll and dragged my chair closer to Lucia.

“I liked Paris,” she said. “I felt more at home there than I’d felt anywhere else since leaving my actual home.”

“Do you regret Evangeline rescuing you?”

“Rescuing me?” Lucia raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you think happened?”

“Isn’t it?” Much like the injury that caused her to need a cane, Lucia never spoke about her life before she’d joined our family.

“Evangeline didn’t rescue me. She won me in a game of poker.”

“Are you serious?” I had assumed that Evangeline had plucked Lucia from a life of poverty and sorrow and pain similar to my own.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Lucia went on, “my life with Evangeline is superior to the life I had with Signor Schirru, but I’ve never been fool enough to believe that Evangeline loves me.”

It was hard to miss the implication that I had been such a fool. “She cares,” I said. “In her own way.”

“How can you say that when you’ve been exiled here for the crime of not being useful enough?” Lucia seemed to be getting pretty worked up as she spoke. “You don’t need her any more than I do. Don’t you have plans of your own? Don’t you want to go out into the world and see what you can accomplish without her leaning over your shoulder and reminding you of every mistake you’ve ever made? Don’t you want to try something new without having to hear her tell you that you’re not good enough?”

I wasn’t sure where this was coming from. I’d gotten the feeling Lucia wasn’t happy, but I’d assumed disgruntled was her default mood. Some people were simply born a little more sour than others. It seemed I was wrong. Dissatisfaction with her life had been stewing within her for a long time, and it was finally beginning to bubble over.

In a way, I understood. There were times I wondered what else life might hold for me. I wondered what I might become if I attended a university and devoted my life to something other than magic and thievery. But the truth was that I enjoyed traveling the world, I enjoyed sampling the pockets of everyone I met, I enjoyed standing on a stage and soaking up an audience’s adoration. The idea of abandoning Evangeline filled me with dread. But this wasn’t the life for everyone.

“Are you going to leave?” I asked, unsure whether I wanted to hear her answer.

Lucia didn’t respond straightaway. After a moment, she heaved a sigh and said, “Not today. But when I do go, there won’t be any teary goodbyes—I won’t give her a chance to trick me into staying—one day I’ll just be gone.”

“I’m glad that day isn’t today.” I cracked a smile, hoping to earn one back.

“Because you need something from me?”

“What? Of course not. Can’t I just appreciate my beloved sister, whose genius is only rivaled by her kindness?”

Lucia wasn’t buying it. She tapped her thigh and stared at me with a look I knew well. A look that said I was as transparent as H. G. Wells’s invisible man.

“Fine,” I said. “I do need your help.”

“Of course you do.”

“But it’s not really for me. It’s for someone else.” Since escorting Wilhelm home after the exposition Friday night, I’d devoted every possible second to working out a way to help him. If Laszlo really was the thief who had terrorized countless wealthy Americans east of the Mississippi, and he was planning to steal something in Seattle, possibly something from the exposition itself, then I needed to discover what it was. Laszlo couldn’t harm Jessamy Valentine, Wil, or anyone if he was locked in a jail cell.

“Would that be a certain rival magician’s assistant?”

My mouth fell open, and Lucia clapped her hands in delight. “How?”

“I don’t spend all of my time in this workshop, Jack,” she said. “I have friends, and those friends have eyes and ears. You haven’t exactly been discreet.”

What else had they heard? I hadn’t planned to tell Lucia about Wil’s magic, but if she’d already guessed, it would make this a lot easier. “What is it you think you know?”

Lucia shrugged, feigning innocence. “Just that you’ve twice now been seen sneaking into the trap room around the time Laszlo’s assistant would be dropping in.” She pursed her lips. “You haven’t gotten him to tell you how they perform that butterfly trick, have you? I have my suspicions, but it’s such a clean switchover that I’m not sure.”

So Lucia’s knowledge extended only to my rendezvous with Wilhelm at the Beacon. I was a little disappointed, but also relieved. I was sure I could trust Lucia to keep his secret, but I wasn’t sure I could trust her not to look for a way to exploit his power. There was more of Evangeline in Lucia than she wanted to admit.

“Wilhelm’s a prisoner,” I said. “Laszlo kidnapped him when he was four and has been holding him captive for the past twelve years.” I quickly told Lucia the rest, only leaving out the parts pertaining to his unique ability.

“Do you believe Laszlo’s really committed all those thefts?” Lucia asked.

I nodded.

“What about him being a killer? Do you think he would actually murder his own assistant?”

“Jessamy Valentine?” I asked. “I don’t know. Wil certainly believes.”

Lucia’s face softened. “In twelve years, Laszlo could have convinced him of anything.”

“Then you think the threat is hollow?”

“Maybe,” she said. “There’s no real way to test it without putting someone’s life in danger, which is what makes it such an effective threat.” Lucia was hardly talking to me anymore. When she began pulling at the threads of a problem, it was like the rest of the world ceased to exist.

“True.”

“And you say he doesn’t remember where he came from?”

“He’s got vague memories of home,” I said, “but nothing specific enough to narrow down the exact location.”

Lucia stood and paced circles around the room. It was what she usually did when she was trying to work her way through a problem.

“If you could help him remember, he could find a way to contact his parents and ask them for help.”

“How?” I asked.

“Isn’t there a mesmerizer on the Pay Streak?”

“Doctor Otto. So?”

Lucia stopped and frowned at me like a disappointed schoolteacher. “Maybe he could help Wilhelm remember where he came from.”

“But that’s an act,” I said. “It’s no more real than what we do.”

“Some of it, maybe. But it’s rooted in sound scientific theory. I’ve read Bernheim’s work with hypnosis and—” Lucia must’ve seen my eyes beginning to glaze over. “Anyway, what could it hurt?”

“It couldn’t, I guess. I was just hoping for a way to help him now. I can’t stand knowing he goes to sleep each night chained to a bed.”

“I’m not sure what else I can do. If you bring me Laszlo’s journal, I might be able to work out the cipher.”

“Maybe if I knew what he was planning to steal—”

Lucia said, “Oh, well that’s easy. It’s the gold.” I must have been looking at her as if she’d lost her mind because she added, “The exhibit in the Alaska Building? Gold bars worth well over a million dollars?”

“I know what it is.” Ruth had shown me the exhibit. “But why do you think Laszlo’s going to steal it? Wil isn’t even one hundred percent sure Laszlo’s going to steal anything at all.”

“It’s simple, really. You’ve said that every theft he’s committed has been bold and daring, which suggests he likes a challenge and that he likes people to know what he’s done. If he’s planning something similar here, then the gold in that exhibit is exactly the kind of prize he would go after.”

“But how? That gold’s got to weigh a thousand pounds.”

“I could think of a few ways off the top of my head,” Lucia said. “Give me a week to study the vault and I could give you a complete plan.”

If Lucia was right about the gold being Laszlo’s target, then it was likely that he would use Wilhelm to steal it. There were more ifs than I liked, and even more questions. Like, why hadn’t Laszlo stolen the gold already? Why was he playing at being a magician?

I’d gotten lost in thought, and when I looked up, Lucia was staring at me. “What?”

“You,” she said. “I’m used to you falling fast for every pretty boy you meet. I’m also used to you giving up on them the moment things get complicated. This one’s different though, isn’t he?”

“No,” I said, more defensively than I meant to, which practically ensured Lucia would know I was lying. “I don’t know. He needs my help is all.”

I expected Lucia to laugh at me or make a joke. Instead, she nodded slowly and said, “Be careful, Jack. I’m not saying love’s a con, but we’ve used it to con an awful lot of people.”

“Wilhelm’s not like that.”

“I bet that’s what every man said about Evangeline right before she took them for everything.”