XV

February 25, 1882

Black smoke carried with it the scent of burning infrastructure and roasting flesh.

Gunner slammed down on the brakes of the automobile he’d appropriated from some poor bastard who’d not thought to lock its doors. Traffic on Twenty-Third Street had come to a standstill. Just ahead loomed the FBMS field office, where the smoke billowed from a fourth-floor window. A sizeable crowd of pedestrians had gathered along the perimeter in the way which any disaster draws spectators, and water tankers on the scene were currently deploying leather hoses.

I shoved open the passenger door, climbed out, and ran through the disarray of haphazardly parked automobiles and motorwagons without waiting for Gunner. I barked orders for civilians to move from my path and outright shoved them aside when I was ignored. Glass shattered from overhead as I reached a clearing that’d been provided to the fire department, and I’d hardly time to look up and stumble backward several steps as a body engulfed in flames was flung from the fourth floor and slammed down into the road.

A visceral panic nearly undid me then and there when I immediately picked up Moore’s magic signature from the broken body before me. But one deep breath, then another, and I was in touch with all my faculties again. The fire was magic. The magic was Moore’s. He was still alive. Which meant this once-fellow special agent before me had, somehow, become a victim of the poison and reanimation and now required… permanent elimination.

Gunner entered the enclosed space next, briefly touching my shoulder as a means of identifying himself, and then I heard him draw the Waterbury and demand the firefighters to back up because he knew what was going to happen with this human burning before us.

Whispers and speculation charged the air like a sudden and incoming thunderstorm.

“Who’s that?”

“What a handsome rogue.”

“A new gangster?”

“That’s Gunner the Deadly!”

Over the excitable voices, crackling fire, and overwhelming chaos, I heard my name—distant and carried on the wind. I raised my head and pinpointed Moore leaning out the broken window, waving his hand for my attention. He pointed, shouted a second time, but this time said, “Watson.”

Onlookers gasped and cried out, and I spun toward the body in time to see Special Agent Watson, Plunket’s new caster partner, pick himself up from the ground. He was still on fire as he faced me, staring through one good eye.

“Oh God,” I whispered.

Watson raised both hands and held them forward, conjured a wind spell, and shot it toward me and Gunner and the firemen at my back. It carried the flames of Moore’s magic right at us, and among the shouts to ready hoses—which would do little against magic fire—and the panicked cries of the crowd realizing the situation had escalated into one of life or death, I held my hands out, palms forward, and cast a wall of shimmering, crystal blue water. The wind and fire crashed into my magic, and while Watson wouldn’t have held a candle to me in a regular fight, he was fueled by endless aether that kept him from overexertion, and Moore’s high, level-four energy had been mingled into his own spell. I remained standing, although the blast forced me back nearly a foot, my shoes skidding along the slick road.

I checked over my shoulder and saw Gunner and firemen alike had braced for the attack, arms raised and heads turned away. Luckily, my magic had shielded them all. I turned back to Watson, brought my hands together, and the water mimicked my motion by forming a tunnel.

Despite the flames, I saw Watson grin. He reached a hand toward me and called, “Fitzgerald!” It was clear that Barrie had perfected his poison and magic ratio, the end result being this undead creature that seemed to be controlled from afar, felt no pain, could only be stopped by the removal of quintessence from the system, and possessed enough intelligence to move and speak almost as if they weren’t actually dead.

Watson cast another wind spell.

I released the volley of water.

The magics hit in an explosion of brilliant white and blue light. Wind bent the bare skeleton limbs of trees along the street and knocked civilians off their feet, but the water spell barreled directly into Watson, dousing the flames and throwing him far enough that he slammed into the front doors of the field office. Despite his smashed body, Watson climbed back to his feet. He looked at me, at Gunner, as the latter moved to stand beside me, then raised his hand overhead. The wind began to spin viciously around Watson as he pulled the freezing February day around him like a blanket, which mixed with moisture in the air. He was promptly surrounded by dozens of jagged, deadly, and nearly translucent ice spikes. Watson flashed that malicious grin again, one he had never worn while alive, and released the spell directly at Gunner.

Gunner shot a triple round directly into Watson’s chest, but the magic kept its target.

I threw an arm in front of Gunner, fire flowing from my shoulder to fingertips, eviscerating Watson’s magic. I looked at Gunner in time to see he hadn’t flinched as a shard of ice with a point, molded by the cold and wind, dangerous enough to plow right through a human body, had been melted just inches from his face.

Gunner caught my gaze and nodded once. I’m okay and thank you was what it conveyed.

Watson’s behavior was like the other undeads: remove Gunner from the equation at all costs, while I remained unharmed. And if there was one fear more intense, more feral, than that of being abused for my magic again, it was someone coming for Gunner’s life.

I yanked my goggles on and ran toward Watson. I cast aether, drew the magic out in a long arc between my hands, then leaped into the air. I rode a current of wind up before crashing down on Watson, driving the aether through the hole in his chest and out his back. I didn’t have the heart to use gravity on this man I’d once known, didn’t want to see his body ruined any more than it already was. This option was harder on me physically, but kinder to my soul. And I needed that.

“I’m sorry, Watson,” I said, staring into his dead eyes as we both crashed to the ground.

He was still trying to grab at me, so I jerked the aether hard, digging it into the front steps and pinning him like a bug on a slide in someone’s curiosity cabinet. I cast more aether on myself, reverse engineering the spell until I could pump him so full of magic that the quintessence began to ooze out from around the spike of aether stuck in his chest. I didn’t let up until the gelatinous black magic, spilling out like blood, coalesced into another big, fat, eel-sized creature. I released the aether, stood, and staggered back as the quintessence lunged after me.

And then it exploded as a round of aether ammunition hit it.

Gunner holstered his Waterbury and raced to join me. He grabbed my biceps before my knees gave out. “Whoa, hang on. I’ve got you.” He eased into a crouch to help me sit on the top step beside Watson’s body. Gunner wiped my face with his hands and rubbed the black, oily residue on his trouser leg.

I put my head between my knees and closed my eyes as my equilibrium went off-kilter and the city felt like it was riding the waves of a storm at sea. I fought the unconsciousness that was slinking ever-closer, because we weren’t done here. There was no time for a long recovery period. Moore was still inside. He said there’d been three afflicted agents. I had to save him, tell him about Magnus Prince—that he possessed the power and authority to have imprisoned me on Blackwell’s, that he’d have had access to our reports on Henry Bligh and could have made contact with Barrie with relative ease, that Barrie was in cahoots with a top official of a federal agency and now no one in our community was safe.

Gunner’s arms came around me, but I weakly shoved him off. “I’m going to pick you up,” he said calmly.

“No.” I shook my head, but the motion made me dry heave a few times.

I turned my hand palm up and focused on the magic plane. I felt the raw current encircle my wrist, twine around my fingers, soothe the constant ache in my palms. I gently closed my hand around the tendrils and opened myself to absorbing the energy without giving the stream anything of my own in return—a grave skill to have, one I hadn’t used since the Great Rebellion. It didn’t leave a wound in the atmosphere, but instead reduced the amount of magic available to everyone else. I had promised myself to never use it again because it set an unbelievably perilous precedent, but seeing as I was literally on a mission to save magic as we knew it….

The effect was immediate, like being blinded by headlights of an oncoming automobile before the chrome grille barreled into your body. I was thrown onto my back, my eyes shot open, and I gasped for air. I raised a shaky hand and yanked the goggles down, losing the purple-tinted world in favor of crisp, winter sunshine.

“Gillian?” Gunner had one knee on the step as he leaned over me. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” I agreed in between gasps for air.

Gunner glanced over his shoulder at the onlooking crowd, at the firefighters blasting the upper windows with water, and then he took my hands and helped me to my feet. “Not that I’m unhappy to see your beautiful green eyes, my dear, but why aren’t you unconscious?”

“Let’s circle back on that later.” I turned, threw the front doors open with a gust of wind, and ran inside with Gunner at my back.

In the event that an FBMS field office’s defenses were breached, protocol was that scholar agents secured all confidential documents, studies, and records, while architect agents acted as their defense. Meanwhile, casters went on the offense, while their bruiser counterparts fortified all ingresses and egresses so the criminal stood no chance of making a successful escape. The fact that I expected to blow the front doors open and climb over a barricade but did not was concerning. No doubt the fact that agents had been assaulted by their own had confused protocol. After all, our manuals never did include a chapter on how to handle undead special agents striking from within.

I raced up the main set of stairs, giving each landing only the most cursory of once-overs. Furniture was overturned, sheafs of paper marbled the hallways, and here and there a body lay unmoving. I kept going until I neared the fourth floor. I could make out the scholar bullpen on my right as I slowed on the steps. The door was shuttered and a small army of architects and a smattering of casters were guarding the agents and sensitive data on the other side of the door. Ahead was the open doorway to the half-bullpen and jail cell that Bert Parker had spent the night in. In the threshold was a body hacked to pieces with what had likely been an axe. Blood and innards painted the walls and floor, and another one of those quintessence eels—withered and quickly dissipating without its host—flopped weakly in the pooled vile. Gunner, still a step behind me, shifted to his left, aimed, and shot it to smithereens.

One of the nearby casters reacted to the gunfire, and a bolt of lightning hit the balusters and handrail right beside me. Wood splintered, fractured, and exploded as we both dropped to the steps and out of sight.

“Hold your fire!” I exclaimed before cautiously rising. I shook my head and wiped my shoulders of debris while reaching the landing.

“Agent, er—I mean—Hamilton?” the woman caster, Special Agent Cooke, cautiously called. “What’re you…?” I suspected that Cooke had been one of the agents Moore had trusted to oversee the piers and look the other way if I was spotted trying to leave the city. I based this fact on nothing more than she appeared to struggle with what to say—not only to me, but in the presence of agents who hadn’t heard the council’s absurd story about my supposed havoc wreaked upon Bellevue.

“Where’s Director Moore?”

She pointed at the hall to my back. “He—he drew Agent Watson away from the scholars. He was going toward the private offices.”

I motioned Gunner to move ahead of me, so that if some knucklehead thought to open fire on America’s Most Wanted Outlaw, they’d first have to come to terms with shooting me in the back. We hurried down the hall, its walls and ceiling blackened from charring, and the deeper we went into the building, the more steam-powered lamps were broken or flickering at random. At Moore’s office, I glanced inside, but it was empty. I instructed Gunner to take a right onto a corridor of private offices, which included the one I used to call my own at the end, beside the busted window. Water rained down from the ceiling in the aftermath of the fire department’s dousing, and steam mingled with the remnants of black smoke.

Moore stumbled out of one of the offices suddenly, coughing lightly. His usually so carefully set hair was in disarray, and his rolled-back sleeves and waistcoat were wet and plastered to his body, but otherwise he didn’t seem worse for wear. He turned and reached into the room to help Rachel Plunket climb over what was probably an overturned desk.

“Sir,” I called, quickly approaching the two. I grabbed Moore’s arm instinctively, then jerked back when he hissed in pain and an electrical arc snapped between us. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m just easily conductive at the moment.”

An embarrassed laugh died in my throat, and I clasped my hands together. My emotional reaction to Moore being alive and well had been so extreme that I’d nearly drawn him into an unwarranted embrace, in front of Plunket, no less. Belatedly, I took in her appearance, and seeing her absolutely drenched in blood about caused my death by apoplexy then and there.

“Plunket,” I cried.

She held up her hands, which were nearly black, there was so much blood. “It’s not mine,” she said in such a calm and rational voice that I suspected she was in shock. “I had to do it,” Plunket continued, nodding to herself. “Agent Phillips. He killed Agent Evans and then started after Director Moore when—when Watson was already trying to—to kill—” Tears spilled down her usually rouged cheeks, instead now spattered with Phillips’s blood.

My heart crumpled in on itself as I watched her break into pieces. Was this helplessness I felt akin to what Gunner suffered when my Soldier’s Heart reared its ugly head? Knowing that a decent person survived something so brutal and ghastly, something that no human should ever endure, and now that moment was left on repeat over and over and over, like a broken steam pneumatic, forever trying to propel forward and never able to break from its locked cycle.

“Come with me,” I said, ushering her forward. To Gunner, I said, “Give us a moment?”

He understood. But of course he did. What didn’t Gunner see? His eyes softened and he grabbed my hand, gave it a quick squeeze, then let go.

Plunket was giving me an odd, sideways stare as I escorted her to the nearest water closet. I motioned for her to sit on the toilet lid, then fetched one of the hand towels from the cabinet beside the sink and soaked it thoroughly. I crouched in front of her in the cramped quarters and hastily wiped blood from Plunket’s hands in the way no one had ever done for me.

“I recognize him,” she said, still sounding detached.

“Do you?”

“He was here in January. Gunner the Deadly.”

I made a noncommittal noise under my breath as I rolled her sleeves back to make certain her wrists were clean too.

“He’s in love with you.”

I glanced up.

“I wish I could say someone has looked at me the way he just did you.”

I said nothing of that and returned to the sink to hold the towel under the cold tap until the water ran clean. I murmured an apology before touching Plunket’s chin in what was a fairly intimate gesture, then began to gently scrub her face.

“I’m so sorry, Hamilton,” she whispered.

I briefly met her dark eyes, and they were filled with more unshed tears. “For what?”

She swallowed hard; it looked like it’d hurt. “I could have been anything to you, and I chose bully.” Plunket took a strangled breath and the tears fell, streaking through the blood I was washing away. “Because all you can think, in moments like that, is thank God it’s not me they’re laughing at. And you’ll do anything to keep them from finding out.”

“Finding… oh.” I lowered the hand towel and studied her ruddy face. “Really?”

Her chin quivered and she nodded once.

I rinsed the towel again as I mulled over my words. I’d denied my tendencies for thirty years. I’d chosen a life of celibacy and solitude, and it’d nearly killed me. But then again, what had been the alternative? Those like us would be lucky to only lose their jobs, their homes. So many were jailed, beaten, even killed. It’s why we haunted the city’s most dangerous neighborhood, because society and coppers alike tended to avoid the area like it was home to the latest epidemic. It’s why men had developed the skill to gauge the interests of others with a mere once-over and women moved to the middle of goddamn nowhere to simply lay their heads down on the same pillow at night.

I turned around and finally said, as I scrubbed Plunket’s neck, “It’s hypocritical of me to say this, because I’m afraid every single day, but you must be courageous.”

“You’re a caster too,” she murmured.

A wry smile crossed my face. “Yes, I know a thing or two about oppression. But so do you. So do a lot of people. And the only way to change society is… to not allow it to bully you anymore.”

“Does he know?” Plunket asked.

Practice what you preach.

“Yes.”

Plunket drew her gaze back to mine. Her chin quivered again, but there was a hint of a smile somewhere in there.

“He’s… well… he’s my darling.”

A sudden ghost of a laugh escaped Plunket.

“It wasn’t intended to be humorous,” I answered, briskly finishing with the last spots of blood I could find on her face. I tossed the sodden towel into the sink.

“No, no. It’s only….” That whisper-laugh again. “You were always such a stickler for code and law and regulation, and yet, your darling is Gunner the Deadly.”

“He’s not as bad as the papers would have you believe.” I took Plunket’s hand before I could overanalyze and second-guess myself. I recalled the sensation of wasting away, when denied human touch, only too well, and unsurprisingly, she startled, but gripped my hand almost painfully. “Don’t give up. And when you find the one who makes you feel safe, you fight to keep her.”

“Okay,” Plunket whispered.

“I’m sorry about Watson.”

She nodded, and the tears were back. “Is he… you didn’t have to….”

“No. It was quick.” I pulled her to stand. “You’re a good agent, Plunket.”

Plunket studied me, studied our joined hands—perhaps with that same curiosity I often had regarding the other gender—studied how strange her thin, delicate fingers looked against my rough, battered ones. Then she met my eyes a final time, said, “You were better,” and stepped out of the water closet.

I followed, watched her pick her way down the dark and ruined hallway, then returned to Moore and Gunner.

“Is she all right?” Moore asked as he mopped wet hair from his eyes.

“Probably not,” I answered truthfully. “Where’s the third undead?”

Moore’s expression was appalled at the description, but he said, “Dispatched on the second floor.”

“Did you take out the quintessence?” Gunner asked.

“If you’re referring to the bloated worm that crawled out, then yes. I set it on fire and it exploded.”

“How did this happen?” I cut in.

Moore settled his hands on his hips. “I put two teams on Parker and stepped out to make a few calls from my office. Plunket and Watson were one of those teams. When Councilman Prince arrived, Plunket slipped out to fetch me—said someone from D.C. was releasing the prisoner without any intention of speaking to me first, not that I’d have had power to stop him. But when we reached the room, the jail was empty and the three agents were dead.” Moore shook his head like he was mentally rewriting his narrative. “Well, they weren’t dead for long, anyway. I found a puncture mark on Watson’s neck, but didn’t have time to inspect the other two. I assume I’d have found the same.” Moore said to me, “I don’t understand. Is Barrie trying to raise the dead, soul and all, or is he trying to control the dead?”

“Perhaps both,” I suggested. “Given the circumstances.”

“You didn’t speak with or see Prince yourself,” Gunner said to Moore.

Moore shook his head.

“Then how do you know it was him?”

“Plunket recognized him. She had a hearing before the council in January regarding Bligh’s actions and subsequent demise. I met him then too, for that matter. He, ah, stands out in a crowd.”

Gunner considered this for a moment, removed his bowler, then said, “The foundation of your Bureau is being tested, Director. Your decision right now will decide if the rotten apple spoils his companions.”

Moore’s stare was steely.

“I’ve let my own matters with Prince rest for the better part of a decade,” Gunner continued, “but unfortunately for us both, he’s now involved Hamilton.”

“What business could you possibly have with an FBMS councilman?” Moore countered.

“We’ve all lived lives,” Gunner answered. “Prince wasn’t always a councilman.”

“He used to be a Pinkerton too,” I clarified quietly.

“Prince believes me a murderer,” Gunner said, and a hush fell over us, so intense that the dripping water sounded like a storm in the absence of conversation. Mildly, Gunner added, “For the wrong reasons. And I was even determined to look the other way after Prince sent Milo Ferguson to belittle my reputation and kill me. I’ve already lost one love in my life. I’ll be damned if I allow it to happen again, and at the hands of someone like Magnus Prince.”

Moore studied Gunner, stroked his beard thoughtfully, then said to me, “As State Director, I have the authority to temporarily deputize regulated casters, if the FBMS faces an imminent threat to its structure, agents, or its capacity to fulfill its duty in the supervision of magic and steam in the state of New York.”

I shook my head and opened my mouth to protest.

Moore spoke over me. “Gillian Hamilton, I temporarily authorize you to work on behalf of the FBMS, to assume all the responsibilities of an active special agent, and to accept orders from a superior—who, in this case, happens to be Director Loren Moore.”

“You can’t do this, sir.”

“I just did.”

“But I’m not—”

“Simon Fitzgerald isn’t in the regulation records,” Moore stated. “Gillian Hamilton is. I’ve seen the documentation myself. And this way, your actions won’t be viewed as vigilantism.”

“Sir—”

“Let me deal with the consequences, Hamilton,” Moore said softly, and he smiled with the courage and bravery of a captain who kept his hand on the wheel, even as his ship was going down in flames. “Dr. Eugene Barrie is an immediate and dangerous threat to not only the health and stability of the magic community, but he has demonstrated a cruel indifference toward the lives of innocent civilians as well. He’s to be handled in whatever manner proves successful.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And there is considerable evidence that can be used to build a case against Councilman Prince for his involvement in Barrie’s undertaking. This is a direct violation of our ethics and abuse of the power he commands as head of the FBMS. He’s to be detained at any cost.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then shall we pay Barrie a visit?” Gunner asked, settling his hat back on his head at that rakish angle he preferred. He looked down at me. “Blackwell’s?”

“An entire asylum of casters at his disposal to abuse for their aether skills, and at the behest and protection of the FBMS? Yes, I do believe that’s where Barrie, and possibly Prince, are currently holed up.” I began to lead the way down the disaster of a hallway.

“Gunner,” Moore called. We both turned, and he said, before tossing Gunner a ring of skeleton keys, “Take my automobile.”

Gunner snatched the ring out of the air one-handed.

“But I expect you to return it. In person.”

“I’ve not been shot yet, Director.”

“For Hamilton’s sake, you’d best keep it that way,” Moore warned.