XVI

February 25, 1882

“The steam shuttle won’t make its evening commute to pick up staff from the island until….” I paused, leaned over to tug Gunner’s pocket watch from his waistcoat, and concluded, “…seven o’clock. That’s not for another five hours.” I tucked the timepiece back and settled into my seat.

“I prefer to abide by my own timetables,” Gunner replied. He made a smooth turn uptown on First Avenue, shifting gears and feeding the engine steam power as easily as when he’d directed that black Morgan stallion in Arizona. Gunner was always so utterly composed, calm, in control of every situation. From gunfights to automobile chases to jumping off the railing of a moving airship. He never hesitated, never showed doubt, and somehow, as if to add insult to injury for the rest of us, maintained devilishly handsome good looks while doing so.

“Are you ever afraid?” I asked.

Gunner briefly took his eyes from the road. “Of course.”

“Really?”

“You don’t think so?”

“You don’t show it,” I answered.

“I’ve been afraid,” he confirmed.

“When?”

“When I was scouring the country for your whereabouts. For over a month, there wasn’t a single scrap of evidence you were even alive.” Gunner looked at me again. “I was afraid then.”

“I wanted so badly to give up,” I admitted.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

I briefly squeezed Gunner’s thigh before a curious thought surfaced. “How did you board the Ora Continental?”

“I’ve made a career out of robbing airships, my dear.”

“Uh-huh.”

“A gentleman never tells.”

I rolled my eyes but had to look out the passenger window to hide the smile on my face.

Gunner parked the auto on the side of the road at Thirty-Fifth Street and First Avenue. He climbed out and made a point of locking the door before tying his black bandana around his face. He crossed the front of the auto as I got out, said quite simply, “Stay here,” and then marched onto the squat boardwalk that overlooked the East River.

I slipped my hands into my trouser pockets, leaned against the auto, and watched with a shake of my head as Gunner jumped off the boardwalk, caught ahold of the steel anchor chain belonging to the docked and hovering shuttle, and showed off some impressive upper-body strength as he climbed up and snuck onto the deck. Nothing happened after that. Traffic ebbed and flowed at my back. The shuttle’s steam engine chugged along in the cold air. I noted that the blimp’s canvas was patched here and there, and the aft propellor looked dented. I thought idly, if this was the best shuttle the city could afford for tending to the doctors, nurses, and guards who worked on Blackwell’s, it spoke a great volume as to how much money was reserved for the actual patients. A few cents per head, I guessed. And that was being generous.

A sudden yelp startled me out of that cynical spiral, and I looked toward the railing around the deck in time to see someone flail, fall overboard, and hit the icy waters like a cannonball. Two men immediately slid down the anchor chain, charged full speed along the boardwalk, and skidded right past me while shouting:

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, that was Gunner the Deadly!”

“I don’t get paid enough for this!”

They vanished into the afternoon sun just as the engine of the shuttle roared to life. The anchor was weighed, the dinky ship took flight, and it was maneuvered over the tops of several trees before descending into the middle of First Avenue. I put my goggles on, held tight to my cap, and approached the shuttle as the propeller kicked up snow and debris from the road. Automobiles and motorwagons came to a screeching halt, horns blaring and steam screaming from their exhaust pipes.

Gunner jumped down from the bridge, wearing his own goggles, and settled his arms on the deck’s railing. He tugged the bandana down and asked, “Would you like a ride, Special Agent Hamilton?”

“First, that title is only temporary.”

“We’ll see.”

“Second, you threw a man into the East River.”

“He wasn’t nearly as smart as his companions.” Gunner reached a hand out.

“Third, you’re showing off.” But I said this while taking his hand and allowing Gunner to hoist me aboard.

“I wouldn’t do it if you didn’t enjoy it.” Gunner removed his bowler long enough to lean down and brush his lips against my own, and then he was returning to the bridge. He stood at the wheel, jostling a brass lever until it seemed to unstick itself, and the shuttle once again rose into the sky. He shifted gears on another mechanism, and the engine sounded as if it cranked into overdrive. Within a minute, we were soaring over the choppy river toward Blackwell’s.

“Clever trick,” I called over the wind. “Is there anything you can’t pilot or drive?”

Gunner held the massive brass wheel with one hand as he considered the question. “I’ve yet to have an opportunity to conduct an El train.”

“Lord save us from that day,” I muttered.

“Gillian.”

“Hmm?” I looked up.

“What will be the best method for entering the asylum?”

“Well… our only options are the front doors or basement. I’m not familiar with the layout of the rotunda, though.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged a little and clarified, “Patients are brought in through the basement.”

“How are patients housed on the upper levels?” Gunner asked.

“They’re separated according to the elemental default for the caster. For example, I had initially been placed on the second floor, because it’s reinforced with bronze, which is the least conductive metal.”

Gunner shifted various levers again. “Even though you can cast every spell across the board?”

“What can I say—Dr. Ashland should have heeded the warnings he’d been given about me.”

“Where would they place casters who use aether?”

“Aether isn’t an inherent skill. It’s a spell usually obtainable by level threes and higher. It takes a great deal of patience and practice to master. In the occurrence such a caster must be interned, platinum is the metal of choice. But the asylum is only three floors—the third is reinforced with iron. And practical experience has taught me that the asylum simply confines problematic higher-levels to the cells in the basement. They employ platinum restraint gloves, but there are other… less humane options available.” I hastened to add, “All that being said, I don’t believe Barrie will be in the basement. There’s simply not enough space for him to work. And given his recent palate cleanse, I doubt he’s willing to work in conditions similar to what we found at Higgins’s warehouse on Bayard and Mulberry.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“Well… the rotunda is the asylum’s pièce de résistance. It’s meant to charm the social reformers who come to inspect the property. It’s quite large, I hear, and very opulent. ‘Even our undesirables are treated like royalty!’ You understand?”

“I do,” Gunner said gravely. “The front doors, then.”

 

 

We wasted no time with subterfuge, landing the shuttle on the dead and frozen front lawn of the asylum. Gunner swung down from the railing and hit the ground with a quiet thump before he offered his hand as I followed suit.

I said to him very matter-of-factly, “This is where Barrie wants me.”

“I’ll have your back.”

“I know.” I took Gunner’s arm as he began to move. “Tell me something.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Anything. Just in case.”

“This isn’t where our story ends, my dear.” Gunner drew close and cupped my face in one hand. “It’s only now begun.”

I nodded but couldn’t speak around the unexpected knot in my throat.

Gunner leaned down, whispered against my ear, “I love you,” and kissed my cheek.

I supposed there wasn’t anything else worth him saying.

“I love you too.”

Gunner flashed that wicked, charming smile he so often hid and unholstered his Waterbury, and we walked to the front doors of the Asylum for the Magically Insane. We climbed the grand staircase that flanked either side of the rotunda entrance, each grabbed one of the brass handles, and shoved the heavy double doors open.

The rotunda was five stories, built in an octagonal shape of the same stone that dominated the island. A grand spiral staircase wound all the way to the top, with each floor looking down at the ones below it. Stained glass windows all along the roof’s perimeter let in colorful sunshine that created fantastical mosaics across the floors and walls. On the ground floor, two corridors, one to the left and the other on the right, no doubt led to the wings of the asylum proper. The welcome desk was unmanned—the rotunda so quiet that the blood in my ears was louder—and the squirming and festering sensation of quintessence was so overwhelming that it nearly bowled me over.

“Something’s not right,” Gunner whispered. “Where are the patients?”

I pointed in either direction at the halls. “Beyond multiple access points so their screams don’t echo where polite society may hear.”

“Okay, but what about the staff?”

I shook my head, and taking a few steps across the lobby, said, “Good question.” Upon reaching the middle of the room, I raised my head back and studied the floors overhead. I could make out the tops of doorframes at this angle. Most appeared to be open, but there was definitely a closed room on the third floor. I heard the quiet scratch of rustling paper and glanced over my shoulder to see Gunner picking up a loose sheet from the floor that I must have stepped right over. He studied it a moment, then calmly folded it a few times. “What’s that?” I asked him.

He shook his head while tucking it into his coat. “This is a trap.”

“No doubt.”

Gunner joined me. “What do you want to do?”

I pointed. “Third floor. The atmosphere here is pulsating.” I started cautiously up the beautifully curved decorative staircase.

At the second floor, we paused long enough to check a few of the rooms. They varied from exam rooms to treatment rooms to some sort of recreational area. All of them looked brand-new, never having once been used since the asylum opened a decade before I was even born. It was confirmation for me that they were for show, to placate the worries of the occasional upper-class woman who’d recently joined a committee or three, as well as nosy journalists. The reality was the actual hospital wings were crowded with double the patients the building was meant to hold, and they had no choice but to live here. They were prisoners—not only mentally, but physically.

We returned to the stairs and cautiously rose to the third floor. Each step felt like I was walking through deeper and deeper water, the current working against me, but with the added sensation of hundreds—thousands—of fat, bloated, disgusting worms crawling all over me. There was so much recently activated quintessence in the rotunda that there was a permanent tear directly over the island. The atmosphere was bleeding out, and there was no way heavy-hitting casters like Moore or even Barrie couldn’t sense this.

“You’re white as a ghost,” Gunner murmured as we reached the landing.

There were fewer rooms here, but all were open and empty except one. Quintessence seeped out from under the crack of the door.

“Magic,” I answered. “We’re about to find out what Barrie’s been hacking and sawing.” I stared at the doorknob as I considered whether I was about to vomit, but there was no turning away from this. Barrie wasn’t only a criminal—he was the true monster, the true butcher. He delighted in this brutality and torture and needed to be stopped.

At whatever the cost.

I grabbed the knob and threw the door open onto an operating theater. Elevated seating had been built into the rounded shape of the building along three-fourths of the room, and the half a dozen steep, wooden rows overlooked the center stage with its menacing table. What was perhaps more mentally and emotionally crippling for me was that there were spectators in the rafters and a… sort of body on the table. Beside the haphazard mess of laid-out flesh and bone, stood Barrie, his arms bloody up to his elbows.

Behind him, lined up along the wall of the auditorium seating, were several men and women, dressed as patients, securely fastened to their chairs. Attached to each of the patient’s hands were box-like brass and silver structures around their palms, a hose protruding from the middle, and a series of ticking mechanisms that looked almost as if it was tightening, twisting, wringing the magic from their hands. A bright white light—aether—was steadily pumping through the tubing, all of which was attached to the mass of body parts on the table. Tentacles of quintessence twisted and squirmed inside the rib cage, and as the aether spread throughout the skeletal structure, I realized I was literally watching organs, muscle, and flesh form right before my eyes.

Eugene Barrie was not only bringing the dead back to life—he was working with the bones of the deceased, not a still-fresh body—and the intensive process appeared to be sucking all of the magic out of the caster patients. Barrie was going to murder half a dozen helpless undesirables for the sake of a science experiment that allowed him to play God.

“Simon Fitzgerald” called a voice to my left, and a man who I could only presume to be Magnus Prince was taking steps down from the amphitheater seating at a leisurely pace. His tone was cool, clinical, even. He was as Shy Phoebe described: tall, at least Gunner’s height, with conservatively cut and styled gray hair. He was handsomely dressed in a charcoal suit with a waistcoat of cobalt blue that heightened his air of riches and authority. Prince’s left eye did indeed have a milky sheen, and the skin underneath was puckered, like a wound from a long-ago fight. Stopping on the second to last step, he smiled and said, “You’ve been awfully disobedient.”

“I’m not mad,” I said sternly. “There’s no reason to speak to me as if I were a child.”

Prince’s eyebrow rose in what was clearly delight. His gaze shifted from me to Gunner and he said, “Fairley. You didn’t heed my warnings, I see. I wish I could say it was a pleasure.”

Gunner lifted the Waterbury and cocked the pistol. “Hamilton’s here to arrest you, Mag. I’m here to kill you. Take your pick.”

Prince chuckled lightly and set his hand on the railing. “Arrest me. Under what authority, Mr. Fitzgerald?”

I squared my shoulders and said, “My name is Gillian Hamilton, and under the deputized authority provided me by State Director Loren Moore, I’m arresting you on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Magic and Steam.”

Prince’s smile grew into something frightening. “Moore authorized my arrest? How interesting. And what exactly do you and him hope to present to the council that I sit on?”

“False imprisonment, for one,” I answered.

“No. The council agreed you were a danger to both yourself and the general population.”

“You lied!” I shouted suddenly. “You lied about my faculties—to the council, to the staff on Blackwell’s, to my director! You turned me into a criminal overnight.”

“You did that all on your own, Fitzgerald—”

“Stop calling me that!”

“—on September 17, 1862.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” I protested, breathing heavily.

“And then you fled,” Prince continued. “And the shine of rising star, Fairley Holloway, dimmed when he refused a direct order to retrieve a war criminal.”

“I don’t hunt children,” Gunner replied, still holding his pistol trained on Prince.

“No. You and your warped sense of ethics and ideals,” Prince countered. “So warped, in fact, that you’re now on the complete opposite side of the law. Gunner the Deadly, isn’t it? Charming.”

“You’ve been harboring Dr. Eugene Barrie, also known as Sawbones, who’s been a wanted criminal since the New Year,” I said, trying to regain both control and composure. “You used FBMS documentation to find the doctor, and instead of overseeing his arrest and imprisonment for involvement in the usage of highly illegal and dangerous magic, never mind the multitude of deaths he’s contributed to, you’ve chosen instead to hire and protect him while he continues to abuse the magic community.”

“What do I care about the magic community?” Prince retorted, and that terrifying smile was back.

I was momentarily nonplussed by the comment. Yes, it was quite obvious he cared little of me, but the community as a whole? “It’s your job to care.”

“It’s my job to maintain law and order among the magically inclined,” Prince corrected. “In the year I’ve sat on the council, do you know what I’ve learned? The whole lot of you are dangerous and defective human beings. If we cannot rid this country of you entirely, then I aim for complete control. And I’ll start by removing casters from positions of power they’ve abused. Like Loren Moore.”

“Moore is the most honest—”

“And what would you know about honesty, you monstrous little fairy?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gunner snapped. “Do you even hear yourself?”

Prince studied Gunner, seeming to outright ignore the weapon still trained on him. “I hear myself quite clearly, Fairley. I hear myself wishing to protect our modern society from the hazards and depravity that magic wreaks upon the innocent. Discipline and control. That’s what this city—what all American cities—need.”

“Magic wasn’t responsible for his curiosity toward men,” Gunner said in an abrupt subject change that lost me, as I was quite certain he wasn’t referring to me.

“You tormented him!” Prince roared unexpectedly. Promptly, he collected himself, cleared his throat, and said, in that once again aloof voice, “Dr. Barrie?”

The man in question momentarily overlooked, I turned to the surgical table to see that what was once old bone and haphazard piles of flesh was now, quite nearly, a completed man. I also saw that two of the strapped-down patients were, without question, dead. Meanwhile, Barrie had both hands on the table as he leaned over the body, watching with a sickening fascination as patches of skin fused together and hair sprouted from pores.

“He’s nearly there,” Barrie responded excitedly.

“What’re you doing, Mag?” Gunner asked with a discernable amount of wariness.

“Finally making use of this godforsaken community,” Prince answered. “What was it Milo used to say? Anything is possible with ‘silver and steam and a little magic in between.’”

The body on the table let out an abrupt gasp and sat up in a sickening rush. The tubes pumping aether into his body were still attached—now embedded in the muscle—but otherwise the man before us looked… alive. And by that, I mean, there was life in his brown eyes. He wasn’t the metals and mechanics of Barrie’s earlier work, nor was he merely flesh and blood and bone behaving like a puppet on strings. He had a soul.

He was a striking to look at too. Tall and lean, perhaps a few years my junior, with hair that was either a natural ash brown in coloring or had subtle hints of premature gray.

The nude man before us tilted his head and said on an exhale, “Fairley?”

I shot Gunner a glance. His complexion had gone milk-white, like he was about to be sick. He looked… utterly horrified. “Oh my God….”

But then Barrie raised a bloody hand in the air, and the seated audience all rose like musicians at the command of a conductor. They were the staff of the asylum, from the matronly nurse, Miss Louise, to the brutal and unforgiving Dr. Ashland. And as all of them growled in unison, “Fiiitzgeraaald,” I realized that they had been on the wrong end of arsenic or morphine and existed in this now-familiar, undead limbo.

“And so begins the discipline and control.” Prince ordered, “Annihilate Fairley Holloway.”

“It’s Gunner, you sack of shit.”

Prince cast a final grin in our direction and said, ignoring Gunner’s retort, “I want it to be absolutely agonizing for him. But spare Fitzgerald. You’ll need him.” To Barrie, he concluded, with an idle wave of his hand in the direction of the tethered patients, “Considering how quickly all of these gave out.”

Barrie pointed a bloody hand in our direction, and the undead staff leapt from the rafters.

A nurse cast a fire spell, and the ball of flames hit me square in the chest as I shoved Gunner to the left of the doorway. I flew in the opposite direction, was knocked off my feet, and was so busy coughing and patting out the flames on my clothes that I barely caught Prince’s movements from the corner of my eye. He ran down onto the surgical stage and tore the tubing from the man’s body. Blood spurted from the open wounds, and the man cried out in pain—so he was nothing like these undead who felt nothing. Prince was quick but noticeably gentle as he aided the man to his feet and shuttled him toward the exit.

“Mag!” Gunner shouted from across the room. He was crouched, Waterbury raised.

Prince moved so that he was shielded by the nude man. “You wouldn’t dare pull that trigger,” he called.

The fire nurse grabbed me by the front of my suit and hoisted me to my feet in a display of strength an otherwise-diminutive woman shouldn’t have possessed. She got an arm around my neck, slid behind me, and started dragging me toward Barrie. I grabbed her forearm, tucked my chin, then drilled my elbow into her ribs over and over until her footing faltered and I was able to tear free. I spun around, raised her into the air on a current of wind with one hand, fed fire into the whirlwind with the other, then slammed her body down in the upper seating so hard that she broke right through the floor and was stuck within the structure of the amphitheater layout.

I turned in time to see Prince dart out the door, using the nude stranger as a human shield. As the door slammed shut, Gunner jumped to his feet and ran to throw it open, but it didn’t budge. Gunner threw his shoulder against the door, backed up, shot the lock plate, then banged on the door furiously when the aether bullets made no difference.

“Magnus! Don’t do this,” he screamed. “Open the door!” I rushed toward Gunner, and at my approach, he said, “The door locks are reinforced with silver.”

“Move out of the way,” I ordered, casting fire a second time. My hands glowed red, orange, yellow—

The floor shaking under our feet was my only warning of approach from behind, and then Barrie had my shoulder in his grip, and our magics drew swords against each other. He spun me around as my lightning lashed out, but by the way my teeth were chattering, like there was an earthquake inside me, I knew his elemental default was earth, and I was more prone than he was when we touched. The wooden floorboards underfoot pitched and moaned and cracked. Gunner was flung against the door when Barrie cast wind on me and threw me into the rafters.

“I have to admit,” Barrie called from below, still in that soft and unassuming voice. “Pretending to go along with you to California was, if nothing else, amusing.”

I grunted and rolled onto my back under a broken bench as an undead doctor leaned down to grab me. I yelped, kicked him in the chest, then cast gravity. I scrambled back, one hand extended to maintain the spell. The doctor’s legs popped, snapped, he folded in on himself like a stick of Gunner’s Black Jack, and the quintessence eel spurted out his back. It flopped angrily against the floor.

“Losing you to the likes of a vigilante was less amusing,” Barrie continued.

Why the hell isn’t Gunner blowing this sonofabitch’s head off? I rolled onto my knees, rose, and saw exactly why. Gunner must have dropped the Waterbury when Barrie attacked, because now the mad doctor was holding the pistol, checking the cylindered rounds, and Gunner was surrounded by three undead. He held a long piece of metal in one hand to defend himself—a thin, sharp knife meant for amputations. Just seeing the blade made me dry heave.

Barrie saw my reaction, glanced curiously over his shoulder, then looked back to me as he said, “They say you murdered a thousand men in Antietam. And yet, that makes you squeamish?”

“Unlike you, I didn’t enjoy it,” I spat.

Barrie smiled coolly. The Waterbury was covered in the blood that coated his hands. “Once I’d informed Mr. Prince that Gunner the Deadly was involved, he all but promised me of your return. Why do you think that is?”

Gunner stabbed the blade through Dr. Ashland, slicing him open from chest to belly. He turned and smashed his elbow into the face of another undead before kicking him in the chest.

“My guess?” Barrie continued. “Secrets. You have secrets too, don’t you, Fitzgerald? I, on the other hand, do not. I’m an open book. A medical man who honed his skills at the worst possible moment in our nation’s history and discovered a few dark desires within myself along the way.” Barrie spun, raised the Waterbury, and shot at Gunner.

I screamed something inarticulate as a gravity spell tore from my hands. The magic grabbed everything in the room short of Gunner and one undead, and hurled them into the wall below the first row of seats, the midair triple aether round included. In fact, the bullet’s change in trajectory blew the head off a nurse and her blood spurted everywhere. I hoisted myself over the amphitheater railing and jumped down to the stage. I grabbed the Waterbury from Barrie, who lay against the wall, momentarily stunned, and threw it to Gunner. I cast a second gravity spell and dropped Dr. Ashland like a ton of bricks had crushed him, while Gunner caught the pistol and promptly dispatched the quintessence spell. That bastard deserved far worse, in my opinion, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Gunner lowered the Waterbury, grabbed my arm, and drew me into a quick, hard kiss. “You’re incredible.”

Smoke was beginning to fill the operating theater at that point, and I nearly asked where the origin was so as to put it out, considering we were still locked inside, but then that undead nurse I’d set on fire broke through the wall she’d been trapped in. Her body was charred black—nothing left of hair or clothes, and she smelled awful—and yet she still moaned something horrible, likely meant to be “Fitzgerald,” and came stumbling toward us. I raised one hand and made a striking motion, gravity following the movement and crushing her body into the floor. A blackened and burned eel wiggled free from the husk of what was once human, and Gunner shot it too.

I cast a water spell next, moving my hands far apart and growing a large, glistening, and gently churning sphere of water, before directing it into the wall, where it made quick work of dousing the flames.

“There’s still smoke,” Gunner warned, and he pointed to the front door, where thick gray plumes coiled underneath the door and into the theater. “Mag. He’s destroying evidence. Witnesses.”

“But he needs Barrie,” I protested.

Gunner shook his head. “No. He knows about Weaver. He’s a councilman. He has access to all of the FBMS reports. He doesn’t need Barrie for quintessence. He can go directly to the source. Losing you will be tough, but if it means getting rid of me in the same breath—he’d do it. And then there’s no one to report him.”

A noise interrupted Gunner—protesting hinges and a heavy thud and bang against stone. We both looked toward the steps in the amphitheater seating in time to see Barrie at the top of the risers, scrambling out an access hatch and onto the lower roof. In his wake, the remaining undead had recovered from their body slam into the wall and were racing across the theater toward us.

“Stop Barrie,” Gunner ordered.

“What? I’m not leaving you here!”

“How much longer can the magic atmosphere withstand the assault of quintessence?” Gunner countered.

I hesitated.

“I’ll be right behind you. I promise.” He immediately shot a huge, lumbering man, who was likely another criminal on loan from the penitentiary, in the head and then drove the amputation knife into his gut, spilling out the oily sack of mucus and magic the old-fashioned way.

With the momentary opening Gunner had supplied me, I ran up the steps and climbed out the open hatch. Immediately, I sucked in a lungful of air that stank of incoming East River low tide and Blackwell’s Island sickly malaise, but at least it wasn’t more of the blood and soot from below. I turned in search of Barrie—the madman was wielding a hefty tree limb that must have fallen from the bare trees surrounding the front entrance. He smashed it into my side, knocking the air from my chest, and I dropped to one knee. Tossing the limb aside, Barrie approached, grabbed a fistful of hair, and yanked my head back. My teeth were chattering from the rumble of the earth, and lightning bit at Barrie’s hand, but it was almost like he didn’t mind the pain.

“I can practically smell the aether in your veins,” Barrie said, dragging his other hand down the side of my exposed neck, digging his nails in hard enough to leave a welt. “I knew. In Tucson. You were someone special.” He pulled my head up closer as he added, “But who’d have ever imagined I opted to save the Simon Fitzgerald. The most powerful caster alive.” Barrie glanced down at my clenched fists. “There’s still pain. I can tell. You shake your hands after casting.” Barrie whispered in my ear, “I suppose I just can’t help myself sometimes.”

“You—ah!—you did that to me on purpose?” I studied his passive face and asked, “W-why’re you helping Prince? He doesn’t care about you. He’s using you.”

With a terrifying sense of welcomed fatalism, Barrie replied, “We all die someday.”

He grabbed my wrist, wincing as sparks sizzled and shot between us, but he didn’t let go. He forced my hand palm up and put enough pressure on the sensitive tendons of my wrist that I was forced to release the fist. He made a kind of pleasured sound in the back of his throat as he studied the latticework of scars. “We could have achieved wonderful feats together. Sawbones and the Butcher.”

“My name is Gillian Hamilton,” I gritted out.

“That’s not what anyone will remember.”

I’d stood on a stoop in the rain, clutching immigration documents that were truly my last hope. The door had opened, and a woman warily looked me up and down as I said, “Good evening, ma’am. I’m here about the room for rent. I’m Gillian Hamilton.”

Loren Moore was massive, even seated behind his desk. He’d studied me intently from where I stood in the doorway of his office, puffing away on his pipe. Eventually, he removed the bit from his mouth, closed a folder he’d been poring over, and leaned back. “You must be my new level-five caster.”

“Yes, sir. Gillian Hamilton.”

Gunner the Deadly had kicked up a spray of orange dirt as he slid behind the wagon, while the Ten-Barrel Self-Propulsion Arachnids busily turned Shallow Grave into swiss cheese. He’d rolled out of the scatter of bullets and pointed his Waterbury in my face the same instant I’d revealed my pinned badge and said, “You’re under arrest.”

“Who are you?”

“Special Agent Gillian Hamilton.”

The sky blackened overhead, the wind picked up, and thunder boomed as I said darkly, “From this moment on, I promise you, no one will forget the name Gillian Hamilton.”

And lightning exploded from my entire body.

It hurled Barrie up against the looming dome structure that housed the final two stories of the rotunda. His back snapped loudly against stone and tile, but he caught himself on a window ledge before falling back to the roof. I stood as Barrie—bloody, burned, and smoking—climbed the ornate architecture around the window. Something fell in his haste, and I briefly studied the three fingers that had fallen from his hand and landed at my feet like a sacrificial offering.

Rain began to fall—heavy, ice-cold sheets that all but blotted out the world surrounding Blackwell’s. Thunder and lightning crashed overhead. Barrie was hoisting himself onto the window ledge of the fifth story, scaling the roof to reach the very top. I let the wind lift me off my feet and shot up to the widow’s walk ahead of him. I stood in the gale, wind whipping and tearing at my coat, cap long since lost, and watched Barrie struggle to haul himself up without the use of all his fingers. He was gasping for breath as he finally got his legs working underneath him and shakily rose. Whatever color was left in his face drained away when he met my gaze.

Barrie raised his bloody stump of a hand, palm toward me, and cast quintessence. The atmosphere churned in on itself, a silent scream of pain and protest as magic that was as black as the clouds that I’d manifested above began to pour from his hand.

I lunged, grabbed Barrie’s wrist, despite the ricocheting pain of our magics, and yanked him close. “One thousand and one murders,” I said. “And yours is the only one that’ll bring me pleasure.” I thrust his hand against the asylum’s lightning rod and let go as a crack sounded overhead, the world turned white, and millions of volts tore Eugene Barrie apart.

“Gillian!”

I looked away from what remained of Sawbones, leaned over the edge, and could just make out Gunner on the fourth-story roof. I jumped from the widow’s walk and landed safely at his side.

“Barrie?” he asked over the raging storm.

“Dead” was all I said.

“We have to get out of here,” Gunner said next. “The fire—”

“What about all the patients?”

“I don’t know how we’d reach them.”

I shook my head, ignored Gunner’s protests, and closed my eyes. I held my hands palm down at my sides, concentrated on the frozen dirt, the blue-gray stone deeper in the earth, the very foundation of this pit of despair and tragedy, and then I jerked my hands upward. I felt the windows burst, doorframes warp, and hinges and bolts scatter. Mortar cracked, support beams listed, and walls crumbled. The fire within the building was most definitely out of control, and I couldn’t be certain if anyone in the wings was even alive, considering smoke inhalation alone could have gotten to them before the flames, but this way, they at least had the option to escape.

The building shook ominously underfoot, and the storm overhead was still raging. I pulled Gunner against me and said, “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t.”

The wind lifted us both, and we shot across the sky and open water.