The Gangster (Magic & Steam #2)

I

He turned on one heel and ran for the mouth of the alley.

“No.”

No .

Thunder rumbled from overhead.

I raised a heavily scarred hand, palm looking as if it’d been used to press drying ferns, then snapped.

A bolt of lightning tore down from the sky and hit Broken Nose’s pistol.

The Waterbury exploded into a smoldering heap of scrap metal, and the ignited aether round knocked him off his feet like a horse had kicked him in the chest. The spark jumped to McCarthy’s mechanical gloves—cogs and wheels flew every which way, pressure gauges went haywire, and steam valves burst. He dropped to his knees, screaming while tearing the gloves from his hands.

I looked at Cigar Stub, one hand still raised, electricity pulsating in my hold.

He stumbled backward several steps before fleeing without a care for either of his two-bit gangster friends.

I rolled my eyes and lowered my arm. The magic grated against the damaged nerves in my hand, and I shook it a few times to quickly dissipate the spell.

Ignoring startled, wary, and gawking onlookers on the street, I carefully picked my way around McCarthy and Broken Nose, both groaning on the ground.

I broke into a run in the direction I’d seen Fishback go and was surprised to find him within a minute.

His form was hunkered down on the stoop of a shop shuttered for the night.

A nearby streetlamp was blinking erratically, the red color pulsating like we’d been enveloped in the city’s heartbeat.

Fishback raised his head at the sound of my steps. He shot up and started to run.

Finally having a clear shot of the man, I held my arm out and sent a violent gust of bitterly cold winter wind after Fishback. It threw him to the ground and kept him pinned to the cobblestones. I approached from behind while removing a pair of handcuffs from my coat pocket.

“I’ll weep the day a man listens to me on the first command.”

I hadn’t pegged Frank Fishback to be a crier.

It took an astonishing amount of degradation of one’s own morality to become known for having perfected the art of strangulation. For the New York police force to fear a single man. For the mothers and wives of coppers walking the beat to ward against evil when the name Fishback was uttered.

And yet, here he was.

Crying .

Fishback sat behind the bars of a cell on the fourth floor of the New York field office at Twenty-Third and Fifth, where if he’d been on the north end of the building, he’d have had a beautiful view of Madison Square Park and Lady Liberty’s dismembered right arm.

Fishback’s attire was still in a state of disarray from the arrest, and he had a shiner on his cheekbone from where I’d thrown him to the ground.

But aside from those shuddering breaths and a wet nose he wiped on the back of his hand every few moments, Fishback had remained as silent as a mouse.

I stood in the narrow hallway opposite of the cells, window to my back where cold air leached through the old glass, staring at Fishback. I absently tapped the purple-tinted goggles hanging from my neck in beat to the hiss and ping of steam clanking through the building’s heating system.

“How hard did you hit him?” Director Loren Moore asked in a thoughtful, almost curious tone.

He stood to my left, as tall as an oak tree and built just as sturdy.

He was over a decade my senior, with age-appropriate steel gray speckled into his ash-brown hair and well-groomed, if fashionably out-of-date, beard.

“I supplied ample warning to stop,” I countered.

Moore lifted a pipe to his mouth, snapped his fingers over the bowl to light the tobacco with a flicker of fire magic, then took a few puffs. A heady cherry scent settled over us as Moore studied our guest. “Talk to us, Fishback.”

Another quiet sob wracked Fishback’s thin body. He shook his head while staring at the floor.

“You had a good thing going,” Moore said, taking the pipe from between his teeth. “A real entrepreneur. Contracted by the Whyos to murder honest cops. How many counts, Hamilton?”

“Twelve, sir.”

“ Twelve ,” Moore said to Fishback. “Twelve times in two years you’ve pissed the police force off, and still they’ve not been able to organize themselves enough to touch a single hair on your head. So what happened?”

Fishback raised his head. He swallowed convulsively, his gaze darting back and forth between Moore and me.

“Was it the money?” Moore asked. “Is that why you started middle-manning the sales of magic ammunition? Not so smart, was it, Fishback? Because once word of magic involvement gets out on the streets, you become my problem.” He made a gesture toward me.

“And when I have a problem, I send for Agent Hamilton.”

The compliment pooled in my belly and brought warmth to my cheeks.

Loren Moore had been my director since the start.

I’d spent years proving myself beneficial to the Bureau by taking on some of the worst backlogged cases that no other agent wanted to handle.

My unrelenting hard work had been noticed—fairly early on, I think—but it had taken a few years before Moore began promoting me through the ranks.

Now, I hadn’t come into this career looking for an elevation in my status.

I had just wanted to do some good. And while enforcing the law wouldn’t minimize the skeletons in my closet any, it was a sort of…

penance, if you will. And the relationship that had grown between myself and Loren Moore over the last several years was a bit like a weed sprouting between the cracks in cobblestones.

Despite the odds, Moore trusted me, believed in me, respected me—and sometimes that was all that got me out of bed in the mornings.

I quite enjoyed Moore’s company, and I do believe the same could be said for him, which was something, considering I am not the most likeable person.

And while he was my superior, I truly believed that had I not worked under him, we might have been real friends.

Although, when Moore praised me, I couldn’t help but wonder if the weight of his words, the lingering silence in the moment, was wholly imagined, or if there was something unspoken he was hoping I’d pick up on.

Moore was a bachelor, after all, but was he confirmed ? Like me?

Huge tears poured down Fishback’s cheeks, leaving streaks in the blood and dirt on his face.

“It rarely ends well when Hamilton returns to the office unhappy,” Moore finished.

“It was for the money,” Fishback blurted out.

He looked at me, his breathing quickening.

“Money. That’s it. He said it was an easy job—that I’d make a hundred just by picking up a delivery and handing it off.

A hundred dollars. Shit . The last mark I did for them Whyos was only fifty, and that was a hell of a lot more work. ”

“Yes, I imagine choking a man to death really works up a sweat,” I replied, deadpan. “Where did the delivery originate?”

“Out West.”

“That’s over a million square miles, Fishback.”

“I don’t—California? Arizona? I ain’t sure.”

“Who hired you?” I tried.

Fishback gulped again. I feared he was one strong swallow away from taking his own tongue down his throat.

I took a few steps forward, wrapped a hand around one of the bars, and asked, “Would you rather a transfer to Sing Sing?”

“I wouldn’t last the night, Mr. Hamilton,” he protested.

“Agent.”

“Wh-what?”

I expelled a huff. “Agent Hamilton.”

“P-perhaps we can work out a deal, Agent Hamilton,” Fishback suggested.

Breaching my personal space.

Sweet and herbal breath whispering against my ear.

His cobalt eyes recognizing a tendency—sensing a mutual attraction.

I heard those spoken words, but they weren’t in Fishback’s voice. It was low. Smoky. Masculine.

Every tick of cogs, I thought of him, and every tock of second hands brought him closer.

I felt as if I were a man with a mechanical heart and Gunner the Deadly held the winding key.

I touched the breast of my suit coat with my free hand, where I carried the travel receipt from Bartholomew Industries in the pocket.

The handwritten message at the bottom was simple.

Only a few words. But the weight of them, as carefully chosen as when he decided to speak or let a moment linger on in silence, had changed everything.

Meet me.

Yours,

Constantine G.

The infamous all-black-wearing, gunslinging, criminal-killing, airship-robbing outlaw had trusted me— a lawman , for heaven’s sake—with something sacred.

Something that perhaps no living person on God’s green Earth knew.

His name.

Constantine .

“Hamilton?” Moore’s voice penetrated the fog of distress and zeal that’d been consuming me since returning from Arizona territory.

I startled and glanced at Moore. “Sorry, sir.” I cleared my throat and turned to Fishback.

“The only consideration I will make is holding you in our office overnight instead of an immediate transfer to Sing Sing. You’ve got this cell to yourself, a heated building, and”—I jutted a thumb at the window behind me—“perhaps you’ll even catch a stray firework or two tonight. ”

“He’ll find me here. Kill me ,” Fishback protested.

“Impossible,” I answered. “This office is staffed around the clock. Our agents are some of the finest in the country, and we’re on no one’s books.”

Fishback wiped his face on the sleeve of his coat.

“Who hired you?” I asked again.

“I ain’t got his real name.”

“Fishback—”

“It’s the truth Mr.—ah, Agent Hamilton. I swear it. Only ever knew him as Tick Tock. New to the streets, but a true gangster if there ever was one. But I ain’t even met the man. Only moved a handful of deliveries for him before you intervened .”

Moore made a sound under his breath and another cloud of cherry smoke filled the hall.

I pushed my coats back and set my hands on my hips. “Why do you fear a man whom you’ve never met?”

Fishback stared at me like a dead man walking. “Tick Tock got an architect working for him, better than anyone in this building.”

“I highly doubt—”

“Agent Hamilton,” Fishback whispered. He was desperate. “I know . I middle-manned those crates myself. I met with a magical mechanical man who picked ’em up on Tick Tock’s behalf. They weren’t no aether bullets. They were fire.”