Chapter 8
Eight
Jack reached for the relic, but Emmy turned away, sliding the book back onto its shelf. The Fairchild tome was only a few
to the left, and she quickly added Paxton and Winifred, millionaires whose maternal great-grandmother married the eldest Fontaine
Emmy had invented. No sooner had she placed it back on the shelf than Jack grabbed her arm and pulled her through the door,
his hands shaking as he fumbled with the key. As soon as the lock clicked into place, they sprinted toward the window. He
threaded his fingers to give her a boost—
Voices flooded the stairwell, followed by footsteps.
Cursing under his breath, Jack tried to pull her away, but Emmy freed her hand, quickly transforming the torn paper back to
solid glass. Jack’s tugging on her arm became more insistent, and Emmy let him nudge her into the narrow, cobweb-ridden space
between a bookshelf and the wall. He squeezed in beside her, his hard gaze locked on the staircase.
Men flooded the basement, one after the other, and Emmy could not breathe, could not trust herself to take one goddamn inhale,
because there were three, four, five, six of them.
“Get the tables, gents.” A white-uniformed guard rubbed his palms together. Even in the dim light, he carried himself with
authority, though he was as young as the rest of them. Handsome, too, with dark hair and darker eyes, striking against his
fair skin.
Beside her, Jack went lethally still.
Golden lantern light flooded the basement, bleeding into the gaps between books. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if they could not see her if she could not see them. But they could—if they glimpsed between the books.
A few guards dragged a table to the center of the floor, along with several chairs. The one barking orders slid into a seat,
a cigar dangling between his lips.
For weeks, the only emotion Emmy had sensed from Jack was that vexing amusement. But as he stared at the handsome leader,
he hardly blinked, his gray eyes burning with hate. This was the prisoner she’d met in Grimsbane, the one who snapped necks without so much as flinching.
These guards were their age. Jack had to know them.
“I heard you quit gambling.”
“I swore off the pool halls.” The leader grinned. “But what’s a game between friends?”
A deck of cards appeared, along with an amber bottle of whiskey. Soon the basement reeked of cigars, and Emmy’s throat burned
with the need to cough.
Jack’s warm hand found hers, and relief flooded her. For so long, she’d been alone in her paralyzing fear. But as she came
to her senses, she quietly smacked him away. She didn’t need comfort, she needed him to be ready to fight.
He squeezed her hand more insistently. Not intended to comfort, but a request. The relic.
If she gave it to him, she’d be defenseless—and he might burn these men to a crisp. Emmy waited for her conscience once again,
but it remained silent. The past two years had taught her well: if it came to her life or theirs, she’d choose herself without
hesitation.
Dragging her hand over the bookshelf, Emmy envisioned the discarded books plumper and taller, slowly filling every crack until no light shone through the gaps.
Once they were completely out of view, she pressed the relic into Jack’s fingers.
As soon as it was out of her hands, the ethereal mist vanished.
She still had her ordinary magic, but without the relic, it would be too slow and weak to keep her safe.
The bookshelf creaked as Jack shifted, but the guards’ boisterous conversation continued. He pressed his free hand against
the wall, and black flames seeped between his fingers.
“All right, boys,” said the leader. “What’ll it be? Stud poker?”
Jack swept his hand in an arc along the wall, a trail of red-hot stone blazing in its wake.
“You win with suspicious frequency, Stratton.”
Stratton. The leader was Oliver Stratton.
How Emmy longed for another look at the man Grace had kissed. The man who, according to Jack, had blocked Emmy’s magic, preventing
her from proving her innocence.
“I suppress everyone’s conjury so no one can cheat,” Oliver insisted.
“Except you.”
“Except me.” She could hear his grin, could feel the guards’ sycophantic laughter vibrating through her clenched teeth.
Jack completed his fiery circle and, with two hands, shoved the center of it. Stone scraped stone, though the noise was drowned
out by the guards’ chatter. Then, as night air poured through the hole he’d made, the scraping ceased for a terrifying moment—and
in that cursed millisecond, the guards’ voices quieted, an ill-timed lull in conversation. No matter how tightly Emmy shut
her eyes, no matter how much she wished for more boisterous laughter, the silence persisted.
The stone circle crashed onto the ground outside.
Chairs screeched against the floor, and through the cries of “Did you hear that?” and “Over there!” came Oliver Stratton’s
unmistakable command. “Find out what that was. Now.”
Snatching the relic back, Emmy squeezed through the hole in the wall, Jack on her heels. The guards were already moving the bookshelf, their shouts growing louder—
Emmy could not go back to Grimsbane.
Pressing both palms to the wall, she imagined it whole. It could not be scarred like her, or damaged like her, or hollowed
or broken like her—
The stones knit back together seamlessly. Jack gaped, his surprise a mirror of her own. He made to run away, but the stone
circle still lay on the ground, its edges charred. Slamming her palms against it, Emmy reduced it to nothing but dust; nothing,
like her cell in Grimsbane, her life within its walls.
The stone was gone, and Jack was pulling at her, running—
“Hey! Stop!”
The voice was behind them, and Emmy had no time to think, her hands acting on pure impulse alone as she pressed her palm to
Jack’s face, imagining the handsome sneer of Oliver Stratton, that uniform of ivory instead of Jack’s coat of midnight black.
“You’re him,” she whispered as the guard’s lantern illuminated them.
“Where do you think you’re— Oh, my apologies, Commander Stratton.” In the darkness, the guard managed to look contrite. “Didn’t
see you had company.”
Jack opened his mouth. Closed it again, before he threw an arm around Emmy. “Stand guard, Holtz,” he sneered, his voice so
much like Oliver’s, Emmy’s skin crawled. “I shouldn’t be long.”
The guard tipped his cap before turning back around.
“Keep walking,” Jack gritted through the corner of his mouth.
Every instinct in Emmy roared against leaving her back exposed. How long until the guard realized he’d been tricked and they
all came after them?
Her ears popped as they passed through the illusion again, but still, they walked.
As soon as they reached the shadow of the trees, Emmy broke free of Jack and sprinted into the woods.
Stumps and branches tripped her in the dark, making cuts all over her arms, her legs.
Still, she ran. Her muscles screamed at her, and her lungs begged for air, but Emmy did not slow down until she was about to collapse.
Finally, she stopped, hands clenching her knees as she tried to quell the nausea ratcheting up her throat, the jagged ache in her pitiful lungs.
Jack skidded to a stop beside her, gasping just as heavily. This close, the shape of his face was alarmingly incongruent,
like one of his poorly buttoned shirts. If the guard had so much as lifted his lantern, they would have been caught.
He tried to speak but could not catch his breath, instead throwing himself on the forest ground, limbs splayed. Lifting a
finger, he tried to speak once again but couldn’t.
A laugh bubbled in her chest. She tried to contain it, but he looked so . . . ridiculous.
They ought to have kept zigzagging through the trees. Emmy tried, but that potent laugh sparked as soon as she looked at Jack
again. Half Oliver, half himself. Though both were handsome, he looked positively terrible.
The laughter won. She wheezed with it, guffaws spilling from her like water past a dam. Whenever she tried to stop, she glimpsed
the confusion in Jack’s bizarre face, and she was a goner.
“What is it?’
“Your face,” she managed to say.
He looked offended. “My face?”
Oh, this was the epitome of foolishness, letting herself lose her damn mind when the guards could be coming for them.
Pressing her hand to his cheek, she summoned her magic.
Humor still twitched his full lips, though his smile was no longer grotesque.
Far from it, in fact. His true face was much nicer than Oliver’s, and certainly more so than that terrible half transformation she’d done.
With such good looks, he’d probably gotten away with all sorts of awful things as a little boy, never experiencing a single consequence. It certainly explained his arrogance.
When he was once again Jack, he grinned up at her. “Like I said: when you finally stopped overthinking your magic, it worked
just fine.”
“And yet you still haven’t stopped talking.”
A twig snapped in the darkness.
Jack moved with more speed than she would have thought possible. Snatching the relic from her hand, he jumped in front of
her, igniting a dark flame on his palm.
“It’s us,” Jimmy called, Jack’s flame illuminating their sweat-sheened faces.
Caleb’s gaze swept over Emmy, his expression so bewildered, she glanced down at herself. Branches and twigs were tangled in
her dress. Her hair had come loose while she ran for her life, and a few leaves had lodged themselves in what remained of
her braid. Feral indeed.
“She did it.” Jack’s smile was devilishly alive. It was as if their close call had eroded away a bit of the mask he wore.
This quest for vengeance—he reveled in it.
Perhaps something in her had eroded away, too, for she could not wipe the smile from her face. With the relic, she’d transformed
a human face. Twice. She’d forged the Society’s records right under their noses. For the first time in a long time, Emmy felt
like an asset. A weapon.
And she rather liked it.