XIII
Once we’d left the office, Gunner vanished into the midday crowds on Twenty-Third Street.
Having remembered my Personal Discussion Device on our way out of The Buchanan, I rang Henry Bligh and requested he join me out front in five minutes.
He took seven, which could have been as much about his ego as it was the effects of his overindulgence.
I was studying the disembodied hand of Lady Liberty across the street at Madison Square Park, the gilded copper of the flaming torch gleaming in the noonday sun, when the door opened behind me.
“Agent Hamilton,” Bligh said brusquely.
I turned on my heel as Bligh came down the front steps. He stopped on the last tread and forced me to look up. “I’d like to ask you about Frank Fishback.”
His bleary blue eyes narrowed and a cloud of air puffed around his mouth on his exhale. “I gave my report to Director Moore last night.”
“Yes, I am aware. But now I’m asking you. Is that a problem?”
Bligh shifted from foot to foot, looked away, and ground out, “No, sir.”
“I’m sure that hurt.”
Bligh’s gaze shot back to me, and if looks could kill….
“What did you hear that made you open the door to the jail?”
Bligh crossed his arms, and I could so easily imagine his aristocratic features on the face of a child, cheeks stained red as he threw a tantrum until his parents lavished on him whatever his heart desired.
Bligh himself had indicated on his registration documentation that his caster abilities hadn’t manifested until he was seventeen, quite late in comparison to the national average of thirteen years old, or myself at the tender age of five.
He’d had a normal childhood, whatever that meant.
When Bligh had realized he had an ability to utilize the raw stream, magic was already legal.
And his parents, with money so old, they were able to sway the public ever so gently on the benefits of the magic community, worked diligently to find Bligh a position with the Bureau and then convinced high society it was an elite opportunity instead of what it was most of the time—thankless and dangerous work.
“Bligh.”
“I heard the window.”
“Breaking?”
“I—yes.”
“You told Director Moore you broke the glass.”
Bligh blanched a bit. “I did. I mean—I heard the window rattle in its frame. It sounded as if something were breaking. By the time I opened the door, the cell was on fire and the hall was full of smoke. I broke the window.”
“It wasn’t left open?” I clarified.
“Why the fuck would I break the window if it was already open?”
“You were drunk,” I stated.
Color came back to Bligh’s cheeks—embarrassment and anger. “Are we done?”
“Not quite. What did you see once you entered the hall?”
“What do you mean? Fishback was on fire.”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
“Where was Agent Plunket?” I asked next.
“How the hell should I—?”
“Section Four, Article Two of the Bureau’s hand guide specifically states that agents in the field must be made informed of their partner’s whereabouts at all times, which extends to both office hours and—”
“She was in the toilet,” Bligh protested over me. “Jesus Christ, Hamilton.”
“Don’t skirt details with me because of undue modesty.”
Bligh shook his head at that and let out a sort of aggressive laugh. “I suppose you really don’t know anything about women.”
I was reminded of the countless editions of The Delineator I’d purchased and read over the years—the women’s publication my secret to successful communication with the opposite gender.
Feeling heat rise to my cheeks despite the cold day, I said, “Yes, and you’re a damn wizard simply because you’re engaged?
Plunket is a special agent. The fact that she is a woman is not relevant—”
“Your fairy tendencies are showing.”
I bristled. “My human decency is showing, Agent Bligh. If I see you treating your partner as lesser, in words, in writing, in person—in any goddamn capacity, do you understand me?—I will make it my personal mission to see you stripped of your badge and tossed to the curb.”
“Well, we all know you’ll do anything to keep others from getting promoted, so I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Not all casters can obtain level five certification. That does not mean I’m sabotaging you. Your skills are maxed out.”
Bligh pushed closer into my space, and I was forced to take a step back, lest my magic unintentionally hurt him. “Hogwash.”
“Hardly. I oversaw your training. You’re a level two. Period . And you’re upset I’m a senior agent? I’ve been at the Bureau for a decade, putting in the work every day. You’ve been here three years. Earn your keep.”
“Earn it?” Bligh laughed mockingly. “By doing what, cradling Moore’s sac? That’s probably your favorite assignment. You’re an ugly little sodomite. It’s what everyone thinks.”
“Do you not remember what I said to you last night?”
“Do you not realize how easy it’d be for me to ruin you?”
I clenched my fists so tight that my fingernails were digging crescents into my scarred palms. “I can’t imagine you admitting that I whipped your ass would be something you could stomach.
And I don’t think Moore will be terribly receptive to one of his agents blackmailing another for kudos toward his next review. ”
The smile that crossed Bligh’s face just then was different from the cruel and mocking grins of the last three years.
This one was ice-cold. Dare I say, malevolent.
“You’re a fucking slum rat, Hamilton. I can always pick out the ones who act above their station, trying to prove they aren’t trash.
But they are. I bet you scurried out of the shit and piss of the Lower East Side.
Moore might be desperate to keep a level five lightning caster on his roster, so much so that he’s willing to ignore any complaints filed against you for your filthy tendencies, but you forget, I’m not like you. ”
“We’re special agents. We’re all held to the same set of reg—”
“That’s where you’re wrong, you dumb fuck. Not when you’re from Fifth Avenue. All it’d take would be a whisper to my mother-in-law during a dinner party. She’s got the biggest mouth for gossip in this whole damn city. You’d be right back in the gutter you crawled out of.”
“Don’t you dare pretend you know a thing about me,” I said.
“I don’t have to pretend. I can smell your destitution, you toad.”
I’d had to learn some important life lessons at a very young age: no one is going to come to your defense, weakness is certain death, the small are underestimated.
These cautions were true as a child, but perhaps held even more weight in adulthood.
Because right here, right now, on a busy street in Midtown, not one person had spared me a second glance as Bligh bullied his way into my personal space.
If I hesitated, cried, screamed, Bligh would have all the confirmation he needed, and God only knew he’d spare no expense to get me off the corporate ladder so that he could bask in his preconceived success.
So I did what I hadn’t done in a very, very long time.
I relied on physical prowess and took Bligh by surprise when I socked him right in the face.
He stumbled back, tripped on the stair, and crashed to the icy steps while holding his nose. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
I winced and shook my hand. My knuckles were red, not so much from the strike, but the interactions of our lightning magics.
“That’s twice now I’ve put you on your ass,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
“I’m not impressed by your riches or your lineage.
Your character is what matters. And clearly, Henry Bligh, you have none. ”
Bligh removed his hand and gingerly touched his nose. The tip was scorched black. “You’re a son of a whore.”
“Unfortunately, I knew my father.”
Bligh got to his feet while wiping his face. “Your days are numbered.” He flicked his hand and splattered blood across the front of my coat. “I’ll see to that personally.” With that, he turned, walked up the stairs, and vanished inside.
The Iron Palace was exactly that—a six-story behemoth taking up an entire city block on Broadway and Tenth.
Its front featured cast-iron ornamentation and support columns, it had a glass skylight, endless expanses of windows on every floor in order to maximize the usage of natural light, and nineteen department stores inside.
The Palace employed something like 2,000 people, from the managers to cashiers, bookkeepers to ushers, to the army of seamstresses that made the consumption of fashion so easy nowadays.
And while I’d never had reason to step inside before today, based on the crowds coming and going from the main doors, it was a marvel of business and marketing savviness that should have made the rest of Ladies’ Mile envious.
Whether Gunner had watched the scene between Bligh and me from a safe distance, or the freckling of blood on my nice coat told the story, or even if my disposition alone was enough warning, we passed the trek without conversation.
To say that I had never liked Henry Bligh was an understatement.
Upon his hiring three years ago, he’d been assigned to work with Rachel Plunket, but was to complete additional studies under myself for his first year in an effort to hone and strengthen his lightning casting.
It hadn’t been successful.
Bligh was an egotistical and arrogant motherfucker.
He hadn’t liked showing me respect as his senior from the start, which I suspected stemmed from his upbringing of sucking on a golden spoon, but when he got it in his mind that I was…
not like most men… all hell had truly broken loose.
And perhaps what had been most upsetting was that he seemed to truly believe there was a secret to reaching level five casting skills that I simply refused to share with him.