Here, the evening was just getting started.
The Silvervine was decorated in rose and gold, with red velvet covering the walls. Tables surrounded a dance floor where customers did the Charleston to the accompaniment of an eight-piece orchestra. More diners watched from a second-floor balcony. Waiters threaded their way through the tables, carrying drinks—none filled more than halfway to allow for illicit alcohol to be added—and plates of spaghetti, linguini, and steak.
After pausing at the coat check, the host led him through the dining room to an arch on the far side. A velvet curtain hung in the arch to shield the occupants in the room beyond from curious eyes.
It was another dining room, this one much smaller than the main hall, with fewer tables and only a four-piece orchestra. The dance floor was mainly unoccupied, though a pair of women drunkenly swayed together, laughing hysterically at their own lack of coordination. Sam followed the host up a set of stairs to the balcony above.
Sullivan sat at one of the three tables, his right-hand man Leonard Turner at his elbow. The other tables were occupied by men and women Sam recognized as members of Sullivan’s gang whom he’d met over the summer. Several of them called greetings when he entered, and a few leaned back in their seats to shake his hand as he passed.
Heat crept up his neck at the attention, even as he tried to smile and return all the greetings. He barely knew them, but apparently that didn’t matter. The important thing was he was Sullivan’s, just like they were.
“Glad you could make it, kid,” Sullivan said, pulling back the empty chair at his table. “Have a seat; have a seat.” To the host, he added, “Get the man a Canada Dry, would you? Fill it to the top. And another scotch and soda for Lenny here.”
“Thanks.” Sam’s palms sweated as he sat down, and he wiped them on his knees beneath the table. He wasn’t used to any of this—when he took the job as Sullivan’s hexmaster, he’d assumed he’d be spending his days working in the lab and his nights at home with Alistair or at The Pride.
And for the most part, he did. But his promotion had unexpectedly put him in the upper echelons of the gang, which meant the other members wanted to get to know him. Most of the time he was able to politely dodge invitations to dinner or drinks, but when Sullivan summoned him, he had no choice but to attend.
“How are you doing?” Sullivan asked him. “All healed up?”
The man who’d formerly held Sam’s job, Vic Nagorski, had shot him in a misguided attempt to force Sam to help him with a hex, one that could heal any wound—but only at the cost of someone else’s life. Fortunately, ordinary doctors and hexes had been able to save him, though he was only now really able to move without pain again.
They hadn’t saved his mother, though.
“Once a failure, always a failure,” whispered his father’s voice in his head.
“Good as new,” he told Sullivan. “How is Mrs. Sullivan?”
A look of sorrow flitted across Sullivan’s face, there and gone in an instant. He’d aged since his only child’s death, his hair grown out so darker roots showed, more lines around his eyes. “She’s visiting her mother in New York for a bit. I’ll pass along your greetings.”
A waiter came with their drinks, then took their orders. Sam got the steak, since he’d never mastered the knack of twirling spaghetti on a fork, and didn’t want to look like a fool in front of his employer. Once the server was gone again, Sullivan said, “How are things going at the hexworks?”
Sam wasn’t sure why he’d been invited to this dinner, when Sullivan could have summoned him to his office at any time. But being asked to talk about hexes put him on surer footing, and he sat up straighter.
“Good! We’re fully up and running now—one of the scriptoriums wasn’t working out, it was too dark, but we figured out how to amplify the hexlights without needing more magic to run them, so that’s taken care of.”
Vic had burned the old hexworks to the ground, which meant the entire operation had to move to a new location. Sullivan acquired a building that once housed a Lithuanian-language newspaper, now out of business, and Sam had been helping to convert it to a hexworks ever since.
“Excellent, excellent.” Sullivan took a sip of his drink, which looked like a gin and tonic. While working at The Pride, Sam had learned more than he ever wanted to know about cocktails. “And you’ve figured out the counter to that look-away hex, I believe.”
“We have.” Sam had to restrain himself from going into details; most folks didn’t particularly care about how hexes worked, so long as they did. “It’s ready to be copied now.”
Sullivan beamed at him. “Well done. You’ve earned a bonus.”
Turner slipped a hand inside his suit coat and came out with a thick envelope, which he passed over to Sam. Sam’s throat constricted—he wanted to protest, say it hadn’t been anything, really. He was already being paid more than he’d ever dreamed and certainly didn’t need a bonus.
But it wasn’t just him now. Luke and Glenda, his teammates in the lab, deserved acknowledgement for their hard work.
Silently pledging to split the entire sum between the two, he accepted the envelope and put it in his own coat, beside his hexmaking kit. “Thanks, Mr. Sullivan. That’s very generous of you.”
Sullivan smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I take care of my people.” His eyes went past Sam, and he sat back. “And here’s that dinner.”
Talk turned to inconsequential things while they ate. Turner regaled them with a story about an excursion to Milwaukee in which he’d encountered a pair of contortionists, and soon had Sullivan and Sam both choking on their laughter. When they’d first met, Sam had thought Turner severe—and he could be, especially when carrying out Sullivan’s orders. But he had a lighter side to him, always ready with a preposterous anecdote or amusing joke.
After dessert—chocolate ice cream with shavings of chocolate sprinkled on top—a steady stream of the other gang members came by for a quick word with their boss. Sullivan and Turner lit cigars; Sam demurred, to Turner’s amusement.
“Maybe we should call you Choirboy,” he said with a wink. “You don’t smoke, you don’t drink, you’re going steady with that cat when you could be working your way through Bughouse Square—you’ve got to have some vice.”
Sam’s face heated, but Sullivan only laughed. “A smart man keeps his vices under wraps,” he said, pointing his cigar at Turner.
