“Did you hear me, girl?” Price said. “I told you to answer the question.”
A distant rumble of thunder punctuated his command, but Maisie wasn’t the only one to disregard it. Jules was glancing between the girl and Fletcher with an expression of dawning comprehension, and even a couple of the coppers lowered their weapons slightly.
“Fletcher?” Maisie said again, hoarsely but this time aloud. There was an impossible amount of emotion injected into those two syllables: Disbelief. Hope. Caution. Shock.
“Answer the—”
“Shut up,” Kane told Price sharply, unable to help himself. Despite being the one restrained, he knew that Price wouldn’t harm him personally after the threats he’d made. He would let the court deal with Kane if it came to that. Still, even if chastising the inspectorhadput Kane in the line of fire, he would have done it. The look on Fletcher’s rain-streaked face was unlike anything he’d seen before. It was the face Kane might have made had he seen his parents rise from the dead.
“Mairéad,” Fletcher whispered. Then, after giving himself a shake: “Help her. She needs medical attention.” He glanced wildly around at the dumbstruck coppers.“Help her!”
The name struck a chord somewhere deep in Kane. It had been years since he’d last heard it, but he remembered it nonetheless. Mairéad—that was the name of the little sister Fletcher had lost. The reason he’d come to London in the first place, desperate to find her, though he’d ultimately given up the search. He rarely spoke about her and hadn’t in years. Kane, not wanting to pry into his friend’s anguish, never raised the subject.
“You heard him,” Jules shouted, surprising Kane. His onyx hair was plastered to his face and neck, and his eyes were flinty as he lurched forward, pulling an officer with him. “It doesn’t matter why the girl’s here. You’re the police. Aren’t you supposed to help people?”
His scathing tone made Price’s nostrils flare, but the inspector indicated for the two officers nearest Maisie to move in. They did, one using his coat to apply pressure to the wound at her hip. She gave a sharp intake of breath. Despite their difference in coloring, Kane could see Fletcher in her face. Her eyes were dark where her brother’s were light, but they were the same distance apart. Her nose was the same proud shape, and when she grimaced again, Kane saw that her front teeth were crowded in precisely the same way.
Meanwhile, Fletcher had sunk to his knees where he stood, unable to pull his gaze away from his sister’s. He didn’t go to her. He didn’t appear to know what to do. He was a man whose entire world had just shifted on its axis.
Maisie gave her head a slight shake, dragging her attention from Fletcher with obvious difficulty. “You need to go inside,” she insisted to Price. Her voice held the same nearly imperceptible lilt that Fletcher’s did when he was trying to conceal his accent. “Aurora Vaughan—she’s in there. She’s been using the Exhibition to collect energy—tostealit—and now she plans to use it to create magic. Mass amounts of it. She wants to use it to clear out the slums. Members of the Royal Commission are working with her—possibly even members of Parliament.” Maisie took a rasping breath.
Nobody appeared to know what to say to this. The surrounding officers looked to Price for instruction, and he grimaced. “What do you mean,magic? Are you talking about alchemology? And what do the slums have to do with it?”
“Yes, alchemology.” Maisie’s voice, although weak, was snappish. Kane decided he liked her right then and there.
To his credit, Price only nodded. “Take her to a doctor,” he told the copper still holding his coat against Maisie’s hip. “Question her once she’s been dealt with, and then look into whoever this Aurora Vaughan is. Martin, Andrews—you two go as well.”
“Hold on.” Kane’s mind was spinning as it tried to catch up. “Did you say AuroraVaughan?”
“Yes!” Maisie tried to push herself farther upright, relieved that Kane appeared to recognize the name. “She has her daughter with her—Zaria Mendoza. She needs her to complete the Magnum Opus.”
“The what?” Price said, scanning his men as if expecting one of them to answer.
Kane, on the other hand, was reeling.Daughter, Maisie had said. Vaughan was a woman, and she was Zaria’s… mother? Not only that, but if Aurora Vaughan was the one harnessing energy from the Exhibition, didn’t that also make her the Curator?
“That’s impossible,” Jules said, his lips colorless. “Zaria’s mother left nearly two decades ago.”
“Left Zaria, maybe.” Kane twisted his wrists in the handcuffs. “Apparently she didn’t leave London.”
He almost couldn’t conceive of it. The kingpin who’d attempted to get Zaria to spy on him, who yearned for control of the dark market, wasn’t at all the Ward-like figure he’d imagined. No wonder she never showed her face and used others to do her dirty work. If Kane hadn’t been so deeply resentful, he might have been impressed.
They’d been right to suspect a connection between Vaughan and the Curator. What they hadn’t considered was that the two might be one and the same.
Price drew himself up tall, adjusting the collar of his uniform.Something about the action was resigned. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. Then, more loudly: “Officers, get into formation. I don’t know how this Aurora Vaughan has been getting into the Exhibition without our knowledge, but it ends tonight.”
“Wait,” Kane said sharply. “We had a deal.”
From the corner of his eye he could see Fletcher crouched beside Maisie, finally having reached her. He was still cuffed, but he’d managed to take her hands in his own and was staring at her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. As if he were seeing sunlight for the first time after millennia of darkness. Something in Kane’s chest flipped over.
Price spoke through his teeth. “Indeed. Finnegan? Let Masters Zhao and Collins go.”
“What?” said Jules, overhearing. He stared at Kane in stupefaction. “What about you?”
On the way over here, Kane—alone in a stagecoach with Price and two of his men—had struck a deal: If he was right about the Curator’s plan, Price had to let the others go. Jules, Fletcher,andZaria, assuming they found her. In return, he could keep Kane as long as he wanted, and use him as a witness to help put the Curator away. In the event that they weren’t able to catch the Curator, Kane would take sole responsibility for all recent crimes at the Exhibition.
“I’ll be fine,” Kane told Jules. He forced a sardonic smile.
Jules shook his head stubbornly as his hands were freed. “If Zaria’s in there, then I’m coming.”
