“Just take me as far as you can in that direction. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
“Are—are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, miss?” The driver’s brown eyes are worried.
“Quite sure. Just as near as you can get me to the river district.” I half climb, half fall into the carriage.
I will see to it that Father and Finn are all right, and then I will find Inez. It’s well past time for us to have a reckoning.
The carriage pulls up in front of a row of houses on Fifty-Sixth Street. Ahead of us, an army wagon blocks the way to Fifty-Seventh. I climb down and hand the driver coins, but he waves them away.
“Can you tell me how to get to the Golden Hart?” I ask, pulling my tattered hood up over my hair.
His olive skin flushes. “It’s down by the river, miss. River and Seventy-Second. But that’s right where the fire is.”
I thank him and hurry toward the barricade. The air smells of smoke—not the pleasant smell of wood smoke from the chimneys, or the waxy smoke of a candle, but something heavier, more acrid, and more dangerous.
Behind the wagon, the barricades have been knocked down. So much for the supposed quarantine. I spot two guards who’ve been immobilized. They stand at the checkpoint, hands clenched around missing rifles and truncheons. Witches have been here.
As I make my way into the river district, people flood past me in the opposite direction. Mothers carry frightened children; fathers lug suitcases full of valuables. People on foot hurry alongside those on horseback, choking the narrow streets and making it near impossible for wagons to pass. Several carriages sit abandoned in the middle of the street. The sidewalks are littered with dropped toys and clothing and pots and pans. Above it all, smoke clouds the air, and to the west, orange flames leap into the night sky.
I’ve walked half a dozen blocks when I encounter the first fire. Two city blocks lie smoking, reduced to rubble. A line of firemen directs water from three steaming fire engines onto the ashes, trying to prevent the sparks from reigniting. One block has been utterly flattened, so much that I can’t tell what the buildings once were. In the second block, a row of brick chimneys still remains—and at the nearest corner, one brick edifice, toothless and eerie without its windows and doors.
How many fires were set? How many lives have already been lost? I hasten my pace, heedless of the pain in my arm and the now constant throbbing of my skull. I pray that down by the river, the firemen and the witches are working together peacefully. What if I was wrong and the people don’t want our help?
I’m three blocks nearer the river, walking up Bramble Hill, when I hear an explosion. People around me scream and point wildly, and I follow their fingers just in time to see the great wooden water tower at the top of the hill crack wide open and water flood out.
The way it breaks—that isn’t the work of firemen. That’s magic.
As I get nearer, the gutters run with water and my boots sink in the mud of the streets. Bramble Hill is the highest elevation in the river district, just before the streets slope down toward the river. Several ramshackle tenement buildings sat right below the water tower on overgrown lots choked with weeds. On our Sisterly missions to the poor, Mei and Alice and I visited families in some of those buildings. Two and three generations lived crammed together in little two-room flats with no heat and rags stuffed into the cracked windowpanes to keep out the wind. Now the buildings are nothing but charred, blackened wood. Smoke pours off the remains and water rushes downhill, flooding several more blocks.
At the bottom of the hill, several buildings are in states of partial collapse. People hang out second-story windows and climb onto porch roofs, crying for rescue. I spot Vi’s father, Robert, shouldering his way into a small clapboard house. Vi and two other witches stand in the street next to a wagon, and as I watch, two toddlers float off a porch roof, away from their astonished mother, and safely into the back of the wagon.
No one objects to the witchery. No one attacks the girls openly doing magic in the street. I pause for a moment, warring with my conscience, but it seems as though Vi and the others are doing well enough. The fire here has been quenched. I hurry on.
As I near River Street, the scene takes on an increasingly nightmarish cast. Two hulking warehouses, several blocks apart, are on fire. Sparks arc out over the river like fireflies. Flaming bits of docks bob on the water alongside pieces of ruined ships. Down the street in each direction, fire brigades pass buckets and fire engines hiss, but these blocks in the middle seem to have been abandoned.
Even from across River Street, the smoke is choking, and the heat makes it feel like June instead of December. As I near the intersection with Seventy-Second, my heart pounds. The fire has already eaten away at the entire block of shipping offices and taverns and the inn. I watch, coughing, as a roof collapses with a shower of sparks.
This is where the Golden Hart was.
A girl dashes past, dressed in the black cloak of the Sisterhood. Her hood is down, and I recognize the fuzzy black braids wound around her head. “Daisy?”
Daisy Reed—Bekah’s older sister—whirls at the sound of my voice. “Cate?”
I join her, lengthening my stride to match hers. Daisy was part of the Harwood mission. She would know Finn by sight. “My father was staying down here at the Golden Hart, and my—Finn came to warn him. Do you know if everyone got out of these buildings in time?”
“I think so. Rilla and some of the others tried to stop the fire here, but it was impossible. That was a lumberyard, and it went right up.” Daisy gestures to the smoldering lot between this block and the warehouse ahead, then jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “I saw Finn with a group of Brothers working for the fire brigade. The fire’s been contained down by the train depot; we’re all moving this way.”
“There are Brothers down here helping?” I ask, astonished, and Daisy nods. At least Finn is all right. I proceed to the next worry. “Have you seen Tess?”
Daisy shakes her head. “Maybe she’s with Bekah and Lucy. I’m going to look for Bekah now. They were paired up with Sister Gretchen, but I heard Gretchen got shot by a guard.”
We’re passing the second warehouse. The roof has collapsed; flames leap from the debris and have spread to the shipyard in the next block. Out on the river, ships in various stages of construction have been set loose. There is a terrible beauty in the flaming skeletons of those still on the dry docks.
Across the street, a row of witches—Sister Mélisande, old Sister Edith, and two of the governesses—stand with their hands linked as they direct the wind out to sea instead of inland. Firemen train their hoses on the tenement houses across River Street from the shipyard. The bucket brigade is hard at work, scooping water near the docks. And at the end of the longest pier, two figures gesture angrily. One is Elena, and the other—
Even this far away, I can make out Inez’s hawkish profile.
The image of Maura, lying pale and broken beneath the rubble, flashes through my mind.
I barrel toward Inez.
Chapter 21
IF I STILL HARBORED ANY DOUBTS ABOUT whether I am capable of murder, they are dismissed.
I would use the strength of my own arms or any magic at my disposal to do it. I don’t care if all of New London witnesses Inez’s death at my hands.