The Serpent's Curse, Lisa Maxwell [new reading .TXT] 📗

a shudder and then headed downstairs. In the kitchen, the iron stove was waiting for her. It was a reminder of the tediousness sure to be found in the day ahead. Silently, she cursed it—and her own luck at being stuck once more under her brother’s thumb. Viola was not made for chopping onions and baking bread. She knew that she had no talent for any of the domestic chores Paolo and their mother expected of her, but she would bide her time and do what she must to appease them… at least for a little while longer.

Again, her thoughts drifted to the night of the gala, but to her shame it wasn’t Jianyu she thought of now, but Ruby Reynolds. The blond heiress had said dangerous things to Viola that night. But then, Ruby was rich enough to be brave and stupid all at once. In the quiet shadows of the kitchen, Viola could not stop herself from remembering how Ruby had looked that evening, draped in little more than a cloud of silk. Ruby had been dressed as Circe, the witch who turned men to swine, but with a mouthful of impossible words and a single kiss, the silly slip of a girl had done far worse to Viola.

Lifting her fingers to her lips, Viola stopped short of touching them. She forced herself to lower her hand. It did no good to think of things that could not be. Could never be. Pretty promises and the soft press of skin had simply given her a taste of a world that could never be hers. It had given her hope, the most dangerous of spells, but in the end Ruby’s kiss had changed nothing at all.

Cursing softly, Viola slipped out the back door as noiselessly as she’d done everything else since waking. She muttered every vulgar word she could think of as she made her way to the outhouses behind the cafe, but by the time she was finished with her business there, she’d fallen silent. Not even the phrases that would make a sailor blush gave her any real satisfaction.

When Viola stepped back out into the cleaner night air, she knew she was not alone. She walked steadily toward the building, waiting for the intruder to show himself, and when she was nearly to the kitchen door, she paused.

“I know you’re there,” she said, her voice soft in the night. She missed the reassuring weight of Libitina—or any knife, really. Like a fool, she’d ventured out unarmed. In the distance, a dog howled, but no other sound reached her ear. “Whoever you are, show yourself. Only a coward hides in the shadows.”

Viola waited, listening to the city rustling itself awake, a constant hum of life all around her. Just as she thought that maybe she’d been wrong, a man stepped from the alley that ran behind the row of buildings. He seemed enormous, with impossibly broad shoulders, dark, flashing eyes, and even darker skin.

Viola stepped back and instinctively drew on her affinity until the man was on his knees, but then she saw what he was holding in his hand—

Libitina.

She released her hold on his life at once, and the man slowly stumbled back to his feet, his free hand rubbing at his chest. “Where did you get that?” she asked, moving toward him. She realized that he wasn’t so large as she had imagined him to be. He was simply a man, no taller than her brother or any other in the Bowery. His skin was not made of the darkness of night, but was instead a warm deep brown.

The man flinched, raising his hands in surrender, and she realized he was not a stranger. It was the same man she had seen at the gala, the one who had carried Jianyu away.

“He told me you would come if I showed you this,” the man said, his eyes still wary as he held the knife to her, handle first. “Jianyu. He told us that you would believe me.”

“Who are you?” Viola didn’t reach for the blade, even as her palms itched to feel its weight.

“My name’s Johnson. Abel Johnson,” the man said again. His voice had gone tight with a fear that Viola recognized too well, but still this Abel Johnson offered her the knife—Libitina—once more. “Jianyu sent me to get you.”

She was already reaching for her blade when she paused, the man’s words—the significance of them—finally registering. Her heart felt suddenly lodged in her throat. “He’s alive?”

“Only just,” the man said, releasing the knife to Viola’s keeping. “We’ve tried everything. Doctors and praying and every home remedy my mother ever knew, but nothing closes up the wound you gave him. He’s been bleeding for days now.” The man’s jaw was clenched, but Viola could not tell whether it was fear or the usual male pride that he now held between his teeth. “He said that you would come, that you could do something about it. We have to go now. He doesn’t have much time.”

Viola felt herself torn in two. She could save Jianyu. She had thought him dead, already past healing, yet if his heart still beat, she could help him. But if she left now, she could not return. And if she did not return, she might never discover where her brother was keeping the ring.

“If you come with me now—”

Viola was shaking her head. “I can’t.”

“You can’t come or you can’t help him?” Abel asked, tucking his hands in his pockets.

“You don’t understand. My brother—”

“I know all about your brother,” Abel said, his mouth twisting as though he’d tasted something foul. “He’s a dangerous man, and the men he surrounds himself with aren’t much better. But Jianyu seemed to think that you were stronger than him.”

Viola glanced back to the door. In a matter of an hour the sun would be up, and with it some of Paul’s men. If she were discovered missing, and especially if anyone discovered who she had gone