“It’s not about you, Cleaver. I don’t want to work for you or anyone else anymore, Artos included. You’ve all given me reason to run from your so-called protection. I just want to be left alone.”

  “There’s no room for another Sable boss in Baltimore. Artos will work for me, same as you. It’s inevitable.” Cleaver tapped his temple. “I’ve seen it.”

  “Ah, yes, your so-called sight. But it’s not a sure thing, right? You’ve seen things that didn’t come to pass for one reason or another.” She waited for Cleaver to nod, then said, “So why this obsession over me? What do you think I’ll do that you can’t do for yourself?”

  The intercom chirped on the desk, then a voice came through the speaker. “We’ve another uninvited guest. You want I should run him off?”

  Winnie felt a sudden, familiar tug pulling her toward the dance floor. She knew what she’d see before she turned toward the glass — a pair of bouncers holding a thrashing Danny between them.

  Cleaver looked through the glass, then turned to Winnie with a smile. “Another friend of yours? And how, I wonder, did he manage to find you?” Cleaver walked to the intercom, pressed the button, and asked the bouncer to bring the intruder upstairs. “I think we’ll ask him directly.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence while Winnie waited for Danny to get ushered upstairs. Winnie could only think of one reason he would be searching for her like this. Surely his headaches were back.

  Winnie felt that familiar itch. She wanted to heal him, even if it meant Cleaver would discover her addiction.

  The door opened and Danny was shoved into the office. He stumbled, only staying upright by grabbing at Winnie. She caught his weight while he steadied himself. He looked like crap, his eyes sunken, slitted to invite only the scantest light. The bright room was likely a hammer to his head. Without even trying, Winnie began to draw the magic around her, healing him, lost in the coming rush of euphoria as …

  “Stop!”

  Winnie looked at Cleaver, standing a few feet away, holding a gun in one hand, his other extended to draw magic like Winnie. He stared in horror.

  “What do you think you’re doing, girl? You just drew in more Sable than I thought possible for one person to hold. I thought you were preparing to attack, until you directed it all toward our intruder. What are you doing?”

  “I’m healing him, Cleaver,” she said, without moving her eyes from Danny. “He was a prisoner of Kane’s. They experimented on him, left him broken so that now he gets these horrible headaches. I’m the only one who can fix them.” Winnie swallowed, and stole a defiant glance at her host. “I have power that you know nothing about.”

  “That may be, but I can see what you’re doing, putting a temporary wall around some spell that’s already set in this boy’s brain. Whoever put it there is dabbling in the worst Sable I’ve ever seen. But what you’re doing is nearly as bad, and that’s not even counting what it must be doing to you.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Cleaver. I can take care of myself,” Winnie hissed through clenched teeth and waves of pleasure. She barely heard the intercom chirp with the now-familiar voice.

  “Boss, it’s Hal again. There’s a Red Leg inspector here to see you. Claims he’s here to talk. He’s alone and isn’t wired so far as we can tell.”

  Cleaver keyed the intercom. “He let you search him?”

  “He insisted. He knows the Durham girl is here and wants to see her.”

  Winnie was still swimming in euphoria and barely registered what was said. What would a Red Leg inspector want with her beyond an arrest?

  She was too distracted to think it through and, in her current state, didn’t care. She heard Cleaver invite the inspector upstairs. From the corner of her eye, she saw him take a dark blanket from a shelf and drape the crates. It wouldn’t hide them from a thorough search, but it would suffice to hinder a casual examination of the room.

  She finished her spell work on Danny, then drew her magical tendrils from his mind with what felt like a bottomless sigh. Like always, Winnie was spent from her healing, her pleasure centers still tickled by his proximity.

  Danny collapsed to the floor. Winnie leaned against a table for support as the door opened again and Inspector Victor Holmes entered the office.

  He looked around until his eyes found Winnie. “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” Winnie asked, most of her mind still fixed on Danny.

  “Morgan. What have you done with her?”

  Winnie waved towards the door. “She’s fine, with Cait and Tris last I saw her.”

  Victor turned toward Cleaver. “I think you have one of my constables, Mr. Yorke. I came alone in a show of good faith to retrieve her.”

  “I suppose you’ll swoop back in and take me in for kidnapping once I hand her over,” Cleaver said.

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort. I just want her back and will leave once I have her.”

  “He’s sweet on her, Cleaver. That’s why he wants her back so bad,” Winnie purred. “He turned her against me, then made her his personal Red Leg officer. Isn’t that right, Victor?”

  “I’ll talk with you another time, Winnie, when you’re not high.”

  Cleaver considered Victor’s offer. Winnie could see the wheels spinning behind his dark eyes as a question nagged at the back of her mind.

  “How did you find us, Victor? Is Morgan wearing some sort of tracker?”

  The inspector turned to glare at Winnie. “No. I figured she was with you. I rounded up lover boy here and sent him to find you. I simply followed.”

  Winnie tracked Victor’s line of thought. Danny did seem to turn up in the oddest places. She looked over at him, dazed in the aftermath of her therapy.

  “That’s right,” Victor said. “Your boy has been turned into a perfect bloodhound by Director Kane. He can find you wherever you are. All Kane has to do is trigger the spell he placed in Barber’s brain and the headaches start. You’re the only one who can stop them, with predictable consequences for you both. It was always Kane’s plan to incapacitate you enough to keep you from interfering with his plans.”

  “Why tell me all this?” Winnie said. “And why should I believe you?”

  Victor laughed. “You can lie to yourself all you want, Winnie. But don’t lie to me. You know I only tell the truth. Friend or enemy, I stand by my word. Kane set this whole thing up to keep you out of his way while he solved the problem you started after destroying the Harvester.”

  Victor crossed to where Danny was slumped in a chair, put a hand on Danny’s head, and, with a grasping motion, seemed to pull something imaginary away.

  Cleaver gasped. She switched her vision to the magical spectrum just in time to see Victor’s fingers peel away both her barrier spell and the deeper enchantment put in place by Kane. Peeling was the only way to describe it. Victor tugged at the edges of each spell until it started to tear from its anchor, then wove the spell’s knitted threads into wisps of translucent energy. Winnie knew from her discovery that the magic preferred to follow its own path. Victor was setting it free.

  “How did you do that?” Winnie whispered. She could undo a spell she had cast, and sometimes repair broken weaves in other people’s work, but he was dismantling the threads like one would unravel the frayed cuff of a sweater.

  Victor looked up at Winnie. “I don’t know how or why I can do this. I just can, ever since that night at the steel mill. You need to know something else: Neither Morgan nor I knew what Kane was doing there. It was as much a shock to us as it was to you. By the time they had you in custody, neither of us could do anything to help you … not that you needed it, in the end. But you must understand, Morgan had no idea what Kane was up to.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She still betrayed me, and I’m not sure I can ever recover from that, even if she had a change of heart and came to warn us about tonight’s raid.”

  “Morgan had nothing to do with that. We didn’t know about your plans until Artos called and told us that you were planning on selling it all to Cleaver.”

  Winnie stared at Victor, shocked. She couldn’t believe that Artos would turn her over like that. It had been his plan, too. But Victor was right. He didn’t lie. It was an irrefutable fact. If he said that Artos had called in the raid on tonight’s operation, then she believed in that truth and whatever struggle accompanied yet another reversal in her loyalties.

  It was almost too much to bear. She pushed off the table she’d been leaning against.

  She had to clear her head and stand on her own two feet. So much had changed in the space of minutes. So much of what she believed to be true was now undeniably false. Her world was upside down.

  She looked at Cleaver. “We need to go back down to the others. Victor will want to see Morgan and I have some things to say that everyone should hear.”

  Cleaver nodded and opened his office door. Winnie followed him down to the storeroom along with the others.

  It was finally time to set things right.

  Chapter 45

  When the door to the storeroom opened, Winnie saw Tris and Cait on one side of the room with Morgan standing opposite them, alone. They wanted nothing to do with her. Their obvious surprise when she entered with Cleaver, Victor, and Danny might’ve been amusing if the circumstances weren’t so dire.

  Morgan ran to Victor’s side. The way she clung to him, Winnie realized that there was a relationship there that she hadn’t suspected before. It forced her to reconsider her opinion of Victor. She’d always seen him as heartless, bound only to his job. But he’d come here alone, risking his beloved job to rescue Morgan. It made so much more sense in light of this new revelation.

  Cait and Tris had a world of wonder in their eyes. Surely, they thought that Victor’s presence meant they were back in custody, somehow betrayed by Cleaver Yorke. Winnie shook her head, forestalling their questions. She cleared her throat and looked at the New Amsterdam boss.

  “I’m through with Artos, Cleaver. He’s always had his hidden agenda. And while I knew that, I would have never imagined that he’d turn us in like he did tonight.”

  “Winnie,” Cait said, confused by her revelation. “Artos helped you make tonight’s plans. You think he betrayed us?”

  Winnie nodded. “I do. We sure as hell didn’t call the Red Legs to raid us. If Morgan hadn’t warned us, we’d have been picked up with Cleaver and his men. Think about it. Who stands to gain the most if we’re all locked up? Who reclaims the throne with no one left to challenge his power?”

  Tris stepped forward. “But Winnie, you were on his side in this.”

  “Maybe my new abilities forced Artos to reconsider how he dealt with me. I could do things he said hadn’t been possible for a century or more. I think he saw the way people reacted to what I could do and realized I was the hero of the chanter community. Not him. That makes me a threat to his standing.”

  She pointed to Victor, who was standing with Morgan.

  “He confirmed that Artos called in the raid. He also has some strange power that allows him to dismantle magic spells, says he’s had it since the steel mill.”

  Morgan shot Victor a questioning glance. He half-smiled. The inspector probably hadn’t revealed his newfound power to anyone until tonight, after removing Kane’s spell from Danny’s mind. She filed that away for future reference and turned to Cleaver. She needed everyone to understand what she was about to say.

  “Cleaver, you’ve always said that we were supposed to work together, that you’d seen us standing side-by-side against whatever is coming. Is that still true?”

  “Nothing’s changed there, Winnie. You and I must stand together against the coming apocalypse.”

  “Then I accept your offer, at least in part.”

  Tris and Cait gaped at their friend. Cleaver looked pleased with himself.

  Winnie waved them all off. “I said in part because we’re partners, Cleaver. I’ll not be working for you. I’ll work with you, if you’ll accept that.”

  “Partners are bad for business. They always cheat each other in the end. I’ll make you a captain.”

  Winnie shook her head. “I’m not Cricket, and this isn’t a negotiation. If anything, I’m offering to let you work with me.”

  Cleaver laughed, then fell to a hush when he realized that Winnie wasn’t kidding. “You’re serious.”

  “Don’t worry. I have no interest in your business. I just need your help to fight whatever is coming. I can do more than I’ve done if I don’t have to worry about you and Artos or anything else. I’m in my corner, and looking for allies. You need me more than I need you. I don’t know why and I’m not yet sure how, but it’s somehow my fate to stop the Director. For some reason that I don’t understand, and probably don’t even want to know, I might be able to stop the world from crumbling around us.”

  Cleaver exhaled, deep and heavy. “So, you’ve no eyes on my business?”

  “You run New Amsterdam. I’ll keep Baltimore. When the time comes, I’ll give you instructions. Follow them to the letter and everything will work out.”

  “How do you know what to do all of a sudden?” Tris asked. “You’ve managed to temporarily return things to normal, but the problems always returned.”

  “Victor gave me the idea when he peeled the magic from inside Danny’s head. He picked apart the fibers and returned them to their natural state. They dissolved, back to wherever they came from. I think we’ve all been working magic the wrong way all these years. It isn’t something we control, or stitch into our bidding. The magic is alive, vital, almost aware. It can best be used when you work with it, let it do as it wishes with only the faintest direction. That was how I doused the fires and killed the storms. Magic doesn’t seek chaos and destruction. It wants to fix what’s broken.”

  Victor looked puzzled. Then he said, “That makes what I’ve seen at the crater fit a whole lot better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Victor described the grassy bowl with the magical pool at its center. Everyone listened as he related his conversations with Seelie and how the crater seemed impervious to the local tremors and storms.

  “It’s almost as if the magic there has healed the land,” he finally finished.

  “That’s an example of what I think is wrong with the world. We’re bending magic to our will. It’s meant to shepherd the natural world, but we’re abusing its power and forcing it into unnatural things.”

  “So, let me get this straight: You wanna set the magic free so it can do whatever it wants in the world, even though that violates everything we believe about working magic?” Cleaver laughed, a bit too loud. “And you want me to work for you.”

  Winnie nodded. “I think this is what happened to Europe. More and more of their public works projects were put under magical control, until they sucked the natural world dry. It’s why every major city here in the United Americas is surrounded by wasteland. We’ve ripped the fabric that holds nature together. We have to return it or suffer Europe’s fate.”

  Cait looked at Winnie. Danny stood nearby, staring at her. Everyone was. She felt self-conscious. She’d just suggested that everything they knew as fact was wrong and that the foundation of their social structure was built on a lie. She was tired of trying to tell them what was right. It was time for them all to decide for themselves.

  There was a long silence as the room pondered what she’d said. Winnie waited, feigning patience.

  Cleaver broke the silence. “My visions never lie. Sometimes I might interpret things wrong, but that’s on me. I can look back and see the mistaken viewpoint rather than the mistaken vision. I’ve seen us side-by-side, confronting what’s to come. I’ve always assumed it was because you were working for me.”

  “And now?” Winnie asked.

  “Now I need to see it from a different direction. I’m in. New Amsterdam’s chanter community stands with you.”

  Winnie had to throttle her obvious joy. It was a win for her, and for the world, but she wasn’t ready to show him.

  Victor shocked her next. “I’ve seen too much of what you can do, and thus, doubt is impossible. Despite all that’s working against you, you’ve come out on top. I’ll do all that I can to help.”

  Morgan beamed by Victor’s side. Winnie knew where her sister stood, if only because the man she loved had shifted his loyalties.

  “Thank you,” Winnie said. “That means a lot. You know this could mean the end of everything holding our society together. Chanters and middlings will eventually have to work together. That’s why Kane is working so hard to divide us. He knows that unity will defeat him.”

  “I know,” Victor said. “I also know it won’t be easy to beat him. He’s stacked all the cards in his favor.”

  Winnie cocked her head. “Then why side with us?”

  “Because I’ve seen you in action, and I now know what unblemished magic can do when given the chance to flourish on its own.”

  She nodded at Victor, accepting his allegiance. She only needed to hear from her oldest and dearest friends. Winnie met the eyes of Danny, Cait, and Tris in turn. They each nodded as her eyes met theirs.

  Everyone was on board.

  Their grand alliance had begun.

  Epilogue

  “Have a seat, ma’am. Please. It’ll be a while.”

  “That’s all right. I’d rather stand.”

  Elaine Durham hobbled back and forth on her cane, looking over the priceless artwork. The ancient paintings were dark, and faded in many cases, but she was sure that someone had assigned extraordinary value to them. The same was likely true for the bronze and marble sculptures standing on pedestals around the antechamber. The woman behind the desk watched Elaine perusing the statues and paintings, eyes like claws on her back.