Canon in Crimson Read online

  “I’ll just be a minute,” he told me in his New York voice. “You stay out of trouble while I’m gone, okay?”

  I nodded and he disappeared into the room. Of course, I remembered how long his last minute had taken, and after a little while, I started to get restless again. The longer I stood there next to the guard, the surer I was that he was going to notice I didn’t belong. I could just leave—walk out the door and back to my normal life. It wouldn’t be as interesting, but it wouldn’t be as dangerous either—and now, at least, I’d be warmer. But I’d never see Alger again, either…

  “Ma’am?” said the guard.

  I jumped as I turned to looked at him.

  “Yeah? What?” I asked. My palms sweated in my pockets, and I held my breath, waiting for him to kick me out

  “Just making sure you’re alright,” he said, giving me a friendly smile. “You look worried.”

  I blinked at him for a second before I realized that no, he wasn’t going to kick me out—he was trying to start a conversation. Come on, Vic, I told myself, taking a deep breath. Say something.

  “Um, yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m fine. Just bored waiting for my…uncle.”

  The guard smiled back and I breathed easier.

  “Sure, but you’ll be done waiting in a minute,” he said. “I’ll be here all night.”

  I shrugged.

  “At least it’s warm in here,” I said.

  The guard looked confused for a second, but then he laughed.

  “You’re a funny bird,” he said. “So you’re Mr. Averitt’s niece? How come you’ve never come by before, when he’s in here every day?”

  “Um,” I said, panic rising again in my throat, “I’m…not from around here.”

  “Oh,” said the friendly guard. “Where are you from, sweetheart?”

  “Um,” I said again, “I don’t—”

  “She’s from Georgia,” Alger said, reappearing in the doorway and slipping a small leather-bound book into his pocket. “Thanks, Oliver, but we need to be going.”

  Relieved, I smiled at Alger and turned to go, but Oliver reached out to touch my shoulder and I stopped.

  “Wait,” he said. “How long are you in town?”

  “I . . . ” I floundered and looked at Alger.

  “Not long,” he supplied. “But we right now we—”

  “Will you be here tomorrow night?” Oliver asked, undiscouraged. “I’m not working, and if you—”

  “Oliver,” Alger said, rounding on him, “I’m sure my niece is very flattered, but this really isn’t a good time.”

  He tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow and pulled me along behind him, and I shot Oliver an apologetic shrug as we left. I bit back all my questions while we hurried (as much as Alger’s fake limp would allow) past the teller window and up to the door. But just before we escaped, I found the reason Alger had been so keen on leaving: the real Mr. Averitt. The second he walked in the door, his eyes widened just like they had on the train, but this time there was nothing separating us.

  “You!” he shouted at Alger, his voice reverberating off the marble walls. “So that’s why you did it! You’re after my money!”

  If I hadn’t been in on the con, I swear I would’ve been fooled when Alger stared at Averitt, his eyes wide, his mouth open in shock.

  “I—what?” he stammered. “Why do you look like—” He reached up to touch the fake moustache like he was looking in a mirror and shook his head in incredibly realistic confusion. Of course, that only made the real Averitt angrier.

  “Imposter!” he yelled, shaking his cane wildly in the air. “This man is impersonating me!”

  By now, the tellers were all staring at us, and Oliver had approached, watching the situation unfold in growing concern. I wasn’t sure what Alger was going to do next—but I did know that there were too many eyes on us, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. Letting go of Alger’s arm, I stepped toward the real Averitt.

  “Hey,” I said, “my uncle’s no imposter!”

  “I don’t have a niece,” Averitt growled. “And you’re about to learn your lesson, you little mongrel.”

  He lifted his cane and prodded me with it.

  Well, that turned out to be a huge mistake: my new friend Oliver finally stopped watching and surged forward.

  “That’s enough!” he said, taking a hold of Averitt’s arm and yanking it behind his back. “We’ll see who needs to learn a lesson when the police get here.” While Averitt struggled and frothed in anger, Oliver turned and nodded to Alger and me. “I’m sorry, sir, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll take care of this.”

  Alger nodded, and I threw Oliver a grateful smile as the two of us walked out of the bank, free and clear, into the frosty winter evening.

  “Well,” Alger said when we’d made our way back to the sidewalk, in his British accent again, “that didn’t proceed exactly as planned, but I suppose it might actually be a better result.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, my pulse still racing.

  “As it happens, our Mr. Averitt is a bit of an imposter himself,” Alger explained. “He was a very valuable German asset during the War, and the authorities have been after him for some time. After he’s questioned by the police, there’s a distinct possibility that he won’t be available to seek out his stolen possessions.”

  I eyed Alger skeptically as he slipped into an alley, where he started peeling off the layers of his disguise and discarding them, turning back into himself.

  “He was a German spy?” I asked. “Why would you say that? How do you even know?”

  Alger’s face, half old and half young now, took on a cool, distant look I hadn’t seen before.

  “Have you always been a thief, Victoria?” he asked.

  “I—” I paused, caught off guard. “I mean—no, I—I don’t think so.”

  “Well, neither have I.”

  Looking back now, I wonder why I didn’t ask what that meant. Maybe I was intimidated by his sudden seriousness—or maybe I was afraid that if I asked too many questions, he’d remember that he didn’t really have any reason to keep talking to me, and that I’d nearly ruined his plan just a minute ago. Either way, I decided that the best thing I could do was leave it alone and change the subject.

  “So,” I said as we left the alley, “there’s still something I can’t figure out.”

  “And that is?” Alger asked, raising a blonde eyebrow.

  “How’d you get the key to Averitt’s safe deposit box?”

  The half-smile I’d been fishing for reappeared on his face.

  “Excellent question,” he said. “I used the fourth and final principle of proper thievery.”

  “Which is?”

  “Preparation,” he said.

  I laughed and took his arm again, starting to feel like it was the most natural thing in the world as we headed back to the train station. When we got there, though, he stopped.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Victoria, but I’m afraid this is where we’ll need to part ways,” he said, gently pulling his arm away from my hand. “I trust my debt is paid?”

  I tried to hide my disappointment in a nod.

  “Sure,” I said. “But…do you think I’ll see you again?”

  Once more, for just a second, I saw something in his eyes—a shade of compassion that didn’t match his cavalier manner—and I felt that connection again, like the translucent memory of a dream. But it passed and he smiled.

  “I imagine that’s quite likely,” he said.

  And then he turned on his heel and walked away into the thickening night. I watched him go and then turned to figure out how I was going to get back to my neighborhood. As I headed into the station while my mind replayed the day’s impossibly exciting events, I shoved my hands in my pockets—and I smiled as my fingers closed around a thick roll of bills just about the size of the stack of cash from the stolen wallet.

  Alger Slade, I thought, a skip working its way into my step
, good luck getting rid of me now.

  Chapter 3—Fight Test

  R7 didn’t like guns.

  Maybe it was because she still wasn’t very good at using hers, or she’d seen exactly what they could do to a person a few too many times, or they were too loud in her ears, reverberating like cannons. But whatever the reason, it was just as well at the moment, because as far as she could tell from inside the speeding car, the guns being fired by New York’s finest were doing absolutely nothing to stop the twelve-foot-tall, glowing-eyed, steel mechanical man looming over them in the middle of Union Square.

  “Okay,” she shouted to G3 over the engine’s roar and the thunderstorm of gunfire, “what do we do now?”

  Her partner swerved expertly to dodge a hunk of metal debris that might once have been a lamppost.

  “Not sure yet,” he answered. “We don’t usually run into these.”

  R7 shrugged acknowledgement, thinking that she really should be more nervous at this point. Training had been one crazy exercise after another, but it had never been anything like this. And yet, the training worked. She watched with detached calculation as the huge metal man reached down with one giant hand and swatted a handful of bulls aside like so many dominoes. As it bent down, she noticed the huge, bug-like antenna rising out of the top of its head.

  “Alright,” she yelled, as the scene of the destruction grew rapidly larger as they hurtled forward. “Got anything bigger than a pistol?”

  G3 took his eyes off the road for long enough to flash her a rare grin.

  “You know, I think I do,” he said.

  “Uh oh.”

  “On three, I want you to jump out of the car,” G3 told her.

  “You want me to what?”

  “Just do it!”

  And so, on her partner’s mark, R7 threw open the door and dived out of the car to tumble into the street—and he did the same. R7 tucked and rolled, tearing clothing and scratching her skin, and momentarily, she lost track of G3. She scrambled to her feet in time to watch the car tearing forward at full speed, slamming head-on into the mechanical man. R7 heard the crunch of metal, the pops of snapping wires, and the hissing sound of gas escaping.

  Then the car exploded.

  Maybe that hadn’t been such a bad idea, R7 thought, finding herself surprisingly unconcerned as she ducked the hunks of burning shrapnel whistling by her head. Flames and a cloud of smoke obscured the figure of the metal man, but when the smoke cleared, she saw it lying on the ground beneath the wreckage of the car.

  Her ears still ringing, she searched the mass of people in the square. At first, the only person she saw not running, screaming, or trying to hide was a tall figure in red, perched on a nearby ledge, watching the scene. The Red Death—could it be? But she had other things to focus on, and in a moment, she found G3 standing across the street, watching the prone metal monster with a critical eye. She jogged over to him.

  “So...is it...dead? Broken, I guess?” she asked.

  “I guess you’d better find out,” he told her.

  “Why me?”

  “You know why, R7.”

  She sighed—but she knew he was right. So, waving the crowd away to a safe distance as she went, she advanced slowly on the huge machine, which was still smoking and crackling from the car’s impact,

  Standing over the metal monster, she wondered exactly what she was supposed to do now. Its eyes were no longer glowing, but she didn’t have any idea what that actually meant. So with a deep breath and a shrug, she did the only thing she could think of: she kicked it. The machine answered with a whirring click that gave R7 just enough time to squeeze her eyes shut and cover her ears before it blew up.

  A bloom of heat enveloped and seared her, and bits of metal and wire rained down, slicing into her skin and crashing into the street. She dropped into a protective crouch, waiting for the heat and the pain to subside, while mechanical brimstone fell around her. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was probably less than a minute, she opened her eyes. Examining her arms, legs, and shredded uniform, she found that her burns, scrapes, and abrasions were already starting to fade out, as her hearing once again faded back in. And when she looked up, she found G3 standing in front of her.

  “Alright,” she said breathlessly, “so what the hell was that thing?

  “I’m not sure,” he said, clapping an approving hand on her ash-covered shoulder. “Except that it was a hell of a way to kick off your new job.”

  Chapter 4—Renegade

  “One and a half minutes,” Alger greeted me.

  “I know!” I gushed, letting the door swing shut behind me and sashaying into his kitchen. “Pretty good, right?”

  “Certainly,” he said, still leaning over the percolator on the stove. “Another few months and you’ll be quick enough to avoid being arrested.”

  “Don’t be such a pill. You know I’ve been working really hard,” I said, pocketing the lock picks he’d given me and shrugging off the coat he’d made me buy.

  “Oh, very well, it’s not bad,” he said, relenting.

  He turned to reach over and tousle my hair and I glared in answer, shoving the web of auburn strands out of my face and flinging myself into what had become my chair at the spotless oak kitchen table.

  “Coffee or tea?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Coffee,” I said, my halfhearted irritation dissipating like steam at the offer. “Do you really need to ask?”

  “Not especially, but it’s best never to assume with you,” he said as he brought the cup, which he’d already brewed. He’d assumed plenty, of course, adding cream and sugar exactly the way I liked it. I’d tried tea once or twice, but I’d quickly learned that coffee was far and away the better choice.

  Of course, that wasn’t even close to the only thing I’d learned in the last few weeks. After our first adventure with Averitt and the bank, I’d started showing up at Alger’s apartment in Clinton Hill every day. To my delight, instead of trying to chase me off, he’d kept letting me tag along while he pulled off his elaborate miracles. For the most part, all I’d learned from those trips was how outclassed I was in the arts of the underworld, but soon enough, my constant siege of questions wore him down, and he started actually teaching me things.

  Alger had explained that the most important part of preparation was gathering every scrap of information you could find. So, he had me practice watching and listening to everything that went on in a room or a restaurant or a park—all without acting like I was paying attention. Since I could recite everything I saw and heard, word for word, detail for detail, that had proved pretty handy already.

  Alger showed me that mastering timing meant learning which of the details I’d memorized was important, so I could figure out when to make my move. So, for instance, he taught me that I didn’t have to pick anyone’s pocket if I could find the right moment to ask and hold out my hand. And, he showed me that when a door had a deadbolt that couldn’t be picked, instead of kicking it in “like an amateur,” I just needed to wait until I could walk in when it was unlocked.

  Since I didn’t have Alger’s talent for disguise or his silver tongue, confidence proved more complicated than the other principles, but after a while, I started to believe that if he was involved, anything was possible. And when I wasn’t able pull something off the first time, he assured me that it just meant I needed more practice. Which was why, after a while, he started creating lessons for me that weren’t as high stakes as his real jobs. They’d been useful, even if they were more like games than real training—well, except for the one where he stopped answering the door and made me learn to let myself in without a key.

  Of course, on some days, I showed up to find his apartment empty and dark. I would trudge away in disappointment and spend the rest of my day twiddling my thumbs in the cheap hotel room I had scrounged up enough money to rent. I waited with all the patience of a caged tiger until the next day, when I pounced on the chance to see him again. If I was l
ucky, which I usually was, I would found him waiting for me—and if I was really lucky, like I was today, he’d be waiting with coffee.

  “So what shall we do today?” Alger asked, his eyebrows drawing together in thought as I wrapped my fingers around the warm mug.

  I raised an eyebrow, imitating him.

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell me?”

  “Quite right,” he said with a smile, setting his own cup of tea on the table. “In fact, it so happens that I did have something in mind.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” I said into my coffee mug, finally taking the first heavenly sip as Alger sat down across the table from me, heroically ignoring my comment.

  “You’ve seen gin rummy, haven’t you?” he asked, as a deck of cards seemed to materialize in his hands and start shuffling themselves. I nodded. “Good,” said Alger. “Then you can tell me when I’m cheating. That should be of some value to you in the business, I’d expect?”

  “If you say so,” I said with a shrug. “Sounds fun.”

  “Fun isn’t the objective, but I suppose it’s an acceptable collateral advantage,” he said. “Now watch carefully.”

  Quicker than I could see his hands move, he dealt, and the game began. I tripped up immediately.

  “You gave me eleven!” I said.

  “Yes, my dear. The game begins when you discard one.” He smirked at me. “You’re certain you’ve seen this before?”

  I glared at him again and tossed out an unmatched nine, which he immediately snatched up. I played along for a while, focusing on the cards but not catching anything. After most of the game went by and I failed to see any foul play, he picked up a six I’d thrown and knocked. I just barely saw him switching it for a card on top of the deck as he drew his hand back.

  “There! You switched them!” I turned over the offending six and threw it down triumphantly.

  “Excellent work. Next time perhaps you’ll notice this, too,” he said smoothly, pulling a jack of diamonds, a nine of clubs, and the queen of spades out of his sleeve. I went back to glaring at him and crossed my arms. Yeah, just because you’re perfect at everything doesn’t mean—