She had no training, no practice. No lessons in what this strange new ability meant or how to use it. The one who should have given her those answers was gone.

  Robert Ash couldn’t help her anymore.

  Lily was on her own with nothing but a word to guide her.

  It would have to be enough.

  She felt the challenge rising up in Sam, readying itself to spill from his lips, binding them irrevocably to the terrible outcome she had just foreseen.

  Cannon gave a little nod to the corporal, a signal no one but Lily took note of.

  In the orchestra, the two privates stood, uniformed bodies quietly working their way toward the stairs that would take them up onto the stage.

  The sergeant in the box tapped his hat against his knee.

  Lily swallowed her dread and guilt and uncertainty. She drew her will into a single vivid point and focused it on that subtle place inside of her, the silent and secret core where she felt her power live.

  She asked it one simple, desperate question.

  How do I stop this?

  The point hit. Connection arced. The world blazed into daylight. Colors shone, lights dazzling her. The crowd was an agonizing roar in her ears, the crash of an unruly sea. Electricity skittered across her skin and centered itself on the staff of yew she held in her right hand.

  It flooded with something like fire, twisting and alive in her grasp.

  Dangerous. Powerful.

  The answer.

  Lily gasped aloud under the force of it, the certainty crashing through her brain. The implications of it terrified her. It was madness. Possibly suicide . . . and without doubt a brutal betrayal of someone she knew trusted her completely.

  Her power sang it, and it burned with the call of a siren.

  The Poplar Hippodrome slammed back into motion.

  She must have made some sound. Sam had turned and looked down at her now with concern.

  “Lily?” he asked, and then Cannon’s voice rang out from the center of the stage.

  “We done now, Sam Wu?” he drawled cheerfully. “Or have you something more than running your mouth to offer tonight?”

  From his place beside her, Lily felt Sam rise to Cannon’s bait, the call to battle ready to spill from his lips.

  It didn’t matter. None of it would happen.

  Lily was about to rewrite the script. With the knowledge blazing inside of her, she didn’t have any choice.

  As Sam opened his mouth to speak, Lily pointed her yew staff at the Lord of Limehouse, the wood pulsing in her hand, and said the words she knew might end their friendship.

  “Jack Cannon,” she called out in a voice that rang across the theater, spelling the crowd of the Hippodrome into an abrupt and shocked silence. “I challenge you to a fight.”

  FIVE

  THE SILENCE HELD FOR the space of a breath after the shock of Lily’s announcement. It broke with a roar.

  The men and women filling the seats of the theater knew they had just been promised a show. They leapt from their seats, cheering like spectators at a Roman circus—all but three of them.

  Jack Cannon regarded Lily with bemused surprise as though some part of him were pleased to learn he could still be taken off guard.

  Behind Cannon, Zhao Min raised a dark eyebrow.

  Sam Wu glared down at her with absolute fury.

  The palpable force of his rage took her breath away.

  Lily had known it must come to this. She had stolen his plan, robbed him of his chance for vengeance. He trusted her and she had turned that on him in what must inevitably feel like a betrayal.

  The truth of that tore her apart, but to refuse would condemn him to far worse.

  Her onmyōdō gave her no choice. Lily had asked for it and her strange power had answered in a way that was undeniable.

  She had to fight Cannon, even if it cost her Sam.

  Even if it meant risking her life.

  Lily had overcome thugs in the street before. This would be different. Cannon might underestimate her for a moment or two, but he would very quickly recognize that he must treat Lily the same as any other genuine opponent he had faced in his life.

  She was quite certain he had faced many of them.

  Sam stepped closer, his voice a cawing whisper in her ear.

  “This was my fight,” he rasped, the rage seeping off of him.

  “Not anymore,” she replied.

  “He’s going to flog you,” Sam promised. “He has you by three inches and three stone, and he ain’t some windbag. He will whip you, Lily, and when he does, he’s going to make you pay for it.”

  Lily turned to him, refusing to be bowed by his anger.

  “Look around you. Look at the uniforms, Sam. There’s a military police sergeant in the box watching every move you make. The minute you swing a fist they’ll be on you. You’ll be discharged, with nothing left for you but Cannon. He was on to you. This whole thing is a trap. You never stood a chance.”

  He hated it—every word that came out of her mouth. It added fuel to his fury, turning it to something deeper and wilder, more indiscriminate in its target. It flared out of him, electrifying the atmosphere—all his pent-up rage at Cannon, at Robert Ash. At this world that kept twisting his life into knots.

  The force of it broke Lily’s heart.

  There was no time to do anything about it. The familiar weight of her staff was a beacon in her hand, calling her forward. Following it, Lily turned from Sam and stepped out onto the stage.

  Cannon hadn’t yet spoken. His gaze shifted from surprise to a careful measuring. Lily knew he was making his own attempt to see the future, assessing what he could best gain from this unexpected opportunity that had presented itself.

  Lily knew better than to give him too much time to do that.

  Thankfully, there was another weapon at her disposal besides her walking stick—the crowd that packed the theater.

  Lily had some notion of how to use it.

  “What’s the matter, Jack?” she called out boldly. “Afraid of being bested by a woman?”

  The words had exactly the result she had anticipated. The crowd roared with approval at the taunt.

  Lily knew better than to mistake the cheering for an endorsement. There would be plenty of appetite here to see a woman beaten, but a riled-up audience would not tolerate Cannon putting her off. This was a show they wanted to see, and Lily was banking on Cannon being savvy enough to recognize that.

  She was right.

  “Name your stakes,” Cannon returned.

  There was no time to consider it. Lily shot back the first thing that came into her head.

  “If I win, you leave England—and you never come back,” she replied.

  Gasps and laughter bounced through the theater. Her demand was audacious, far beyond the usual stakes for a contest like this. Had a man made the same declaration, he would have been derided or refused.

  Lily was not a man.

  Cannon had no doubt he’d win. The considering look he was giving her had nothing to do with doubt over the outcome of the contest.

  He was mulling over what he could best gain from his victory.

  Cannon stepped closer, pitching his words for Lily alone instead of the audience.

  “And when I trim you, girl, I want your father. You’ll give me something on Lord Torrington that puts him in my pocket for good. If you don’t, I’ll send you back to him one little piece at a time until he provides it himself.”

  Her heart felt like a cold weight in her chest. Of course Cannon would want to use this opportunity to gain leverage over one of the most powerful men in England. Though Lily’s father held no official position in Parliament, he wielded immense influence.

  Cannon would understand very well how to use that.

  Lily didn’t have the information Cannon was looking for. The transgressions she knew her father had committed were more or less public record. His affair with her actress mother was old news. That he had deserted Lily to a boarding school after her mother died was a betrayal to her alone. In the eyes of the world, it had been a perfectly sensible thing to do.

  There would be more. Her father lived a complicated life. She did not doubt there were things in his past that could cause a great deal of trouble if they came out, and not just for himself, but potentially for the entire nation.

  She could not give Cannon what he was demanding, and yet if she refused the stakes, he could easily refuse the fight. Sam still waited in the wings, all his rage aching for a target.

  If Lily didn’t see this through—if she left Sam any sort of opening—she couldn’t say what he might do, even with the military police in the room.

  “I accept,” she replied, and the cheers of the crowd battered at her ears.

  “Sticks, is it?” Cannon said, noting the presence of her staff.

  Lily nodded.

  He shrugged out of his coat and waved to an associate among the men ringing the stage. Cannon was solidly in his middle years, but in his shirtsleeves, it was clear he had not let himself go soft with age. He was a solidly built man, and as Sam had pointed out, he both outsized and outweighed Lily. She knew better than to dismiss the significance of that in a fight.

  The man Cannon had singled out came forward and handed him a club. The wood was shorter than Lily’s yew staff but thicker and heavier. A well-placed blow from it could easily snap her arm like a twig or crack her skull.

  More than her father’s freedom was at stake in this match.

  Lily pulled off her own coat. She tossed it at Sam, who caught it more out of instinct than a desire to help. Freedom of movement was far more important to Lily than the impropriety of stripping to her shirt in front of a room of strangers. Thanks to her days as a chorus girl, she had tread the boards of a stage in less.

  She tested the balance of the staff. Her hand knew just where to grasp it. The wood she had practiced with for so many years was an extension of her body, as natural to move as her arm or her leg.

  Recalling that gave her a brief burst of confidence. Cannon would not find her as easy to take down as he supposed.

  His club was heavier, but she had longer reach—and she was fast.

  “What do you say, then, lads?” Cannon shouted at the crowd as he stalked back into the open ring at the center of the stage. “Shall I give it to her quick and hard or draw it out for the night?”

  The crowd howled with approval at Cannon’s blatant innuendo.

  The reality of what she was doing swept over her and Lily felt ill. She fought it back, grasping at a more useful emotion—fury.

  Jack Cannon deserved to fall, and Lily was going to do everything she could to bring him down.

  Without further warning, he turned and came for her.

  Cannon moved quickly. With practiced instinct, he threw the momentum of his body into the blow he aimed at her shoulder.

  Lily parried it with her staff, deflecting the energy of his attack as she had trained to do for years. She spun her stick to prepare for the return swing she was almost certain he would make and Cannon’s club slid harmlessly past her side.

  She had first picked up this staff on a stage in Covent Garden. She could still recall the sting of wood against her arm as Bay exploited a weakness in her raw technique. The stern East Indian light rigger had engaged in an act of mercy when he decided to teach a skinny English girl how to defend herself. The first time her staff collided with Bay’s, Lily had dropped the stick.

  She had quickly learned not to let go.

  Cannon circled her, adjusting his approach now that he knew his opponent was not entirely defenseless.

  He attacked again. Nothing in his movements spoke of the kind of training Lily had received from Bay. It was all strength and rough experience.

  Fast. Brutal.

  Blow followed blow. Lily twisted, parried, joints aching from the impact. The faces around her were a blur, fists in the air, the roaring in her ears thirsty for violence. The noise was a barrage. She fought to block it out. She needed everything she had to protect herself from Cannon, even as she recognized that there was something casual in the unrelenting swing of his club.

  He was toying with her.

  An opening presented itself, brief as a flashbulb. Lily took it, landing a glancing blow on his gut.

  The wind of the crowd shifted. The cheer that rose was for Lily. They didn’t care whose blood they saw tonight, so long as someone got hurt.

  Rage flickered across Cannon’s features as they circled each other. Lily knew it wasn’t the blow that had done it but the change in the mood of the audience. It represented a loss of control.

  Cannon did not like to lose control.

  He came at her hard. That vicious playfulness was gone now, his attack all furious intent. Lily struggled to move her staff in front of one of his swings. The club slipped past, striking a glancing blow against her arm.

  She deflected most of the momentum but it was still enough to send pain shooting from her fingers to her collarbone.

  Shock stole her focus, and Cannon threw his left fist into her cheek.

  The force of it snapped her halfway around.

  Lily felt warm moisture drip down her face. He had split her skin with that blow.

  Cannon paused for a moment, grinning as he preened to the crowd, waving them into an even wilder response. His confidence was back, that unquestioning certainty that he was going to win.

  He could not win.

  The truth of that swept through her like a gust of wind. He could not win.

  In its wake, the steady pulse of her heart slowed, beats stretching out along with the passing of time. Her hands were slick against the wood of the yew staff.

  A drop of blood fell gracefully from her cheek to the floor. She could hear the soft sound of it hitting the boards as though the room around her were silent as a church and not screaming with bloodlust.

  Her power woke, merging into her bones and flesh and wood.

  The connection was complete in a way she had known only once before as she moved like a ghost through the rooms of an abandoned manor on Hampstead Heath, the lingering tendrils of a drug still seeping through her veins.

  The future spilled out before her, unrolling like a carpet, and Lily understood that the game had just fundamentally changed.

  He would come at her next from the right.

  The abrupt swing of his club was intended to take her off guard, a quick diversion from playing to the crowd back to an unrelenting assault. It was to be a disabling blow, one that would send Lily to the floor.

  She was ready for it.

  She easily parried, then snapped her staff into a backswing that sliced across Cannon’s jaw.

  His head snapped to the side, forcing him to stagger a half-step back. His eyes widened with surprise at the blood he wiped from his lip.

  Then his eyes darkened with rage.

  He came at her like a bull, mercilessly wielding every ounce of his superior weight and size. The strikes were meant to break her, to snap bone and split skin.

  It didn’t matter.

  Lily was ready for all of it.

  She caught the energy of each swing and spun it harmlessly past her. She moved flawlessly into every opening she had already known would be there, her staff striking home again and again.

  It felt like fighting a blind man, someone incapable of perceiving that which came so perfectly and obviously to Lily.

  A fierce and ruthless joy rose in her, growing stronger with every shivering impact of her yew against his flesh.

  The man who fought her thought that he would win. He had attacked her certain of his own superiority—and he had unwittingly stepped into the ring with something he could not possibly comprehend.

  Pride had brought him to this. Now he would pay the price for it.

  She shifted from defense to attack.

  Lily was no longer anticipating and countering his moves. She forced him to react to her own.

  It was pathetic. His clumsy attempts to protect himself were clear to her before he had lifted his club. Every deflection was another opportunity she could easily exploit. Every attempt he made to give himself the upper hand exposed a weakness she ruthlessly moved against.

  The power raced through her brain with a drunk sort of ecstasy. The crowd fed it, screaming with approval, and the beat of that dark song resonated in the blood pulsing through her veins.

  She expanded. She was more.

  And she would tear him apart.

  A red spray arced across the stage as Lily’s staff blew across Cannon’s face once more. The next opening revealed itself. Lily saw how she would sweep him, sending him plummeting to the ground.

  He landed like a sack of grain.

  She strode in for the finish. Raising her staff, she could feel how it would thrust down into the soft cavity of his eye, blast through until it struck the hard oak of the stage behind his head.

  Victory would be hers. The blood of the man who had dared to oppose her would spill across the ground at her feet.

  Lily realized what she was about to do.

  The horror of it washed over her like a fever. She stumbled back, fighting the need to vomit.

  The crowd was on its feet, howling with savage pleasure at the spectacle she had just provided.

  Cannon rolled on the ground, gasping out a curse. His face bled. He held his ribs against some invisible damage Lily had inflicted on his gut.

  She had very nearly murdered him.

  She would have gloried in it.

  She raised her head to the bodies ringing the stage, desperate for some way to anchor herself to the present—to the person she had always thought she was. Her eyes found Sam.

  He stared at her with a mixture of horror and awe. Lily wanted to shout to him, to make herself heard over the blistering joy of the crowd.

 

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