by Lisa Maxwell
“Two years?” He was going to be sick again.
Two years ago he was still struggling to climb out of the filth of the Bowery and doing his damnedest to survive. Two years ago he didn’t have money in his pocket or a reputation on the stage. Two years ago he didn’t even have the name he now wore. Two years was practically a lifetime in a world as capricious and dangerous as his, and she’d taken it from him without a second thought.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she whispered, her expression pained.
“How is that even possible?” he snapped, wincing inwardly at how sharply the words had come out.
But his sharpness was like a flint to a rock, sparking her temper. “Slipping through time isn’t exactly easy, you know,” she said, snatching the tickets back from him. “On a good day, it takes all my concentration to find the right minute to land, and that’s when I’m not in a moving train cornered by the police. You’re welcome, by the way. Seeing as we aren’t currently in jail and all.”
“Two years, Esta.” But then he saw the way her hand holding the tickets was shaking, and his anger receded a little. “I meant for you to”—he waved vaguely—“to slow things down, so we could get off the train and get away.”
“We got away, didn’t we?” She gestured to the obvious absence of Jack.
He took a breath, trying to hold down the bile in his stomach along with his own temper. “You’re right. We were in a tight spot, and you got us out,” he told her, trying to mean it. “It’ll be fine. You can fix this. You can take us back.”
“Harte . . .” Her hesitation made his stomach twist all the more.
“You can take us back,” he repeated.
Esta’s expression was pained. “I have no idea what just happened. I meant to go two days and went two years instead.”
“Because we were on a train—you said so yourself,” he said slowly, trying to keep his composure. “We’ll get off at the next station, and then you can—”
“It wasn’t just the train,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
The nausea somehow suddenly didn’t seem so important. “What do you mean?”
“My affinity . . . it doesn’t feel right. Ever since the Brink, it’s felt off. Unstable.”
He frowned at her. He’d known that the Brink had done a number on her, but he hadn’t realized that it had affected her magic. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have waited another day.”
“We needed to go—we have to get the stones,” she snapped. “We’re running out of time as it is. Soon Logan will be in the city and—” She broke off as though realizing what she was saying. It was already too late. Because of what she’d done, this Logan of hers had already been in the city for two years.
“And nothing. You should have told me,” he said, maybe more forcefully than he’d intended. But his nerves were jangling, and his anger was the only thing that was keeping him from retching over the side of the train again.
“I know,” she said, biting back at him, but then she closed her eyes and took a breath. “I know,” she repeated, her voice softer now. “But everything was happening so fast. We had to find clothes and get out of Brooklyn, and I thought if I could just push through, it would be okay. That I would be okay.”
“But you’re not okay, are you?” he asked, and watched as a series of emotions flashed across her expression—denial, frustration, worry—all mixed together as one.
“You saw what happened at the station. I could barely hold on to time long enough to get us away from Jack,” she told him, still staring out at the passing landscape as though she couldn’t look at him. “You’re right. I never should have tried slipping through time, but we were cornered on a moving train, and I thought, if I could just get us on the next train—if I could just get us to tomorrow—then we would be safe. But once I started to slip through, I couldn’t control it. And then with you—”
“Me?” he interjected. “You’re saying I caused this?”
“Not you,” Esta said as she shook her head. “But whatever it is that’s inside you now. I can feel it when you touch me, and when I’m trying to pull on my affinity, it’s like trying to hold a live wire.”
His stomach turned over again. “You think it’s the Book?” At the very mention of it, the voice began to stir deep within him. On the bridge, he’d told her that the power of the Book was inside of him, but he hadn’t told her everything. Before, he hadn’t been able to find the words to explain what the Book wanted—and especially what it wanted of her. Now, with the questions and the fear that shone in her eyes, he couldn’t make himself say them.
Her hair had come half undone and the dark strands of it were whipping about her face, but her expression was steady now. “I can’t be sure. Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe something happened to me when we crossed the Brink.”
Maybe he should have consoled her—forgiven her, even. But he was still too upset about the two years of his life that she’d carved away like nothing to give her any reprieve.
Esta sank down next to him, her skirts pooling over his legs. Gently, her hand touched his cheek, turning his head so that he was forced to look at her. “We will fix it,” she told him, her eyes bright with determination. “I will fix this. But I don’t think we should try to go back—not yet,” she finished, before he could argue. “I don’t know why we went so far. I don’t know why I couldn’t control where we landed. Usually I can. But if I try to take us back now and I miss again, we could be stuck. You saw what happened to the bag of stones I tried to bring back on the bridge.”
“They were gone,” he remembered. All that had been left were the charred remains of the settings. The stones themselves had turned to ash.
“I don’t think the stones can exist at the same time with other versions of themselves. If I can’t control my affinity again and we go back too far, Ishtar’s Key will cross paths with itself, and it will be gone. We will be stuck whenever we land, with no way out of the city again and no way to stop Nibsy or the Order.” She licked her lips. “And I don’t know what will happen to me if the stone disappears.”
“To you?” He shook his head, not understanding.
“Or to you. I told you what Nibsy did before we changed things,” she said. “How he sent me forward?”
“When you were a baby . . .”
She nodded. “I think that still needs to happen. If I’m never sent forward, then I can’t come back. If that happens, it means I wouldn’t have been there to help with the heist at Khafre Hall or to save you—any of it. You’ll die. Who knows what that would mean for the Order or Nibsy or magic.” A shadow fell across her expression. “If I’m never sent forward as a baby, I’d grow up like I should have . . . in the past. I’m not sure that this version of me would even exist anymore.”
Panic spiked inside of him. “You can’t just disappear.”
“Why not? The stones did, didn’t they?” she asked, her gaze steady.
He considered that for a moment, a world without Esta. Everything he’d done to try to send her back to her own time had been to save her—from the past, from the power rollicking inside of him. But she’d come back, and in doing so, she’d given him another chance . . . one he didn’t deserve. “Then you’re right. We shouldn’t chance it. We’ll wait.”
“You’d be okay with that?”
“The stones we’re after still exist, don’t they?” he asked. “It’s only been two years. They can’t have gone that far. We’ll find them here . . . now.”
She was still frowning at him. “And then what? We won’t be able to take them back.”
“Because they’ll still exist in 1902,” he realized.
They sat, speechless for a moment, as the click-clacking of the track kept time beneath them.
“It doesn’t matter,” Esta said finally. “We’ll worry about getting the stones back to 1902 when we’re sure we can get back to 1902. First we get the Book’s power under control. We need the stones for that. Maybe once we h
ave them, there will be something in the Book itself to solve the problem. It got us through the Brink, didn’t it? If there’s not, two years isn’t that long.”
Two years is a lifetime. “It’s not a great plan. . . .” Then he realized—the Book.
No.
Harte looked at Esta, unable for a moment to speak. “My coat” was all he could say.
“What about it?”
He saw the moment she understood what he meant, but he said the words anyway, because he had to face them. Because he knew that no amount of silence would make them any less real. “The Book was in the coat. The one I left behind—to get away from Jack.”
SOME DISTANT STATION
1904—New Jersey
You should have let me kill him,” Esta said, feeling herself go cold as she drew back from Harte. Because one thing was clear: None of this would have happened if he hadn’t stopped her from killing Jack. They would still have the Book, for one. And they would still be in 1902, because Jack wouldn’t have been chasing them.
She could have done it.
She could have gladly carried that burden with her for the rest of her life. She had no way of knowing what effect her inaction would have, but she knew one thing—nothing good could come from Jack getting ahold of the Book.
Harte was still sitting on the platform at the back of the train when she pulled herself to her feet. He looked pale and unsteady, but Esta was having a hard time finding any more sympathy.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me,” she continued.
“And then what?” Harte asked. “You would have just walked away, with his blood on your hands?”
“Better his blood than ours.”
Harte scrubbed his hand down over his face, expelling a ragged breath as he closed his eyes for a moment. He looked as though he was about to be sick again. “I’ve done plenty of wrong in my life, but I don’t want to be the type of man who can kill someone in cold blood.” He opened his eyes to look at her. “Even someone who deserves it as much as Jack does.”
There was something about the way his voice changed, the way it seemed to carry to her so clearly on the wind, even with the noise of the train and the tracks, that made Esta pause.
But only for a moment.
This world didn’t allow for pausing or second-guessing. It wouldn’t permit her to keep whatever delicate sensibilities Harte thought she should have.
All at once the memory of Professor Lachlan’s library at the top of his building on Orchard Street arose in her mind. The dimmed lights. The smell of old books that had once meant safety. On her wrists, Esta could still feel the ache of bruises from the ropes that had held her to the chair. She could almost feel the heat of the stones Professor Lachlan had adorned her with, like the sacrifice he’d intended her to be. The man who had raised her would have used her affinity—used her—to unite the stones and take control of the Book’s power. You’re just the vessel. He would have killed her.
She lifted her hand to touch the still-healing wound just below her collarbone and closed her eyes against the memory of what had happened. . . . These things do tend to work better with a little blood.
That night had been less than twenty-four hours ago and was also still a hundred years to come. In the darkness behind her eyelids, another memory assaulted her—Dakari stepping into the room, unaware of what Professor Lachlan had planned. Unprepared for the bullet that came a few moments later.
The echo of the gun.
The sound of Dakari’s body collapsing, deadweight, to the floor.
And the weight of the guilt she bore for his death.
Maybe she’d never had any real softness to start with. Or maybe the last bit of softness had been killed as surely as Dakari that day. Either way, Esta knew that if she could live with the memory of that night, she could bear anything. Become anything. Harte might not have believed that she was strong enough, but Esta had already survived the senseless loss of her friends, of her family—of her father. A little blood on her hands for the sake of their memory and for the sake of their lives was hardly anything.
Besides, she knew that she wouldn’t have to carry any of it for very long. No matter what happened between now and the end, Professor Lachlan had already explained to her how the stones could be used to control the Book. She hadn’t yet told Harte. She didn’t know how he would react to learning that it would require sacrifice—her affinity and most likely her life—and they didn’t have time for him to get all noble again or have second thoughts. But then, she was a girl without a past and without a future. She’d already resigned herself to the fact that she had little hope of walking out of this alive.
Now they would have to live with the consequences of not killing Jack when they’d had the chance. Two years had passed, and during that time the world had continued on, history unspooling itself each day. Who knew what had changed in the days and weeks since Jack Grew got his hands on the Book and all the knowledge contained in its pages? Who knew what might wait for them at the station at the end of the line?
Harte looked like he was going to be sick again. Not that Esta blamed him. When she thought of Jack with the Book, she felt like throwing up too.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him after a few minutes of tense silence, the wind whipping at them as the train sped onward. She wasn’t sure that she believed it, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say as the train hurtled down the track, careening toward some distant station she had never thought to see and toward a future that she was determined to meet head-on—the same way she met everything else.
“You know what Jack could do with the Book.” Harte turned from her, his eyes unfocused on the passing countryside. “The Order wouldn’t let him have access to it because they knew how dangerous it was, and I gave it to him. He’ll have secrets that even the Order was smart enough to keep away from him.”
Every bit of what he’d said was true, but still . . . “If Jack had kept you from getting on the train, it would have been over anyway.”
“I could have fought him,” Harte said, his jaw tense. “I could have beat him.”
“Sure. With the station police on your tail and all those people around and the train already leaving. A fistfight is exactly what would have worked.” When Harte glanced back at her, irritation shadowing his expression, she continued. “You had to get on this train—that train—whatever. You made a choice, just like I did. You did what you had to do to get away. Besides, Jack doesn’t really have all that much,” she reminded him. “The Book’s power is in you, right?”
Harte’s jaw clenched. “There’s still the information in its pages. That’s more than enough for it to be dangerous.”
“So we’ll just have get it back.” She pulled herself up to her feet again. “I’m a thief, aren’t I? I’ll steal it.”
He looked up at her. “It might be too late for that already.”
“If we can get control of my affinity, there is no such thing as too late.” Still, there was a part of her that worried Harte was right.
She offered him a hand up. “We can get off at the next station and figure out what to do.”
He ignored her offer of help. “We might as well wait until we get to Baltimore. We’ve already paid for the tickets,” he told her. “No sense getting off until we’re in a city that’s big enough to give us our pick of routes. It’s been two years,” he said, an answer to her unspoken question. “I don’t know where any of the people we need to find are now. I’ll have to send out some telegrams, make some inquiries. If Julien is still performing, he shouldn’t be that hard to find.”
Already, the crowded industrial-looking buildings of the area around the station had given way to more open land. The smell of the coal burning in the train’s engine was faint, and the air carried a scent she didn’t recognize—something green and fresh and earthy that didn’t exist in the city.
“We should probably get some seats,” she told him. “It’ll be a while before we reach
Baltimore.”
Harte pulled himself upright without her help but held tight to the railing for a moment to steady himself. “Where did you get the money for the tickets?” he asked as he reached for the door to the car. He held it open for her to enter.
“Compliments of Jack,” she told him as she stepped through.
The car was almost entirely empty. In the front, an older man dozed with his head tucked into his own chest. He didn’t stir at the sound of the door opening or the noise of the tracks. Still, Harte lowered his voice when he spoke.
“You took Jack’s wallet?”
She shrugged. “He’s good for it. And he was a little . . . distracted at the time.” She slipped into an empty row of seats. When Harte didn’t immediately sit next to her, she glanced up at him. He was staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. “What?”
“That’s why you were kissing him.”
At first his words didn’t make any sense. “Kissing . . . ?” Then she realized what was happening in that pretty little head of his. “You’re an idiot. You know that, right?”
Harte had the grace to look a little embarrassed as he slid into the seat next to her. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m aware.”
Esta wanted to say something more, but Harte’s attention had been drawn by the landscape speeding by. It was as though sitting on the platform of the train car, he hadn’t even seen it, but now she could have disappeared altogether and he wouldn’t have noticed. All Harte could see was the world outside the windows of the train—a world he had lied and stolen and cheated for.
She decided to let him have it. For now.
Through the seats, Esta could feel the vibrations of the rail, telegraphing the shape of the land they were crossing. She’d never thought she would leave the city—had never wanted to—but now she had to admit that the world was wider and more beautifully tempting than she could have expected. Already the towns were giving way to a landscape of fields carpeted with the lush green of summer crops, their stalks rippling in the breeze. The colors were more vibrant somehow. More raw and alive.
