With a ragged grumble, Abe released Cela’s hand long enough to scoop up the blond boy from the floor. “Now can we go?” he asked. “Or is there anyone else you want me to collect and carry for you?”
Evelyn was on the floor, trying to pull herself up as she grabbed her bleeding arm, and everything was chaos, but Cela felt a laugh bubbling up. With all the mess they were in, Abe was alive. As long as she had him, the rest didn’t matter.
By the time they were in the stairwell, Jianyu had come back to himself and was walking under his own power. “The ring,” he said, when they reached the bottom of the steps. He started to turn back.
“No.” Cela tugged at him.
“We can’t let her have it,” he argued, trying to break loose from her grip, but she could feel how gently he treated her.
“You go back there now, you’re going to be arrested for trying to kill a white woman,” Abe told him.
From the expression on Jianyu’s face, he wanted to argue.
“Can you get back in without her knowing?” Cela asked.
Jianyu met her gaze, and she saw the calculations play out in his mind. Finally he shook his head. “Even if she can’t see me, she could sense me.”
“Then you can’t go back,” she told him. “Not now.”
“But the ring—”
“It won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead,” Cela said. “We’ll come back for it. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Abe snapped. “We can’t be here when the police arrive.”
The blond didn’t stir, so Abe didn’t put him down. They ran into the night, leaving Evelyn howling behind them.
THE BREWERY
1904—St. Louis
Esta came to slowly, reaching toward consciousness like a swimmer struggling up to the surface of a cold, deep lake. Her head pounded as she lay in the darkness and breathed in the dusty scent of the burlap sack still over her head. She didn’t know where she was or how long she’d been out, but she remembered who had taken her.
The Antistasi.
Her breath hitched at the memory of everything that had happened at the fair—the missing necklace, the way the darkness had descended stark and empty and absolute when her affinity touched the power of the Book. The ground splitting open . . . The ground split open.
She pulled herself upright, but nearly toppled over again from the dizziness brought on by whatever they’d used to knock her out. Opium, maybe, from the way her affinity felt dull and numb, but not only opium. This was different from anything she’d experienced before—there was something about whatever they’d given her that made her feel untethered, like she wasn’t quite attached to the earth but was floating free, even as she could feel the solid floor beneath her.
She called for Harte, but there was no answer.
After a while she thought she heard voices, and moments later the door opened. “Come on,” a voice said. Since she didn’t recognize it, she figured it must not be the cowboy. Rough hands grabbed her by the arms and dragged her from where she was lying. The moment they took her by the arms, she realized that her cuff was missing. Panic seized her as she realized what that meant, but she kept that emotion locked down. She would have a better chance of getting it back if they didn’t know how important it was to her.
Once she was outside the wagon, Esta could hear buzzing insects and the soft rustling of trees. Not the city. She wobbled at first but recovered before anyone had to support her. Whatever was about to happen, she’d walk on her own two feet. But her head ached worse now that she was upright.
“Where are we?” she asked. Her tongue still felt clumsy and thick in her dry mouth, but her voice sounded strong. At least she thought it did.
“You’ll see soon enough, but I’m going to warn you before we go in.” It was the cowboy this time. “I’ll give you the same warning I gave to your friend. If either of you even thinks about causing a lick of trouble, there ain’t a person here what would think twice about taking care of you for good—no matter who you think you are. You got that?”
“Understood,” she told him, even as she was already considering all the possible options for freeing herself and Harte if things went downhill.
“That’s fine. Come on, now. This way . . .”
With her head pounding from the drug and her whole body feeling like her joints had come loose, it was a challenge to stay on her feet as she was led blindly through what felt like an obstacle course of ramps and steps. Finally, they entered a building—she knew, because the insects went quiet. From the way their footsteps echoed, it had to be a larger room, and from the other voices, they weren’t alone. There were two, maybe three others already there.
They pushed her into a chair, and she felt them secure her to it with more rope. Then, without any warning, the sack they’d put over her head to blind her was pulled off. She blinked. Dim as the lighting was, it caused even more pain to shoot through her already throbbing head.
Esta ignored the pain as she squinted, trying to get her eyes to adjust. She’d been right. They were standing in something that looked like a large warehouse. On one side of the room, enormous silver tanks lined the wall. On the other side, a series of long tables held wooden crates filled with glass bottles. The stools in front of the tables stood empty. A factory of some sort. The people were gathered in a smaller, open space between the tanks and the tables. In addition to the cowboy, there was a handful of people—men and women of various ages. They seemed to be waiting for something.
Across from where Esta was sitting, two other guys in workman’s clothes flanked a chair that held one last person—Harte. He still had the burlap sack covering his face, but that didn’t seem to matter. Even with his face covered, she knew that he understood she was there—his head turned in her direction, and his entire body seemed to come to attention, straining against the ropes that held him to the chair.
“Is that you, Slim?” he asked. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“I’m fine,” she told him, keeping her voice low and clipped. “You okay?”
“I’d be better if I could see something,” he said, shaking his head a little, as if to shake off the bag.
“You’ll see soon enough, when Ruth decides what to do with you,” the cowboy told him. He frowned at Esta, but before he could say anything else, they heard a door opening from somewhere deep within the factory. The group turned toward the sound of the approaching footsteps, making it clear that someone important was arriving.
A moment later a woman appeared on the walkway above. She looked over the gathering below for a moment, before descending the steps to the factory floor. She was maybe in her early forties, but her hair was already shot through with gray, and she wore an expression that labeled her as the person in charge.
The woman—clearly the Ruth the cowboy had mentioned—gave a silent nod, and at her order, one of the men flanking Harte drew the sack off. He’d lost the hat he’d been wearing earlier, and his dark hair was a mess, sticking up in all directions. His eyes found hers, but they were too wide, too wild, and she narrowed hers at him in warning. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to give away too much.