“No,” she told them. “You don’t need to leave. Tell him, Abe. Tell him he’s welcome to stay.”
Her brother hesitated, and her irritation spiked.
“Tell him,” she demanded. “You left me alone for nearly a week, Abel Johnson. I was at Uncle Desmond’s most of that time, and you never once came for me, but Jianyu did. He got me out of that theater where that harpy actress had locked me up, so I’d say we’re about equal in owing debts, wouldn’t you?”
Abel frowned. “This isn’t our fight, Cela,” he said softly. “We have our own worries right now, our own battles to wage.”
“Maybe it’s not,” she told him, “but have you ever considered why it’s not?”
“Because we have enough problems without worrying about Mageus, too.”
“That’s what they want us to do, isn’t it, though?” She was pacing now. “You don’t see what Tammany is doing, offering black saloons their protection so long as we vote their way? They’re not helping us. They’re using us, same as politicians have ever done. You’re fighting for better wages, aren’t you? But who are you fighting? Who owns the railroads?” she asked, but she didn’t give him time to answer. “I’ll tell you who—they’re all in the Order.”
Her brother was considering her words, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at Jianyu like he was trying to make up his mind.
“You don’t think that there are Mageus who look like us?” she asked. “Don’t you remember the stories Daddy used to tell us? There were Africans who could fly, Abel.”
“Those were just tales.”
“Were they?” she asked softly. “Because he told those tales like they were the truth.”
“Cela—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head before he could use that condescending older-brother tone with her. “When I thought you were dead, when I was alone this last week, it changed me. I can’t go back now. Maybe this isn’t your fight, but Jianyu’s my friend, so it’s become my fight.”
Jianyu was watching them, his expression unreadable. “You do not have to take on my fight,” he told her. “You never should have been brought into this. Darrigan never should have involved you.”
“But he did,” she told him. Then she looked back at Abe. “If he goes, I go with him. I can’t just hide forever, Abel. Not when I know that Evelyn has the stone, and not when I know how powerful it is. If the wrong people get that ring, who do you think they’ll come after next? We won’t be safe just because we don’t have any magic.”
Abel looked like he wanted to argue, but he was just silent for a long, heavy minute. When she saw his mouth hitch upward, she knew she’d won.
“You’re worse than Mama, you know that?”
She smiled full-on then, her eyes damp with tears that she’d been holding back. “Why, Abel Johnson, that may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Rabbit.” Then her brother’s expression faltered. “What do we do with the other one?”
Cela glanced over to where the white boy had been lying. Her stomach sank. “Well, we’d have to find him before we can do anything with him,” she said. Because the white boy was gone.
NIGHT WALKING
1904—St. Louis
The room Ruth had assigned to Esta was still draped in darkness when she finally gave up trying to sleep. Too much had happened—the missing necklace, being taken in by the Antistasi, and the choice she’d made in that warehouse. Her thoughts felt like birds taking flight, but she couldn’t tell if they were flying toward some new freedom or away from some unseen danger.
When Esta had dropped the package at the warehouse, she’d been acting out of anger and desperation. Lipscomb’s words had stroked that part of her that still hurt from everything she’d lost and that craved retribution. But the moment she’d heard the explosion, she’d realized how far she’d gone. It was only when news had come of what the bomb really was—what the Antistasi had truly done—that she felt as though she could breathe again.
Ruth had awakened magic in Sundren. The idea was almost too fantastical to be true.
Except that it made a certain sense. Hadn’t Professor Lachlan revealed to her how the Order had once been Mageus? Rich men, they had come to a new land, hiding what they were in plain sight and hoping to start anew, without the threat of the Disenchantment and the fear of who they were. As their magic began to fade over time, they worried that the newer arrivals would be stronger and more powerful, so they’d built the Brink to protect their own power. But they’d made a mistake—the Brink had become a trap instead of a shield, and as their magic continued to fade through the following generations, the Order themselves had eventually forgotten who they once were. Or maybe they simply refused to remember.
It was logical to think that those lost affinities could still be there, waiting below the surface to be awoken. And if that was possible, it meant that a different future was possible as well—one without the threat of divisions or the death of magic. In the version of the future that Esta had grown up in, a hundred years to come, most people believed magic was a fiction and Mageus were all but extinct. But if the Antistasi could resuscitate magic for everyone now, the future could be different. Maybe even better.
Clearly, Harte hadn’t felt the same promise that Esta had at hearing the news. It wasn’t long after he made his opinion known that North had escorted him from the room. Esta hadn’t been able to go after him—not without losing the ground she’d gained with Ruth—but she needed to see him. Something had happened to him in the Nile, and she had a feeling it had something to do with the way he’d acted in Ruth’s office.
She wasn’t surprised to find the door to the room they’d put her in locked, especially after Harte’s little display. She didn’t blame Ruth and the rest of the Antistasi for not trusting her, despite what she’d done for them—she probably would have done the same. But a locked door had never been a problem for her, so she pulled her affinity around her and made quick work of picking the lock. She stepped over the Antistasi who’d fallen asleep at his post in the hall outside and started her search for where they’d put Harte.
She found him on the floor below, and she slipped inside the small, closet-like room before releasing her hold on time. There was a canister on the floor like the one from the wagon, probably used to make sure that he didn’t cause any trouble.
Harte was sleeping on a narrow pallet, his breathing soft and even. She knelt next to him and pushed his hair back from his forehead as she whispered his name. When he didn’t respond, she gave him a gentle shake until his eyes opened.
He blinked and turned toward her, finding her in the darkness of the room. “Esta?” he whispered, her name soft with sleep on his lips. His hands lifted to cup her face, his thumb brushing across her cheek and sending jolts of warmth through her.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, keeping her voice low so they wouldn’t alert the guard outside his room.