He nodded as he pulled her toward him, slow and tentative, testing the moment. Lifting his head, he touched his lips against hers, so softly that her throat went tight. She felt another jolt of heat against her skin and an answering desire, and she didn’t pull away. For the first time since that night they’d kissed at the boardinghouse, she felt like she could finally breathe.
Esta barely had time to register that the warmth she felt against her mouth wasn’t brought on by the heat in their kiss. Just as she realized that it was the power inside Harte seeping into her, his entire body went suddenly rigid, as though all his muscles were contracting, and he jerked away from her. Scrambling upright, he retreated.
“You’ve come,” Harte said, but it wasn’t his voice she heard. There was something else to it, some other power layered over it. Impossible colors flashed in the depths of his eyes, and it wasn’t completely Harte she saw looking out at her.
“What—” Her voice broke in a combination of fear and betrayal.
“I knew you would,” the voice that was not Harte purred. The colors in his eyes faded, and the darkness that replaced them was pure in its emptiness, devastatingly cold and impossibly ancient. “You see the world as it is, fractured and terrible, and you have come to me, just as I predicted. I feel your anger, the rage that pulses clean and true. I can be the blade that lets you cleave the world in two.”
Harte gasped, a horrible clutching sound, and then doubled over.
“Harte?” She wanted to reach for him and to back away all at the same time.
“Stay there,” he rasped, breathing heavily. His jaw clenched as he fought whatever was inside of him.
She couldn’t do anything more than watch and wait until, eventually, his breathing slowed and his body relaxed. When he looked at her again, it was only Harte she saw.
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “You can’t just sneak up on me like that.”
The sharpness in his voice cut straight through the already frayed leash that was holding her temper at bay. “What the hell, Harte? Were you there for any of that?” she asked, afraid to know the answer.
“You mean, do I remember kissing you?” he asked shakily. He raked his hand through his hair and looked miserable enough that she could almost forgive him for snapping at her. “I thought I was dreaming, and by the time I realized I wasn’t, she’d already taken hold.”
Her instincts prickled. “She?”
He let out an exhausted-sounding breath. “This thing inside me. I think it’s a she.” Then he told her everything that he’d seen when he’d lost it in the Nile—about the woman and the Book, about Thoth and the circle of stones. “Her name’s Seshat. I think she’s some kind of demon or something. Thoth was trying to stop her, but he didn’t. And she didn’t die. Part of her was trapped in the Book.”
“You saw all of that?” she asked.
“More like I felt it. Like I was there, experiencing what she experienced,” he said, shuddering a little at the memory. “She had stones—not the ones that the Order had, but ones like them. When Thoth destroyed them, it damaged her. I think it’s what we need to do to contain her again. If we can connect the stones, we could trap that power again. We just have to figure out how to connect them.”
But Esta already knew the answer to that. She could connect them. It was what Professor Lachlan had tried to do to her, and it was what she’d already known she would have to do if she wanted to end this madness once and for all. “We have to connect the stones through the Aether,” she told him. “We’ll need the Book, but once we have that, I can do it.”
She reminded Harte about what had happened when she’d returned to her own time, and now she saw the moment when he realized what she meant. “No.” He was shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s the only way,” she told him.
“I refuse to believe that,” he said. “We will find another way. We’ll get the Book back and there will be another way.”
He looked so horrified and determined and ridiculously stubborn that she just nodded. “Sure,” she said. Because what was the use of arguing? She wasn’t there to save her own life. She was there to make sure that Nibsy couldn’t win, to make sure that the Order and others like them couldn’t destroy even one more future. And maybe, even to make sure that Harte could someday be free, like he’d dreamed.
“We need to go,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. “We’ve already lost time, but if we can get back to Julien, we can figure out what the Society did with the necklace and get out of this town, just like we planned.”
She was already shaking her head as he spoke. “We can’t.”
“We can,” he told her, his eyes shadowed.
“The Antistasi—”
“The Antistasi aren’t our problem,” he said, dismissing her words before he even heard them. “The sooner we can find the Book, the sooner we can find a solution to how to control whatever this is inside me, and the sooner we can go back and stop Nibsy.”
She was still shaking her head. “They have Ishtar’s Key.”
A CHOICE IN THE MATTER
1904—St. Louis
Harte went very still. “They have your cuff?”
Esta nodded, her expression tight. “I think they took it while we were unconscious in the wagon.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, feeling a bolt of panic. Without the cuff, they were stuck in 1904. Without the cuff, they couldn’t control the Book, and if it got into the wrong hands . . .
“When was I supposed to tell you—while I was unconscious, or in the middle of the room while everyone was listening?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
She was right. Between being captured and being separated while the Antistasi forced her to run their errands, there hadn’t been any time to talk. “It’s fine,” he said, but he felt like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. “We’ll get it back.”
At first she only frowned, as though she were considering another option.
“You can steal it back,” he insisted, because that much should have been readily apparent.
“I don’t know if we should,” she told him. “Not yet, at least.”
“Of course we should. You’re a thief, and a damn good one at that,” he said, trying to figure out what she was thinking. “Why wouldn’t you want to take it back?”
“I do,” she insisted. “I’m just thinking . . . maybe we should wait. Hear me out,” she protested, before he could argue. “We don’t know where the necklace is right now.”
“Julien can get that information,” he reminded her. But they couldn’t get to Julien as long as they were stuck here with the Antistasi.
“Sure. But what if we need more than the two of us to get it? Ruth and the Antistasi want the necklace, right? Why not use them like they’re using us?”
He gave her a doubtful look. “They don’t exactly seem like easy marks.”
“Neither was Dolph,” she argued. “But that didn’t stop you from trying. Why not keep them as allies? Once they get the necklace, I can take both, and we can be gone.”