Days ago, everything had seemed clearer, simple even. In the bowels of Khafre Hall, his plan had been straightforward. If he took the Book from Dolph’s gang, he would have the freedom he’d wanted for so long, and Nibsy Lorcan—the double-crossing rat—wouldn’t be able to use it for his own ends. He’d seen Nibsy’s plan, the way he would use the Book to control Mageus and use the Mageus under his control to eradicate Sundren. It would be a world safe for the old magic, but the only one with any freedom in it would be Nibsy himself.
But it hadn’t only been Nibsy that Harte had been worried about. Stealing the Book from the Order also meant that Jack Grew would never be able to use it to finish the monstrous machine he was building, the one that could wipe magic from the earth. Too bad that the moment Harte’s hands had brushed that crackled leather, all those plans had changed.
He was used to keeping himself away from others. Most people didn’t realize how much of themselves they projected, so Harte had long become accustomed to pulling his affinity inward and keeping himself closed off. He hated being caught off guard by the onslaught of jumbled images and feelings and thoughts that most people shoved freely into the world. But he hadn’t thought to prepare himself for the Book.
When his skin had made contact with the ancient, cracked cover, he’d realized his mistake. He’d felt a hot, searing energy enter him—a magic with a power like nothing he had ever experienced.
Then the screaming had started.
It had taken only seconds, but those seconds had felt like a never-ending barrage of sound and impressions, an incoherent jumble of languages he should not have been able to understand. But Harte never needed to know the words to understand a person’s heart and mind, and touching the Book had been like reading a person.
Actually, it had been far easier. It was as though the power within the Book had been waiting for that moment—waiting for him to become its living body. He’d understood almost immediately that the Book was more than any one of them had predicted. It was power. It was wrath. It was the beating heart of magic in the world, and it wanted nothing more and nothing less than to be set free. To become. To consume.
And what it wanted most to consume was Esta.
Fortunately, the power he’d unwittingly freed was still weakened by centuries of imprisonment. Harte could still push it down and lock it away when he focused. But the power was growing stronger every day, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to suppress it forever. He hadn’t planned to.
Harte had planned to die. He hadn’t known for sure whether throwing himself from the bridge would silence the clamoring voices, but he’d figured that at least it would mean they couldn’t use him as their pawn. But then Jianyu had shown up at the docks the night before the bridge and offered him another way.
By then Harte had already scattered the artifacts, sending most of them away from the city to keep them out of Nibsy’s reach. He hadn’t realized until it was too late that he could have used them to control the Book’s power. He certainly hadn’t expected Esta to return.
Now stopping Nibsy and the Order and keeping Esta safe depended on controlling it. To do that, they needed the artifacts. But retrieving them meant leaving people behind—his mother, for one. Jianyu, for another. And maybe most worrisome of all, it meant leaving one of the stones.
He’d given one to Cela because he didn’t have any other way to repay her for what he’d done when he’d forced his dying mother upon her with his affinity. The ring had been the least obtrusive of the Order’s pieces, other than maybe the cuff that he’d given to Esta. Harte had known even then that it wasn’t a good enough trade, but now that Esta had returned, he truly understood the danger he’d put Cela in—especially if the boy Esta had brought back with her could find anything. He could only hope that the command he’d planted in her mind with his affinity would be enough to help Cela evade danger until Jianyu could protect her and the stone.
Harte waited a while before he released his hold on the railing, long enough that Esta was out of sight and the crewman on the ferry was beginning to pay more attention to him than was safe.
When he stepped from the boat onto the solidness of the New Jersey soil, he tested himself to make sure that the power within him was still quiet, pushed down deep. It was a new state, but for Harte, who had been trapped on the island of Manhattan his entire life, it might as well have been a new continent.
Around him, people bustled onward, gathering their bags and their children as they moved toward the terminal entrance. He joined them, keeping his cap low, his eyes down, allowing himself to be caught up in the current. He sensed the excitement of some heading off toward new places and the weariness of others making the same trip they’d made countless times before. All of them were oblivious to the miracle it was that they could choose to purchase a ticket, step onto a train, and arrive somewhere else. For Harte, that miracle was one he would never take for granted, however much time he had left.
As he was carried along by the crowd, he almost felt as though the world could be his. Perhaps their mission might actually work and a different future could be possible. But then he heard a whispering begin to grow louder in the recesses of his mind. The dark choir merged into a single voice, one that was speaking in a language he should not have recognized but understood nonetheless. A single word that held untold meaning.
Soon.
THE SIREN
1902—New York
The sun was already climbing into the sky as the streetcar rumbled north through the city. Jianyu kept himself tucked back into a corner, careful not to touch anyone and reveal his presence, until they reached the stop at Broadway, close to Wallack’s Theatre, where Harte Darrigan had once performed. Cela’s neighbors believed she’d fled from the house because she was guilty of the fire, but Jianyu suspected otherwise. He was not sure where she would go, but he hoped she would eventually return here, to the theater where she worked.
Keeping the light around him was easier now, with the morning sun providing ample threads for him to grasp and open around him. When he reached Wallack’s, Jianyu looked up to find familiar eyes watching him from above.
It was only a painting, a large multistoried advertisement for the variety acts to be found inside, but Harte Darrigan’s gaze seemed to be steady on Jianyu—though whether it felt like a warning or encouragement, he could not have said.
Still concealed by his affinity, Jianyu surveyed the theater from across the street. He could wait and watch for Cela to arrive, but he decided that inside there might be some hint of where else she would go. Keeping his affinity close, he crossed the street to the stage door. After picking the lock, he slipped into the darkened theater and began searching for some sign of Cela in the area backstage.
Inside, the theater waited, dark and silent. Jianyu had never set foot in Wallack’s before, or any of the Broadway houses that advertised their shows on bright electric marquees. He had taken in a show at the Bowery Theatre once, when he had first arrived in the city, but it had been a noisy, raucous affair in a house tattered and broken by the usual crowd. Wallack’s was different. It looked like a palace, and Jianyu had a feeling that it would still feel like one, even when the house was full.
He followed the narrow halls back, deeper into the theater, passing dressing room after dressing room. But Cela was not a performer. She would not be given her name on a door. No . . . she would be somewhere else, somewhere quieter. He continued on in the darkness until he came to steps that led down into the belly of the building.