The magician no longer interested him. No . . . He desired what lived inside the magician. The power that had slipped from his fingertips those many years ago. The demon bitch who had evaded him too many times over the years and centuries. He would have her now. He would take every bit of her power for himself.
Darrigan’s eyes had gone dark, and Jack—and the other voice that lived inside Jack—knew it was because the magician was no more than a shell. And Jack would have his revenge. He would destroy Darrigan once and for all.
“Thoth . . .” The words came from Darrigan’s mouth, but they were not spoken by his voice.
“Seshat,” Jack said, letting the syllables hiss from his mouth, soft as a snake. “You can’t win this time. Without the protection of the Book, your power will be mine.”
“Protection?” Darrigan’s lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “The Book was my prison, and now that I am free, I will destroy you.”
“You can’t destroy me, Seshat. I have become power itself. I have become a god.”
“Even gods need a home, Thoth. I will destroy everything to ensure that you never again walk free.”
SESHAT’S RETURN
1904—St. Louis
Esta was offering the tray of canapés to Teddy Roosevelt himself when the first of Maggie’s devices popped, showering sparks over the entire rotunda and spewing forth a fog that wove through the air like a living snake. The security pulled Roosevelt away, making a solid wall between him and any of the other attendees. A woman in the crowd screamed, and the crowd in the rotunda began a panicked stampede toward the doors.
Esta ran in the other direction. She’d heard the crash of shattering glass from the distant hallway, where she’d left Harte, and she’d known somehow that something had gone wrong. But she hadn’t expected anything like what she saw when she arrived. Jack Grew was there, and Harte was speaking to him, but their voices were off, eerily inhuman. And Harte’s eyes were completely black, with not even the whites showing.
“You had everything,” Jack said in that strange, otherworldly voice. “You had the key to all power at your fingertips, the heart of magic at your command. It was yours to control—and instead you tried to destroy it.”
“I tried to save it,” Harte shrieked, his face contorted. “I created the words and the writing of them because I thought it would be enough to stop the eventual death of magic. But I was wrong. The Book was a mistake.”
“The Book was a gift,” Jack said, stepping toward Harte.
“You had no right to it,” Harte spat. “You stole what was not yours to take. I counted you as a friend, and you betrayed me. I revealed my failures to you, and you abused my trust by giving power—broken and debased as it was—to the undeserving who could not appreciate it—all for something as vulgar as fame.”
“Why should magic have belonged only to those like you?” Jack asked. “Once, all people could touch the power that threads itself through all of creation. Who were you to keep it from them?”
“Who were you to give it only to the sycophants who favored you?” Harte threw back. “You don’t think I know what was behind your rise?” Harte laughed, and it was the high, manic laugh of a woman who had come unhinged. “You don’t think I know how you stole the secrets I inscribed and doled them out only to those who could pay, those who could bestow power upon you?”
“I gave them to the worthy,” Jack said. “And I was rewarded. You . . . You were forgotten.”
“Because of you,” Harte spat. “Because of how you tried to destroy me. But you failed in that, didn’t you? You didn’t expect that, did you? If you had realized how I had been bound to the Book, you would have destroyed it—and me. But you didn’t, and because of your shortsightedness, I bided my time, waiting for someone to release me. Waiting for this moment.”
Harte lunged at Jack, pushing him backward into the rotunda. Above them, the air was filled with the living plumes of dark smoke caused by Maggie’s devices—the distraction she’d promised. Within the depths of it, lights flickered like lightning flashing. Esta could feel the rumble of cold power mixing with the warmth of the old magic, the two battling and warring overhead like some alchemical thunderstorm about to break.
Beneath it, Harte and Jack were grappling with each other, their hands clawing and punching as they rolled across the ground. And the power that came off them was overwhelming, hot as the flames that had consumed the brewery and icy as the Brink all at once, clashing and warring as the two fought. For a moment Esta was sure that Harte would win. But then something shifted inside Jack and roared up, pinning Harte to the floor. Harte had gone limp beneath him, like he’d lost consciousness completely.
Esta acted on instinct, pulling her affinity close and making time go still as she sprinted to where the two of them were. Shoving Jack off Harte with the bottom of her shoe, she went to Harte and placed her hands on his face. “Wake up,” she pleaded. “Come on . . .” She tapped at his cheeks and urged him again.
Without warning, his eyes flew open. But before she could feel the shudder of relief, she realized that it wasn’t Harte looking out at her. It was something dark and ancient peering from the coal-black depths of his eyes.
Harte’s hand snaked out and gripped her by the wrist before she could even think to back away, and the intensity of the power she felt rise between them shook her so profoundly that she lost hold of her affinity. The world spun back into motion, and Jack moaned softly from where he’d toppled over on the floor.
But Esta didn’t notice. The moment Harte had touched her, the moment the power within him had connected with hers, she’d been overwhelmed. And then, the world fell away. . . .
There was a chamber made of stone and clay and the sand of the desert. And there was a woman with eyes of amber, just like her own, and the woman had made a mistake. She leaned over an altar that held the open pages of a book, and her pain and frustration hung heavy in the air. But the woman looked up suddenly and her eyes met Esta’s.
“You’ve come.” The woman’s voice echoed through the chamber in a language Esta did not know but could understand even so. And though she could hear the woman speaking, her mouth never moved. “The one who can release me. The one who can fulfill my destiny. I knew you would come. I knew you would give yourself over to me.”
Esta was frozen in place, moored in time and Aether. She could not move as the woman looked into her very heart.
“I see you so clearly. I see what you desire. The end of this pain and struggle.”
Esta wanted to deny it, but she could not so much as shake her head. No, she thought. I don’t want this.
“I tried to save it. Magic. Power. The energy that flows between all things. It was dying. It was fading even in my time, as people forgot, divided themselves from each other and from the unity of all things. So I tried to preserve what I could by creating the writing. I thought I could save the heart of magic within the permanence of words.” The woman’s eyes flashed with fury. “But I was wrong. Creating the power of ritual through writing only weakened magic further. Magic isn’t order—it’s the possibility held within chaos. Ritual limited the wild freedom inherent in power, broke it apart and kept it fractured. But it also made it controllable, even for those who were without an affinity for it.