“Watch out!” Esta told him, but the warning came too late.
Before Harte could lift himself onto the train, Jack had him by the wrist, yanking him back.
“Harte!” Esta was already preparing to jump from the train when Harte shouted at her not to.
All around them, people had stopped to watch. The entire platform had taken on a strange, hushed atmosphere that had nothing to do with Esta’s affinity and everything to do with the curiosity of the other travelers.
Harte jerked away from Jack, pulling his arm out of the coat to get free. Off-balance from losing his grip on Harte, Jack fell back, holding on to the coat. A moment later, Harte had boosted himself up into the train.
“Come on,” he said, leading her toward the front of the nearly empty car. “We can’t stay here—” he started. But before they could even reach the middle of the car, a station officer had come through the doorway. The moment he saw Harte and Esta, he drew out his billystick and blocked the entrance. The few passengers sitting in the car looked up, curious about what was happening.
Harte stepped in front of her, backing her toward the rear exit slightly. They’d had only a minute to catch their breath when the door of the car opened behind him. Esta turned to see Jack blocking their other means of escape.
“Get us out of this, Esta,” Harte murmured as he kept his attention on both ends of the car and the approaching attackers.
“There’s nowhere for you to go, Darrigan,” Jack said, a satisfied smile sliding across his face.
“He’s right, son. Put your hands up and get to your knees, and we can do this easy,” the officer said from the front of the car.
They were trapped. Even if she could manage to pull time to a stop, there was nowhere to go—no way to escape.
Except one.
Esta had never tried to slip through time like that before—not in a moving vehicle. Time was connected to place, which meant she could only slip through if that place existed in the time she wanted to reach. But they didn’t need to go very far—a day or two, maybe as much as a week—just long enough to be on a different version of this train, away from this danger.
She put all her effort, all her energy into focusing on the seconds around her. Ignoring the pounding in her temples, she drew deeper on her affinity than she ever had before. The stone on her arm, Ishtar’s Key, grew uncomfortably warm as Esta focused on the spaces between the seconds and began reaching for the layered moments that make up the reality of a place. She riffled through those moments, hunting desperately to find what she was looking for.
Around them the train began to rattle, vibrating along the track violently enough to have the policeman grabbing at the back of a seat to stay on his feet.
“What’s happening?” Harte asked.
But Esta didn’t hear anything other than the roaring in her ears, searching and searching until she could see nothing but the multiplicity of moments stacked up around her, solid and real as the present one.
Usually, sifting through time was like riffling through the pages of a book, searching for some word, some detail to key into the right date and time. Usually, she had time to focus and sort through the layers to the precise point she wanted, to a safe point. But with the train picking up speed and the heat from the connection between her and Harte tugging at her attention, time itself felt loose and unmoored. Instead of finding a safe place, she found huge gaps where the train they were riding on didn’t exist.
To find the same train, in the same place . . . at a different time . . .
She focused everything she had, everything she was, pushing against the impossibility of it. Ishtar’s Key grew warmer and warmer, until it was nearly burning against her arm. And then, there. She saw a flash of possibility.
Even though it felt as though the world was collapsing in on them and the floor was falling out from under them, she didn’t stop to be sure. Esta grabbed Harte’s hand and dragged them both forward through time.
WALLACK’S THEATRE
1902—New York
Jianyu Lee understood the weight of failure. Its oppressiveness had chased him from his brother’s house and later sent him, desperate to prove his worth, to a new land. Like the story of Kua Fu chasing the sun, Jianyu had tried to outrun the disappointments of his boyhood. Instead he’d carried them with him on the endless journey across sea and land, only to find more waiting when he arrived in this city and discovered that the promises of the Six Companies’ agent had been lies.
He had tried to make the best of working for Wung Ah Ling, the man who fashioned himself as Tom Lee. With his diamond stickpin and stylish derby hat, the self-proclaimed “mayor” of Chinatown was well known throughout the city. He had been delighted to have a Mageus in his employ and had taken Jianyu under his tutelage. Lee had helped him perfect the English that Jianyu had been taught on his long journey, and Lee had explained that the work of the tong was to aid their brethren in navigating the strange ways of this strange land. To protect them. But the longer Jianyu collected bribe money from poor shopkeepers, living in the same rooms where they worked while Tom Lee lived in the palatial splendor of his three-floor apartment at 20 Mott Street, the more Jianyu realized that Lee was no different from the rich merchants back in Gwóng-dūng who ate well while the poor farmers starved.
The day Jianyu was sent by Lee to collect money from a laundryman whose rasping voice and well-lined skin reminded him of his long-deceased grandfather’s was the day Jianyu realized he was still nothing more than a bandit. The new beginning he had hoped for was more of the same. After that, every day that he worked as Tom Lee’s lackey, using his affinity against those who could not help themselves, he had added another stone to his burden. But Dolph Saunders had given him a way to lay some of that burden down when he’d offered Jianyu a place in the Devil’s Own. The dream of destroying the Brink had given Jianyu hope for a different future—for himself and for each of his countrymen back home who carried an affinity, and who would be threatened if the Order’s cancerous power were allowed to spread.
Jianyu had been so busy guarding against the danger of the Order that he had failed to see the danger in their midst. They all had, and Dolph’s life had been the cost. In the days following Dolph’s death, Jianyu felt the old familiar shame return, creeping in the shadows of too silent rooms, waiting for him to pick up the burden of his failures once again. Perhaps he might have. Perhaps one day he might still, but for now, Jianyu had work to do. Nibsy Lorcan was a danger perhaps even worse than the Order, who seemed focused on their power here in New York. If what Harte Darrigan told him was true, Nibsy’s ambitions were much larger. If Nibsy controlled the stones, his power might stretch beyond the seas. Whatever might come, Nibsy Lorcan could not be allowed to win.
Jianyu had made Darrigan a promise to protect Cela Johnson and the stone she carried. It was the first step toward defeating Nibsy, and he would not fail.
First, however, he had to find her before anyone else did.
After the confrontation with the woman in the cellar of the theater, Jianyu knew he could not leave until he had determined whether Cela was inside. Which was why he spent the day watching the theater’s doors from an alleyway across the street, wrapped in light, so no one noticed him as he waited. All morning, he passed the time by watching the comings and goings of those who did not have to worry about who or what they were, people who knew they belonged—or those who could pretend they belonged. How many among those who passed by that morning were also Mageus, able to blend in and become invisible within the crowd without using any magic at all? It was a comfort that Jianyu had not had since the day he left his own country.