She could have gladly carried that burden with her for the rest of her life. She had no way of knowing what effect her inaction would have, but she knew one thing—nothing good could come from Jack getting ahold of the Book.
Harte was still sitting on the platform at the back of the train when she pulled herself to her feet. He looked pale and unsteady, but Esta was having a hard time finding any more sympathy.
“You shouldn’t have stopped me,” she continued.
“And then what?” Harte asked. “You would have just walked away, with his blood on your hands?”
“Better his blood than ours.”
Harte scrubbed his hand down over his face, expelling a ragged breath as he closed his eyes for a moment. He looked as though he was about to be sick again. “I’ve done plenty of wrong in my life, but I don’t want to be the type of man who can kill someone in cold blood.” He opened his eyes to look at her. “Even someone who deserves it as much as Jack does.”
There was something about the way his voice changed, the way it seemed to carry to her so clearly on the wind, even with the noise of the train and the tracks, that made Esta pause.
But only for a moment.
This world didn’t allow for pausing or second-guessing. It wouldn’t permit her to keep whatever delicate sensibilities Harte thought she should have.
All at once the memory of Professor Lachlan’s library at the top of his building on Orchard Street arose in her mind. The dimmed lights. The smell of old books that had once meant safety. On her wrists, Esta could still feel the ache of bruises from the ropes that had held her to the chair. She could almost feel the heat of the stones Professor Lachlan had adorned her with, like the sacrifice he’d intended her to be. The man who had raised her would have used her affinity—used her—to unite the stones and take control of the Book’s power. You’re just the vessel. He would have killed her.
She lifted her hand to touch the still-healing wound just below her collarbone and closed her eyes against the memory of what had happened. . . . These things do tend to work better with a little blood.
That night had been less than twenty-four hours ago and was also still a hundred years to come. In the darkness behind her eyelids, another memory assaulted her—Dakari stepping into the room, unaware of what Professor Lachlan had planned. Unprepared for the bullet that came a few moments later.
The echo of the gun.
The sound of Dakari’s body collapsing, deadweight, to the floor.
And the weight of the guilt she bore for his death.
Maybe she’d never had any real softness to start with. Or maybe the last bit of softness had been killed as surely as Dakari that day. Either way, Esta knew that if she could live with the memory of that night, she could bear anything. Become anything. Harte might not have believed that she was strong enough, but Esta had already survived the senseless loss of her friends, of her family—of her father. A little blood on her hands for the sake of their memory and for the sake of their lives was hardly anything.
Besides, she knew that she wouldn’t have to carry any of it for very long. No matter what happened between now and the end, Professor Lachlan had already explained to her how the stones could be used to control the Book. She hadn’t yet told Harte. She didn’t know how he would react to learning that it would require sacrifice—her affinity and most likely her life—and they didn’t have time for him to get all noble again or have second thoughts. But then, she was a girl without a past and without a future. She’d already resigned herself to the fact that she had little hope of walking out of this alive.
Now they would have to live with the consequences of not killing Jack when they’d had the chance. Two years had passed, and during that time the world had continued on, history unspooling itself each day. Who knew what had changed in the days and weeks since Jack Grew got his hands on the Book and all the knowledge contained in its pages? Who knew what might wait for them at the station at the end of the line?
Harte looked like he was going to be sick again. Not that Esta blamed him. When she thought of Jack with the Book, she felt like throwing up too.
“It’ll be okay,” she told him after a few minutes of tense silence, the wind whipping at them as the train sped onward. She wasn’t sure that she believed it, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say as the train hurtled down the track, careening toward some distant station she had never thought to see and toward a future that she was determined to meet head-on—the same way she met everything else.
“You know what Jack could do with the Book.” Harte turned from her, his eyes unfocused on the passing countryside. “The Order wouldn’t let him have access to it because they knew how dangerous it was, and I gave it to him. He’ll have secrets that even the Order was smart enough to keep away from him.”
Every bit of what he’d said was true, but still . . . “If Jack had kept you from getting on the train, it would have been over anyway.”
“I could have fought him,” Harte said, his jaw tense. “I could have beat him.”
“Sure. With the station police on your tail and all those people around and the train already leaving. A fistfight is exactly what would have worked.” When Harte glanced back at her, irritation shadowing his expression, she continued. “You had to get on this train—that train—whatever. You made a choice, just like I did. You did what you had to do to get away. Besides, Jack doesn’t really have all that much,” she reminded him. “The Book’s power is in you, right?”
Harte’s jaw clenched. “There’s still the information in its pages. That’s more than enough for it to be dangerous.”
“So we’ll just have get it back.” She pulled herself up to her feet again. “I’m a thief, aren’t I? I’ll steal it.”
He looked up at her. “It might be too late for that already.”
“If we can get control of my affinity, there is no such thing as too late.” Still, there was a part of her that worried Harte was right.
She offered him a hand up. “We can get off at the next station and figure out what to do.”
He ignored her offer of help. “We might as well wait until we get to Baltimore. We’ve already paid for the tickets,” he told her. “No sense getting off until we’re in a city that’s big enough to give us our pick of routes. It’s been two years,” he said, an answer to her unspoken question. “I don’t know where any of the people we need to find are now. I’ll have to send out some telegrams, make some inquiries. If Julien is still performing, he shouldn’t be that hard to find.”
Already, the crowded industrial-looking buildings of the area around the station had given way to more open land. The smell of the coal burning in the train’s engine was faint, and the air carried a scent she didn’t recognize—something green and fresh and earthy that didn’t exist in the city.
“We should probably get some seats,” she told him. “It’ll be a while before we reach Baltimore.”
Harte pulled himself upright without her help but held tight to the railing for a moment to steady himself. “Where did you get the money for the tickets?” he asked as he reached for the door to the car. He held it open for her to enter.