“Can you hold it?” Harte asked.
The tendrils of heat and power that had vibrated against her skin when she took Harte’s hand were climbing her arm. The more they twisted themselves around her, the more slippery the spaces between the seconds felt. A moment ago those spaces had felt solid and real, but with every passing heartbeat, her hold on time—her hold on magic itself—grew murky, indistinct. As though neither the seconds nor her magic really even existed.
“Not much longer,” she told him through gritted teeth as she fought to keep hold of her affinity.
“Then we’d better hurry.” Harte climbed down from the roof of the elevator and into the hallway and then turned to help her.
Esta’s feet had no sooner touched the ground than she realized the darkness of the elevator shaft had followed her into the well-lit hallway. It hung in the edges of her vision, threatening.
From inside the shaft, she heard a groaning of cables, a sound starkly out of place in the silent hush of the timeless moment. “Did you hear that?”
Harte frowned. “What?”
The groaning came again, louder this time. “That,” she told him. There shouldn’t have been any sound, not now when she had slowed the seconds to a near stop and the rest of the world had gone still and silent. Fear pooling within her, Esta tried to pull away from Harte, but he held her tight. “I can’t . . .”
“Esta?” He tightened his grip on her, his eyes stormy with confusion.
There were people in those elevators, people who had nothing to do with the officers chasing her. People who might die if the cables broke and the elevator plummeted to the ground below, just as people had died on the train. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew she had to stop it.
Esta wrenched herself away from Harte, away from the unsettling energy that felt like it was trying to claim her, and allowed time to slam back into motion. Suddenly, the gears of the elevator began to churn and she could hear music coming from somewhere nearby.
“What—” Harte started, but before he could question her any further, the man at the stairway shouted.
“Hey!” He pointed at them, his eyes wide with disbelief that he hadn’t noticed them standing there before. Lifting a whistle to his mouth, he reached for the golden medallion he wore on his lapel, but before he could touch it, Harte attacked, tackling the man and then knocking him out before he could do anything else.
“We have to get out of this hallway,” he told her as he rubbed at the knuckles of his right hand. “Before someone comes.”
Esta had already realized they’d need a hiding place. By the time Harte had pulled himself to his feet, she had one of the nearby rooms unlocked. “Bring him in here,” she said, stepping aside. “If we leave him out there, they’ll know.”
The room was exactly like the one she had checked into earlier that day. The walls were papered in the same elegant chintz, the bed had been covered in the same fine linens, and the furniture had the same burnished wood and brass fixtures as hers. This room, though, clearly belonged to a man. There were trousers and socks strewn about the floor, and even with the window open, the smell of stale smoke and old sweat hung in the air.
“What are we supposed to do with him?” Harte asked as he locked the door behind him.
“Take him into the bathroom,” Esta told him as she propped her leg up on the bed and hitched up her skirts.
Instead of moving, Harte was looking at her exposed leg.
She ignored the heated look he was giving her—and the answering warmth she felt stirring inside of her—as she unfastened the silk stocking she was wearing and pulled it down her leg. “Snap out of it, would you? Here,” she said, tossing the stocking to Harte, who still looked stunned as he caught the scrap of fabric. “Tie him up with that.” She rolled off the other stocking and tossed it to him as well.
If they weren’t in such a bind, the way his ears went pink as he caught the bit of silk might almost have been adorable, but they needed to get out of the room and the hotel as fast as they could. The longer it took, the more likely they’d be caught. After all, it was only a matter of time before the police figured out what she and Harte had done and started searching rooms.
While Harte was in the bathroom tying up the watchman, Esta began stripping out of the gown she was wearing. The second she had slipped it on at the department store, she’d known it was perfect. She’d never been one to care all that much for clothes, but she’d loved the dress, despite knowing that she was in no position to be admiring silly, pretty things. She sighed a little as it tumbled to the floor in a puddle of silk the color of quicksilver. The exact color of Harte’s eyes.
Esta shoved that unwanted thought aside as she stepped out of the pile of fabric and balled the gown up, the physical action reinforcing how unimportant the garment was. She kicked it under the bed.
“What are you doing?”
Esta turned to find Harte, his eyes wide and his cheeks pink.
“Getting rid of the dress,” she told him.
“I see that,” he said, and she didn’t miss the way his hand clenched into a fist or the tightness in his voice. “But why are you getting rid of the dress?”
“It’s too noticeable,” she said, frowning. “And I’m too noticeable in it.”
“You don’t think this is going to be even more noticeable?” he asked as he gestured stiffly toward her, standing as she was in nothing more than a corset and a pair of drawers.
In her own time she saw people wearing less than this on the city streets. Not that Harte would understand. So often, she forgot how different they were—how much a product of his own time he was. Moments like this reminded her . . . but he was just going to have to get over it.
“I wasn’t planning on going out there like this,” she said, heading to the wardrobe. “There has to be something in here,” she told him.
She gathered some of the men’s clothing that was hanging clean and freshly pressed inside the wardrobe. When she saw the doubt in his expression, she ignored it.
“That is never going to work,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
“Look at how easily Julien recognized me, and he wasn’t even looking for me—I’m too tall not to stand out,” she told him. “At least for a woman.”
He looked unconvinced. “You really think you look anything like a man?”
“I think people usually only see what they expect to see,” she said as she slipped a stiffly pressed shirt on. It smelled of fresh linen and starch, scents that brought to mind memories of Professor Lachlan, of a childhood spent trying to please him, the days she’d spent studying next to him in the library that took up the top floor of the building.
But now the memory of that library brought with it a different image. Dakari. And the smell of linen and starch only served to remind her that lies often hid behind the faces you trusted.
Pushing aside the past, she buttoned the shirt, but not before she loosened the ties of her corset a little, so it didn’t press her into such an hourglass shape. Finally able to breathe, she finished fastening the buttons.
“Let’s hope they’re all blind,” Harte muttered. “Every single one of them.” But he left her to finish getting dressed while he went and checked on the man in the bathroom one last time.