Still, pain in the ass or not, he’d felt bad about the gun he’d pressed to her side and even worse about the bullets Professor Lachlan had loaded into it. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the Professor when he’d told Logan that Esta had turned on them and couldn’t be trusted. It was that Logan might have been a lot of things, but he’d never thought of himself as a murderer. He didn’t like the idea of having to put a bullet in her back. Even if she had done the same to Dakari.
So he’d been glad when she hadn’t fought him as they’d walked to the departure point. He’d been relieved when he’d had to nudge her only once to get her moving, but he should have known it couldn’t be that easy. Nothing with her ever was. One minute he felt like the whole world was being ripped apart, like his very soul was collapsing in on itself, and then he felt the solidness of the pavement beneath him again.
Before he could even pull himself upright, he’d felt a pain tear through his shoulder joint, and his hand had gone numb as Esta slid away from him. He’d stumbled, trying to get to his feet, but his vision was only just clear enough to see Esta scoop up the bag he’d been carrying and disappear.
Logan was trying to get his eyes to focus, when the reality of his situation hit him. The dampness of the cobbled street, the smell of coal smoke and soot in the air. The strange slant of light coming down through the overcast day, and the bustle of voices around him in languages he didn’t understand. Professor Lachlan had tried to teach him, but he never had the head for words the way Esta had.
Esta. Who was always good at everything. Esta, who had definitely abandoned him.
In the past.
There was a scent in the air with the sootiness—a ripeness that indicated something alive. Or something that had once been alive. Animals or rotten food or shit. Yeah, definitely shit. In the cool morning air, the stench was muted, but Logan could imagine the smell would be thick enough to choke when the heat of the summer swept over the city.
He wasn’t supposed to be there during the summer. Professor Lachlan had promised. Once Logan had delivered the bag and the notes, Esta was supposed to bring him back to his own time—their own time.
Where. He. Belonged.
The bag he’d been carrying was long gone, but at least he still had the notes, he thought as he patted the pocket of his jacket. Yeah. Still there.
Logan finally managed to sit up. His pants were damp from the puddle he’d landed in. Rainwater . . . Let it be rainwater. . . . Rubbing at his head where it had hit the concrete, he realized he was being watched. Two broad-shouldered guys with dark coats and hats tipped low over their eyes were stalking toward him. One had a stick of some sort—a club, but with a wicked spike at the end.
Scrambling to his feet, Logan put his hands up as he tried to back away, but he backed up instead into someone else.
“Whoa,” he said, his head still swirling as he struggled to stay up.
“What do we have here?” the largest of the guys asked, taking another step toward Logan and penning him in. The guy smiled, a ruthless sort of grin that made Logan feel like he’d just swallowed a stone. He wasn’t the fighter—that was Esta. He was more of a talk-your-way-out-of-the-situation type. But these guys didn’t look like they were interested in listening.
“Where’d the girl go?” the other one said, his expression as flat as his broken nose. “She was just here and then—”
“Stuff it,” the larger one said, jabbing at Logan with his stick. “She’s one of them.” He pinned Logan with a look. “Wasn’t she? Does that mean you’re one of them too?”
“Look, I don’t want any problems,” Logan told them.
“Too late for that now, ain’t it?” the large one said as the man Logan had backed into took him by the arms. The other one picked up the gun Logan had been holding just moments earlier, his insurance against Esta’s probable attempt at escape, and pocketed it. “I think you’d better come with us. The boss is going to want to see you.”
Jerked and pressed along, there was no choice but to walk—walk and curse Esta and her damn treachery the whole way.
THE SIREN
1902—New York
Jack Grew had had enough of the constant coddling and fussing of his mother after two days. After five, he was finished completely, so he moved himself back into his own set of rooms. It had given him some peace, not having a constant parade of maids and doctors checking on him, and also some space from the rest of his family, who seemed always to be showing up to remind him about the next interview or appointment they’d arranged.
They were always doing the arranging. Never asking. Never consulting. Only demanding, and he was damn well sick of it. Now, at least, he had time to pour himself into deciphering the Ars Arcana.
When the clock struck eight, its long, sonorous chimes dragged Jack from his stupor. He blinked a few times, trying to remember where he was or what he had been doing. On the table in front of him, the Book was lying open, the page filled with symbols and markings in a language he didn’t recognize.
Right. He’d been reading. Or he’d been trying to.
He rubbed at his eyes. He’d sat down not long after five to wade through a page of Greek and must have fallen asleep at some point. That was the thing he’d discovered about the Book—when he was studying it, time seemed to have no real meaning. He’d often wake in the morning, still dressed in the clothes he had been wearing the night before, his neck aching from sleeping upright in a chair, and the Book open in front of him.
Or perhaps that was simply an effect of the morphine, he thought dully, even as the ache in his head made him grimace. Taking the vial from his pocket, he removed a cube of the morphine and popped it into his mouth, cringing at the bitterness of it. But a few moments later the pain started to fade.
Not quickly enough, he thought, placing two more of the bitter cubes into his mouth. A little while longer, maybe, and he’d stop using the painkiller. He wasn’t some damn soldier who couldn’t give it up. It hadn’t been that long, he thought, his mind already softening and growing clearer. It simply took time, he told himself as he turned back to the Book.
It wasn’t the ringing of the clock that brought him out of his stupor the second time. No. That was a different bell altogether.
He blinked, his head still swirling pleasantly and the pain in his head feeling very far away. He went to rub his eyes only to discover that his hand held a pen. The Book was still open, but now the page that had been completely incomprehensible before was filled with notations . . . and they were in his own hand.
Not just notations. Translations. And he didn’t recall writing any of it.
The bell was still ringing.
The doorbell. Sam Watson. He’d almost completely forgotten about the appointment his uncle had made for another interview. The first one had been a complete waste of time, but apparently the Order felt that they needed to put a word in the ear of the press about the gala, and they were using Sam—and Jack—to do it.
Jack groaned as he closed the Book with a violent snap. The pages rippled, bouncing with the force of it. The bell—and Watson—could damned well wait, he thought as he took the Book into his bedroom and secured it in the safe. He took two more cubes of morphine to dampen the pain that was already shooting through his head from the incessant ringing of the bell. Then he went to the door.