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“This is a device that the Jefferson Guard developed back in St. Louis. The Veiled Prophet Society uses them to detect feral magic,” Hendricks explained. “And now… so shall the Vigilance Committee.”
Cooke seemed suddenly more interested. “The Society sent this?” He frowned, turning the medallion over.
“As I said, we’re stronger together against a common enemy. The Society believes this. I hope that the Vigilance Committee will come to believe it as well. Withholding from one another only weakens us all. Distribute them to your men with my compliments and thanks,” Jack told Cooke. “They’ll offer some protection against the Thief’s feral magic and against any maggots who might think to help her. We can’t let the Thief get away from us,” he warned. “For the good of the country.”
“For the good of the country,” Cooke agreed.
They finally pushed through the crowds at the docks, and Cooke led them to an open-air carriage. The hills of San Francisco were barely visible through the murk of the cloudy day.
He would need to spend time with Cooke and the rest of the Vigilance Committee later, once this was all over, Jack thought. With Cooke under his influence, the Committee would likely be valuable allies in the future, but for now Jack was only interested in one thing—obtaining the artifact that was waiting for him, and making the damn magician sorry for ever crossing him.
“Now,” Jack said. “About the other issue you wanted to discuss with me…” He took another cube of morphine and let it fortify him for what was to come.
A PREMONITION
1904—San Francisco
The journey to California took Esta three interminable days. As the train cut through the country, she didn’t know how much of a head start Jack might have had from Denver. She had no way of knowing if she’d be in time to reach Harte before anyone else could, but a new scar had appeared on her wrist. Considering that the scar had appeared somewhere in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, Esta figured Nibsy also knew that she’d managed to escape his reach in Denver. If he knew that, it was also likely that Cordelia had already notified Nibsy and the rest of the network about where Harte had been heading.
The scar formed a single word—clavis—but beneath that word there was a line of strange markings. Esta understood what the word meant— “key.” It was Nibsy’s way of ordering her to return with the cuff, but the markings were a puzzle. They seemed oddly familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she might have seen them before, and she didn’t know what they signified.
Even if Esta had any intention of bowing to Nibsy Lorcan’s demands—and she definitely didn’t—she didn’t have Ishtar’s Key. Until she found Harte, she wouldn’t have Ishtar’s Key, and she had a feeling that her arrival in California wouldn’t go as easily as she hoped. After all, they’d left the sharpshooter behind, basically tied up like a gift for the Brotherhoods. If the Brotherhoods had Cordelia, it was possible that they already knew everything that Nibsy knew. They might have already found Harte. They might already be waiting for Esta as well. Even if she managed to slip past all of that danger and find Harte, Cordelia knew their final destination, which meant that the Brotherhoods probably would as well. If they could manage to make it out of San Francisco, returning to Manhattan to retrieve the final artifact had now become more dangerous.
Of course, none of that would matter if Esta couldn’t reach Harte. From the way time had pulled her under, she now knew for sure that nothing would matter if she couldn’t retrieve her cuff.
By the time Esta boarded the Pacific Railroad’s ferry into San Francisco, she was both bone-tired and completely on edge. Each night she had tried to sleep on the train, but her dreams had taken her to the same tormented desert landscape, and every morning she awoke with the sand serpent rising, its fanged jaws wide to devour her. Surfacing from those dreams felt too much like coming back to herself after time had pulled her under in Denver. But the dreams also reminded her of Thoth’s mocking threat: You live on borrowed minutes. Time will take what it’s owed.
Esta no longer doubted that time itself had become a danger, like the serpent in her dreams, but as the train carried her onward, she realized that Thoth had given her an unexpected gift by revealing what the Book could do. The memory of Jack withdrawing the dagger from the pages of the Book had stuck with Esta as she’d run from Denver. She’d turned that image over in her mind instead of watching the landscape pass outside the train, and in the end she came to believe it was the solution that she had only dared to hope for.
The Ars Arcana was infused with a piece of pure magic. Seshat herself had revealed how she’d placed it there in those brittle pages an eon ago, but until Esta had watched Jack pull the dagger from the Book, she hadn’t realized what that truly meant. Thoth’s actions—his bragging—had demonstrated it more clearly than words could have possibly conveyed. The Book itself was a container of sorts. Its very pages could be used to take objects out of time. If she and Harte could get the Book, they could use it like Thoth had. They could place the artifacts outside of time and return back to 1902 without losing them.
And they could get the Book. Jack had told Esta that he was heading to California, hadn’t he? They would be in the same city. She would have another chance to take the Ars Arcana from him—as long as she found Harte before Jack did.
Esta hadn’t had any trouble at the station back in Oakland, but now that the ferry had finally shuddered to a stop, its engines rumbling beneath the steel decks as it came to rest next to the docks, she wondered if her luck would hold. The day was slightly overcast, but there was none of the famous fog she’d expected of the city. Even from that distance, she could see San Francisco huddled on the shore of the bay. It wasn’t the city she was used to seeing in movies and pictures. There was no Coit Tower, no skyscrapers. Beyond the jut of land, the mouth of the bay lay wide open, devoid of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which wouldn’t be built for decades to come.
As the other passengers began to move toward the exits, Esta wondered what she would find once she disembarked. Harte could already be gone. If she was wrong about what the episodes in Denver meant, he might not be in danger at all. He might already be traveling back to New York to find her. Even now he might be expecting her arrival, and when she didn’t come…
He would wait for me, Esta thought. If this trip to California turned out to be nothing but a wild-goose chase, she could be back to the bridge in a few days. Harte wouldn’t give up on her so quickly.
Esta tucked her coat around her and pulled the stolen hat farther down over her forehead as she followed the crush of people eager to leave the ship. She didn’t check her pocket, where she’d secured Maggie’s pouch, even though she wanted to. She wasn’t green enough to make herself a mark for pickpockets who might be casing the crowd.
As the travelers from the ferry began to filter into a line down the gangplank, Esta searched the dock for any sign of trouble. She’d almost relaxed when the glint of metal on a dark lapel caught her eye. A pair of men were waiting not far from the exit to the ferry’s dock, and they were both wearing medallions that looked too similar to the Jefferson Guard’s to be a coincidence. Esta didn’t know to which Brotherhood the men owed their allegiance, but it didn’t really matter. If these men had medallions from the Society, it meant that the Brotherhoods’ influence had already reached farther than she’d realized, all the way across the continent. Worse, it meant that they were expecting trouble—they were likely expecting her.
Esta hadn’t thought the trip to California would be easy, but these two men definitely complicated things. Stuck in the line of passengers on the narrow path of the gangplank, though, there was little she could do without drawing attention. If she used her affinity to get past the men, it would trigger the medallions. She’d be past the danger, but the medallions would alert the men to the magic she’d used. If these men were waiting for her specifically, as she suspected they were, it would only confirm her arrival. She couldn’t afford for the Brotherhoods to realize she’d arrived. Her affinity was always an option if push came to shove, but if she could avoid the men’s notice without using it, she would.
But maybe these two men could help her. Esta had no idea where to find Harte. She’d boarded a train to California knowing only that she had no other choice. Thoth had told her that Harte had been captured by some associates of his. If the men were linked to the Brotherhoods, perhaps they could lead her to Harte.
Esta trailed behind a group of businessmen down the gangplank, and once they’d reached the dock, she kept close to the group, hoping that anyone who saw her would assume she was one of them. Once she was past the men with the medallions, she could get herself into a better position. They wouldn’t wait at the docks forever, and when they left, she could follow them.
She was nearly past the men when a small boy appeared seemingly out of nowhere to tug on her jacket. She looked down at him, imagining him at first to be some kind of urchin trying to con travelers out of a few coins. His eyes were wide with an expression that looked strangely like surprise, considering he was the one who had approached her. There was something familiar about him, but she didn’t have time to figure out what it was.
“I don’t have anything,” she said, pulling away. But the words were no sooner out of her mouth than Esta’s vision blurred, and the boy flickered. He was there and then he wasn’t. It happened so quickly that she might have dismissed it as a trick of her tired eyes, except that she knew it wasn’t really the boy flickering. It was happening. Again.
Esta drew in an uneasy breath and held it, as though if she remained still for long enough, time would forget her debt. But her pulse was already racing, her skin clammy and damp with a cold sweat, and she felt the same panic she’d felt when she was chased by the sand serpent in her dreams, trying to outrun the impossible.
The world steadied a second later, but Esta didn’t lie to herself about what had just happened. She understood and accepted the warning for what it was, and she knew she couldn’t predict when time might open its jaws—like the serpent in her dream—and pull her under. She had the unmistakable premonition that there would be no waking from that if it happened again.
The boy was tugging at her again, but she jerked away once more and tried to push through the crowd to escape him.
