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“Miss Esta?” His small, high voice carried over the din of the crowded docks, but Esta didn’t allow herself to turn back, not even when it registered what he had called her.
The scene in front of her flickered again. She saw the docks all around her and the shoreline beyond, cluttered with haphazard shack-like structures and teeming with people, and then they were gone. The city around it—past, present, and future—glimmered and flickered like a double-exposed image, unsteady and unmoored from her own moment in time.
Vaguely Esta was aware of someone shouting her name as the scene solidified again into the San Francisco of 1904. She turned, feeling like she was stuck in a dream as she watched the men with the medallions grab the boy. He was writhing and kicking as he tried to get away from them, and he was still shouting for her.
She didn’t know how he knew her name, and she didn’t care to wait around to figure it out. The men hadn’t seen her yet. They were too busy wrestling the kid, and Esta knew that she should use the distraction to her advantage. She turned to go, but the second she turned away from the men and the boy, the world flickered again. And she knew—the boy was important. She didn’t know who he was or how that could be, but she reached for her affinity anyway, pulling the seconds slow as she turned back. With each step she took toward him, her vision became clearer. The world became more stable and steady.
When she touched the boy and brought him into her net of time, he gasped and tried to pull away. Esta held tightly to his wrist as she dragged him away from the men and toward the mess of the city that lay beyond the docks. She didn’t stop until they’d traveled far past the ramshackle buildings near the water and were well into the city proper. It was the San Francisco from before the earthquake that would level it. With the stink of the sewers and the trash heaped in the streets, it felt like an untamed outpost of humanity, and it made even Old New York seem practically clean and modern by comparison.
Finally, when Esta thought they were far enough away, she released her hold on the seconds. This time the boy didn’t try to pull away again, but looked up at her, his eyes wide with something that might have been wonder. Or maybe it was fear, which would have made him smarter. He couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. He had a tousled head of dark-blond hair, and beneath his button nose, his mouth was pressed in a flat line. But there was no fear in his expression.
“Who sent you?” she asked, trying to decide if the boy was a threat.
He simply stared at her, not answering. Perhaps he didn’t know English?
“How did you know my name?” she demanded.
The child didn’t move, but Esta knew he understood. Keen intelligence sparked in his eyes, but it looked like he was trying to figure out a difficult puzzle.
“How did you know who I was?” she pressed. After all, she was dressed in men’s clothing. She didn’t look like a “Miss” at all.
Again she had the thought that there was something about him that seemed familiar. Something that made her pause. “Did Harte send you?”
The boy’s eyes widened as he nodded, and that was when Esta realized that his eyes were the same perfectly stormy gray as Harte’s.
“Where is he?” she asked, her stomach turning at the shadow that crossed the boy’s expression. “What’s happened to him?”
But the child only shook his head. “You have to come with me.”
TRUE POWER
1902—New York
When James Lorcan received yet another summons from Paul Kelly on a random Wednesday afternoon, he took his time about answering it. He knew that Kelly was only calling the meeting—a last-minute and unplanned meeting at that—to prove that he could. It was another volley in their battle of wills, and in return, James made sure to keep Kelly waiting, because James knew that he could.
Kelly might believe that he was the more powerful of the two of them—certainly, an argument could be made that Kelly’s Five Pointers were the wildest and most dangerous of the gangs in the Bowery—but James knew otherwise. He understood that true power moved best in invisible currents, like electricity… or like magic. Those who knew how to wield it, to hold it firmly in the palm of their hand, didn’t always require muscle and brawn. Often, they simply required a bit of patience—something Paul Kelly did not have.
Once he’d arrived at the Little Naples Cafe, James didn’t miss that Kelly did not so much as offer him a glass of water. He didn’t ask for one either, despite the growing warmth of the day. Instead, he waited for Kelly to finish the sandwich he’d been eating when James arrived and pretended that he hadn’t been pulled away from his own business.
Kelly finished finally, dabbed at his mouth delicately with his napkin, and then pushed the plate aside. “I have news.”
James inclined his head. “I figured as much.”
“Things are moving faster than we expected,” Kelly told him.
“How much faster?” James asked, allowing his affinity to unfurl a little to detect the way the Aether moved in response to this news. He might be working with Kelly, but James didn’t trust the gangster. He had no plans to allow Kelly to obtain the upper hand in their dealings.
“We originally thought the plans were to move the goods during the summer solstice,” Kelly said.
“They’re not?” The solstice had made sense. Sundren, like those in the Order, often believed the movement of the planets and stars had important meaning, but then, maybe they did for false magic. “Why the change?”
“Not a change, exactly,” Kelly said. “A misunderstanding. The Order is making their move on a solstice, but it’s not the one on the calendar. It’s a day they’re calling the Manhattan Solstice, whatever that means.”
“When?” James asked, because it was the only question that truly mattered.
“Not in late June, like we’ve been planning,” Kelly said, looking almost annoyed. “They’re planning on making the move on the twenty-eighth of May.”
“That’s only four days from now,” James said. He had been operating under the assumption that he still had time to prepare. He’d planned to bring Viola to heel and align his forces just so.
