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“You should go on without me,” he said, still staring at her offered hand. Her fingers were long and graceful, the fingers of a pickpocket who’d never been caught. “It isn’t worth the risk.”
“You’ve already taken the Quellant,” she said. “If it’s not going to work, better to know now.”
Before he could stop her, Esta grabbed his hand. Her skin felt warm and soft as her fingers closed around his, and then the sound of the room drained away, leaving the world silent, and then… nothing. Seshat didn’t so much as shift inside of him. The emptiness grated against his already weak body, but for the first time in ages, he felt only himself.
“It worked,” Harte whispered, barely able to believe it could be possible. It had been so long since he had touched anyone without holding back, but it had been especially too long since he’d touched Esta. He tightened his fingers around hers, afraid to let himself wonder what this new development meant for him. Maybe, just maybe, this was actually an answer. Maybe it could buy him a little more time, because now that he wasn’t dead and gone, Harte Darrigan realized again how much he wanted to live.
Esta let out a shaking breath that made him suspect she’d been every bit as nervous and unsure. “You know what this means?” she asked.
It meant that he could kiss her again.…
“I can take you back to 1902,” Esta said, apparently thinking of something else entirely. “We can stop the Thief and the Antistasi and the Defense Against Magic Act. We can set everything back the way it’s supposed to be. We can make things right.”
Harte tried to ignore the pang of disappointment he felt at her words. But Esta was right. They should be focusing on what they’d set out to do, not on what it would feel like to press his mouth against hers. But then another thought occurred to him.
“Esta, you know we can’t cross the stones,” he told her.
“If we can get the Book back from Jack, we won’t have to,” she told him. “We can use it to—”
“How are we even supposed to find Jack? It’s been nearly fifty years!”
“You know about that,” Esta said, looking suddenly uneasy.
“I know,” Harte agreed. “But I don’t understand why.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she explained. “You were so sick, and you needed antibiotics—penicillin. It’s a type of drug that can cure infections, even really awful infections, like the one you had.” Esta pressed her lips together before she spoke again, more determined now. “It was the only way, Harte.”
“You could have left me there,” he told her. “You should have. If I died, Seshat would have disappeared right along with me. It would have been so much easier—”
“Don’t,” Esta told him, her voice sharp now. “Don’t you dare say that I should have just sat there and watched you die. You are not negotiable. Not for me.”
He stared at her, shocked by the emotion in her voice, and fought the urge to argue that she was wrong. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Greedy bastard that he was, Harte wanted her to feel for him even a small bit of what he felt for her. He wanted her to need him, wanted to be needed. Not for the cuff he’d taken, but for himself.
The truth was that no one had ever needed him—not his mother or Paul Kelly. Not even Dolph Saunders. They’d each needed his power. They’d needed what he could do for them. He understood now that he’d taken Esta’s cuff because he’d been worried that he, alone, wouldn’t be enough to draw her back. But her words erased that worry. She hadn’t come back for the cuff. She’d come back for him.
Harte wished that he could freeze this moment, or bottle the feeling bubbling up inside of him. Even for a little while. Because he knew it couldn’t possibly last.
“That goes both ways, you know,” he said when he finally trusted himself to speak without betraying everything he felt.
He thought that he’d succeeded in hiding the true depth of his emotions. His voice had been steady, easy even, but suddenly Esta’s cheeks went pink and her eyes went soft.
“We’ll figure it out,” she told him. She was already pulling away from him, as though the terrible rawness of the moment had been too much for her. “Seshat and the Book and the artifacts—we’ll figure out all of it. But first we need to get out of here.”
Still holding his hand, Esta pushed the chair into the hallway and then through the hospital’s corridors. Their gleaming white floors were filled with nurses in skirts so short that not even madams would have worn them in public. Esta released time long enough to take the elevator down, and Harte couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t an operator in the empty car. Esta simply pressed one of the buttons that lined a panel near the door, and the machine began to move.
The nurses, the machinery, they were all indications of how much the world had changed in the years he’d lost. In the years I’ve gained, he thought ruefully. Forty-eight years. A lifetime.
As the doors opened at the bottom floor, the world went quiet again, and Esta pushed Harte through the still, silent lobby, dodging around people frozen in time. Harte didn’t miss the men Esta had noticed arriving earlier. They were unmistakable with their dark suits. Familiar silver medallions gleamed on their lapels, and at the sight of them, Esta moved faster.
“Did you see them?” she asked, as she continued on toward the hospital’s exit.
“You were right. They look like trouble.”
“But did you see what they were wearing?” she asked. “Those medallions on their coats?”
“Like the Jefferson Guard,” Harte realized. “Do you think it’s the Society? It’s been so long.…”
“Maybe, but it could be any one of the other Brotherhoods,” Esta said. “What we did in St. Louis brought them together back in 1904. It doesn’t look like much has changed in nearly fifty years,” she told him, grimacing.
