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Esta handed Harte the other pistol she’d been holding. With time pulled slow, she wouldn’t need it. Then she held out her hand for Everett.
“I still don’t like this,” North said, stepping forward.
“That’s because you got old,” she told him dryly. “You’ve lost all your sense of adventure.” But there was an emotion in his eyes—a fear that Esta knew she might never understand—and it made her soften a little. There wasn’t really a version of her story that she could see ending with the sort of consequences that North and Maggie had to watch over. “I’ll take care of him, North. I promise.”
It felt like an odd promise to make since Everett was no child. He was a couple of years younger than Esta herself, but he was more than tall enough to feel like her equal.
“Ready?” she asked, and when Everett gave her a determined nod, she reached for her affinity and left the others suspended in time.
“It’s quite a trick you can do there,” Everett said, clearly trying to cover his unease with a little bravado.
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged off the unspoken question. “I’m more interested in seeing what sort of tricks you can do.”
Once they were back inside the market, Esta saw that the destruction had progressed. More of the stalls were being consumed by the strange flames that filled the space both with the heat of fire’s normal oxidation and the icy energy that was the mark of unnatural magic. It felt the same as standing too close to the Brink, and considering what the explosion had done to the Quellant that should have still been in Harte’s system, she didn’t have any desire to get close enough to the flames to test them.
Esta gave Everett a small jerk of her head, indicating that she’d follow his lead. Together they went to the first of the masked men, and she watched as he examined the weapon. He reached out to touch it, but she pulled him back.
“Don’t,” she warned. “We don’t need company.”
He gave her a small nod, like he understood, but paused to study the piece before carefully placing one of the small devices on the metal tank strapped to the first man’s back. “I don’t want to activate it now,” he told her. “Not unless we want to get caught up in them going off—I mean, they won’t hurt us, but they might make it more complicated. It would be best to set them off all at once and then get the hell out of the way.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she told him.
She studied the room as Everett led the way to the next masked figure. The flames were still undulating, slow and steady as they continued to burn, and all around, the Nitemarket was being consumed. People had started to flee almost immediately, or else they’d started to gather their merchandise in a feeble attempt to save what they could, but one person caught her eye.
Esta hadn’t noticed him at first, but she recognized Dom standing not far from where the four of them had been when the attack originally broke out. He had a look of sheer fury on his face, and in his hand he held a bottle that looked like a Molotov cocktail. Apparently, he thought he could fight all five men with a single homemade bomb.
“How much does your dad like Dom?” Esta asked as Everett finished laying the last device. She pointed to where the rotund old man was standing, a portrait of rage and vengeance.
Everett shrugged. “From what I understand, he doesn’t necessarily trust him, but Dom’s a pretty dependable buyer. They go back quite a few years. My mom, on the other hand… she hates him.”
Esta could see why. Something about Dom gnawed at her. She had the sense that he knew more than he was letting on, but she also had the feeling that leaving him behind would be a mistake. “Let’s bring him with us.”
She made sure to take the bottle from him before pulling him into the net of her affinity, which turned out to be a smart move, since he startled when she touched him. Thankfully, Dom didn’t pester her with questions. His eyes narrowed as he took in his situation—her and Everett, the bomb now in her hands, and the world around them, silent and still—and seemed to accept it at once.
“I thought you looked familiar,” he told her.
Esta shrugged off his comment. “I have a very ordinary face.”
“You have a very famous face,” Dom countered. But he didn’t press. “I take it this is a rescue?”
“Of sorts,” she agreed. “Follow along, and we’ll be out of here in a second.”
The three of them moved together—awkwardly at first and then increasingly with more coordination—until they reached the masked men. Once they were past them, Everett took another small device from his pocket—an object that looked like nothing more than an ordinary lighter.
“Is there a way to release time and get things moving again?” he asked.
“I promised your father I’d keep you safe,” she reminded him.
“It’ll only take a second. I want to be sure that the devices work,” he added when she hesitated to answer.
She didn’t love the idea. With the rest of the world frozen in the net of time, they were safe, but Everett had a point. It had been enough of a risk to come back that it made sense to make sure the risk had been worth it.
“Fine, but only for a second,” Esta said, hoping that she didn’t come to regret it. “Keep ahold of me, just in case.”
Everett nodded, and carefully, Esta released the seconds. Confusion swarmed around them again, but neither Everett nor Dom so much as flinched. With a flick of his thumb, Everett struck the flint wheel of the lighter and a flame appeared. It took less than a second for the devices that he’d placed on the masked men to spark, and a second later the devices were crackling as blue-white smoke began to flow from them, billowing around them until they were almost obscured.
The masked men immediately realized that something had happened and turned, trying to find the source of the smoke, but before they could do more than twist, the smoke surrounding them began to solidify, and within seconds, they were each encased, head to toe, within a shell of hardened foam. The flames from their weapons died almost immediately, but not the flames that were still consuming the market itself.
