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Maggie stepped forward. “We don’t have time for arguing. We’ll sort everything out later—after we get out of this mess.”
“There isn’t any way out of this,” North told Maggie. “Once this train stops, we’ll be surrounded. Hell, we’re already surrounded.” He rubbed his hand over the coppery stubble on his jaw, his expression tight.
“There’s always a way,” Esta said, considering their options. “Give me a minute to think.”
“Think all you want, but it won’t help any,” North said, trying to sound like he was in control of the situation, but there was a note in his voice that betrayed his fear. He swallowed hard, his throat working as his mismatched eyes met hers. “I’ve seen what happens with crowds like that. You can’t reason with them, and you can’t outrun them.”
“After what we did…” Maggie’s voice trailed off like she was remembering everything that had happened the night before. She grasped North’s arm to steady herself. “When they find us—”
Esta understood Maggie’s fear. Maggie had seen firsthand what had happened to the people they’d doused with Ruth’s serum in St. Louis. She’d watched their magic awaken, and then she’d watched them die. She had every reason to be worried.
“There’s no reason for them to find us,” Esta said. They were still Mageus, weren’t they? The two of them were Antistasi, for goodness’ sake, and wasn’t she the Devil’s Thief?? Maybe Esta didn’t have her cuff, but they weren’t powerless. They weren’t without options. “You have your watch, don’t you?” Esta asked North.
“What about it?” he said with a frown.
North’s watch didn’t tell time; it changed it. In St. Louis, they’d used his watch to try to undo the damage they’d done. It had all been too little and too late, but it didn’t have to be too late now.
“Use it,” Esta told North. “Take us forward, once this has all cleared out.”
“That’s not how the watch works.” His mouth pressed itself into a flat line. “We’re on a moving train. Even if we weren’t, I can’t go farther ahead than I’ve already been. I wouldn’t know where I might land.”
“You can’t see where you’ll end up when you use that thing?” Esta asked. It was a limit that Ishtar’s Key didn’t have. When Esta slipped through time with the cuff, she could see where she was going. She could find the right moment in the layers of years, like picking out a single word on the page of a book.
For a second Esta considered leaving, like she’d intended to before she’d seen the riders. Maybe North’s watch couldn’t save them, but there wasn’t anything stopping Esta from pulling the seconds slow and slipping away. Maybe if she wasn’t with them, North and Maggie would have a fighting chance. After all, Jack had only seen her and Harte in St. Louis. Without the necklace, there would be no proof that the two Antistasi had been involved in anything at all. Maybe without her they would be okay. But “maybe” wasn’t enough for Esta to bet on.
If they had been seen together on the train, North and Maggie would still be targets. Esta couldn’t walk away. She owed them too much—for standing against Ruth, for being willing to leave the Antistasi, for trying to help save the ball from Ruth’s serum, and maybe most of all for saving Harte when Esta had been pulled under by Seshat’s terrible power, helpless to do anything at all.
If North couldn’t use his watch, there was only one way Esta could see to get out of the mess they were in. It meant breaking the rule that she lived by.
Never show them what you are. Never show them what you can do.
Professor Lachlan’s words came back to Esta then, unwanted and unwelcome but true just the same. She hadn’t even shown the truth of her affinity to Harte until that day on the bridge, when it had been a choice between revealing what she could do or letting a bullet take his life. There wasn’t any bullet speeding toward them this time—not literally—but the danger was every bit as real.
The memory of the shadow she’d seen moments before rose, but Esta pushed it aside. It was only nerves or exhaustion. Nothing more. Seshat’s power was in Harte, and Harte wasn’t there.
Esta straightened her shoulders. “I can get us out,” she told them. She only hoped they would all live long enough for her to regret what she was about to do.
THE COLD WITHIN
1904—A Train Heading West
Harte Darrigan leaned his head against the frame of the train’s window and watched the continent pass by. He took every bit of it in—the long sweep of boundless plains that eventually climbed into mountainous terrain and then finally leveled itself out in the west. Once, he would have betrayed anyone and given up anything to have this view. Now, he knew that whatever possibility those wide-open spaces might hold, they were not for him. Maybe they never had been.
The bench seat beneath him was hard and nothing like the comfort of the Pullman berth he’d woken in the night before. Harte had been shaken from the soundness of sleep by the terrible dream he’d been having. In it, he’d been standing over a pit of vipers. He’d started to back away but had stopped short when he’d noticed something trapped within the writhing snakes: an arm. Then he’d realized the arm was Esta’s. He hadn’t thought or hesitated. He’d jumped into the pit with only one thought in his mind—to save her—but the snakes had quickly wrapped around him and began to pull him under as well.
When he woke, it had taken Harte a moment to realize that it wasn’t a serpent wrapped around him but Esta’s arms. Even once he understood that he was safe—that she was safe—his heart had continued to race. It was only as he focused on Esta—the warmth of her arms, the closeness of her face tucked into the crook of his neck—that Harte had started to breathe again. Esta had smelled lightly of sweat and the smoke from Maggie’s devices, but beneath the grime of what they’d been through was an essence that was so undeniably her. For a moment Harte had simply lain there, willing away the vividness of the dream, but the second he’d started to truly relax into Esta’s warmth, Seshat had lurched, rattling at the thin boundary that kept the ancient goddess from overtaking him completely.
Maybe he should have thrown himself from the speeding train and ended the danger Seshat posed right then and there, but Harte knew he couldn’t, not yet. Not as long as the artifacts were out there, unprotected in the world, where Nibsy might retrieve them, and especially not when Jack Grew had the Book. Or rather, Harte remembered, the thing that lived inside Jack had it. Thoth. The very being that had trapped Seshat thousands of years ago in an attempt to take magic for himself was inside Jack now, pulling his strings in ways that Harte didn’t yet understand.
It was Harte’s own fault that the Book had ended up in Jack’s hands—in Thoth’s hands—and it was his responsibility to fix that mistake. But the danger Seshat posed to Esta was too real to ignore. Harte had known he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t risk losing her, not like that.
He had untangled himself from Esta’s arms, and as the train slowed, pulling into some unknown station, he’d slipped the beaded bracelet onto Esta’s wrist and touched her cheek softly, letting his affinity flare, just a little. He’d barely made contact when Seshat surged again, and it had taken everything Harte had to pull his magic back. His affinity had suddenly felt like something raw and untamed. Like something apart from himself that he could not completely control. He’d drawn back his hand, but not quickly enough. Esta had flinched in her sleep, pulling away from his touch.
Harte hadn’t dared to touch her again. Even though Seshat seemed to recede, he could sense her anger at being denied once more.
He shook off the memory as the train sped along and told himself that leaving Esta had been the only way to protect her. He told himself that it would be faster this way. He would retrieve the Dragon’s Eye for her, and then he’d meet her at the bridge. They would each find one of the missing stones, and then they’d find each other. Harte only hoped that Esta would come to understand, and that she wouldn’t kill him when she found him.
It wasn’t like she wouldn’t have a good reason. The weight of her cuff tucked into his inside jacket pocket felt far heavier than the small piece of jewelry should have, as though his guilt was adding to its burden. It was, perhaps, the worst of all his betrayals.
