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The carriage stopped at the Morgan mansion, and Junior alighted. When Jack didn’t immediately follow, Junior turned to him. “The members of the Inner Circle are inside, along with the Princept. They require your presence.”
“Consider their message already delivered. I’m afraid I have other plans,” Jack said, keeping his voice pleasant.
Junior gave an exasperated sigh. “Come, Jack. Meeting with them now is the first step toward regaining their confidence.”
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly care whether the old goats of the Inner Circle have confidence in me or not,” Jack told him truthfully. “I actually do have another engagement—one I’d arranged before my arrival, as I wasn’t expecting company on my ride into the city.”
“Jack—”
“I’m finished dancing to their tune, Junior.” Jack pulled the door shut and knocked on the roof of the carriage, leaving Junior to deal with the Inner Circle and the rest of the Morgan clan without him.
As the carriage rattled on through the city, Jack took two cubes of morphine and crushed them between his teeth simultaneously. Finally. Little by little, the tension in his head eased, and as the morphine lit his blood, the Book grew warmer, like a brand against his chest.
Fifteen minutes later the carriage stopped again, and Jack descended into the grime of the seaport. The area around the docks was lined with weather-beaten warehouses and teemed with longshoremen and other laborers, who looked at Jack from the corner of their eyes as he made his way through the maze of buildings.
He’d been away for months, but the warehouse he rented stood as it ever had, far at the end of the line of other low-slung structures. Making quick work of the lock, he entered the dark, dust-filled building.
Looming in the center of the space, the remains of his once-glorious machine waited. Before he’d left for Cleveland, he’d managed to rebuild the base and had been working on one of the circular arms, but he hadn’t gotten much further. Now his progress was coated in dust.
He took the valise that had not left his side for the last few days and set it on the dusty tabletop. He didn’t even care that the fine leather was being marred by the grime, because the contents were far more important. He opened it and took out an object he’d obtained only a few days before. This was what had drawn Jack away from the post where his family had deposited him and out into the wilds of the country.
With satisfaction, he held the piece up in the flickering lamplight. The ornate dagger gleamed, and the unpolished garnet in the hilt seemed almost to glow from within. He thought he might understand why legend called it the Pharaoh’s Heart, because even now he could almost sense the throbbing power coming from the stone.
In a single, fluid motion, Jack brought the blade down, lodging it into the wood of the table. The stone in its hilt pulsed, blood red in the dim light of the warehouse, and Jack finally allowed himself to smile.
Let the Inner Circle believe what they wanted of him. They could try to push him out and keep him away, but they would inevitably fail. With the Book’s knowledge and the power caught inside the stone, he would finish what he’d started so many months before.
Whatever the Inner Circle said, he would be at the Conclave. They could try to push him out and keep him away, but they would inevitably fail. It was time to show them all exactly what he was capable of. He would build his machine and harness the power of the Book, and then, when the time was right, Jack Grew would show the Brotherhoods what true power was.
All he needed was a maggot strong enough to bring all his plans to life. Fortunately, he knew how to find one.
THOSE WHO ARE LEFT
1983—Grand Central Terminal
The icy winter air nipped at Harte’s cheeks, but he barely felt the cold. All around him, the world had frozen in time, caught in Esta’s magic. He had no idea where he was going as he tugged Esta along. All he knew was that they needed to get away.
“How was he able to do that?” Harte asked.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “He always could.”
The sidewalk was crowded with early-morning commuters, and Harte expected each person they passed to blink with night-dark eyes or break free from the hold Esta had on time. But no one did, and he didn’t slow until they’d gone two blocks. Finally, Esta stopped him.
“We have to keep moving,” he said.
“I know, but we can’t just run ourselves to exhaustion. We need a plan,” she told him, looking around as though to get her bearings. “I need to think.”
“How are we going to plan when Thoth could be anywhere?” he reminded her. “He can be anyone. And your affinity doesn’t touch him.”
“So we need to go somewhere there’s not a lot of people,” she murmured. Suddenly her expression shifted. “I know where we can go.”
She didn’t explain as she took the lead, guiding him through the maze of enormous buildings that had grown up since the early century. They dodged across streets, winding through stalled traffic, until suddenly they came to a building that looked like something from the past. The cream-colored stone facade was dingy with pollution and age, but unlike the boxy, window-covered structures around it, this particular building featured towering columns and arched windows. It was crowned with a large, ornately gilded clock. Above, winged statues watched over the streets below.
“Where are we going?” he asked, trying to get his bearings in a much-changed city. All around him, skyscrapers towered. The crown of one flashed a brilliant silver in the winter sun.
“Grand Central,” she told him.
On the other side of the doors, Harte found himself standing in a cavernous room topped with an arched ceiling. A train terminal. It was strangely gloomy for such a huge place, but perhaps that was because one wall of windows had been covered by a large advertisement for Kodak. Or maybe it was because the ceiling had been painted a dark cerulean blue. He thought he could almost make out the shape of constellations in the murkiness of the false sky, but he couldn’t tell beneath the soot and the age of the paint. On the far end of the station, crowning what must have been the entrance to the trains, a large illuminated clock waited in vain to advance the next second forward.
