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“Shhhh,” Cela said. “You don’t mean that.”
The white girl turned on her. “I do. I mean it.” She looked at Viola. “Theo was only mixed up with the Order because of you. Because you and your friends needed to steal some stupid artifact from them. I know all about what you did. He told me how he helped you, how he put himself at risk for you.”
“I tried to stop him,” Viola said, her voice breaking. “I never wanted him to risk himself for us.”
“But he did, didn’t he?” The girl’s voice turned hollow. “He saw what you were doing as some silly adventure. He thought he was helping his friends. But you were never his friend. You never should have let him put himself at risk. That’s why Jack Grew came after us today, because of what happened last June. All because of you and your friends. And you don’t even have the Delphi’s Tear to show for it. The Order still wins. Jack still wins. Theo would be alive right now if he’d never gotten mixed up with the likes of you. Theo died for nothing.”
The viciousness in the girl’s voice nearly had Cela leaving her to fend for herself. But Ruby was leaning on her too much to let her go, and Cela understood what grief could do to a person’s tongue.
But it was too late to defuse the situation. She watched the color drain from Viola’s face and her violet eyes go glassy with tears. There wasn’t time to step forward and comfort Viola. She rushed from the room before Cela could take one step to stop her.
Before Cela could go after Viola, the girl collapsed. Her legs went right out from under her like the porcelain doll she appeared to be. Cela slid down with her, wrapping her arms around the girl, who was quivering now like a leaf in the wind.
“I didn’t mean it,” Ruby whispered, and then she burst into tears.
“Hush,” Cela soothed. “It’s going to be okay.”
The girl let out a shuddering sob. “No, it’s not. She’s going to hate me.”
“Viola doesn’t hate you,” Cela said, thinking of the pain and especially of the longing in Viola’s eyes every time she’d looked Ruby’s way. “Viola’s been nothing but nerves since she dragged you in here, all because she’s worried about you. She’ll be back soon enough, once she cools off. And then you two can make nice. You’ll see.”
She finally got the girl calmed down and helped her out of the wilted white dress. For a long time, they waited together in the halo thrown by the oil lamps all night for some kind of news, but when the first rooster crowed, neither Viola nor Jianyu had returned.
PART IV
ADRIFT
1902—Central Park
One second, Harte had been stuck in the tunnel, trapped between two lines of the Guard that had pinned them in, and the next, he was falling through time. At the same instant he’d felt a blast of icy energy from the Guards’ fog, the heat of Esta’s magic flashed through him. The ground disappeared beneath them, and he felt himself tumbling into nothing. Time tore at him until he thought there was no way he would survive it. He knew this was it. Time would rip him apart. And then the pain grew so great that he wished it would.
He didn’t even realize Esta’s hand was no longer in his, not at first. He landed hard, unable to stop himself from slamming into the unforgiving ground. His head was still spinning, and his stomach felt as though it would turn itself inside out.
It felt worse every damn time it happened, and this time he couldn’t stop himself from retching. After his stomach was completely emptied and his mouth tasted like a Bowery gutter, he finally began to catch his breath. Only then did he realize he was alone.
Harte scrambled to his feet, nearly falling over because of the dizziness still plaguing him, but Esta was nowhere to be seen. The Guards were gone, but so was she.
Beyond the trees, the city had changed. The enormous buildings that had swept the clouds had now disappeared. In their place, the city of the past had returned. It looked like his city. It sounded like his city as well—there was no squealing of sirens, and the steady rumble of automobiles had drowned away to nothing. The clip-clop of horse hooves had him scrambling to the edge of the tunnel.
Dakari.
But it wasn’t Dakari’s white open carriage on the road that ran over the tunnel. Instead, a wooden coal wagon plodded along, pulled by a mismatched pair of old nags. Harte realized then that the trees were nearly bare. The last of late autumn’s gold clung to a few of their branches instead of the lush spring greens he’d been expecting.
This wasn’t the plan.
They’d intended to slip back as close as possible to when they’d left—not long after Khafre Hall and the events on the bridge. They knew they would need time to use the Book and fix the Brink, to discover if their plan with Dakari had worked, and to try to stop both Jack and Nibsy. They knew, too, that they had to stop the rumors of the Devil’s Thief. It should have still been late spring. The air should have been warm with the promise of the sweltering summer to come. But it wasn’t. The wind kicked up, and a clutch of dried leaves swirled around his feet, thickening the air with the scent of their rot. The coolness in the breeze spoke of winter and snow.
He didn’t know when this was, but he knew Esta was gone. If he happened to find himself in a time she couldn’t reach—
No. It wasn’t possible that he’d lost her. As soon as Ishtar’s Key cooled enough to travel again and as soon as whatever was in that fog wore off, she would come. She had to come.
He waited late into the night. At some point, he drifted off to sleep, and he woke the next morning chilled to the bone and shivering from the overnight frost. But he still didn’t leave, because leaving meant accepting, and he wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet. Not ever. He kept watch all through the day. Waiting. Knowing the world would right itself. That Esta would appear.
Near twilight, he realized he had an audience—a small newsboy who’d stopped to stare.
“You okay, mister?” The boy’s hat was askew, and he had a bruise beneath his eye that had turned a yellow-green.
“No,” Harte told him. Because the truth of what had happened was beginning to become undeniable. “Not even a little.”
