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“I’m going to need you to drive as straight as you can. And whatever you do, don’t let me go,” Esta told her.
Cela blinked at her in confusion. “What are you—”
But Esta was already leaning far over the front lip of the driver’s perch. She tightened her grip on Cela’s hand and leaned forward to touch the back flank of the horse. As soon as her fingers brushed the coarse hair of the animal, she reached for time. Using all her concentration and strength, she slowed the seconds.
Cela gasped, and the wagon started to slow.
“No!” Esta shouted. “Keep driving. Steady as you can.”
Her hand was damp with sweat, and her skin felt warm with the effort of holding on to Cela and the seconds, all while keeping a precarious balance over the front of the wagon. When they hit a pothole and slid a little through the snow-covered street, Esta nearly lost her grip, but she fought hard to keep them all—herself and Cela and the horse—in the net of her power. By the time they’d put entire blocks between them and whoever was following them, Esta was damp with sweat. The icy winter air lashed at her face, but she ignored the sting of it.
As they rounded another corner, she realized they were close to Washington Square. The arch wouldn’t be built there for years to come, but it was easy enough to recognize with its stately homes and manicured pathways. Exhausted, she pushed away from the horse and fell backward onto the driver’s perch as the world slammed into motion around her.
Cela tossed a disconcerted look in her direction. “What was that?”
“Hopefully enough to get us away,” Esta said, looking back around the side of the wagon. The streets held the occasional carriage or wagon, but they seemed to have lost whoever had been chasing them.
“Well? Any sign of them?” Cela asked.
Esta looked again, and this time she noticed the logo of the newspaper emblazoned on the side of the wagon. “We can’t go back to the Age,” she told Cela. “If they saw the name on the wagon, they’ll know where to find us.”
Cela’s eyes widened. “We have to go back. We can’t just leave Joshua and the rest to fend for themselves,” Cela said. “They need to know that trouble is coming. We have to warn them.”
“We will,” Esta promised. “But first we have to get Jianyu somewhere safe.”
Fear tightened Cela’s features, and she looked torn between two terrible options. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“Really bad,” Esta told her gently. “I want to make sure your friends at the newspaper are safe, but that bracelet Tom Lee put on him is still changing. I think it’s going to kill him if we don’t get it off.”
Cela’s mouth pressed into a thin line. She looked like a woman at war with herself. “Can we get it off?”
“I think there’s a way, but we can’t do it in the back of this wagon,” Esta told her. “Is there somewhere else we could go? Somewhere safe?”
Cela nodded. “There’s a safe house we’ve been using for the people we’ve rescued from the Order.” She still looked torn in two, but she turned the wagon west and headed toward the water.
The building they stopped next to looked like any other tenement in the city—drab brick with uneven steps, fire escapes cluttered with clothing despite the freezing weather, and windows covered by white curtains. But there was something about the place that set Esta’s teeth on edge, something that made her want to turn around and go the other direction.
“Where are we?” Esta asked, following Cela down from the driver’s perch.
Cela busied herself with securing the horse and wagon. “You’ll see soon enough.”
When they opened the back of the wagon, Jianyu looked worse than he had a few minutes before. The blood was nothing now compared to the veining darkness that was creeping steadily up his arm. Climbing ever closer to his heart.
Esta sensed Cela coming up behind her, and she felt fear in the other girl’s sharp intake of breath at the sight of Jianyu and his arm.
They helped him down, but when Jianyu saw where they were, he began to panic. “No, Cela. We have to leave. This is far too dangerous,” he argued. “We can’t risk leading our enemies here. If the Order or Nibsy or anyone knew of this place—”
“It’s the only place I could think of,” Cela told him. “It’s been safe for months now.”
“I cannot risk them—”
“You’re going to have to,” Cela snapped. “You don’t have a choice.”
Esta wasn’t sure what the subtext of their conversation was, but they didn’t have time to argue, not with how much worse Jianyu’s arm currently looked. “She’s right. We need to get that thing off you, and it needs to happen now.”
Jianyu was still trying to argue and fight against Harte’s support, but the pain he was in was making it difficult.
“It will be safe here,” Viola said. “There’s no reason to think otherwise. But that wagon, it will give us away.”
