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She saw the doubt in Harte’s eyes, the worry. “The stones, Esta. How are we supposed to touch them here? Nibsy has the ring, and Jack has the dagger. That’s at least two that we know for sure will disappear the second they’re out of the Book.”
“Don’t you see?” She kissed him again, unable to stop the joy from bubbling up within her. “The sigils are the answer—to finishing Thoth and to using Seshat’s power. I felt it, Harte. The boundary they make cuts off everything, even time. We can use them to take the artifacts out of the Book, and then we can complete the ritual. We can unite magic and time, and we can finish this once and for all.”
Harte still looked unmoved. “We don’t have to rush anything.”
“You know that isn’t true,” she whispered. “This has to be done. Before the Conclave.”
He didn’t have an argument for that. He knew what the diary she’d taken from Nibsy foretold: the deaths of Jianyu and Viola. Esta’s as well. He refused to let that particular future come to be.
“If we find Jack before the Conclave, we can use the sigils to trap Thoth within them, and I can eliminate the threat he poses.”
“And once we trap the demon?” Viola asked. “Then can I kill the bastardo who murdered Theo?”
Ruby took Viola’s hand and gave her a watery-eyed look of approval.
“I’m not sure it’s going to be that easy,” Esta told her as she remembered the sickening suck of the dagger sliding into Jack’s chest and the way he’d looked at her—him, not Thoth—right before he died in Chicago. They couldn’t risk making him a martyr as she had before. “If we’re the ones who kill Jack, it’s only going to reinforce how dangerous people with the old magic are.”
“What do I care what people think?” Viola asked. “I care only that Jack would be dead.”
Ruby murmured her agreement, but Esta knew she was right about this. “Jack’s the least of our problems. We can take care of Thoth, but the Brink is more important. If I’m right, these sigils could be the answer. We could do what Dolph always wanted to do. If we use the Book, we can stabilize the Brink before the Conclave. We cut the Order off at the knees and take away the danger Jack presents at the same time.”
“It’s true, then?” Jianyu said. “You have the Book and the artifacts within it?”
Esta nodded. “We have everything. We can end this.” She walked over to where she’d left the satchel on a chair in the corner and brought it to the large kitchen table as the others gathered around. She unfastened the satchel and took out the first-aid kit and other supplies so she could remove the thick white towel they’d wrapped the Book in early that morning before they left the Plaza.
Even before she touched it, she had the sense that something was wrong. Her hands began shaking as she removed the towel from the bag. The second she grabbed it, she knew there was nothing inside, but her brain refused to accept it. Even once she unwrapped the folded towel, she didn’t want to believe it. But there was no denying the truth. Inside the towel, there was nothing but dark ash.
Everything was gone. The Book, the artifacts within it, and any hope they had of ending this.
Esta shook out the towel, certain that it would reveal the Ars Arcana if she just willed it hard enough, like a magician revealing a trick. Nothing but ash tumbled out.
“Well?” Viola demanded. “Where is it? Where’s the Book of Mysteries?”
A feeling of unbelievable dread was coursing through Esta as she looked at the empty towel. “We should have realized,” Esta whispered, still too struck by the horror of what had happened to fully process it.
They had been so careful. They had planned and schemed and found the answers they needed. They had known not to cross the stones, but why hadn’t they considered that the Book itself might follow the same rules?
Why would they have considered that? They couldn’t have known, because unlike the stones in the artifacts, the Book had never crossed with itself through time. Not until now.
“It’s gone,” she said, her voice hollow with defeat. “It was here. We had it. We had everything, but now it’s gone. And the artifacts are gone with it.”
They had no Book and no artifacts, save the cuff around Esta’s arm. And there was no guarantee that Dakari would take on what they’d asked of him—no guarantee he’d even made it out of the park before the Guards found him. They might never know if they could take Nibsy out of the equation.
No, it wasn’t exactly where they’d started. Somehow, it felt worse.
“The Book isn’t gone,” Jianyu told her. “It’s here, in the city. With Jack. I saw it not even a week ago.”
“Jianyu’s right,” Harte said. “If Jack is here, then the Book is as well. We can still get it back from him. We can still stop him, Esta. And now that we have the sigils, we can destroy Thoth.”
That thought buoyed her spirits, but only a little. Because it wasn’t enough. The version of the Book with Jack wasn’t their Book. It wouldn’t contain the artifacts or the angry goddess who had been trapped within the pages of that other Book.
“But what about the artifacts?” she asked. “They’re still out there. Without them, there’s no chance of stabilizing the Brink. Even if we had them, Seshat’s gone.”
Her eyes met Harte’s, and she knew that he understood exactly what she meant.
Without Seshat, there was no way to fix the Brink—not without sacrificing herself.
PART V
