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“The Quellant?” she asked, needing to touch him but knowing she couldn’t.
“Gone,” he said through gritted teeth. “She’s…” He groaned again, flinching from some unseen torture. “So angry. Can’t—” He doubled over again.
Desperate to help him, Esta pulled out the leather pouch Maggie had gifted her so many weeks before, the one filled with various magical concoctions. With half-frozen fingers, she fumbled open the clasp, but when she looked inside, she suddenly couldn’t breathe.
It’s gone. It’s all gone.
Everything inside the pouch had turned to powdery ash. The wind gusted, as if on cue, and she tried to clasp the pouch closed again to protect what was left. But she knew already that it was pointless. The incendiaries and Flash and Bangs—and most important of all, the Quellant—were gone. The Brink had taken everything. Incinerated all of it with its terrible power.
On her arm, her cuff felt icy hot, and she grasped the satchel that was slung diagonally against her chest. To her relief, the Book and the artifacts were still there. But without the Quellant…
Esta realized then that the sirens she’d been hearing for the last couple of minutes weren’t in the distance any longer. They were coming closer. Behind them on the bridge, she could still feel the warning of the Brink, a devastating cold over the chill of the winter air. Before her, the streets seemed more dangerous than they had been before. The air felt suddenly alive, as though the city itself knew they’d entered. As though it was angry with their trespass.
“We need to go,” she told Harte, her instincts prickling. The sirens were even louder now. They couldn’t be found there, trapped on the bridge with the Brink behind them and no way to retreat. “Can you walk?”
Harte nodded, but from the agony in his eyes and the way he held himself stiff and hunched against the pain, she wasn’t sure she believed him. But she couldn’t help him, either. She couldn’t even touch him without the Quellant to hold back Seshat.
Luckily, he was able to pull himself to his feet, and on unsteady legs he moved, lurching and stumbling next to her as they hurried along the remaining span of the bridge. They slipped and slid through the filthy slush covering the long, sloping walkway that led to the park where City Hall waited, white and sepulchral, in the snowy night. Even wearing the jacket Harte had given her, she wasn’t dressed for the cold, and with the thin leather of her soles already soaked through, she could no longer feel her toes. But the cold that chilled her to the core was more than the weather. The echoing reminder of the Brink’s energy still vibrated through her, a warning of what would happen to her affinity—to her very self—if ever she tried to leave the city again.
But somehow none of that mattered—not the slushy snow nor the ache in her frozen toes. Not even the unsettled fear that clung to her bones as sirens drew closer. All that mattered was Harte. Stumbling along beside her, he gasped and shook with each step, but he hadn’t given up.
She had to get them somewhere safe. Off the bridge. Out of sight.
Esta led the way around the park that skirted City Hall, trying to make sense of the way this version of the city was different from the one she had known as a child. So much was the same—the height of the buildings and the lights and the speed and the noise of it—but this New York, modern though it seemed, wasn’t hers. This city was somehow louder and dirtier. The scent of diesel smoke was heavy in the air, and trash and debris lined the streets, piled up alongside the homeless who’d made their beds beneath makeshift tents in the snowy park.
Harte tried to keep pace beside her, but he was struggling. By the time they reached the sidewalk in front of City Hall, he was breathing hard through clenched teeth. Without warning, he stopped and curled over, grabbing his head again. His whole expression twisted in pain.
“Harte?” Esta stepped toward him, but he flinched away, and when he finally uncurled himself, finally looked up at her, she saw a too-familiar darkness bleeding into the gray of his irises.
She’d made an agreement with Seshat. She’d killed Jack and destroyed Thoth along with him in exchange for Harte’s life, but it was clear the goddess had decided not to uphold her side of their bargain.
“Just hold on a little longer,” Esta told him, wishing she could do more as she tried to decide where to go. She wanted more than anything to put her arms around him, to keep him from flying apart, but she knew that without the Quellant, she couldn’t take the risk.
The flashing red of police lights lit the buildings around them now as the squeal of tires tore through the night. A half dozen bright blue cars with glinting chrome fenders skidded to a stop near the mouth of the bridge, blocking the entrance to the walkway where they had just been.
“We have to keep moving,” she told Harte. The police showing up like they had couldn’t be a coincidence, even if she didn’t understand how they could have known about their arrival. The Brink hadn’t ever been monitored as far as she knew. But who was to say how much their movements through the past had changed this present? Who was to say what dangers waited in this version of the time line?
Harte was still huddled over, doubled into himself.
“We have to go. Now.” In a few minutes those cops would be out of those cars and would start to fan out. They were clearly looking for something—for someone—and they would see the path the two of them had made through the snow. If they didn’t get away before then, there would be no way to explain what she and Harte were doing in the nearly empty park in the middle of the night, coatless and dressed in clothing decades out of style.
The two of them scuttled along behind a row of newspaper boxes covered in graffiti, careful to avoid being seen. Half the windows had been busted out of the few boxes that were still standing. They had to keep moving, but with the police surrounding the area now, their only real choice was to go underground.
The Brooklyn Bridge subway station didn’t look that different from the way it had looked in her own time. It still welcomed them with the same mechanical staleness the air underground always carried, that dust-laced scent of machines layered with the strong ammonia reek of urine. But at least the platform was protected from the icy wind and free from snow. At least they were out of sight.
Luckily, the station was mostly empty. A group of three guys in heavy coats huddled together on the far end of the platform. Even from a distance they looked completely strung out.
When Harte groaned again, grabbing at his head, they glanced up from whatever they were dealing, but a second later they turned back to their huddle. Uninterested.
She couldn’t hear the sirens anymore, but that didn’t put her at ease. She had no idea what was happening aboveground. Still, no one had followed them. At least not yet. Eventually someone would track them down. They had to get on a train, and fast.
Esta looked up. The station clock had been busted open, its hands removed, and its face obscured by graffiti, so she wasn’t even sure what time it was. Late, by the emptiness of the streets and the platform, but this wasn’t her New York. There were no digital readouts to tell her the schedule. There was nothing they could do but wait and hope that the next train would arrive before the police found them.
Harte crouched down, hunching against the peeling paint of the iron column in the center of the narrow cement platform. He was rocking a little, still moaning to himself, but at least the guys at the other end of the station didn’t seem to notice or care. Just another junkie, as far as they knew.
“Is there anything I can do?” She crouched down next to him, wanting more than anything to brush the hair back from his pale, damp forehead. “Anything that would help?”
He shook his head, his teeth still gritted. “Stay back.” His lips pressed together, like he was steeling himself against the next wave of whatever pain Seshat was inflicting. “Please. It makes it worse… when you’re close. She’s so angry. Wants you. So badly.” He grimaced again. “She keeps screaming about Thoth. How she wants to destroy him.”
