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It didn’t make sense. “Thoth’s gone. I took care of him when I killed Jack.”
“Tell that to Seshat,” Harte groaned. He looked even more wan in the yellowish glow from the fluorescent lights overhead.
The squeal of an arriving train echoed through the tunnels before Esta could reply.
Harte flinched, clamping his hands more tightly over his ears at the sound of screeching brakes as the train slid into the station. The litter along the edges of the platform fluttered in the gust of air the train brought with it.
The cars were boxier than the ones Esta had grown up riding, and the entire train was covered completely in graffiti, including the windows, so she couldn’t see inside. She had no idea how many people might be riding or what might be waiting, but when the doors lurched open, no one exited. A disembodied voice echoed through the dimly lit station, instructing everyone to disembark. It was the last stop on the line.
Esta clenched her jaw in frustration at the worthless train. They couldn’t just sit here waiting. Soon, the cops outside would start searching farther from the bridge. Soon enough, they’d search the station. But considering how late it was? She didn’t know how long it would be before another train came along—
And then she realized which train it was.
“Come on,” she told Harte, pulling him up by his sleeve-covered arm.
Clearly in too much pain to argue and too weak to pull away, he allowed her to drag him onto the train, but the second they were aboard, he seemed to realize how close she was and pulled away again. She understood why, but the rejection still stung as she took a seat in the row closest to the back door of the car. Harte took the bench opposite, making sure to keep his distance.
He flinched again, like another volley of pain had just shot through him. “I can’t…,” he whispered. “Too much…” He rocked as he spoke to himself—or to Seshat. She couldn’t hear him enough to be sure.
Esta willed the doors to close before anyone else arrived or tried to board, but she didn’t let go of the breath she was holding until the train started to lurch forward slowly, not gathering much speed as it left the station. Harte didn’t seem to notice. The rocking had stopped, and now he seemed suddenly too still, hunched as he was against the filthy wall of the train, his eyes closed and his mouth in a pained line.
“Just a little longer,” she told him.
He grimaced in response, turning away from her.
The inside of the subway car was as covered in graffiti as the outside, and there was trash collecting beneath the seats. Subway cars in general weren’t exactly the cleanest places in the city even in her own time, but this was something else. She’d seen pictures of the city before it was cleaned up back in the 1990s, but she hadn’t spent much time in the eighties. The oddness of a city so similar to her own—and yet so different—was unsettling. As the train began to move, a bent syringe rolled to a stop against Esta’s foot. She kicked it away.
The train swayed as it started to curve around the next bend, and Esta realized they needed to move. If they missed their chance, she was out of ideas. It was this or nothing.
She stood, bracing herself against the movement in the same way she had her whole life. It steadied her a little, the familiarity of the train’s movement beneath her, lurching and swaying. Harte was huddled against the filthy window, his hands over his ears, as if he were trying to hold his head together.
“Let’s go, Harte,” she said as the train lurched again. She stood and made her way to the door at the end of the car and flung it open, but when she turned back, Esta realized Harte hadn’t followed her. He was still curled in the corner of the seat, still grimacing and half-delirious from the pain.
JUST A LITTLE LONGER
1983—Lower Manhattan
Harte heard Esta calling him as if from a distance. It was hard to hear anything over the storm raging inside him. The instant they’d crossed the Brink and the Quellant burned away, Seshat had begun railing against him, swelling and clawing and pushing at the boundary between them. It felt as though his skin might split open if he didn’t concentrate on keeping himself together.
He thought he had understood. He thought he’d felt the true extent of Seshat’s affinity before. But this was different. Now he understood exactly why Thoth had wanted her magic. She was a force. More than a force. She was power and its antithesis. Even ancient and disembodied and half-broken by Thoth’s betrayal, Seshat’s magic was a living, breathing thing. Her power was astounding, impossible. Holding her back felt like he was trying to hold on to lightning.
Worse, Seshat wanted Esta more than ever.
Harte was only half-aware of where they were, and he had no idea where they were going. But he didn’t think he could last much longer against Seshat’s onslaught, not when he felt utterly decimated by her wrath.
You cannot stop me. I will take all that she is, all that she contains, and tear it from the world.
“No,” he said, struggling to hold himself back—to hold Seshat back.
“Harte?” Esta was standing in an open doorway. Her short hair was a wild riot around her face in the gusting wind.
He could hear and see her, but he couldn’t respond. All of his focus was on Seshat, pushing her back. On holding her down. Just a little longer.
Yes. Go to her, Seshat commanded, her power swelling within until he was on his feet. He couldn’t stop his back from arching as she pressed and clawed at him. He could not stop himself from moving steadily toward the open door, toward Esta.
She had no idea the danger she was in.
Esta let the door slide closed and approached him, grabbing him by his sleeve. Seshat roared in triumph as Harte tried to pull away, but Esta was determined.
