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“Keep your coin,” Jianyu said, trying to hide his frustration. “I told you before, there is no need. But your son is not the only one we protect. When we know for sure that the Order no longer searches for him, I can bring you to him.”
She frowned. “There must be something I could give you. Something you want. Why else would you risk so much?”
It was a question Jianyu asked himself often. “I know what it is to need rescuing,” he told her. “I had a friend once who risked everything for me. I am only repaying his kindness.”
“You mean Dolph Saunders,” Golde said.
Jianyu nodded.
“They say you betrayed him,” Golde told him. “They say you betrayed the Devil’s Own, you and that Italian girl. And yet here you are, saving my son, the same as Dolph himself would have.”
Jianyu did not speak. He understood that Golde was not really talking to him, but to her own conscience.
“They knew him by name,” Jianyu said. “The men who took your boy. It was no accident. They knew he worked for Dolph. Do you have any idea who might have betrayed him?”
Golde’s brows drew together thoughtfully, but then she shook her head. “It could have been anyone. After I stopped Josef from taking the mark, a lot of the boys turned away from him.”
“What mark?” Jianyu asked, suddenly alert. “Dolph’s?”
“It’s not his any longer,” Golde said dourly. “That boy offered it to Josef, the one who thinks he has the eggs to step into the shoes Dolph Saunders left behind.”
“Nibsy Lorcan offered your son protection in exchange for taking the mark?” Jianyu considered the implications of this.
She nodded. “Josef had been running messages for him, the same as he had for Saunders, until about a week ago. The boy wanted him to take the mark. Josef would have, but I stopped him because Dolph Saunders promised me that it wasn’t required for the job. If it was good enough for Saunders, it should have been good enough for the one who followed him,” she said sourly. “So I said no. I told him that his god was more important than loyalty to any one man, and he’s a good boy, my Josef. He listened. He honored me. And he lost the job because of it.
“When those men took him, I went to Lorcan. I told him how they’d taken my Josef—a boy who had always been loyal to the Strega and to the Devil’s Own. I told him that Dolph had promised protection.…” She shook her head. “Lorcan told me that he wasn’t Dolph Saunders, and Josef wasn’t one of his. It’s the only reason I sent word to you. I would have never sunk so low otherwise.”
Jianyu was not surprised. He and Viola were never the first choice of those who the Order had taken. They were always the choice of the desperate. But the news that Nibsy had offered Josef a mark… None that they had rescued wore the mark of the Devil’s Own.
“I’m sorry for it now,” Golde said, surprising him. “I’m sorry for thinking of you so poorly. I shouldn’t have listened to the whispers and gossip.”
Her words unsettled something in him. How many times had Jianyu rescued someone from the Order’s men only to have his actions thrown in his face? “There is no need to apologize,” he said, feeling unspeakably awkward. “I will send word as Josef heals, and when it is safe, I will bring you to him.”
Golde reached out and touched his arm. “Thank you,” she told him, and then, pulling her shawl around her, she turned to go back into the building.
At first Jianyu did not follow. He stayed on the roof, under the sweep of stars with the city breathing around him, struck by what had just happened. Golde’s words—her gratitude—were unsettling enough, but the news that Nibsy Lorcan might be building his ranks was more so. Especially if he was culling those who refused to take the mark.
It should not have been so surprising. In these unsettled times, it made sense that Nibsy would want to increase his numbers. With the leadership of the Five Pointers currently sitting in a cell on Blackwell’s Island, with Tammany and the Order at odds, and with the gangs of the Bowery at one another’s throats, Nibsy would want an army of supporters around him. Of course he would demand loyalty as well. The only question was what his next move would be once he’d amassed that army.
It was a question that was answered sooner than Jianyu expected. As he exited the front door of Golde’s building, there was the boy himself—Nibsy Lorcan—waiting for him in the pallid shaft of a streetlamp’s glow.
Before Jianyu had time to reach for his bronze mirrors or his magic, Werner stepped from the shadows, and he felt the breath being pressed from his chest.
THE LIBRARY’S SECRETS
1983—City Hall Station
When she reached the top of the stairs leading out of the subway, Esta made quick work of the locked emergency exit door and then carefully secured it again so it wouldn’t look disturbed. She didn’t have any plans to let go of time, but just in case… There was no use taking any chances.
Finally aboveground and in the icy night air, she turned her back on the steady red glow of the police lights that surrounded the bridge and started walking through the park that skirted the white stone buildings of City Hall. She tucked her hands into her pockets and hunched against the cold, glad that the wind was now as still as the rest of the world, and then she started trudging through the drifting snow in the park toward the redbrick building that had defined her childhood.
Esta hadn’t gone very far when something made her pause. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the lights of two unfamiliar towers standing like twin sentinels in the winter night behind her. She’d never seen them before. In all her trips through time, there had never been a reason to. Professor Lachlan had kept her focused and on a tight leash. But the looming presence of the Twin Towers was yet another reminder that while this city might look similar to her own, it wasn’t. She was a stranger here, and with all the changes she and Harte might have created to the time line, she could be standing on quicksand.
Turning north, she cut through the park, but before she reached Centre Street, she noticed a statue gracing the intersection that hadn’t been there before. The body of a man gleamed almost golden in the dim light, but covered in snow, she couldn’t tell who it depicted. There was something about it that sent a chill through her, though, even more than the night air. It was enough to make her pause and see what else had changed, but other than the statue, the area around City Hall seemed the same—past and future, almost identical.
She couldn’t help but remember the day not so long ago when she’d first found herself in the past. Viola had still hated her and had brought her downtown to test her mettle on the Dead Line. It had been only a few months ago, but it felt longer. It felt like an eternity.
Esta shook off the past and kept walking, weaving her way through once-familiar streets. Caught in her magic, the cloudy windows of a graffiti-covered bus revealed the single passenger it carried on its late-night run. She wished she could grab the bus or hail a cab, but the city remained caught in her affinity, and it needed to stay that way—for Harte. To protect him for as long as she could.
