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Harte pulled himself to his knees. Nothing Seshat was telling him was new, but none of it mattered. Not until he found Esta.
Toward the back of the station, there was a tunnel that glowed with a faint light. Possibly the exit? As he inched along, Seshat fought him. She didn’t want him to leave the station, and the closer he came to the tunnel, the more erratic her fear became. But he was almost there. He’d nearly made it to the first of the steps that led upward into the darkened staircase.
And then, suddenly, Esta appeared. He’d been alone with Seshat’s wailing, and then a heartbeat later she was there. She was safe.
Seshat froze, her wailing suddenly going silent as she retracted deep within him, and the reprieve was almost enough to make him weep with relief. He was too exhausted from her onslaught to wonder why. All he could do was collapse against the cold, hard wall, trying to catch his breath. He had to gather what strength he could, because he knew Seshat wouldn’t stay quiet for long.
When he looked up, Esta’s face was drawn and serious. Her eyes were hard, determined, and he knew instinctively that something had happened to her. It was there in her expression. Something had put a distance in her eyes like he’d never seen before.
“Are you okay?” he asked, still leaning against the tiled wall. “Did Nibsy harm you? Because if he touched you—”
“I’m fine.” Her voice was strong and sure, but there was a stiffness in her tone that he didn’t recognize.
“Esta?” he asked gently. “You can tell me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him. “Not right now. Please. Don’t make me relive it.”
The stern set of her usually soft mouth and the hardness in her eyes told the story clearly enough. Fine then. He wouldn’t ask more of her than she could give, wouldn’t drag the details from her. Not now, at least. But he desperately wanted to touch her. She’d done too much, taken on too much in the last few days, and there was nothing he could do to help her, to comfort her. Not with the threat of Seshat within him.
“The Book,” she said, her gaze finding the scarred leather tome where it lay on the platform. He hadn’t even noticed it there. She must have left it with him, and he’d been so distracted by Seshat’s rage—so desperate to reach Esta before Nibsy could hurt her—that he hadn’t protected it. He’d walked away from it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t—”
Esta wasn’t listening. She hurried over to the Ars Arcana and stopped. Standing over it, she paused, clenching her fists at her sides, before she finally picked it up from the ground.
Seshat was still quiet, but Harte realized that it wasn’t an easy quiet. The emptiness within him was somehow almost more terrible than her raging. Then, from somewhere deep within him, Harte felt Seshat’s fear. It was as though she understood what was coming, what would happen next.
On unsteady legs, Harte made his way to where Esta was standing, paging through the Book. She was looking for something, and then she found it—the page that was half-torn and missing. With the Ars Arcana propped open in one hand, she pulled a small scrap of parchment from her pocket and held it up to the page. The pieces matched exactly, and the second the torn halves touched, Harte felt a jolt of power wash over him as the fragment fused itself back onto the page in a burst of molten light.
“You did it,” Harte said, still barely believing it. “You got the key from Nibsy.”
Her mouth went tight, but she nodded in a way that made him wonder what it had cost her. Because something had changed. Something had changed her.
“Now we’ll be able to get the demon’s power out of you, and once we have control over it, we’ll finally be able to use the piece of pure magic in the Book.” She was still looking at the newly complete page rather than him when she spoke. “We’ll be able to change everything.”
Harte felt a wave of panic rush through him. It was all happening too fast. “We still need the Delphi’s Tear. We don’t have the ring yet.”
Esta peered up through her dark lashes, then pulled something from her other pocket. “This ring?”
She was holding the Delphi’s Tear. Weeks ago—decades ago now—Harte had given it to Cela Johnson as payment for taking care of his mother. The ring should have been in 1902, waiting for them to retrieve it. Nibsy shouldn’t have had possession of it. “How—”
“I’m a thief,” Esta said without any irony or humor.
Harte didn’t want to think about what it meant that Nibsy Lorcan had come to possess the ring. What had happened to Cela? Had Jianyu not reached her in time to protect her? Or had they both been unable to protect themselves?
“You have the others?” she asked.
He noticed the satchel lying on the ground and scooped it up, ignoring the way Seshat shivered within him. “They’re right here, where you left them.”
Esta nodded and took a thick piece of charcoal from the same pocket that had been holding the ring. “Go ahead and take them out.” She crouched down and started drawing a circle on the ground.
“Wait.” He stepped toward her. “Esta, we can’t just rush into this. We don’t know what this ritual will do to you.”
She didn’t give any indication that she’d heard him. Ignoring his worry, she continued her tracing, making steady progress on the circle that was quickly forming around her. It was maybe six or seven feet in diameter. Not enormous, but more than large enough for a person to stand in the center and hold out their arms.
“Esta,” he said again, more forcefully. He stepped toward the line, but Seshat lurched within him, and he stopped short before crossing it. “Would you stop for a second? We have to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She looked up at him, pausing only long enough to speak. “We don’t have time to argue. The police are searching for us. They know we crossed the Brink.” Her expression was as brittle as her voice, and there was something of a warning in her words. As though she’d been pushed as far as anyone could be pushed before breaking. “If they find us, they’ll take the Book and the artifacts, and everything will have been for nothing. I have to finish this now.”
