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With the sun high overhead, wrapping his affinity around himself was as easy and natural as breathing, but he paused to make certain the light was secure, to be sure that no one could detect even a glimmer of his form. When a carriage pulled up in front of the house, he knew it was time. He crossed the street and mounted the front steps just as the enormous door opened and Morgan’s wife stepped out. As she descended to the waiting carriage, he slid into the interior of the home.
The halls were empty, and so nothing stopped him from reaching Morgan’s library quickly and without incident. Pausing long enough to be sure no one was near, he opened the door and slipped inside.
Immediately, he felt swallowed by the enormous, masculine space. This was no cozy room for contemplation. It was a room designed to impress, and he easily could imagine Morgan holding court behind the large mahogany desk, directing his empire from the comfort and luxury of the plush leather chair. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, and the gilding on the spines of finely made books winked in the soft filtered light. The air smelled of wealth, of tobacco and wood polish, of amber and leather. Beneath his feet, the boldly colored Persian carpet was plush enough to swallow the sound of his steps, so he did not worry about being detected as he moved across the space, invisible as a ghost to any prying eyes.
The mansion was enormous, but Jianyu had decided to focus first on the library, Morgan’s personal sanctuary. It seemed the likeliest place for the tycoon to keep his most important pieces—and his most important secrets. During his previous visits, he had made his way through two walls of shelves with no luck. He had opened book after book, but he had not yet found the answer to the question of the strange silver discs Viola had taken from the Order’s new headquarters.
They needed those answers. Until they understood how to use Newton’s Sigils, Cela had to remain outside the city.
Jianyu turned to the next section of shelving and, tilting his head from side to side to loosen the tightness in his neck and shoulders, he got to work. His fingers grazed the edges of the spines one by one, scanning the letters there. He searched for words that spoke of magic and science or told the tale of ancient lands and terrible power. The first shelf was Shakespeare. Dickens and Thackeray. Goethe and Dostoevsky. Literature and philosophy that Jianyu remembered from Dolph’s collection. But not what he was looking for. In the next section over, however, a name shimmered from the spines that sent Jianyu’s heart racing: Newton.
With light fingers, he tried to tip the first book toward him but found that it did not move. Not a book, he realized. An entire shelf that appeared to be volumes of Newton’s work was actually a single, solid stretch of faux volumes, and with a bit of effort, he was able to fold the entire piece down. Behind it, he found a mechanism that could only be a strange type of combination lock. Its tumblers were cylindrical and inscribed with odd icons rather than the arabic numerals typical in the West.
Jianyu stepped back, considering the problem. There was no clear hinge on the hidden panel behind the false books. Whatever the lock kept safe was larger than the single shelf. Carefully he traced his fingertips along the edges of the section of shelving that he had been searching and realized that there was something more to the molding there than in other places in the library. Perhaps the lock protected a larger chamber, and the entire section of shelf would swing out? But then, this was not an exterior wall. It was more likely a compartment of some sort.
Carefully, he rotated the tumblers, but the images on their surface were nonsense. Hieroglyphs or some sort of cipher, he could not be sure. He could detect the faint rubbing of metal against stone when he moved them, but this was not the sort of thievery he had any experience with. He wished again that Esta or Darrigan had returned. He had no talent with locks.
He was still considering the problem, sure that the answers they needed must wait within, when he became aware of a noise. It came softly at first, barely audible through the thick walls of the mansion, but soon the rumble of male voices was on the other side of the door.
The door swung open suddenly, and J. P. Morgan entered the room, along with three other men. The same men who had been with him in the Mysterium that night—the High Princept and others from the Order’s Inner Circle. Morgan stood in the doorway, ushering the men in, and before Jianyu could slip out, he pulled the door closed behind him, twisted the key in the lock, and pocketed it.
INTRUDERS
1983—Orchard Street
Esta still felt unsteady from whatever Professor Lachlan and the girl had drugged her with, but she was free. She couldn’t believe her plan had worked. She hadn’t really expected it to. Not when she was sure Professor Lachlan had been watching her every move. Not when the girl who was her exact image had somehow been an even better fighter than she had ever been. But she’d managed to outwit them in the end. The body beneath the bedsheet wasn’t moving—at least for now—and the door to the cell was wide open.
Glancing up at the camera in the corner, Esta flipped off the red light that had been glowing at her like an all-seeing eye. She didn’t care if it—if they—were still watching. The door was open. She was free.
On the floor at her feet, the person beneath the sheet started to move. It wouldn’t take long before he was conscious again. She started to step over his body when she saw the knife that had fallen from his hand. Viola’s knife. Frowning, she scooped it up. Professor Lachlan didn’t deserve to keep it.
The figure on the floor was already pushing himself up, and she knew it was time to go. He’d be disoriented for a minute or two, but not long enough to waste time. She had just started to pull time slow when the man beneath the sheet moaned.
She stopped in her tracks. She knew the sound of that voice.
“Harte?” Esta turned and pulled the sheet from the body. There, trapped in her hold on time, was Harte.
She hadn’t even considered that he’d come for her—how could he have known? If she had pressed a little differently, a little harder, she could have killed him. “Oh, god. Harte.”
In an instant Esta was on her knees next to him. She started to reach for him, to bring him into the net of her affinity, but then pulled back when she remembered they’d lost the Quellant and that Seshat was still a danger.
How is he here?
She released time, and with another wincing groan, he wobbled a little, rubbing at his eyes. He’d have a hell of a headache from what she’d done, but he was there. However he’d managed it, he’d come for her. He’d found her.
It was only a second, maybe two, before he blinked at her, but that time felt unbearably slow and sticky until his confusion cleared and he really looked at her. She saw as he recognized her—the flash of relief and some other deeper emotion in the depths of his stormy eyes.
“Esta?” He bolted upright then, his hands coming to frame her face. They were trembling a little, and his eyes were searching her face like he barely recognized her. “Tell me it’s really you.”
She pulled back on instinct from the frenzy in his voice and the wildness in his eyes, but he’d already grabbed her wrist. Without any thought of gentleness, he tore the bandage off. She gasped as the red, angry wounds burned in the open air. He seemed frozen as he stared down at the raw skin on her arm, and then his face split into a smile. He started laughing. He sounded like some kind of lunatic.
And then suddenly he wasn’t laughing any longer. He was kissing her. His hands framed her face before she could stop him, but she realized that there was no sizzle of Seshat’s power, no darkness threatening. He was kissing her, and she kissed him back. All that had happened fell away, and there was only Harte—his lips against hers, claiming her, as his strong fingers threaded through her hair. Pinned her to him.
Breathless, she pulled back. “How—”
“I knew it,” he said, leaning his forehead against hers. His breathing was still heavy. His hands were still trembling, but then, so was she. “I knew it couldn’t be—I didn’t want it to be you.”
“The girl,” she said, understanding what must have happened. She’d hardly been able to believe it when she’d turned in the stairwell and found the other version of herself—the one that should have been an eighty-year-old woman. But the girl hadn’t been old. She’d been like looking into a mirror. “He used her to get to you, didn’t he?”
