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Harte nodded, closing his eyes.
She tried to pull back. “Is it safe? Seshat—”
“She’s gone,” he told her, not allowing her to retreat from him. “Locked back into the Book.”
“The girl did the ritual?” The girl—the one who had looked so much like her, the one who had once been her in another time line, another reality.
Harte pulled back from her, and his stormy eyes were filled with pain so stark, so clear, it took her breath away.
“It killed her,” Esta realized. “The ritual killed her.”
He nodded. “I couldn’t save her. And then I left her there.” Closing his eyes, he pressed his forehead against hers. “I didn’t mean—” His voice broke, and she felt him shudder.
The ritual killed her. That other girl. That other version of who Esta might have become. Dead. Gone.
She didn’t understand how she could still be there, alive and whole, when the injuries on her arm proved that she and the girl shared a connection. Unless it was because the past remained malleable. It was still possible to save the girl—to save herself—by going back and giving her the stone. By putting history on a different path.
Esta had been so confident, so willing to take on the responsibility of removing Seshat from Harte’s skin. She’d been ready to make the sacrifice—more than willing—but she knew now that it had only been because, secretly, she’d hoped there was a way to survive it. Now that it was over, now that she was still here and the truth of the ritual’s consequences were irrefutable, Esta realized she’d been wrong. She hadn’t been anywhere near ready to make the sacrifice that had been required. And she was damn grateful to be there, alive and with Harte.
Esta took Harte’s face gently in her hands, her heart aching for him. She’d never forget finding him in that hellish hole in San Francisco, a hair’s breadth from death, so she understood what he must be feeling. She knew what it was like to almost lose him. Even if he’d hoped it wasn’t actually her who had returned to him in the subway station, he couldn’t have known for sure. Not really. She and the girl were identical. Nibsy had made certain of it.
He’d been so damn proud of what he’d done. Because he’d had the ring, a change from her original time line, Nibsy had been able to augment the power of the healers he used. He’d been able to slow the girl’s aging because he had known that Esta would come for him eventually. He’d ensured it by keeping that scrap from the Book, and he’d been ready.
And so had the girl, that other version of herself. It had been like fighting a better, tougher, and more prepared version of herself—and Esta had lost in the end.
Could Nibsy know so much? Predict so much?
“It wasn’t me,” Esta said, trying to push away her fear along with Harte’s. Softly, she brushed Harte’s hair from where it had fallen over his forehead. “I’m here. We’re both here. We’re both alive. You did what you had to do, and now we have a chance, Harte. Now that Seshat’s no longer a threat to you, we have a real chance.”
“I know. I keep telling myself that, but I just watched you die, Esta.” His expression was bleak, empty. He let out another shuddering breath, as though expelling all the grief he was carrying. “I watched you die, and I left you there.”
“You didn’t leave me, Harte.” She leaned forward and kissed him softly. “That wasn’t me. I’m still here. You came for me.”
“Knowing that doesn’t seem to matter. I’m not going to be able to forget…” He looked at her, his expression fathomless and filled with grief. “The ritual didn’t kill her, Esta. I did.”
“No, Harte—”
“She’d trapped us in a circle of power—a ritual like the one Seshat did,” he explained. “And then Nibsy came. The only way out of that circle was for her to finish the ritual by giving her affinity to the stones. But she couldn’t do it on her own, not after what it had done to her already…”
“You used your magic,” she said, understanding what had happened.
“We were trapped there, in that ritual circle, and the Guard was coming. If they’d found us… If they’d pulled us across that boundary…” He shook his head.
“The Guard?” Esta frowned. “The Jefferson Guard?” That couldn’t be right. She’d killed Jack. She’d taken care of Thoth.
Harte nodded. “The power of the ritual must have drawn them into the station,” he explained. “He told me it was the only way, but what if it wasn’t? She looked so much like you.”
From the vestibule outside the cell, a buzzing alarm blared, startling them both.
“Something’s happening,” Esta said, filing away all that Harte had just told her. She pulled herself to her feet and offered Harte a hand.
Scanning the monitors of the control room, they found the issue—men had entered through the back door. More through the front. Harte had been right. “Those aren’t police,” she said, noticing the familiar cut of the uniform and the glint of metal at their lapels. “The Guard is here.”
The squad of Guardsmen was already climbing the back staircase. In the flickering black-and-white of the screens, the staircase light seemed filtered, like they were walking through a fog. There was a trio outside the door to the second floor—close to where they were currently standing—trying to figure out how to open it, while their comrades continued upward.
“I left Nibsy on the platform too,” Harte told her. “It was only a matter of time before they traced him to this place.”
Esta watched as a Guard took a small pen-like device from his coat and shot a beam of light toward the space between the door and the jamb. A few seconds later she heard an echoing noise coming from the room beyond that made it clear they were trying to cut through the door.
