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Harte looked unsure until his gaze fell to her torn sleeve and the blood staining the side of the overalls. “Okay, then,” he said. “If that’s what you think.”
She didn’t want to know how bad she must look that he’d given in so easily. “How’s your affinity?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing but whispers. Not enough to risk anything.”
It would have been nice to know that they could depend on Harte’s magic to take care of any unexpected problems they might run into. If she could just keep hold of time, she could get them to safety, but her whole upper arm felt encased by ice now. Unsure what that meant, she worried instead about focusing on her affinity. Her connection to the old magic felt tenuous as the world when silent, and she had to grit her teeth to not lose hold of it. “Let’s go.”
They’d barely made it through the large, heavy doors when the seconds slipped from her grip and the soft sounds of the hotel wrapped around them. She reached for time again, but it took two tries before she was able to make the world go still.
Once they were through the entryway, the lobby of the Algonquin was all gleaming dark wood and luxury. Dark pillars flanked the space, reaching up to the ornately coffered ceiling above. Giant palms softened the overall impression of the room, creating cozy nooks around deep leather sofas and plush carpets. Esta would have given pretty much anything to collapse into one of those chairs and rest, but there wasn’t time. Her connection to the old magic was still too unstable. She’d rest once they were in a room.
On one side of the space, golden elevator doors waited to take them up to safety, but Esta steered them to the other side of the lobby instead. There, the main check-in desk was staffed by two men in dark suits, and a yellow tiger cat sat on the counter, an unexpected sentinel sightlessly watching the still, silent room. She couldn’t stop the seconds from slipping again as they approached the front desk, and she was sure the cat saw them before she could pull time tight.
Behind the counter, she found a small office. On one side, luggage was stacked and tagged, waiting for its owners, on the other side, the wall was covered by a large board with rows of metal pockets, like a filing system. Each of the pockets was labeled with numbers that corresponded to the floors of the hotel and the rooms they contained. A little of her worry eased. It would be easier to steal a room this way—like plucking that wallet filled with cash in Times Square had been easier. New York in the eighties might be gritty and dangerous, but it was also a city before computers had taken over. Before cameras watched the subway and credit cards were the most common currency. Cash, at least, was untraceable. Just as their use of a room would be.
“What are we doing back here, Esta?” Harte asked, frowning.
“We’re getting a room,” she told him.
He frowned. “We could have just picked a lock.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But this way no one will bother us.”
It took her a minute to figure out the system, but once she did, it was easy enough to locate a room that still had a key hanging on the corresponding holder. She slipped the white notecard from the metal pocket, and with a pen she found on the counter, she wrote a false name on the card before placing it back into the corresponding room’s slot. It looked like someone had been officially checked in now, so there wouldn’t be any worry about an unexpected arrival. A Do Not Disturb sign on the door would take care of the rest.
She held up the key, feeling almost hopeful. But they were barely across the lobby when her head spun unexpectedly. Her connection to the old magic pulsed, sending a shock of heat through her, and she stumbled as she lost her grip on time again. She teetered on unsteady legs, but Harte was there to catch her. She didn’t want to admit that his arms were the only thing holding her upright. Even once he set her back on her feet, she couldn’t stop herself from leaning on him.
“Elevator,” he growled, wrapping her closer to him and leading them both to the bank of golden doors.
EVERY WEAKNESS
1902—Bella Strega
James riffled through the stack of papers that Jianyu had been so generous to liberate from Morgan’s mansion, but he couldn’t quite believe what he was reading. He’d known J. P. Morgan was a collector, known as well that the Morgan mansion must have contained numerous secrets—he never would have maneuvered Dolph and Leena into infiltrating it otherwise. But he hadn’t really expected this.
Never underestimate the ambition of men to dig their own graves.
He flipped over another sheet of paper and marveled at the secrets it contained. Line after line told the story of the men of the city, both past and present. Every weakness. Every possible indiscretion. Morgan, clearly, had been angling for more power for some time now. With this information at his disposal? He should have been able to claim the highest position in the Inner Circle. Had it not been for the bumbling mistakes of his nephew, perhaps he would have.
The collected scraps and bits of parchment told a history of the Order that was unlike any James had ever encountered. Here was evidence of their every victory and failure. It was a true accounting, rather than the narrative of half-truths and myths they currently wrapped themselves in.
The Aether danced when he picked up one of the sheets of parchment, an overlarge document compared to the others. Its ink had long ago browned and faded with age, but he knew at once that it was the most exciting—and perhaps the most important—of them all.
Newton’s Sigils. There they were, clearly sketched on the page, just as Werner and Logan had described them. According to the document, the thin discs were made of mercury, not silver. The Sigil of Ameth had been carved into their surface, just as it appeared in the painting of Newton with the Book that currently hung over the bookcase.
Here at last were the answers he had been searching for: the sigils could be used as a key. They could be used to get through the Brink.
It wasn’t their original intent. Newton had designed them to neutralize the power of the Book. He’d infused them with some of his own power, because Newton had been Mageus.
He hadn’t been a Sundren searching for power that wasn’t his to claim, as the story went. No, he’d had a connection to the old magic already, but genius that he was, he’d learned that he could harness more. Just as alchemists sought to transform lead into gold, Newton understood that the Ars Arcana contained a piece of old magic, a shard so pure that it could transform him.
Myth and legend called what he was attempting to do to the philosopher’s stone, the key to eternal life. But these documents made it clear that the philosopher’s stone wasn’t an object. It was a ritual that gave victory over time itself. But Newton had never finished that ritual. Something had happened. He hadn’t been strong enough to look into the fire and live. He’d nearly gone mad from what the ritual had done to his affinity, so he’d fashioned the sigils to contain and neutralize the power in the Book.
With them, he created a space where the Book’s power could be constrained.
Newton had given the Book of Mysteries and the artifacts to the men who would form the Order. He’d given them the sigils as well, a safeguard against the Book’s power.
A hundred years later and those men had forgotten the danger in those pages. They had only remembered the promise. They either forgot the risk or believed themselves stronger than Newton, and they’d used the Book and the artifacts. They too failed in completing the ritual and created the Brink instead. Too late, the forefathers of the Order realized their error and found themselves trapped within a boundary of their own making. But they still had the sigils. And they found a way to use them.
