The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  Now, the closer they got to that tower, the more she felt like the girl she’d once been. But Professor Lachlan wasn’t there to help her, and she had a sinking feeling that if anyone carried her off the bridge this time, it would be because she was dead.

  She straightened her spine, ignoring the kiss of the gun. She would get the Book and the stone from Darrigan, or she would die trying.

  The boy pushed through the crowd, dragging her along, with Nibs following close behind. Viola was there too, somewhere, ready to step in if need be, as were Jianyu and a handful of Dolph’s crew. All there to make sure that everything went their way, and to be certain that Harte Darrigan never came back into the city.

  They made their way toward the front of the crowd. Each step was one closer to the cold currents of energy warning them of disaster and death. Eventually, they reached the point where she could see Harte, already warming the crowd up with some minor sleight of hand. When he looked up and saw her, an emotion she couldn’t read—and one she didn’t want to think too much about—flashed behind his eyes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I see my assistant has arrived.” He held out his hand, as though nothing had happened between them. As though he’d never betrayed her, never left her for dead in a theater filled with the Ortus Aurea. “Esta, my dear?” When she didn’t move, he asked the crowd to encourage her.

  Applause surrounded them, and when she glanced at Nibs, for some indication of what she should do, she saw his indecision. His eyes were narrowed as he considered Harte, but then he gave a nod of his head. “If you try anything at all, you’re dead,” he told her.

  She was sick of that particular threat. With a frustrated huff, she stepped toward Harte.

  “I’ve missed you, sweetheart,” he said, as he took her hand and made a show of kissing it for the audience.

  “Funny,” she replied, her eyes stinging with tears that had nothing to do with the breeze. “I haven’t thought about you at all.”

  The audience close enough to hear roared their approval.

  Harte had already removed his cloak. He handed it to her, and then he proceeded to remove his waistcoat as well. Before he could finish unbuttoning his vest, there was a disruption from deep within their numbers, and an uneasy murmuring rose within the crowd as a man made his way forward, gun drawn.

  Harte’s expression faltered just a little as he gave Jack Grew his most charming smile. “Jack! How good of you to make it.”

  “Give me the Book, Darrigan,” Jack said, pointing the gun directly at his chest. “And the artifacts as well.”

  “You’ll get them soon enough—”

  “The Book!” he screamed, cocking back the hammer. “I will not allow you to make a fool of me again.”

  Harte’s face went serious. “You’re going to have to be patient, Jack. If you shoot me now, you’ll never get what you came here for. So if you’d just lower that thing and—”

  It felt like it all happened at once. She was on the bridge, and she was also standing in the hallway of Schwab’s mansion. She was watching Harte about to be shot, and she was seeing Logan bleeding on the floor. Two moments, two places in time, but the same gunman. The same deadly weapon set to stop a beating heart.

  She grabbed Harte and pulled time slow at the same moment that the gun went off, at the same moment that the bullet began traveling in its deadly path. And when she looked up, the bullet inched past them, so close they could feel its heat.

  “I thought you hadn’t missed me?” Harte said, close to her ear.

  She realized that she was holding on to him maybe more tightly than she needed to. “Where’s the Book?” she asked, not letting go as she backed away from him and the smell of oranges and Ivory soap.

  “It’s in my cloak.” He indicated that she already held the cloak in her arms. “Along with your cuff.”

  “My cuff—” Her chest went tight.

  “The one you showed me. The one you were after.”

  Around them, the world was silent. “And the rest?” she asked.

  “Gone,” he said, pushing a piece of hair out of her eye. “I sent them out of the city last night. By now they’re on separate trains, heading to all the places I’ll never go.”

  Her fingers tightened on the silky material of the cloak in her hands. “Why would you do that?”

  “The Order can’t have them, not with what Jack has planned. And I couldn’t let Nibs get them either.”

  “Nibs?” He wasn’t making any sense.

  “He planned all of this from the beginning—Leena’s death, Dolph going after the Book, even you—” He pressed his lips together. “He’s the one who killed Dolph.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Dolph was shot the night of the heist. Nibs was with us.”

  “Was he?” Harte asked flatly. “Do you know for sure he was waiting outside Khafre Hall that entire time?”

  “I can’t believe he would . . . ,” she started to say, but her words fell silent.

  But it would explain so much about how tense the last couple of days had been at the Strega, about why Nibs had insisted on the gun against her back. “You were in the hall with us,” she argued. “You can’t know—”

  “I know what he intended to do,” Harte continued, his voice urgent. But he wouldn’t look directly at her. “For all his ability to see how things will turn out, he wasn’t expecting me to punch him that night you got taken to the Tombs.”

  She glanced back at Nibs, his face frozen in a sort of strangled fury, and she saw him suddenly in a different light. She’d been a fool not to see it all along.

  “He’s been pulling Dolph’s strings the whole time. Dolph had no idea.”

  Esta shook her head again, wanting to deny everything he was telling her. It had to be more of his lies. “You should have warned Dolph.”

  “I couldn’t,” Harte said, not meeting her eyes. “Nibs had my mother, and I’ve already wronged her enough in my life. I couldn’t do anything more to her. I thought I could work around Nibs. I thought I could get you out too, but things didn’t go quite as I planned that night.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “I couldn’t chance him finding out that you knew. The only way I could figure to get around him was to keep you working blind. There was too much at stake.”

  “You mean like Dolph’s life?” she argued.

  “I never meant for Dolph to die, but this was bigger than Dolph’s life, Esta. He understood that. Nibs cannot get the Book. Do you understand me? He doesn’t want to free the Mageus from the city. He wants to rule them. To use them—us—against the Sundren.” His jaw clenched. “The Book’s dangerous, Esta. It’s not what you think—it’s not what any of us thought. In the wrong hands, it would give someone devastating power. If Nibs were the one to control it, he’d be able to make himself more powerful than any Mageus who’s ever lived. I can’t imagine the devastation that would follow. No one would be safe.”

  “I can’t . . .” The enormity of what he was saying felt unbelievable. “Why now? Why tell me all of this when it’s too late to do anything?”

  “Because it’s not too late for you,” he said. “I’m giving you a way out.”

  He took her hand and placed something heavy and smooth into her palm. The cuff with her stone. Immediately, she felt the warmth of it. The sureness of its power calling to her.

  “Do what you need to do, but either way, get yourself out and take the Book with you. You can’t let either Nibs or Jack get ahold of it. Everything depends upon that. Do you understand? Take it where they can’t follow.”

  “But I—”

  “Do you understand?” he demanded again.

  “What about you?” she asked, still looking for the angle, the indication that this was all part of a larger game for him.

  “I’m dead either way. The Book—it’s not a normal book. It’s like some sort of living thing.” He grimaced, and then he met her eyes. The gray irises that had bec
ome so familiar to her were different now. She thought she could see something more than her own reflection in them, colors that she didn’t have names for flashing in their depths. “When I touched it, I read it more easily than I can read a person. I’ve seen what’s in there, and it’s a part of me now. Even if you take the Book to where they can’t reach it, the Order won’t ever stop hunting me.” He shook his head. “I can’t risk that. If they see me jump and see me die, they won’t have any reason to hunt you . . . or anyone else. You want to protect the people Dolph was protecting? This is the only way.” He gave her a heartbreaking smile. “Whatever happens, the great Harte Darrigan won’t soon be forgotten after what I do here today.”

  Her heart ached. Yes, you will, she knew. If he jumped from that bridge, no one would remember him in a week or a month, and definitely not over the years.

  “So we bring down the Brink before that happens,” she told him. “We free everyone right now and take the Order’s power away from them.” It wasn’t the job she’d been sent to do, but it was what Professor Lachlan intended anyway, she reasoned.

  “You don’t understand. None of us do. The Brink isn’t just a prison, Esta. It was built to protect magic. If it comes down, it won’t free Mageus. Think about Tilly—when Jack’s machine blew up, it took her life with it. Destroying the Brink would do the same thing. It would destroy any magic that it’s taken, and when it does that, it would break everything connected to that magic. You, me, every Mageus who exists is connected to the old magic. When part of that dies, so will ours. And without our magic . . .” He couldn’t finish.

  She didn’t have words to respond to him. It was too ridiculous and too big a lie to be believed. The Brink was what killed them, not what protected them.

  “You can’t expect me to believe that.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” He swallowed hard, his mouth tight. “If the Book had offered me a way out of the city, don’t you think I’d be gone? Do you really think I’d be here, in the middle of this circus otherwise? I could have used the Book to get through the Brink, but the magic in the Book is too powerful. The Brink itself might not have held. Jack told me how they made the Brink—connecting the elements through Aether. The Order has been trying to find a way to make it larger and more powerful, but Jack told me the connections through the Aether are too unstable. The Book might have been able to get me through, but that much magic could be enough to overload the circuit. And if that happens, it would be worse than any electrical outage.”

  “Because it would make magic go dark,” she said, slowly putting the pieces together.

  “Exactly. If I could have gotten out, I would have. I would have even taken you with me. But I can’t risk destroying the circuit through the Aether. I’m still here because there’s no way out without destroying the entire Brink, and to destroy it would be to threaten all magic. All Mageus. There’s no way out for me, so I’m trusting you to help me finish this.”

  She stared at him, searching for the crack in the mask that would expose the lie in what he was telling her. But she did believe one thing—if there was a way out of the city, if there was a way through the Brink, Harte Darrigan would have taken it already.

  But he hadn’t.

  Even now he was giving the Book to her and giving up the one thing he’d wanted from the beginning. If that wasn’t enough to convince her, the fear in his stormy eyes was.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. There were a million other questions she needed to ask. There had to be another way. “I can’t—”

  He placed his fingers against her lips to stop her. “Let’s finish this.” He tore himself away from her grasp, and as he slipped away from her, she let go of time and the world began again.

  When Harte didn’t fall, Jack stood, too shocked to move, which gave the crowd time to wrestle the gun from his grasp. It took only a few moments more before he was arrested and dragged away, screaming and shouting all the while.

  Once it was calm, Harte took his time removing his shirt.  The muscles of his arms broadcast exactly how tense he was as he made a show of stripping for the public. The cool air raised gooseflesh on his bare shoulders, but his eyes were steady, calm.

  “A kiss for luck, my dear?” he asked, his gray eyes determined.

  When the crowd erupted with enthusiastic hoots, she couldn’t deny him. She allowed him to put his mouth over hers, but this was not the kiss she’d wanted for herself that day in Harte’s apartment. His lips were cool, as though he’d already been claimed by the water below, and there was nothing but a resigned determination in the quick brush of skin against skin, mouth against mouth.

  She wasn’t sure she trusted him, but to know he was about to die?

  I can take him back with me, she thought in a sudden rush. To hell with everyone who might see them disappear.

  Too soon, he pulled away from her, and the time for decisions had passed.

  With a flourish, Harte mounted the railing. His eyes scanned the crowd, looked over them to the city beyond, and she thought she saw regret flash across his expression.

  Nibs exploded from the crowd. “Stop him!”

  Esta saw some of Dolph’s boys move toward the railing where Harte stood, but before they could come any closer, police stormed the bridge. The crowd descended into confusion, surging in all directions to get away from the raised billy sticks and angry whistles of the police. In the confusion, she was pushed back from the railing, and from Harte.

  There was no way to reach him. No way to turn him from what he meant to do. She’d saved the Book, but she couldn’t save him.

  Harte’s eyes met hers. Go! he mouthed, and the air seemed to shimmer around him, the sun throwing up a glare as he let go of the cabled railing, and then he was gone.

  Her heart seized. Too late.

  She pushed through the crowd to the railing, where he’d disappeared. Below, there was no sign of him. She watched, waiting for him to surface or for some indication that he’d made it, but even as the crowd behind her was a riot of anger and confusion, the water was silent, holding its secrets as absolutely as a grave.

  Esta didn’t see Nibs coming for her through the crowd. She was too busy trying to breathe through the shock of what had just happened. But as she clung to Harte’s cloak, she felt the hard outline of the Book. Her cuff was warm in her hand.

  He hadn’t betrayed her in the end. He’d given her exactly what she needed.

  But before she could fully comprehend that he was well and truly gone, she felt someone grab her arm.

  “Did he give it to you?” Nibs demanded, his pale face close to hers. “I know he told you where it is.”

  “What?” She tried to shake him off, but his hands gripped her arm painfully.

  “Tell me,” he said, pulling a snub-nosed pistol from his jacket and placing it under her chin. “Tell me or you can join him.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t make sense of what was happening.

  “Tell me what he did with the Book!” Nibsy said, his breath hot and sour on her face as the cool barrel of the gun pressed against her throat.

  “I—” Esta knew in that moment that Harte had been right. She couldn’t give it to him. She knew then that whatever happened, Nibs would never be worthy of the power it held. Her mind raced for some lie as she shifted the cloak against herself so he wouldn’t feel the Book within its folds.

  He clicked the hammer of the gun back, but before he could pull the trigger, his body went rigid and he gasped in pain. The gun fell from his hand, and he let go of his grip on Esta as he grabbed his leg.

  Esta backed away from him and looked up to find  Viola standing a few feet off, her face creased into a serious frown as she watched Nibs pull the silver knife from his thigh. She gave Esta a solemn nod, and then she was gone, melting into the crowd as though she’d never been there.

  Only the feel of the cuff in her hand, warm and urgent and compelling, brought Esta to her senses. Sh
e gave in to the pull of Ishtar’s Key, allowed the warmth of its energy to expand her until she could see the layers of time and history in that place—all the seconds to come that wouldn’t have Harte Darrigan in them.

  Nibs looked up at her, hate and anger twisting his features. He raised the gun, but it was too late. She’d found the layer of time she wanted, and she was gone.

  A STARLESS SKY

  Present Day—The Brooklyn Bridge

  Esta barely had time to dodge the semitruck as it sped past her. Gasping, she clung to the side of the roadway. The gusting air from the passing traffic lifted the hair around her face and whipped her skirts around her legs. It was night, but the glow of the city—her city—shattered the darkness. The gentle hum of automobiles replaced the clattering racket of cobbled streets and wooden wheels, and above her, she couldn’t make out the stars.

  Everything felt too fast. After weeks in a city that moved at the speed of a plodding horse or a rumbling elevated train, the flurry of cars and people felt like too much.

  Harte’s cloak was still in her arms, the Book still heavy within its folds. And if she just ignored the fact that it smelled like him, that combination of Ivory soap and the faint scent of oranges, she’d be fine.

  She had to be fine. She still had work left to do.

  She kept her head down and made the long walk back to Midtown, to the parking lot she’d left from, beneath the crown of the Empire State Building. For her, weeks had passed, but for this city, everything felt exactly the same. The summer night was warmer than the day in late March she’d left behind, and by the time she reached her destination, she was sweating from the heavy skirts and the pace she’d set.

  As she rounded the corner, she stopped short and then retreated. The street where Dakari’s car had once been was now blocked off, and a small crowd had formed. Shards of red from the lights of police cars bounced off the darkened windows of the surrounding buildings. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the street where Dakari had fallen, and she couldn’t tell if he was still there.

  Esta had tried to return to a few minutes after she originally left, just as Professor Lachlan had taught her. But after the walk from the bridge, she was too late. If they had Dakari . . . If he were injured or worse . . .