by Lisa Maxwell
Then his lips were on hers, firm and confident, without any space between them for more questions. She could have stopped him, could have stopped herself from wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer, but she didn’t want to. All the fear and frustration and worry of the night was still there, but suddenly it simply didn’t matter. All that mattered at that moment was the feel of his lips against hers and the reality of Harte, solid and warm and wanting, as he deepened the kiss, pulling her into it. Losing himself as well.
And then all at once he backed away, breaking the connection between them. His eyes were brighter now, and she could see the unnameable colors shimmering there as his chest rose and fell with the effort of his breathing. She wanted to draw him back and kiss him again, but she waited, because she sensed that any movement would break the fragile hope spun out of the moment.
Slowly, tentatively, he reached out to brush the fringe of hair back from her face. “I can’t believe you did this to your hair.”
“It’s just hair, Harte,” she said, the warmth that had blossomed inside of her cooling a bit at his words. But his fingers sifting through her short locks were making it hard to stay angry at him. “I don’t really care if you like it or not.”
He frowned at her. “I never said I didn’t like it,” he told her softly.
“At the bar, I thought . . .” He was running his hand down the bare nape of her neck. “You looked so upset.”
“Can you blame me?” he whispered, and then he leaned in until his forehead rested against hers. “You surprised me. I thought you were safe, and then you appeared . . . like this—”
She pulled back, about to snap at him again, but she stopped when she saw the expression on his face. The desire and need that matched her own.
He ran his hand down the side of her neck, and in its wake, she felt her affinity ripple and warm, felt herself warm as well. “You might as well have arrived completely naked, with your neck so exposed and the shape of your legs in those pants where every person in the bar could see them.”
“No one was looking.” She was frustrated and amused all at once at his prudishness.
“I was looking,” he told her, and he drew her in to him again, kissing her with a desperation that made her lose her breath.
She was only partially aware that the door was still open behind him because all of her senses were taken up with the kiss. His hands ran down her neck, over her shoulders and her arms, smoothing away the anger and fear of the day, pressing aside the emptiness she’d felt when her affinity had slipped from her grasp and sparking something else—something warmer and brighter than she’d felt before. Then he was tugging at the bindings around her chest until they fell away completely and her bare skin brushed against the rough fabric of his coat. She could have stopped him at any moment, but she didn’t want to. Instead, she threaded her fingers through his hair, drawing him closer, urging him on. Meeting him will for will, want for want.
It wasn’t until the back of her legs hit the low bed that she realized they had been moving across the room, but then they toppled together onto the thin mattress, Harte’s weight pressing down onto her and boxing her in. Yes, she wanted to say, but the second they were horizontal, Harte went completely still. He pulled back from her, and she watched his expression close up like a house before a storm, while the strange colors bloomed within his irises.
“Harte?” she whispered, touching his face when he didn’t move other than the ragged rise and fall of his chest as he caught his breath. But even though his eyes were open, staring straight into hers, Esta had the sense that Harte wasn’t really there.
THE WOMAN
1904—St. Louis
Harte was a breath away from Esta. He could feel her skin hot against his, the softness of her body against the firmness of his own, but it wasn’t her he was seeing. The dingy room had fallen away as well, and he felt the oppressiveness of summer—a dry, baking heat that licked along his skin.
There was a woman dressed in white linen robes that draped the floor, and the woman was screaming. She was Esta and she was another woman all at the same time, and she was—they were—screaming. The sound echoed in his ears so loudly that he couldn’t hear anything but the terror and agony and rage in her voice. The woman was looking at him, her face superimposed over Esta’s, and though there was a part of Harte that dimly realized none of this was real—that this was some sort of vision or waking nightmare—he could not shake himself free of it.
He wanted to scream at Esta to get away. He needed to break the connection between them, but it was too late. The voice had swelled within him, blotting out Esta’s face completely.
And then there was only darkness and it was as though he was the woman. As though he was seeing what she saw, feeling what she felt.
Ahead there was a light, and she went toward it until it grew brighter and brighter and became a chamber that was lined with scrolls and parchments piled high upon the shelves. Knowledge and power and all the secrets of the world.
She’d done this.
She’d created it all, but none of it had worked. There was still more to do, or the power in the world would fade as surely as moonlight in the brightness of dawn.
In the center of the room stood a long, low table, and upon its surface gleamed five gemstones—stones not hewed from the earth but made.
The power she wielded was dying. Magic had been fading for some time, growing weaker with each division, with each breaking apart. She had tried to stop its slow death. She had created something to suspend power, pure and whole. To preserve it. So she had created the word and the page. But it had not worked. It had been stolen from her, perverted and abused.
She had meant to save them all, and instead she had created magic’s undoing.
But she would stop that. Now. Here.
She ran her fingers over the stones that she had created, and he could feel the way they called to her. He could feel the pull of them, strong and sure and clear.
And then the vision tilted and changed again. The world tipped and there was a woman—or perhaps it was Esta? Her dark hair was wild around her face. Her eyes had gone black and empty and she was screaming. The stones were aglow, and she was trapped within their power. Pain and rage and fury whipped about the chamber. And fear. There was a fear thick in the air—fear, and the pain of betrayal.
“Harte?” He felt cool fingers touch his face, drawing him up from the depths, and he flinched away, surfacing from the nightmare that had intruded into his waking.
“Don’t touch me,” he said, his voice strained and sharp. He pulled back. Scuttled away from her with an awkward jerking step, falling out of the bed to get away. “Just—stay over there. Stay away.”
The vision still haunted him. The woman and Esta, their faces alternating as he tried to shake the image of the woman screaming from his mind.
Esta turned on her side to look at him. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I want you—” But he clapped his hands over his own mouth, because it wasn’t him who’d spoken. The voice had taken advantage of his weakness and had forced itself up from within him, taking his body and using it as if he were nothing more than a puppet.
Her mouth curved and her golden eyes went dark. “Well, I think what just happened proves that you can have me,” she said impishly.
“No!” he roared. And the word was his own. He was himself. Harte Darrigan, not whatever lived inside of him.
Esta flinched, and he saw hurt flash across her face. “Harte, what’s wrong?” She was reaching for him and looking so beautiful and fragile and utterly breakable.
He knew what the vision meant—he would break her. The Book—the power inside of him, whatever it was—would break her and use her and it would be his fault. All my fault. He would break her like he broke his mother, but this time there would be nothing left afterward, nothing but the blackness that still haunted him long after the vision had faded.
>
The blackness, just like the darkness that Esta had told him she saw when their affinities connected.
Swallowing hard, he forced himself to look at her—to make sure that the blackness in her eyes wasn’t real. Her hair was a mess, the short strands chopped in uneven lengths and falling around her face like some sort of fairy creature, but her eyes were her own. There was concern and pain and a question in their whiskey-colored depths. “I can’t hold it back,” he told her. He saw the flash of pleasure in her expression before he killed it with the words he said next. “It’s the Book. . . .”
“The Book?” she asked.
“The power of whatever it is inside of me. I—” He stopped, corrected himself. “It wants you. It wants to use you, and if it does . . .” The blackness was so empty, like nothing at all. Like it will bleed into the world and no one will be safe.
“What are you saying?” she asked slowly, her tone cooling now. “Are you telling me that you didn’t want to kiss me?”
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head. But it didn’t feel like the truth. “I don’t know.”
Esta sat up the rest of the way, frowning at him. She pulled the sheets around her, but not before he saw the flash of brownish pink and the smooth expanse of skin that had almost been his.
Yes . . . Mine . . .
“No!” he said. His voice was like the report of a gun in the tiny room, and she flinched again. But he would not let it have her. “I don’t know what this is inside of me,” he told her, his voice rough. “I don’t know what this is between us. I don’t know if I want you or if it’s the power that does, but this can’t happen. This can’t ever happen.”
“Harte . . .” There was an ache in her voice that pierced him.
“I’ve seen things,” he whispered, the memory of the visions crashing over him again.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Visions. At the station, at the hotel, just now . . .” He looked at her, willed her to understand as he told her what he’d seen. “I’m going to hurt you. If I touch you, if I let myself go with you, I’ll destroy you.”
“You won’t—”
He let out a ragged breath. “You can’t know that.”
“I’m not some fragile flower, Harte. We’ll figure this out. We’ll do it together.”
She reached for him, but he drew back, avoiding her touch. The voice was too near to the surface of him. Then he turned away, because he knew that if he looked at her now, saw the hurt in her eyes and her body bared to him as it was, his control would crumble. “I apologize,” he said stiffly, his voice brittle and clipped.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” She was on her feet now. He could hear her wrapping the blanket around herself. “In case you missed it, I was right there with you.”
But he was already grabbing his coat, heading for the door, which was still open. We didn’t even close the door. So much for control.
“You’re seriously leaving?” she asked.
“I’m going to walk for a bit.” He did turn back to her then, and her hair was rumpled and her lips were bruised red from their kissing. “I need some air.”
“Harte—”
“And some space,” he finished, striding out the open door. Once he was through it, he closed it behind him with an unmistakable finality.
His legs were shaking as he ran down the steps of the boardinghouse and out into the night. It was still warm, the air was damp from the rain, and the clouds had parted above to show the stars, but Harte didn’t notice any of that. He didn’t even notice which way he was going. He simply walked, as quickly and as doggedly as his feet would go.
He’d kissed her. He’d kissed her, touched her, and it had been everything—more than everything. More than he could have imagined.
He could have had her. She would have given herself to him, and he could have taken her there, on that narrow, dirty bed in that narrow, worn-out room. And she would have hated him for it later.
Onward he walked until the power inside of him receded and the soles of his feet felt as ragged as he did, as he vowed with every step he took that he would never let that happen.
THE REMAINS OF WHAT HAD BEEN
1904—St. Louis
Esta looked at the crackled paint on the back of the closed door as the realization of what Harte had just done settled in her blood. She was holding the blanket up over her bare chest, and through the open window she could hear the sounds of dogs barking and the occasional rattle of a carriage in the distance. Her heart was galloping, and her skin felt flushed and warm from Harte’s kisses, even as her fury mounted.
His words echoed in her mind: I’m going to hurt you.
At least he hadn’t been lying about that.
She had known all along that uniting the stones and taking control of the Book might mean the end of her. Professor Lachlan had told her as much when he’d tried to take the power of the Book himself. You’re just the vessel. Wasn’t that what he’d said?
She had hoped that the Book would hold some key to changing that fate, but the Book was in the hands of Jack Grew, and who knew where he was? The only way to get back to the time and place where they lost it was to get Harte under control. But when she touched Harte, she could barely slow down the seconds. She wasn’t about to trust slipping through time until they figured out how to control the power he had in him.
Power that, apparently, wanted her.
She shuddered at the thought of it. Suddenly the room felt too close—and at the same time, unbearably empty. Esta pulled on the chemise she’d worn earlier beneath her corset. For a moment she just stood in the silence, taking in the narrow, sagging bed with its stained cover rumpled and askew, the faded curtains looking so tired and worn that they would fall at any moment, and the pile of hair she’d left on the floor earlier.
She’d almost slept with Harte Darrigan. A few minutes ago she’d trusted him enough to lay down all her defenses. And he hadn’t even been there. He hadn’t even been the one—the thing—in control. Everything that had just happened—he wasn’t even sure it had been him.
A coldness settled over her as she reached up to push what was left of her hair out of her eyes. Her fingers still remembered what it had felt like just hours before to run through the long strands, to tuck the locks that had fallen back behind her ears, but now her own hair felt foreign to her. Tentatively, she brushed at the nape of her neck, where the ragged ends of her hair felt coarse and sharp, but it only reminded her of the way Harte had touched her.
Across the room, she caught her reflection in the scarred mirror, and without thinking, she stepped closer. She barely recognized herself—the dark rings beneath her eyes, the way her short hair made her jaw seem sharper and her mouth harder, even as her mouth was still rouged from the friction of Harte’s kisses. Her eyes were no longer softened by the makeup she’d used to darken her lashes. It was more than the haircut that had changed her. It was the fire in her eyes kindled by heartache and senseless tragedy. It was the determination in the hard set of her mouth.
For a moment she examined this new version of herself and realized the overwhelming reality of what she had done—to her hair, with Harte—of where they were and what was at stake. And of what might still lie ahead.
She didn’t yet know the person looking back at her, but she liked what she saw. Or she would learn to. She would do what she must to make sure that Nibsy could never have the stones. She would make sure that the Book and its power were protected from the Order and others who might use them to harm those like her. But she would harden herself against Harte Darrigan. She would be his partner, would even save him if she could, but she would not allow herself to open her heart to him.
She would not make the same mistake again.
At her feet, the remains of what had once been her hair littered the floor. She considered it, the long strands soft beneath the leather soles of the men’s shoes she still wore. That hair had belonged to a different girl.
Esta could no more go back to being that girl than she could reattach the hair to her head. No more than she could wipe the memory of Harte’s kisses from her lips. Gathering the pile of hair from the floor, Esta tossed it into the stove, but the fire had already gone cold and dead.
TOO LATE
1902—New York
The fog that had descended upon the Bowery was thick and murky as the night itself. The soft halo of the streetlamps barely cut through the gloom. The streets, wet with the day’s rain, shone like the water that flooded the rice paddies around his village. For a moment Jianyu almost felt like he was there, standing on a hillside and looking over the endless sweep of fields around his family’s home, the water-soaked ground drowning the weeds that would otherwise choke the life from the rice. But then the image flickered, and it was only the city he saw—the grimness of the streets, the sloshing puddles that would never be enough to wash away the filth and poverty that choked the life from the Bowery.
He was late. He had already failed Cela, and now he would fail again.
Picking up his pace, he did not bother with magic. His affinity would be of no help, not with the way his footsteps could be traced from puddle to puddle, but he kept to the shadows and moved faster. He could not be late. If the boy reached Nibsy, the results could be devastating. With the boy, Nibsy would hold knowledge of what was to come. It could make him unstoppable.
The streets were empty, a spot of luck in an otherwise dismal string of days. Lonely and silent, they offered no comfort. To be taken off guard, to have been beaten so soundly, and then to be handed over by Mock Duck for a handful of secrets? Perhaps he should have been grateful that he was alive. Certainly he should be grateful that Cela had been following him and had risked her own life to rescue him. But it galled him to know that he had required her protection. He had failed her—just as he had failed Dolph—but he would not fail again. He would not allow the boy from another time to win. If that happened, if Nibsy became as powerful as Harte and Esta predicted, the impact would be felt far beyond the reaches of the city, perhaps even far across the seas.