SLEEPWALKING
1904—St. Louis
Esta didn’t know how they got away from the fair. She remembered pain and a chilling burst of power, and then, little by little, she surfaced from the fog of what had happened. Seshat. Thoth. And the dangerous reality of her own affinity. By then North had taken them forward in time, to long after the fair had cleared out and everyone had gone back to the safety of their own homes.
She moved like a sleepwalker, barely seeing or hearing as Maggie and North led them through the fairgrounds back to the waiting wagon. She almost didn’t remember to retrieve her stones—the cuff and the necklace—but Maggie helped with that. Then it was a dash to the station, and before she could process everything, she found herself in a Pullman car, resting next to Harte on the narrow bottom bunk.
Even with everything that had happened, even with her world feeling like it had fallen apart, the sun still managed to come up the next day. It warmed Esta’s face through the window of the train, waking her. There was a moment just as she came out of sleep when she forgot where she was—what she was. In that moment between sleep and waking, she did not yet remember the night before. She did not think of the mistakes she’d made or the lives those mistakes had taken. She did not yet remember the terrible truths that had been revealed and the heartbreaking reality of what lay before her. Instead, she thought that she heard a woman’s voice singing to her, and she thought she could almost remember the words of the song. It must have been a memory from somewhere long ago, when she was nothing but a child with no guilt, only innocence. With the world in front of her, wide and open as a promise.
But the softness and safety of the state between sleep and waking lasted only a moment. The ache in her bones and the pain echoing in her skull returned soon after, reminding her of what she’d been through. She felt soiled and wrung out, like an old rag not worth cleaning to keep. Even her bones felt like they would shatter if she moved the wrong way.
Distantly, she heard the soft snoring of the people in the small berth with her. North, propped awkwardly in a chair, and Maggie in the bunk above her. She remembered lying down next to Harte. The power he carried within him was quiet as she nestled next to him, trying to warm him and waiting for him to wake as she fought her own exhaustion.
But now the bed was cold and empty beside her.
She pulled herself up and looked around the small Pullman compartment, but there was no sign of Harte. After what had happened in the rotunda, North hadn’t trusted Harte not to do something rash. He’d lashed Harte to the post of the bunk, but the rope North had used was now hanging empty.
Worse, her cuff—the one that held Ishtar’s Key—was gone. In its place was a simple bracelet made of beads: the one he’d bought that first day at the fair. She reached for it, about to tear it from her wrist, but the moment she touched it, a jumble of images rose in her mind, and she felt an impulse so sure and clear that she knew it was a message he’d left for her, deep in her unconscious mind. He’d used his affinity on her, she realized. Rather than leave a note that could have been found or read by prying eyes, he left her a hope and a plea that only she could know.
He hadn’t left her completely, then. But he also hadn’t trusted himself enough to take her with him.
Cursing Harte for his heavy-handedness and herself for falling asleep, Esta stepped outside into the passage and then out onto the platform, where the prairie grass extended as far as the eye could see.
Harte was gone, but she wasn’t alone. There was a long, unknown road ahead of them, one that led to another ocean, a distant shore. She would do what Harte had asked of her, and then, when she found him, she would make sure he regretted leaving her behind.
There was work left to do. A demigod to destroy. There were still stones to gather, a future to make.
And on the inside of her wrist was a scar—a single word in the Latin she’d learned as a child. A command calling her back, to New York and to the past.
Redi.