THE ARS ARCANA
1902—New York
Harte Darrigan had watched plenty of people walk away from him over the course of his brief life. He’d watched stage managers shut doors in his face and audiences stand up and leave when his act failed to impress them. He’d watched the guys he’d run wild with when he was just a kid turn away and pretend they didn’t know him when he’d been forced to take the Five Pointers mark. He’d even watched his mother turn her back on him when he wasn’t more than twelve . . . though he wouldn’t deny that he’d deserved it. But somehow, watching Esta walk away made him want to howl, to run after her and tell her he’d changed his mind.
It was an impulse he didn’t completely trust.
Yes, he admired Esta—for her talent and her determination. For the way she always met his eyes straight on, shoulders back, unafraid of what might come. His equal—his better, perhaps—in every way.
Of course, he liked her as well—for her sharp sense of humor and the flash in her eyes when she was angry. He liked her steadfastness and loyalty to those she cared about. And he liked that even when she was lying right to his face, she never pretended to be anything other than what she was.
He wouldn’t say he loved her. No . . . He had seen what love had done to his mother and to Dolph. To Harte, the very word was a con—a lie that people told themselves and others to cover the truth. When people said love, what they really meant was dependency. Obsession. Weakness. So no, he would not say he loved Esta, but he could admit that he wanted her. He could maybe, maybe even admit that he needed her. But he would only ever admit it to himself.
Now, though, that desire he felt for her—the wanting and needing—was a craving stronger, darker than it had ever been. Harte trusted it even less, because it wasn’t entirely his own. In the furthest recesses of his mind, he could feel the power that had once been contained in the Book gathering its strength and pressing at his very soul, like some beaked and taloned creature about to hatch.
As Esta walked away from him, Harte’s hands gripped the railing of the boat. He had to hold himself steady as he felt that power lash out within him, because it had already discovered the truth—it had already learned that she was his weakness.
If he released his hold on the railing, he would follow her, which was what the power trapped within him wanted more than anything. If he followed her as he wanted to, it would be that much harder to press the power down, to keep himself whole . . . and to keep Esta safe. Because if the power took hold of him, if he allowed it to reach for her—for all that she was and all that she could be—its razor-tipped claws would claim her. And it would destroy her.
Had Harte known what the Book was, he wouldn’t have been so eager to get his hands on it. When Dolph Saunders had tempted him with the prospect of a way out of the city, he hadn’t imagined that his own body and mind could become a prison more absolute than the island he’d been born on. He certainly hadn’t expected the Book they stole from the Order to be a living thing—no one had. Because if any of the others—Dolph or Nibsy or the rest—had any idea of what the Book really contained, they never would have let him near it.
Days ago, everything had seemed clearer, simple even. In the bowels of Khafre Hall, his plan had been straightforward. If he took the Book from Dolph’s gang, he would have the freedom he’d wanted for so long, and Nibsy Lorcan—the double-crossing rat—wouldn’t be able to use it for his own ends. He’d seen Nibsy’s plan, the way he would use the Book to control Mageus and use the Mageus under his control to eradicate Sundren. It would be a world safe for the old magic, but the only one with any freedom in it would be Nibsy himself.
But it hadn’t only been Nibsy that Harte had been worried about. Stealing the Book from the Order also meant that Jack Grew would never be able to use it to finish the monstrous machine he was building, the one that could wipe magic from the earth. Too bad that the moment Harte’s hands had brushed that crackled leather, all those plans had changed.
He was used to keeping himself away from others. Most people didn’t realize how much of themselves they projected, so Harte had long become accustomed to pulling his affinity inward and keeping himself closed off. He hated being caught off guard by the onslaught of jumbled images and feelings and thoughts that most people shoved freely into the world. But he hadn’t thought to prepare himself for the Book.
When his skin had made contact with the ancient, cracked cover, he’d realized his mistake. He’d felt a hot, searing energy enter him—a magic with a power like nothing he had ever experienced.
Then the screaming had started.
It had taken only seconds, but those seconds had felt like a never-ending barrage of sound and impressions, an incoherent jumble of languages he should not have been able to understand. But Harte never needed to know the words to understand a person’s heart and mind, and touching the Book had been like reading a person.
Actually, it had been far easier. It was as though the power within the Book had been waiting for that moment—waiting for him to become its living body. He’d understood almost immediately that the Book was more than any one of them had predicted. It was power. It was wrath. It was the beating heart of magic in the world, and it wanted nothing more and nothing less than to be set free. To become. To consume.
And what it wanted most to consume was Esta.
Fortunately, the power he’d unwittingly freed was still weakened by centuries of imprisonment. Harte could still push it down and lock it away when he focused. But the power was growing stronger every day, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to suppress it forever. He hadn’t planned to.
Harte had planned to die. He hadn’t known for sure whether throwing himself from the bridge would silence the clamoring voices, but he’d figured that at least it would mean they couldn’t use him as their pawn. But then Jianyu had shown up at the docks the night before the bridge and offered him another way.
By then Harte had already scattered the artifacts, sending most of them away from the city to keep them out of Nibsy’s reach. He hadn’t realized until it was too late that he could have used them to control the Book’s power. He certainly hadn’t expected Esta to return.
Now stopping Nibsy and the Order and keeping Esta safe depended on controlling it. To do that, they needed the artifacts. But retrieving them meant leaving people behind—his mother, for one. Jianyu, for another. And maybe most worrisome of all, it meant leaving one of the stones.
He’d given one to Cela because he didn’t have any other way to repay her for what he’d done when he’d forced his dying mother upon her with his affinity. The ring had been the least obtrusive of the Order’s pieces, other than maybe the cuff that he’d given to Esta. Harte had known even then that it wasn’t a good enough trade, but now that Esta had returned, he truly understood the danger he’d put Cela in—especially if the boy Esta had brought back with her could find anything. He could only hope that the command he’d planted in her mind with his affinity would be enough to help Cela evade danger until Jianyu could protect her and the stone.
Harte waited a while before he released his hold on the railing, long enough that Esta was out of sight and the crewman on the ferry was beginning to pay more attention to him than was safe.
When he stepped from the boat onto the solidness of the New Jersey soil, he tested himself to make sure that the power within him was still quiet, pushed down deep. It was a new state, but for Harte, who had been trapped on the island of Manhattan his entire life, it might as well have been a new continent.
Around him, people bustled onward, gathering their bags and their children as they moved toward the terminal entrance. He joined them, keeping his cap low, his eyes down, allowing himself to be caught up in the current. He sensed the excitement of some heading off toward new places and the weariness of others making the same trip they’d made countless times before. All of them were oblivious to the miracle it was that they could choose to purchase a ticket, step onto a train, and arrive somewhere else. For Harte, that miracle was one he would never take for granted, however much time he had left.
As he was carried along by the crowd, he almost felt as though the world could be his. Perhaps their mission might actually work and a different future could be possible. But then he heard a whispering begin to grow louder in the recesses of his mind. The dark choir merged into a single voice, one that was speaking in a language he should not have recognized but understood nonetheless. A single word that held untold meaning.
Soon.