The Last Magician

“I do. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I know firsthand what the effect of your choices will do to our kind and to our world if you go through with this. But if you stop this now, maybe we can still fix things. Maybe we can change everything.”

He looked at her, his stormy eyes testing her for the truth in her words. She knew they were unbelievable, but this was her only chance to finish what she’d started by coming here.

“You have to believe me.” Esta took his face in her hands, feeling the cleanly shaven cheeks and the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers. “And you know how to see if I’m telling you the truth.”

Someday, maybe she would share a kiss that was more than deception and manipulation. Someday, maybe she would press her lips against someone else’s for no other reason than desire or aching want. Maybe.

But today was not that day.

She closed the distance between them, and at the very moment she pressed her lips against his, she let go of her hold on time. As the world spun back into motion, she put every piece of herself into the kiss, pulling him toward her, tangling her mouth against his, willing him to take what he would as she opened her mind to him. Because if he got the stone, if he took the Book and destroyed it, she would be lost. Everything would be lost.

His lips were impassive at first, and her stomach twisted with the understanding that he wouldn’t take what she was offering. But then she felt the pulse of his magic, warm and now more familiar than it should have been. She didn’t pull back or flinch away this time. Instead she bade him take all he would. His magic wrapped around her as his lips opened against hers, and she allowed herself to be laid bare, to risk everything for the chance that he wouldn’t pursue this course he had set them on.

It was only when a smattering of applause came from the audience that she remembered where she was and what they were doing. She stepped back from him, her cheeks hot, but Harte’s expression was impassive. Unreadable.

It doesn’t matter if he believes me, she told herself. All I have to do is slow time and I can get away—

“Why don’t you come stand with me, sweetheart?” Sam Watson said, taking her by the arm and pulling her away from the safe before she could do anything. He didn’t release her arm, but he gave her a wink. “Best to make sure there’s no question that your Mr. Darrigan doesn’t have any assistance.”

“Of course,” she murmured, eyeing his hold on her arm. As long as he was touching her, she couldn’t use her affinity, not without bringing him with her. She couldn’t do anything about Harte or what he might have planned for the Book. ?All she could do was watch as they locked him into the safe and wait. And hope that what she’d told him had been enough.





THE MYSTERIUM


Still stunned by what Esta had shown him, Harte moved by instinct, pushing against the back of the vault to loosen the bolts there, adjusting his arms to slip free from the chains, all the while struggling to understand what he’d just seen.

What he’d found when he pushed into her mind was too unbelievable. Like something out of H. G. Wells. She had to be lying.

But he knew he would have been able to see the lie in her intentions, and no matter how he searched, there hadn’t been one there. His head swirled with the strange images as he let himself out of the back of the safe, where Jianyu was already waiting, obscuring the view of anyone who might be watching. Together they moved to the back of the stage. When Harte saw the coast was clear for him to slip out into the hallway beyond, he gave Jianyu a nod to let him know he was good.

What he’d seen in Esta’s mind changed nothing.

It changed everything.

As he came around the corner, he almost ran directly into Viola, who was hiding in the shadows. She was now dressed in black, looking every inch the assassin.

“Where’s Esta?”

“On the stage, where she’s supposed to be.”

“This was not the plan.”

He felt the searing energy of her magic a second before his head felt like it was being pressed in a vise. His vision started to blur, and he had the sense that at any moment everything could go black. “Dolph didn’t tell you the whole plan,” Harte said, fighting past the urge to scream from the pressure behind his eyes.

Viola raised a single arched brow in his direction, and a spike of pain shot through his chest. “Dolph trusts me.”

“Dolph doesn’t trust anyone right now,” he gasped. “No one had the entire plan except me and him.” Another bolt of pain rocketed through his chest, nearly making his legs give out. “It’s better this way. They won’t be able to accuse her of anything as long as she’s standing on the stage with them. If they can’t accuse her, they won’t be able to trace it back to Dolph,” he said, and the pressure eased a little. “Besides, she’s not alone. Jianyu is there, isn’t he? He’ll make sure she gets out.”

She lifted one of her knives to his throat. “I don’t like this.”

He met her glare head-on, fighting past the remaining pain. “We can argue about this, or we can finish what we came to do and get out of here.”

Viola glared at him a moment longer, and then the pressure in his head eased completely, and he almost collapsed from the relief of it. “If you’re lying to me, you won’t make it out of this place alive.”

She gave him a jerk of her head, and he followed her silently back through the Egyptian room. They stayed to the edges of the chamber, using the shadows of the great Egyptian gods to conceal themselves, until they came to the other side.

Gilded double doors carved with elaborate renderings of the tree of life marked the entrance to the Mysterium. If Jack had been correct, the passage behind those doors was available only to the Inner Circle, the highest and most exclusive members of the Order. Jack himself had never seen what lay beyond those doors, and if Harte had any say in it, he never would.

Viola dispatched the guard on the other side of the door before he could so much as lift a finger to sound an alarm. Once they were through, they found a wide hall that slanted downward, like a ramp. The floor was made of a polished black granite that reflected the light of the greenish lamps that hung from the walls, which were carved with gilded alchemical symbols. From where they were standing, they couldn’t see the end of the hall. It passed downward, into the earth, and then cut to the right around a sharp corner.

Harte and Viola moved quickly, following the passage until it ended at a brass cage.

“Come on,” Harte said, pulling the grated door of the elevator aside.

Viola hesitated. “You want me to get into that?”

“Unless you’d rather wait here.” He climbed into the elevator’s cage, and Viola, scowling at him, stepped warily into the small boxlike room.

Once she was in, he secured the gate and pressed the lever to make the elevator start its slow descent. The smooth granite turned to concrete and then bedrock as they continued down, rumbling into the depths of the building—into the very heart of the island itself.

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