She had to fix this. She had to go back and save him.
Forcing herself to ignore the sounds of the sirens and the lights flashing around her, Esta focused on finding the layers of time. The stone in the cuff on her arm grew warm, but she ignored its heat and sifted through the moments, peeling back the minutes and seconds until she thought she was close to the instant the gunfire had erupted. She could almost see it—the lights from the police cars began to dim, their sirens fading into the quiet of the night before her original departure.
But just as she found that moment, the same sense of foreboding came over her that had made her body feel as if it were burning all those weeks ago, the night she left. The stone felt hot, like a branded warning against her skin. Just as it had before.
Something is wrong.
She took a deep breath, fighting against her own panic, struggling to make herself slip back to the seconds before Dakari was attacked, but this time, her instincts worked against her. With a gasping sob, she lost her hold on time, and the present—with all its light and noise—came flooding back. She bent over to steady herself, her heart pounding and her skin cold despite the warmth of the summer night. Despite the heat of the stone against her skin.
“No,” she whispered, as though hearing her own voice would help her overcome her fear. But her voice sounded scared, shaken. It was too much of a coincidence for her to feel this way twice, but whether it had something to do with this particular moment, with the stone, or with something else, she didn’t know. What she did know was that Dakari’s life depended on her. She needed to try again, for Dakari’s sake, but before she could, a hand grasped her by the shoulder and pulled her back as another hand covered the yelp of surprise that she would have otherwise let out.
“Shhhhh,” a familiar voice said, close to her ear. “I’m going to let you go, but you need to keep quiet.”
She turned to find Dakari standing behind her, but she couldn’t do much more than open and close her mouth numbly, searching for the words that wouldn’t come. “How did you . . .” she said finally, but she trailed off. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing even as she felt the relief of having him there, whole and alive, before her.
He tore open his shirt, showing her the marred bulletproof vest beneath. “I’m always prepared, E.” He rubbed at his chest, grimacing. “Though those gunshots are going to leave a bruise,” he said.
Esta noticed the blood on his pants. “Dakari, your leg.”
“I know, but I had to wait for you to get back. Now that you are, we should get out of here.” In the distance she could already hear the scream of another siren bouncing off the buildings. “Come on,” he said, lifting himself from the pavement. “You drive.”
She caught the keys he tossed her.
“Maybe you could do that time thing you do? Get me back faster?” he asked.
“Right,” she said, still so relieved to see him that she could hardly breathe. He’s not gone, she thought as she pulled the seconds slow. “I thought you were dead.” She helped him to the car, the city silent around them.
“Nah. I’m damn hard to kill.” He patted his bulletproof vest again, wincing as he slid into the backseat with his injured leg propped in front of him.
“Who were those guys?” she asked as she took the driver’s seat and glanced back in the rearview mirror.
A shadow crossed his expression. “Who knows?” he told her, but he didn’t quite meet her eyes as he said it. “How long were you away this time?” he asked, tending to his leg as she started the car and began navigating through the strange tableau of a city gone nearly still.
“Weeks,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge that they were all dead. Whatever had happened on that bridge, it was more than a hundred years later. Jianyu, Viola, the rest of the crew at the Strega, they’d all be dust in the grave by now. And she would never have the chance to say good-bye.
“Did you get it?” he asked, watching her with careful eyes in the rearview mirror.
She nodded, and the relief that flashed across his face was so stark, it surprised her. Had he thought she wouldn’t?
“The Professor’ll be pleased.”
“Maybe,” she told him.
“What do you mean?” he asked, his brows drawn together in concern.
“I don’t think we can destroy the Brink,” she said, remembering everything Harte had told her. “Even if we could . . . I don’t know if we should.”
Dakari’s expression was stern. “You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know anymore. I need to talk with Professor Lachlan. He’ll know what to do.”
Dakari didn’t speak for a long moment. “You’re right, E. You’ve been through a lot. Maybe you’re not thinking straight. Let’s just get back and we’ll work it all out then.” He wouldn’t say anything else, but he kept eyeing her uneasily as she drove the final blocks to Orchard Street.
The exterior of the building on Orchard Street didn’t look any different than it had when she left weeks ago, but then, why would it? For the people in her own time, she’d been gone only a few minutes. She looked up at the dark brick, seeing it through new eyes. It was an old tenement, and in the moonlight, with the lights out all around and the neighborhood quiet, it could have been a hundred years in the past. She could almost imagine walking the four blocks to Elizabeth Street and letting herself in through the Strega’s back door. For a moment she imagined that the people she’d met there and come to admire weren’t all dead and gone.
Dakari opened the front door and let them into the empty foyer. To Esta’s relief, the foyer looked like it had before her mistakes at the Schwab mansion. It was, she hoped, a good sign—a sign that maybe she’d managed to fix her mistakes.
But it didn’t feel like home anymore.
There was a clean, almost sterile quality to the place that felt wrong to her now. A building like this one should be teeming with life. There should be the sounds of children in the halls and the smells of five different apartments cooking dinner. But there had never been the sound of children in those hallways while she lived in them.
The door of 1A opened to reveal the true entrance of the building. Logan was waiting on the other side.
“You’re up,” Esta said, surprised to see him whole and healthy. “You’re feeling okay?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You were shot,” she told him, confused.
He glanced at Dakari. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Her stomach sank. “You were shot on the Schwab job. When I left, you weren’t even conscious yet. . . .” Her words trailed off. “You don’t remember being shot by the blond—by Jack?”
“There wasn’t any blond,” Logan said, looking at her as though she’d lost her mind. “There was you trying to save some serving girl and almost getting thrown out, but I don’t remember any blond guy. ?And I definitely would have remembered being shot.”