Esta came to slowly, her head throbbing as she opened her eyes to find herself on the floor in a windowless room. She was still wearing a corset and long skirts, her clothing from the past, so at first she thought it had all been a bad dream. That she was still back in her narrow room above the Strega, but she could hear a siren in the distance, a wailing reminder that she was no longer with Dolph and the rest. She was home, but the ache in her arm where Dakari had jabbed her with the needle and the foggy numbness that filled her head wasn’t the welcome she’d expected. Everything felt upside down.
She wasn’t sure where she was, or if she was even still in Professor Lachlan’s building. Her head was spinning as she pulled herself up and felt around the walls of the room, trying to find the door. She made it around the three corners of the small space before she found two seams where a door should have been, but there was no handle and no lock, only a smooth plate of metal over where the locking mechanism should be.
No matter how much she searched, she couldn’t find any place to pick a lock or jimmy a hinge. It was a prison built for a thief.
It was a prison he’d built for her.
It could have been minutes or hours that she sat there in the darkness before she finally heard voices coming from the other side of the wall. She scuttled back and tried to focus enough to pull the seconds slow. But time slipped away from her—she couldn’t find the spaces. She felt like she had in the basement of the Haymarket, unable to call on her affinity and at the mercy of whoever was coming for her.
The wall split open, and she blinked, shielding her eyes from the light of the hall. “Come on, E.”
“Dakari? Is that you?” She wanted it to be him, but she also didn’t know if she could trust him anymore.
A moment later he had hoisted her up onto still-shaky legs and was leading her out of the room.
“What’s going on?” she asked him, and when he didn’t answer, she tried to pull away. “Where are we going?”
He kept a tight hold on her, though, refusing to answer her questions as he half led, half dragged her down the hall toward the elevator.
“Why are you acting like this, Dakari? It’s me. You know me.” If she only had his knife, maybe she could have gotten through to him. But the knife was lost to the past, and if things didn’t improve, she didn’t know what her future held in store. “Please,” she tried again.
He wouldn’t look at her as pushed her gently into the elevator, and he kept hold of her the entire time the cage made its slow, rattling climb to the top. “Just answer his questions and do what he asks. Prove yourself to him, and it’ll be fine. Everything can go back to how it should be.”
But she doubted anything could ever go back to the way it had been before. Too much had changed.
When the elevator stopped at the library, Dakari led her forward. “Come on.”
It was night, but she had no idea how long she’d been out of it with the drug they’d given her and no idea how much time had passed in the windowless prison they’d kept her in. The lights in the library were off, except for the small desk lamp that illuminated the Professor’s face as he bent, serious and focused, over the Ars Arcana. Near him on the table were the five artifacts laid out in a straight line.
When he heard them approaching, he glanced up. “Are you feeling better?”
“You drugged me and locked me in a doorless room,” she said, well aware she was pushing him. “What did I do to deserve that? I brought you the Book.”
“You were also talking nonsense about the Brink being indestructible.”
“I was only trying to warn you.”
“Yes, and where did you get the information?”
“From Harte,” she said, knowing how damning that sounded.
“Of course you did. Because you came to trust him, didn’t you? It was exactly what I was afraid of happening. It’s exactly why I gave you some incentive to return.”
“An incentive?”
Professor Lachlan didn’t so much as blink. “You’re impulsive, but you’re also predictable. I knew that if you believed Dakari’s life was in danger, you’d be sure to return, no matter how you might have come to feel about those in the past.”
She felt numb from more than the drug they’d given her now as the image of Dakari’s body jerking from the impact of the bullets rose in her mind. He’d been wearing a vest, but those bullets hadn’t been blanks. They’d torn through his legs. “You could have killed him!”
“His life was never in danger,” the Professor said, dismissing her.
Esta glanced up at Dakari, but her old friend’s expression was unreadable, his features closed off and distant. If he was upset or surprised by this news, his face didn’t show it.
“You risked Dakari’s life because you didn’t trust me?” she pressed.
“I wouldn’t have trusted anyone that much, but especially not you, impulsive girl that you are. So, no. I didn’t trust that you wouldn’t be swayed by Dolph Saunders or even the Magician. I couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t take one look into Harte Darrigan’s pretty gray eyes, listen to his poor-little-boy-lost sob story, and decide to give him a chance. I gave myself some insurance. I gave you an incentive to return.” He stared at her, his nostrils flaring from the exertion of his tirade.
With those words, something inside her clicked, and apprehension wrapped around her. “How did you know he had gray eyes?”
“What?” Professor Lachlan’s face bunched in irritation.
“Harte Darrigan. You couldn’t know what color his eyes were. Pictures wouldn’t have shown you that.”
His expression went slack, as though he realized the slip, but then a smile curved softly at his lips. “You always have been too observant for your own good.”
Unease slinked through her. “You always told me that it made me a good thief.”
“It did. But it also makes you a problem.” Professor Lachlan spoke to Dakari. “If you’d secure her, I’ll take it from here.”
She knew it was coming, but she could still hardly believe what was happening when Dakari wrestled her into a chair and secured her arms and legs with rope.
“Just tell him the truth, E. If you’re still with us, everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Dakari?” she pleaded, but it fell on deaf ears. He was already heading toward the elevator.
“You know, you were never supposed to come back here. None of this had to happen if you’d have just done what you should have. If you’d only given me the Book that day on the bridge—”
Esta turned back to meet Professor Lachlan’s gaze. “How could I have given you the Book? That was a hundred years ago.”
Professor Lachlan didn’t speak at first, but there was something in his expression that made Esta’s skin crawl. “Maybe you’re not so very observant, after all. ?You don’t recognize me, do you?” He frowned. “Have I really changed so much?”
“You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you,” she said, confused by his question.
“A few weeks, a lifetime. Strange how similar two spans of time can be. I was right about you then. I’ve been right about you all along.”
She saw then what maybe she should have seen before. “No . . .” He’d changed over the years, but beneath the age spots and wrinkles, beneath the tuft of white, thinning hair and the frailness, she thought she could see the boy he’d been. “Nibs?” she said, her voice barely working.
“I always hated that name,” he told her.