“By the time my family arrived in Manhattan, back in 1888, the Order had forgotten what they once were, what they’d come from. They feared the power that was coming to their shores, so they tried to eliminate it. They targeted the weak, the poor. Those who had no voice, no power to fight back. They killed my father because he tried to speak out, and then they hunted down my mother and brothers and sisters. I only got away because I was off working. An eleven-year-old, working at a factory just to put bread on the table.
“They had no idea what fear was, but they will. Newton knew that if anyone could finish what he started and control the Book’s power, they’d be as powerful as a god, the last magician the world would ever know. Now that I have the Book and the stones, I can unlock the power of the Ars Arcana. I’ve been waiting a lifetime—more, really—for this moment.”
“So do it already,” she challenged. “You’re standing here monologuing like some cartoon villain. If you have all the pieces, what are you waiting for?”
He smiled. A slow, creeping curve of his narrow lips. “I’ve been waiting for you, Esta.”
“I won’t help you.”
“Oh, I think you will.”
When he lifted himself from the chair and worked his way around the table to where she sat, she realized then that he didn’t have his usual crutch. Instead, his hand rested on a cane topped with a silver Medusa head.
“That was Dolph’s,” she said through clenched teeth as anger flashed through her.
“Yes, it was. You might say he bequeathed it to me.”
“More like you stole it.”
“Mere semantics. All that matters now is that I’ve nearly won. Dolph Saunders didn’t get the Book. Because of your work, Harte Darrigan didn’t either.”
Disgust rose in her throat. “I would never help you.”
Professor Lachlan tipped his head to the side, his expression calm. “What makes you think you’ll have any choice?”
THE IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
Esta pulled against the ropes, desperate to loosen them enough to free herself. She wanted nothing more than to destroy the man in front of her. But the ropes holding her were too tight. They barely moved.
Professor Lachlan straightened. “You’re only going to wear yourself out, and I’m nowhere near done with you.”
“Funny, I’m more than finished with you,” she spat.
He laughed as he made his way to the table that held the artifacts, scooping them up and bringing them to where she was still tied to the chair. “You certainly inherited your mother’s fire, didn’t you?”
Her voice sounded like gravel when she finally found it: “You knew my mother?”
Professor Lachlan took a moment to look her over, his cloudy eyes studying her. “Dressed like that, you look a bit like her, you know. Not much, but a little. Same eyes. Lighter hair.” He placed the crown that held the Dragon’s Eye on her head, so the cool metal lay snug against her forehead. “You’re certainly impulsive like she was. Stubborn, too.”
“You told me you found me in a park.” Her own voice sounded very far away, and all around her, the room felt like a tunnel.
“I lied,” he said, fastening the collar that held the Djinni’s Star around her neck.
“Or maybe you’re lying now.”
“Am I?” He slid the ring with the clear agate called Delphi’s Tear onto her left middle finger.
She could feel the warmth of the stones, but they didn’t call to her, not like Ishtar’s Key did. Professor Lachlan was still holding the cuff, and if he would just put it on her arm—if she could just fight past the drug in her system—maybe she could get away.
“You have to be lying.” Because if he wasn’t, then everything that Esta had ever believed about herself was also a lie.
“I’m surprised you didn’t put it all together for yourself. ?You might be impulsive, maybe a bit overemotional, but I’ve never thought of you as stupid.” He huffed out an amused laugh. “You didn’t, though, did you?”
He studied her for a moment before he continued. “Actually, now that I look at you, you definitely have more of your father in you. I wonder why someone didn’t notice the resemblance. Not that they would ever have put that together—not when everyone thought Dolph and Leena’s child died at birth.”
“Dolph?” she whispered.
“And Leena . . . who wasn’t quite his wife.” Professor Lachlan gave her a less-than-friendly pat on the cheek, but she didn’t even feel the sting of his hand against her skin.
No.
Dolph Saunders couldn’t be her father. She’d sat across from him countless times, had talked with him and argued with him. She would have known. When he bought her the knish from Schimmel’s and told her what he wanted to do, wouldn’t she have realized? When they brought his body in, pale and lifeless, and she had mourned with the others, wouldn’t she have felt something—anything—that would have made her recognize who he was to her?
“That’s not possible,” she said through the tightness in her throat. “Dolph Saunders died more than a hundred years ago.”
Professor Lachlan gave her a pitying look. “You are capable of traveling through time, aren’t you?” He held up Ishtar’s Key. “With the right equipment, that is.”
“I would have remembered—”
“You were far too young to remember anything. You couldn’t have been more than three when everything went wrong. ?After Darrigan took the Book and destroyed half of Khafre Hall, Tammany’s patrols and the Order’s influence made life a living hell in the Bowery—you know that now for yourself.”
“No,” she whispered, as though uttering that single syllable could change the truth that was staring her in the face. “I was there. He didn’t have a child.”
“He didn’t know he had a child. Leena kept it from him after he betrayed her. He was so desperate back then to shore up his power that he didn’t tell her he was dabbling in ritual magic. She didn’t find out until it was too late that he’d taken some of her power and used it to turn his marks into weapons. The shock of it sent her into labor too early, and when you were born, she told everyone you’d died.”
“How could she?”
“In those days, it was fairly easy. Fathers weren’t all that involved. I think the real question you mean to ask is why.” He shrugged. “Because it was clear from the beginning that you were something special, something rare and powerful, and she didn’t trust that Dolph wouldn’t use you as well.”
“He never knew?” she asked, horrified that anyone could do such a thing.
“He never even saw you. She was desperate to protect you, and you should know well enough that desperate people are capable of terrible things. But they also make easy marks.”
“She trusted you,” Esta realized. It was the only way he could know.
Professor Lachlan nodded. “She needed an ally, and she believed in me. I don’t think she ever intended to hide you for long, but lies have a tendency to take on lives of their own. We both knew your affinity was something different. Maybe once there had been others who could do what you can do, but they were hunted and eliminated during the Disenchantment. You were rare, even in 1902. An unexpected anomaly born from unexpected parents.