“I improvised.” A small smile tugged at her lips. “And now I have this.” She pulled the Book from the bag that she had slung across her body, but her eyes were still staring into its interior, and the color was draining from her face. “No.”
“What?” he asked, wondering what could have put that look on her face after everything they’d been through.
She pulled out a charred piece of metal that looked strangely familiar.
“Is that—?”
“They’re gone,” she whispered, dumping the contents of the bag onto the ground. The artifacts he’d stolen, all charred so badly they were nearly beyond recognition. “This happened before. When I came here the first time to find you. I showed you, remember?”
“Your cuff,” Harte said, remembering the strange images that had flashed through his mind when she’d kissed him onstage. “What happened to them?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I wonder . . . I felt the same heat and pain when I reached to push you through as I’d felt the first time I came back. There must be something to the stones. They must not be able to exist in the same time as themselves.”
Harte thought for a moment. “Nibs wouldn’t have sent the stones back with this Logan character if he knew this would happen. He won’t be able to get to them either. Not where I’ve put them. We’re safe. It’s over.”
“It’s not.” She looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “Someday he will get them. He has before. We have to get the stones before he does.”
“They seem to be beyond repair,” Jianyu said, gesturing to the charred remains.
“Not these,” Esta said. “The others.” She met Harte’s eyes. “The stones that should still be in this time.”
“They’re outside the city, and he’s inside. He can’t get out of the Brink.”
“But they won’t always be outside the city. Eventually they’ll make their way back in. I know, because I’ve stolen every one of them before.” She grabbed his arm. “And what’s worse, Logan is here now. I left him lying on the sidewalk about a week from now. He’s going to find Nibs, and he’ll tell him everything that happens in the future. ?We can’t let him have that information and the stones. We have to get to the stones before he does.”
Harte frowned. “There’s no way to get through the Brink without destroying it.”
Her eyes were wide, her expression unreadable, but he could tell she was thinking, turning over ideas in her mind. And then something clicked, something shifted. “Maybe there is,” she told him, sounding strangely calm.
“Esta, I’ve explained this . . .”
“I know. You told me that the Brink was like a circuit—that taking the Book through would short it out with the excess power. But there are ways to get through a circuit. There are ways to touch electricity. Look at the birds on the wires—you just can’t be grounded.”
He shook his head, not understanding. “Grounded?”
“Maybe grounded is the wrong word. But you’re worried that the power of the Book would short out the Brink, right? We just need to keep the Book from disrupting the current of the Brink. Something Professor Lachlan—Nibs—told me might help. Aether and time are the same thing. Why can’t we use my affinity for time to block the Book’s power from disrupting the Aether of the Brink? Then it wouldn’t overload the circuit, and maybe there wouldn’t be any magical blackout.”
“That might work,” Jianyu said, his voice thoughtful. “It is not so different from what I do with light to disappear. I bend it around myself. If she could direct the Aether of the Brink around the Book instead of through it—”
“You don’t understand, Esta. That won’t work.”
“Why not? If it’s a circuit, then all we have to do is—”
He rested his hand on her arm, stopping her words. “It won’t work because all that power isn’t in the Book anymore.” He swallowed hard, finally forcing himself to accept what he’d known ever since the voices had crashed into him in the Mysterium. “All that power is in me.”
Her mouth dropped open. “In you?”
He nodded, unable to speak. Because he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to live with it inside him, how long he’d be able to control it.
“So this is what you were hiding?” Jianyu asked, his voice dark.
He shifted, feeling vaguely guilty. Jianyu had risked so much to help him. “I told you everything I could.”
“You should have told me everything,” Jianyu said, his voice carrying a note of anger that Harte had never heard before, not even that night when Jianyu found him on the docks.
Esta shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. ?We need the stones.”
He looked at her more closely then, with her hair falling down around her face and her clothes rumpled beyond repair. It was probably certain death for the both of them if he went along with her mad plan. But with the Book living inside of him, chipping away at him a little more every day, he already was a dead man. If her plan actually managed to work, maybe she could save them both. If not, he would happily take any number of minutes more he could in that crazy world, especially if they were minutes fighting with her.
“You’ll need to find Viola and let her know what happened,” she said to Jianyu. “We have some time before we catch up to when I left Logan. If you can keep him from getting to Nibs, that will buy us more. Because once Nibs knows that I’m back, he won’t stop at anything to get the Book.” She turned back to Harte, her eyes already shining with determination. “He won’t know you didn’t actually jump, and he won’t know about the stones. That will give us an advantage, but even so, we’re going to need every bit of luck to get this right.”
“We’re going to need a hell of a lot more than luck,” he muttered, his head still swirling at everything that had happened, all that she wanted to do.
“I will find Viola, and together we can keep your friend from Nibs,” Jianyu promised. “We’ll give you all the time we can.”
“But then what?” Harte said, still refusing to allow himself to hope.
“Then we unite the stones, take control of the Book’s power,” Esta said.
Harte frowned. “I’m not sure any one person should control it.”
“I’m not either, but I’m not willing to let Nibs or the Order be the ones to make that decision,” she said. “Are you?”
“I, for one, am not.” Jianyu stood and offered his hand to help Harte to his feet. He handed Harte a parcel that he took from inside his own coat. “You go with Esta. I will see to things here.”
Harte hesitated for a minute. “I owe you my thanks. For trusting me, even when I didn’t deserve it. For helping me. You could have let me fall.”
“I did it for Dolph,” Jianyu said. “Do not forget your promise, and do not prove me a fool.” And with a small bow of his head, he disappeared, leaving Harte and Esta alone on the bridge.
Harte watched the place where Jianyu had just been, and after a moment he unwrapped the parcel and put on the shirt that it contained.