Just how much more, he wasn’t sure. . . . That depended on how well the evening went.
Adjusting his hat again, he tucked his cane beneath his arm and checked his pocket watch to see how much later he was than planned. It could be worse, he thought, glad to be away from the pull of Evelyn’s magic and the weight of Shorty’s warning.
Tonight things would start to change. Tonight he’d finally take his first steps toward true freedom. He started walking, making his way toward the part of the city called Satan’s Circus, and his certain destiny.
A STAR-BRUSHED SKY
Twenty-Eighth Street near Fifth Avenue
Esta stumbled to her feet, stark fear coursing through her. She didn’t notice the icy shock of the snowbank or the searing pain on her upper forearm where the silver cuff burned against her skin. The echo of the gunshot still rang in her ears.
Dakari.
She turned to where the entrance of the parking lot had once been, open and waiting, but now the street beyond was lit softly by an antique streetlamp. Unsteady on her feet, Esta took a tentative step forward, knocking the wet snow off her skirt as she went. Above, the sky was empty, completely devoid of the skyscraper that had been there moments before.
No . . .
Even with the snow drifting around her skirts, she staggered toward the street. Her muscles and bones ached as they always did after slipping through time. No, she thought as she came to the entrance of the alley.
But no amount of denial could change what was.
She stepped onto the wide, cobbled sidewalk and took in the changed city. A few minutes before, the tall shoulders and flat faces of uninspired, boxlike buildings had lined the streets. Now the structures were shorter, squat with rows of windows like watching eyes. A couple of the buildings hadn’t changed that much, but now their street-level shops were capped with faded awnings rolled back to protect them from the heavy weight of the snow. Where a canyon of buildings once stood, now barely a gully of shops remained, as though life in the city was the reverse of nature, time building up instead of washing away.
She took it all in, the silence of the streets and the swath of stars—she could see actual stars—above her. Marveling at how different and familiar everything looked all at once, she barely heard the muffled clattering of hooves. It was a sound so rare in her own city that it didn’t register as a danger, and she glanced back barely in time to avoid being run down by a horse-drawn carriage.
The driver gestured angrily and cursed her as he passed, and the wheels of the carriage caught at her skirts, making her stumble back. The heel of her boot slipped on the icy road, and she went down hard, landing in the slush-filled gutter.
Shaking from the adrenaline still pulsing through her, she stood up and brushed herself off—again.
A high-pitched whistle sounded, and Esta looked up to search for the danger. Instead, she found a red-faced old man, his filthy shirt open at the collar to expose the hairs climbing up from his chest. He was leaning far over a second-story fire escape, his eyes squinting at her like he was having trouble focusing.
“Süsse!” he called, grabbing at the front of his unbelted pants as he leaned drunkenly over the edge of the rickety railing. “You’re missing your brains tonight, ja, Süsse? I can help you to find them.” His words were slurred, his German oddly accented to Esta’s ears.
Some things never change, she thought as disgust swept away her panic. She made a rude gesture and cursed back at him in his own language. The man doubled over laughing and almost fell from the fire escape. By the time he’d caught himself, Esta had already retreated to the relative safety of the alley.
But her bag was gone. The only evidence that remained were the footprints in the snow leading off to the other end of the street.
“No,” she whispered. It was a stupid, rookie mistake that she never would have made if she hadn’t been so distracted by the attack and so shaken by the memory of Dakari’s body jerking and falling. The bag had contained everything she needed—
Except none of that mattered anymore. She had to get back. She had to help Dakari. To make sure he wasn’t . . .
She couldn’t even think the word.
Blinking back tears, she took a breath and focused on finding her own time—layers marked by brighter lights, blaring car horns, and the glow of the city stretching far above her.
But nothing was there.
No shimmers of past or future. Nothing at all but that present moment in an unfamiliar city filled with the cold scent of winter and a night so quiet it chafed.
Her chest was tight, her whole body shivering as she worked to unfasten the tiny buttons at her wrist. Finally, the last one came free. ?The icy air bit against her exposed skin as she pulled her sleeve up as far as it could go and reached beneath it.
As she pulled the cuff off, she let out a hiss of pain. She hadn’t noticed the injury before, but now her upper arm throbbed and ached where the top layer of skin had peeled away with the metal. But the shock of the pain was nothing compared to the shock of what she saw when she examined the cuff.
The burnished silver had turned black and the iridescent stone was covered in what looked like black soot. Confused by its appearance, she touched it gently with her fingertip, and the stone crumbled on contact, disintegrating like ash until only the empty, burned-out setting was left.
Ishtar’s Key was gone.
At first she couldn’t process what she was seeing. Her stone couldn’t be gone.
Had it burned up because she’d hesitated between present and past? Had she put too much pressure on it, cracked as it had already been?
As the reality of its disappearance began to set in, the loss hit her like the ache of a missing limb. Or maybe like something even more vital, like her heart. Without the stone, she couldn’t find the layers of time. Without the stone, she wasn’t anything more than an exceptionally good thief stuck in a city that wasn’t her own.
Panic emptied out her chest, leaving her breathless and panting.
She was trapped. In the past.
She would never again argue with Logan about who was in charge on a job or enjoy the surprise in Dakari’s eyes when she bested him on the mat. She would never again see the city she knew and loved, with its dizzying speed and clattering rush and brilliant buildings that erased the stars. She would die here, in this other city, not even a footnote in the history books. Alone and out of time.
She sank to her knees in the snow, laid low by the truth of her situation. But as the cold dampness began to seep through the layers of her skirts, a thought occurred to her: Her stone was gone, yes. But the stone wasn’t gone. Ishtar’s Key was still here, in this time, with all the other artifacts. With the Book she’d been sent to retrieve.