The mouth of the room was only a few feet away, but dark-suited men were moving to block any exit. She’d never make it, unless . . .
Esta knew it was a risk, but she couldn’t be trapped. She had to get the art out. She had to get herself out. ?There wasn’t a choice. So she pulled time around her and ran for it.
She didn’t bother to see whether the guards sensed her magic as she slipped past them and into the hall. She didn’t stop for anything, just ran as fast as her feet would carry her, down the winding staircase and back through the statue gallery to the service entrance. Barreling past another guard, who was frozen in midrun toward the gallery, she made it out of the museum, into the quiet night, but she didn’t release her hold on time. She moved effortlessly through the silent, still world. The bare fingers of the park’s trees, so much smaller than in her own time, were dark shadows against the star-filled sky as she passed the knifelike point of Cleopatra’s Needle. They waved her on as she made her way down the lane to where the carriage was waiting.
The others would be gone, she knew. If everything had gone to plan. She didn’t release time until she reached the dark body of the carriage. The horses nickered when she knocked, using the rhythm of beats she’d been taught. To her relief, the door opened.
But that relief changed to caution when she saw that Dolph sat concealed in the shadows, waiting. “You have the items?” he asked as she took the seat opposite him.
She gave a nod, and he rapped on the roof twice with his silver-topped cane to signal the driver. With a lurch, the carriage started off, rattling down the cobbled road.
The small, dark space felt too close, too confined with Dolph’s long legs taking up most of the room between them. She pulled her legs as far from his as she could and tried to shake off her nerves. He’d taken a risk in allowing her to help them, and everything had gone wrong.
“Well?” His voice was low, expectant.
She began unfastening the items, taking them from their hiding places beneath her clothes. Dolph took them from her, one at a time, but his expression lit at the sight of a small, carved stone cylinder. He tucked it away in the inner pocket of his coat, like it was something more important than the rest.
After a few long moments of silence punctuated only by the rattling of the wheels and the strained squeak of the seat beneath her, Dolph spoke. “Nibs told me what happened tonight.”
“He did?” Her mouth went dry.
“You took quite a risk, going through with things,” Dolph said. “You could have gotten yourself out and left Jianyu to his own fate.”
She relaxed a little. He wasn’t talking about her use of magic. “That’s true,” she admitted. “I could have.”
“You thought about it,” he challenged, his expression unreadable in the dappled shadows of the coach.
“No, actually. Once I knew Jianyu was trapped, it never crossed my mind.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” Dolph said.
Esta leaned forward until her face was lit by the flickering light coming through the small window. She wanted him to see the truth of her words, the sincerity of her intention. Dolph Saunders needed to trust her if she was ever going to get into Khafre Hall. She needed to be on that crew if she was ever going to get close enough to stop the Magician and get her hands on the Book . . . or her stone. Her only way back was through Dolph.
“I never considered getting myself out,” she told him. “You trusted me with this, and I was not going to betray that trust. My only thought was to find a way to get everyone out safely. I did my job, like I promised I would.”
He considered that for a moment, but his expression didn’t change. Instead, he leaned back in his seat lazily, his fingertips drumming against the silver Medusa that topped his cane. “Your job was to fleece the crowd,” he said, his lean face grim in the shadows of the coach.
“Who said I didn’t?” She pulled out a necklace studded with enormous diamonds and emeralds. The stones glimmered as they dangled from her fingertip. “Mrs. Morgan sent this along with her compliments.”
Dolph’s finger stopped moving. “Did she?”
Esta did let her mouth curve then. “Well, maybe she would have, if she had known it was gone.”
As Dolph took the necklace from her, his expression grudgingly appreciative, Esta didn’t feel any sense of victory. Dolph might be pleased, but she couldn’t help worrying about what it meant that the Magician had seen her. Harte Darrigan would know Dolph was behind the robbery, and she didn’t know what he might do with that knowledge.
And she couldn’t help but worry that her use of magic to escape might come back to haunt her. To haunt them all.
A DAMN GOOD TRICK
It had been a damn good trick, making all that art disappear in a matter of the two minutes or so the lights had gone out, and with none of them using their affinities. But the girl had left a mess in her wake, the least of which was the mixture of leftover champagne Harte was covered in and the crystal goblets shattered on the floor around him.
She seemed to have a way of quite literally disappearing every time they met. It was something to do with her affinity, he knew. He should have been annoyed by her habit of leaving him empty-handed and looking like an idiot, but that, too, was a damn fine trick, and he couldn’t stop himself from admiring her for it. Even if this time she’d left him in a precarious place.
There had been no way around talking to the squat police captain. He stood, dripping and smelling like a cheap clip joint, as he relayed a version of what he’d seen.
He could have handed the girl and Dolph and the rest of them over, which would have certainly improved his standing with Jack, but that would’ve come with certain risks. Considering that the girl knew enough about him to make her dangerous, he hadn’t been sure that telling the police everything was the best idea.
Better not to be caught in his own net. Better to have something up his sleeve against Dolph Saunders—and the girl—just in case.
If he’d been smarter, he would have left the minute he saw the girl. He had known something was about to happen, and he should have left instead of trying to find out what she was up to. Now he’d missed his curtain, which wouldn’t go over well, considering the talk Shorty had given him the other day. He’d have to do damage control when he got back.
“The papers are going to have a field day with this,” Jack said dully as he came up next to Harte. “The whole family is going to blame me, you know. So much for getting them off my back.”