Somehow the future had changed. Most likely, her being there had changed it. The Magician’s treachery was even worse now, and she didn’t know what other implications that might have. She had to fix it, but she had no idea how.
A knock sounded at the door, startling her. “Coming,” she called as she tucked the clipping back into its protective wax sleeve with shaking fingers and then slid the small packet down the front of her corset.
When she opened the door, Jianyu was waiting on the other side.
“Can I help you?”
His expression was unreadable. “Dolph wants to see you.”
Her chest went tight. “What for?” she asked, glad that her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. She thought he’d been pleased with her when they arrived back in the Bowery late the night before, but with her unsettling discovery of the changes in the news clipping, she wasn’t taking anything lightly.
“It was not my place to ask,” Jianyu said evenly. “He’s waiting in his apartment downstairs.”
“Okay,” she told him, smoothing her rumpled skirt. “Give me a minute?”
Jianyu nodded, but just as he turned to leave, he seemed to change his mind. “You dressed me as a woman.”
“I did,” Esta admitted, feeling more uneasy with every moment that passed beneath Jianyu’s watchful gaze.
“It was insulting.”
Esta frowned. “Only if you think women are somehow less than men.”
“Are they not?” Jianyu asked, sincerely surprised and confused.
Frustration spiked. ?This was a different time, she reminded herself, and yet . . . “A woman saved you, so you tell me.”
Jianyu seemed to consider this. “It is true that things would have been difficult for me without your help.”
Esta snorted. “More like impossible.”
“Then I suppose I am in your debt.”
“Or we could just call things even,” Esta said.
Jianyu studied her for a moment, and then he gave the barest nod and left without another word.
Esta watched him go, wondering what exactly had just happened between them. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she’d found another ally. ?That fact made her feel somewhat better as she made her way down to the door of Dolph Saunders’ apartment. She hesitated for a moment, calming herself and gathering her wits about her, before she knocked.
“Come,” a familiar voice called from inside.
The door was unlocked, so she eased her way into his rooms and was greeted with a welcome breath of warmth. A coal stove burned in the corner, and near it, Dolph sat at a small desk, making notes in his ledger. He didn’t bother to look up when she came in, but the sight of him so soon after she’d read about his death shook her. If she didn’t fix things, she was looking at a dead man.
“Jianyu said you wanted to see me?”
He must not have noticed the way her voice broke, because he never took his concentration from his ledger as he gestured for her to come in. “Give me a second,” he said.
“Of course,” she told him, finally taking a look around his home.
Dolph was a man of few words. He never dressed in anything but black or dark grays, which gave the impression that he was perennially waiting for a funeral to begin. With all his glowering, she didn’t expect his apartment to feel so comfortable.
A faded floral carpet covered most of the bare floorboards, and the room had a softness that her own didn’t have. The furnishings were worn and well used, but the delicate spindles of the straight-backed chairs against the wall and the graceful camelback arch of the small divan were the selections of someone with an eye for decorating. In all, it had a distinctly feminine feel, which was only underscored by the wispy lace panels over the windows on the back wall of the front parlor.
Above a small shelf lined with books hung a painting that Esta recognized. It was one of the larger oil paintings they’d liberated from Morgan’s collection the night before. In it, a young man reclined beneath an apple tree, a dog at his feet and a wide book open in his hands as he pondered a fallen apple. Dolph had, apparently, wasted no time in making it his own.
The news clipping had mentioned the painting as part of the evidence they had against him, so seeing it hanging on his wall was another reminder of his new fate. She wanted to tell him to get rid of it, to get rid of all the evidence he might have, but she wouldn’t be able to explain herself. She needed him to continue to trust her if she was going to fix things, so instead she gestured to the newly framed canvas.
“Is that supposed to be Isaac Newton?” she asked as she studied the scene. ?With the apple resting on the ground by his feet, it could have been depicting him discovering gravity, but it was a strange painting, otherwise. A crescent moon hung opposite a bright sun, and the book the figure held in his hands bore odd symbols that looked like a series of interlocking circles and parallelograms, with a star in the center. It wasn’t any math or science she’d ever seen.
Across the room, Dolph’s pencil stilled and he looked up, his pale eye taking her measure for a long moment. “It is.”
“But this looks so . . . mystical. I thought he was a scientist.”
Dolph’s brow furrowed. “There never was much of a line between science and magic, especially not that far back. Early sciences—alchemy or theurgy, for instance—were just ways for those without affinities to try to do what Mageus could do. Newton wasn’t any different, but Newton’s the least interesting thing about that piece.”
Then Dolph turned back to his ledger, making it clear he wasn’t interested in further conversation on the topic.
Esta was about to ask him what the most interesting thing was, when she heard Professor Lachlan’s voice in her head—Patience, girl. How many times had he reminded her to take her time, to avoid whatever impulse drove her forward until she thought the situation through and considered all the possible outcomes?
Too many times. And there was even more at risk now.
So she bit back the question and occupied herself instead by looking over the books in his small collection—Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kierkegaard, all in their original languages. She wasn’t surprised, somehow.
Eventually, Dolph finished whatever he was doing in the ledger and closed it. “Tell me what you know of Harte Darrigan,” he said finally.
“The Magician?” she asked, suddenly wary. ?He can’t know, she reminded herself. “Not much,” she hedged. “Nibs took me to see his show the other night.”
“I’m aware. He told me that Darrigan was quite taken with you.”
Esta frowned. “I don’t know that I’d use those words, exactly.”
“Really?” Dolph leaned back in the chair a little, crossing his arms over his chest and giving her the full weight of his stare. “What words would you use?”
Pain in my ass, thought Esta, trying not to let her nervousness show. A pain in yours, too, if I don’t stop him. Not that she could tell him what she knew, how things might have changed. Dolph had no reason to believe her, and without her stone, she had no way to prove it.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “He seems talented enough, but I was onstage with him for less than five minutes.”