Her brow wrinkled. “He works for Dolph,” she said. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Sure.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, scratching at the growth of whiskers that were already beginning to itch. “You’re right.”
“Are you okay?”
“If we’re going to pull this off, we need to be able to trust each other.”
“You really came back for me?” she asked, tilting her head to one side, so that a single lock of her hair fell over her forehead and into her eyes.
“Yeah. I did,” he said, keeping his hands tucked into his pockets so that he wouldn’t reach for her, wouldn’t brush that lock of hair aside just so he could feel it slip between his fingers.
He was still uneasy. But if he was going to get the Book and keep it away from Jack and Nibsy, he needed her. Especially now that he couldn’t depend on anyone else. He just had to keep his heart locked up and his head on straight.
ANGLES AND EDGES
Harte’s Apartment
Esta sat on the edge of Harte’s porcelain tub, looking at the news clipping. She’d changed something, or she’d started to. The story of Dolph’s arrest and death was still there, but it kept blurring, as though the words couldn’t decide which future to pick. She thought she could almost make out another story floating just beneath the surface of the page, like another time waiting for her to slip through to it. But then she’d blink, and it would be gone.
In truth, she was only delaying the inevitable moment when she’d have to face Harte again. He’d come back for her, and she had no idea what to do with that.
Maybe she’d been going about things all wrong. Professor Lachlan said she had to stop the Magician, and she’d assumed that meant working against him. But her actual goal was to get the Book, and maybe to do that, it would be easier to work with him. Maybe they didn’t have to be enemies.
Except in the end, she would still betray him, just as she would betray the rest.
There was nothing for it, though. No way around it. To finish her job, she needed the Book. If she took the Book, the rest of them would lose. It didn’t—couldn’t—matter that she’d come to think of them as friends. She already had friends—Dakari and Mari, even Logan. But Mari was gone because of a mistake she had made. And if she didn’t do what she’d been sent here for, she could be sacrificing Dakari and Logan’s futures as well as her own. There wasn’t a way to save them all.
But she wasn’t there to save them all, she reminded herself, even as she felt her throat go tight. She had a future to get back to, and as much as she had grown fond of this time, grown to respect and admire the people in it, she refused to regret what she had to do.
She pulled the plug and watched the grime of the night before swirl down the drain, right along with most of the confidence she’d managed to summon. Suck it up, she told herself as she pulled Harte’s robe around her. What was done was done. A minute past too late wasn’t the time to start having regrets.
When she stepped out of the steamy bathroom, Harte was on the sofa, waiting with a sullen expression. On the table next to him, a neat pile of orange peelings sat atop a handkerchief. She could practically hear him think, the way he was sitting there—his hand scratching at the day-old scruff on the edge of his jawline as his eyes stared off into space.
He was so deep in thought that he didn’t seem to notice her until she settled herself next to him.
“Feel better?” he asked, looking up.
“Yes. Much.” She tucked her legs up under her.
“Wouldn’t you rather get dressed?” He looked troubled when his gaze drifted over the robe she was wearing. Almost nervous.
Fine with her. She’d take any advantage she could get.
“No, I’m good,” she said, leaning back comfortably. “It feels amazing to be out of that corset.”
He gave her another uneasy look but didn’t say anything more. It felt to Esta like he was on the edge of making some decision but wasn’t sure whether to jump.
So maybe she’d give him a little push.
“Thanks for coming back for me,” she said softly, touching his hand.
Harte looked momentarily surprised, but then he pulled away from her and composed himself. “Don’t think it means more than it does.” He picked up the newspaper and made a pretense of looking over the front page. But his motions were stiff and it was clear his eyes weren’t focusing on any headline. “I need you to get Jack. Otherwise, I would have happily let you rot in there.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t need your help after all,” she drawled, frustrated with his moodiness. This approach clearly wasn’t working, so she got up from the couch. She’d regroup and figure out another way.
He caught her by the hand, gently this time. She could have pulled away, but instead she turned to look at him. There was an unreadable expression on his face that made her pause.
“Don’t start telling yourself stories about me, Esta. I’m not some knight in shining armor.”
“I never said you were.”
“I don’t have some hidden heart of gold. I’m a bastard, in every sense of the word.”
He seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as her. “I never thought otherwise.”
“I know how women are,” he muttered.
She looked at him and saw him anew—the sadness in his eyes. The way he held himself as though he were bracing for a slap. “You don’t know half of what you think you do,” she said softly.
“I know more than you can imagine. I saw where believing too much in a man got my mother.” His mouth went tight.
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. I should’ve died in a gutter somewhere before my twelfth birthday. I would have deserved it after what I did.”
She couldn’t stop herself from taking a step toward him. “What could you have possibly done to deserve that at only eleven years old?”
“I sent my father away,” he said. He lifted his chin, like he was waiting for her judgment.
She shook her head, not understanding. “You were a child. How could you send a grown man anywhere he didn’t want to go?”
He looked at her, his stormy eyes dark with some unspoken emotion. “I can do more than get into your head to see what’s there. Do you remember that day onstage? When Nibsy brought you to the theater the first time? I put a suggestion into your mind. I told you what I needed for you to do to make the effect work. I gave you a command, and you obeyed.”
She frowned. “That’s not how I remember things ending up.”
His mouth turned down. “Yeah, well . . . you weren’t in the cabinet at the end, like you were supposed to be, but you did everything else. And you forgot everything the second the door of the cabinet opened, just like I told you to.”
It felt right to her, answered one question that had been looming. But it raised so many more. “You really ordered your father away?”
He nodded. “The only thing he spent more time doing than beating me and my mother was drinking. I wanted a break. I just wanted her to be happy again, so I told him to leave. He did.”