“You tried to save her.”
“He never came back. He left the city, or he tried to. But he didn’t get much farther than the Brink.” His eyes were flat, emotionless.
“You were only a child. You couldn’t have known,” she said, thinking about her own inability to control her affinity at that age. She’d always been too impulsive, but then it had been worse. Like the time she was with Dakari and saw a tourist with an open backpack in Central Park. He’d warned her against it, but she thought she could lift the wallet inside before anyone noticed. But she hadn’t quite known how to hold the seconds for very long, and they caught her with her hand in the bag. It was only Dakari’s quick thinking that got her away, but he was a black man in a city where stop and frisk was the rule of law. He ended up flat on the pavement, his arms wrenched behind him while she couldn’t do more than stand by and watch, tears clogging her vision.
He ended up spending the night in a holding cell. She’d never forgotten that day. Dakari had lived to forgive her, but from the sound of things, Harte’s father hadn’t been so lucky.
“My mother didn’t care. When she found out what I had done, what I could do, she was horrified. She went after him. She hated me for what I’d done. She risked the Brink to find him.”
“Oh, Harte . . .”
“She didn’t get very far, but even getting that close changed her,” he said, his voice flat and almost emotionless, like he was telling her someone else’s story instead of his own.
“I am sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he told her. “It made me stronger. It made me who I am.”
They weren’t so different, the two of them. They’d both been abandoned by their parents, but at least she’d had the Professor. He’d seen something in her worth saving, but Harte never had that. She still might not trust him, but she understood him. The drive that made him who he was, the determination to prove himself—the bone-deep need to belong somewhere—those were all things she knew very well.
She understood the hurt, too. The fear that there was something intrinsically wrong with you to make the people who were supposed to love you leave. The way that fear either hardened you or destroyed you. It had turned into a sort of armor for her, another weapon in her arsenal, and she suspected the same was true of Harte.
“Don’t look at me like that.” He narrowed his eyes.
“Like what?”
“Like you know something about me. It’ll be easier for both of us if you can get it through your head right now that I don’t need some girl to come along and fix me. Life’s carved away any softness I might have had, and all that’s left now are hard edges. That’s all I’ll ever be. That’s all I ever want to be.”
She studied him—the stiff shoulders, the tight jaw, and the stormy eyes that dared her to judge him, and she had the sudden urge to ruffle his feathers again. She wanted to see the boy she’d met in the basement of the theater, the rumpled boy whose eyes glowed with possibility instead of desperation. She wanted to throw him off so he’d lose that distant look, just for a moment. She wanted to see if she could.
“I’m not here to save you.” She sat next to him again and felt a surge of satisfaction when his brows furrowed.
“No, you’re not, are you?” he asked, looking at her with the strangest expression.
“Nope,” she said truthfully, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair. “I wouldn’t bother trying.”
“You wouldn’t?” He looked wary now, but he didn’t retreat. He seemed frozen, almost mesmerized.
“Who said I want you to be anything but what you are? I like your angles and your edges,” she told him, hoping he could hear the truth in her words. “I have plenty of my own, you know.”
“I know,” he said, his voice soft with a hint of hope and desperation.
She smiled at the nervousness in his eyes. “I’d slice right through anyone softer.”
He stared at her for what felt like a lifetime, as though he was afraid to move. ?As though he was afraid not to. “You would, wouldn’t you?”
She nodded. He smelled of oranges, and she could imagine what it would be like to close the distance between them and have a taste of his lips. Kissing Harte on purpose would be like everything else between them—a battle of wills. A clash of temper. An unspoken understanding that neither would back away or back down.
And then what?
The thought was like cold water. In the end, she’d have to take the Book from him, from Dolph as well, and leave them all here in this past to face their fates alone.
“This is a terrible idea,” she murmured.
“I know,” he said, leaning closer.
Nothing is more important than the job. Professor Lachlan’s words echoed in her mind, reminding her of the last time she’d lost sight of what was important. Reminding her that she had another life, another set of responsibilities, waiting for her. Maybe she didn’t need to fight Harte, but she couldn’t let herself start believing there was any future possible for them. At least no future that didn’t end in betrayal.
She pulled back, ignoring the way her throat had gone tight with something that felt too close to longing. But what she longed for—for him, for a rest from constantly being on guard, for a place to call her own—she wasn’t sure. “We have too much at stake to muck everything up with this.” She motioned between them.
The urgency had drained from his eyes, and she could no longer read the expression on his face as he pulled farther back from her. The space between them, which was no more than the length of her arms, suddenly felt impossible. “You’re right.”
“I’m sorry, Harte. I—”
“No,” he said. “Don’t. There’s no need. We were caught up in a moment, that’s all. I’m the one who should be apologizing. But we can’t get caught up like that again.” He got up from the couch and headed into the kitchen.
Still unnerved, she followed him. “So you said that last night went well with Jack?” she asked, her voice a bit higher than usual. Desperate to get things back on track.
“It did,” he told her, pouring himself a glass of water. He seemed to want to keep the table between them. That was fine with her.
“And?”
He took a long drink of the water before he spoke. “The good news is that you were brilliant last night. Jack absolutely believes you’re the lost heir. It’ll be up to you to reel him in, but it shouldn’t be hard. He’s itching to prove himself, so he’s primed to make mistakes.
“Jack will be at the show again tonight,” Harte continued. “It’s all arranged. All you have to do is pretend you’re interested in him when he comes backstage after. Stroke his ego a little and let him dig his own grave. Just lead him on enough to get us an invitation to Khafre Hall. ?We’ll need a reason for him to want us there, though.”
She remembered the men behind the wall at the Haymarket. “I think I have an idea of how to do that.”