Esta came to slowly, her head throbbing as she opened her eyes to find herself on the floor in a windowless room. She was still wearing a corset and long skirts, her clothing from the past, so at first she thought it had all been a bad dream. That she was still back in her narrow room above the Strega, but she could hear a siren in the distance, a wailing reminder that she was no longer with Dolph and the rest. She was home, but the ache in her arm where Dakari had jabbed her with the needle and the foggy numbness that filled her head wasn’t the welcome she’d expected. Everything felt upside down.
She wasn’t sure where she was, or if she was even still in Professor Lachlan’s building. Her head was spinning as she pulled herself up and felt around the walls of the room, trying to find the door. She made it around the three corners of the small space before she found two seams where a door should have been, but there was no handle and no lock, only a smooth plate of metal over where the locking mechanism should be.
No matter how much she searched, she couldn’t find any place to pick a lock or jimmy a hinge. It was a prison built for a thief.
It was a prison he’d built for her.
It could have been minutes or hours that she sat there in the darkness before she finally heard voices coming from the other side of the wall. She scuttled back and tried to focus enough to pull the seconds slow. But time slipped away from her—she couldn’t find the spaces. She felt like she had in the basement of the Haymarket, unable to call on her affinity and at the mercy of whoever was coming for her.
The wall split open, and she blinked, shielding her eyes from the light of the hall. “Come on, E.”
“Dakari? Is that you?” She wanted it to be him, but she also didn’t know if she could trust him anymore.
A moment later he had hoisted her up onto still-shaky legs and was leading her out of the room.
“What’s going on?” she asked him, and when he didn’t answer, she tried to pull away. “Where are we going?”
He kept a tight hold on her, though, refusing to answer her questions as he half led, half dragged her down the hall toward the elevator.
“Why are you acting like this, Dakari? It’s me. You know me.” If she only had his knife, maybe she could have gotten through to him. But the knife was lost to the past, and if things didn’t improve, she didn’t know what her future held in store. “Please,” she tried again.
He wouldn’t look at her as pushed her gently into the elevator, and he kept hold of her the entire time the cage made its slow, rattling climb to the top. “Just answer his questions and do what he asks. Prove yourself to him, and it’ll be fine. Everything can go back to how it should be.”
But she doubted anything could ever go back to the way it had been before. Too much had changed.
When the elevator stopped at the library, Dakari led her forward. “Come on.”
It was night, but she had no idea how long she’d been out of it with the drug they’d given her and no idea how much time had passed in the windowless prison they’d kept her in. The lights in the library were off, except for the small desk lamp that illuminated the Professor’s face as he bent, serious and focused, over the Ars Arcana. Near him on the table were the five artifacts laid out in a straight line.
When he heard them approaching, he glanced up. “Are you feeling better?”
“You drugged me and locked me in a doorless room,” she said, well aware she was pushing him. “What did I do to deserve that? I brought you the Book.”
“You were also talking nonsense about the Brink being indestructible.”
“I was only trying to warn you.”
“Yes, and where did you get the information?”
“From Harte,” she said, knowing how damning that sounded.
“Of course you did. Because you came to trust him, didn’t you? It was exactly what I was afraid of happening. It’s exactly why I gave you some incentive to return.”
“An incentive?”
Professor Lachlan didn’t so much as blink. “You’re impulsive, but you’re also predictable. I knew that if you believed Dakari’s life was in danger, you’d be sure to return, no matter how you might have come to feel about those in the past.”
She felt numb from more than the drug they’d given her now as the image of Dakari’s body jerking from the impact of the bullets rose in her mind. He’d been wearing a vest, but those bullets hadn’t been blanks. They’d torn through his legs. “You could have killed him!”
“His life was never in danger,” the Professor said, dismissing her.
Esta glanced up at Dakari, but her old friend’s expression was unreadable, his features closed off and distant. If he was upset or surprised by this news, his face didn’t show it.
“You risked Dakari’s life because you didn’t trust me?” she pressed.
“I wouldn’t have trusted anyone that much, but especially not you, impulsive girl that you are. So, no. I didn’t trust that you wouldn’t be swayed by Dolph Saunders or even the Magician. I couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t take one look into Harte Darrigan’s pretty gray eyes, listen to his poor-little-boy-lost sob story, and decide to give him a chance. I gave myself some insurance. I gave you an incentive to return.” He stared at her, his nostrils flaring from the exertion of his tirade.
With those words, something inside her clicked, and apprehension wrapped around her. “How did you know he had gray eyes?”
“What?” Professor Lachlan’s face bunched in irritation.
“Harte Darrigan. You couldn’t know what color his eyes were. Pictures wouldn’t have shown you that.”
His expression went slack, as though he realized the slip, but then a smile curved softly at his lips. “You always have been too observant for your own good.”
Unease slinked through her. “You always told me that it made me a good thief.”
“It did. But it also makes you a problem.” Professor Lachlan spoke to Dakari. “If you’d secure her, I’ll take it from here.”
She knew it was coming, but she could still hardly believe what was happening when Dakari wrestled her into a chair and secured her arms and legs with rope.
“Just tell him the truth, E. If you’re still with us, everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Dakari?” she pleaded, but it fell on deaf ears. He was already heading toward the elevator.
“You know, you were never supposed to come back here. None of this had to happen if you’d have just done what you should have. If you’d only given me the Book that day on the bridge—”
Esta turned back to meet Professor Lachlan’s gaze. “How could I have given you the Book? That was a hundred years ago.”
Professor Lachlan didn’t speak at first, but there was something in his expression that made Esta’s skin crawl. “Maybe you’re not so very observant, after all. You don’t recognize me, do you?” He frowned. “Have I really changed so much?”
“You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you,” she said, confused by his question.
“A few weeks, a lifetime. Strange how similar two spans of time can be. I was right about you then. I’ve been right about you all along.”
She saw then what maybe she should have seen before. “No . . .” He’d changed over the years, but beneath the age spots and wrinkles, beneath the tuft of white, thinning hair and the frailness, she thought she could see the boy he’d been. “Nibs?” she said, her voice barely working.
“I always hated that name,” he told her.
“It can’t be. You can’t be him. That’s impossible.”
“It’s improbable, not impossible. What’s a century when you can find healers like Dakari to keep you whole?” Professor Lachlan gave Esta a chastising look. “What’s a century when you’re waiting for the key to your plans? I’m a patient man, Esta. You must know that much by now.”
“You killed Dolph,” she said. “He trusted you, and you killed him.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand—Dolph wanted to destroy the Brink. He wanted to bring down the Order. You were on the same side. There wasn’t any reason to kill him.”
Professor Lachlan—Nibs—sneered. “Dolph had some grand plan to destroy the Brink and free the Mageus in the city. But what would that have done? Started a war with the Sundren, a war we were too weak to win . . . at least with the Book in his hands.”
“They were better hands than yours.”
“He thought we needed the Book to gain our freedom, as though the Book of Mysteries, the most ancient and hallowed record of magic, was some simple grimoire he could use to break a wicked spell,” Professor Lachlan scoffed. “He always was shaky on his Latin tenses. He misunderstood the message Leena sent him before the Order took her. I know, because she explained it to me when she gave me the note. . . . Not that I bothered to correct him. As long as he wanted to keep pursuing the Book, it worked for me, but I knew all along that it wasn’t that the Book could free us, but that we could free the Book . . . And now I plan to do just that.”
“But the Brink—”
Professor Lachlan waved off her protest. “I never cared about destroying the Brink. It never stopped me from doing the things I wanted to do. It can stay up for all I care. It’s a mere nuisance compared to what the Ars Arcana contains,” he told her, tapping the Book. “This isn’t just a record of the most important magical developments throughout history. It is an object infused with the very source of magic. Whoever can unlock it controls it. And whoever controls it will have the whole world in their hands.”
Esta remembered then what Harte had told her on the bridge—that no one had really understood the Ars Arcana’s true nature. He’d been wrong. Nibs had known. Nibs had always known, and he’d manipulated them all.
“And you think you should have that power?” she asked, urging him on as she tried to think of some way out of the mess she’d walked right into.
“Why not me? The Order could barely touch the power these pages contain. They knew what the Book was capable of, which is why they kept it under lock and key. But they were never brave enough to actually use it. They’d been warned by the last person brave enough to attempt unlocking the Book’s secrets and wielding its power after it nearly drove him mad.”
“One of the Order?” she asked, realizing that she could just begin to feel the drug they gave her wearing off. She didn’t know how long it would take before she could be free of it, but she might be able to wait it out. She needed to keep him distracted, to keep him talking. A little longer, and she could try to escape.
“One of their earliest founders,” Professor Lachlan told her. “Most don’t realize Isaac Newton started his career as an alchemist. Before he sat under any tree, he searched for the philosopher’s stone—for a way to isolate quintessence. I’ve had a long time to learn about the Ars Arcana, a long time to learn about Newton’s secrets. He got as far as creating the five artifacts by imbuing ancient objects from the five mystical dynasties with the power of Mageus whose affinities happened to align with the elements. But he stopped before he ever managed to unite them and use them to control the power of the Book. Historians believe that he had a nervous breakdown in 1693, but that wasn’t what happened at all. It was the Book, and his breakdown was the result of attempting to control its power. After he recovered, he gave up alchemy and entrusted the Book to the Order for safekeeping.”
“You always told me that elemental magic wasn’t real magic,” she argued, still reeling. “Or was that a lie, too?”
“It’s not. Elemental magic isn’t real magic. It requires breaking up the pieces of creation, dividing them and weakening them in order to control them. Real magic is about controlling the whole of creation, the spaces between the elements that make up the very fabric of existence. Mageus don’t need the elements, but we can use them. We’ve always been able to use them. With the right rituals, the elements can be quite useful to augment natural power. It’s what made the Order what it is. It’s what made you what you are,” he told her, lifting the cuff and examining it in the light of the desk lamp.
“The Order doesn’t have real magic,” she argued. She was feeling stronger now, but she had to keep him talking until she figured out how to escape. So she pressed on, taunting him with her disbelief. “They aren’t Mageus. All the power they have is stolen.”
He placed the cuff back onto the table before he looked at her. “That may be true now, but it wasn’t always. The Order of the Ortus Aurea began as a front. Like so many of those so-called occult societies, it was formed so the richest, most influential Mageus could hide in plain sight. The Order is one of the oldest, though, and they were able to maintain their power even as the Disenchantment destroyed magic.”
That news contradicted everything she’d ever been taught, everything she’d ever believed. “You’re telling me that the members of the Order were once Mageus?”
“Of course they were. There’s always been magic in the world, and at one time most people could put their finger on it, until they allowed themselves to forget. The Disenchantment helped with that. When the climate on the Continent grew too dangerous, the Mageus who could leave, did. They brought their little society to the New World, because they thought they could start fresh and they believed the new land was one where magic could take root. It didn’t work, of course. Away from their homelands, after a few generations, their power had faded. So they used the secrets in these pages to create the Brink as a way to protect their magic.
“But they couldn’t control it. What began as a way to build their power became a trap, and their magic continued to fade. A few generations more and the only magic they had left was the power they could steal through their experiments. The Brink was never intended as a weapon, but it became one well enough.
“By the time my family arrived in Manhattan, back in 1888, the Order had forgotten what they once were, what they’d come from. They feared the power that was coming to their shores, so they tried to eliminate it. They targeted the weak, the poor. Those who had no voice, no power to fight back. They killed my father because he tried to speak out, and then they hunted down my mother and brothers and sisters. I only got away because I was off working. An eleven-year-old, working at a factory just to put bread on the table.
“They had no idea what fear was, but they will. Newton knew that if anyone could finish what he started and control the Book’s power, they’d be as powerful as a god, the last magician the world would ever know. Now that I have the Book and the stones, I can unlock the power of the Ars Arcana. I’ve been waiting a lifetime—more, really—for this moment.”
“So do it already,” she challenged. “You’re standing here monologuing like some cartoon villain. If you have all the pieces, what are you waiting for?”
He smiled. A slow, creeping curve of his narrow lips. “I’ve been waiting for you, Esta.”
“I won’t help you.”
“Oh, I think you will.”
When he lifted himself from the chair and worked his way around the table to where she sat, she realized then that he didn’t have his usual crutch. Instead, his hand rested on a cane topped with a silver Medusa head.
“That was Dolph’s,” she said through clenched teeth as anger flashed through her.
“Yes, it was. You might say he bequeathed it to me.”
“More like you stole it.”
“Mere semantics. All that matters now is that I’ve nearly won. Dolph Saunders didn’t get the Book. Because of your work, Harte Darrigan didn’t either.”
Disgust rose in her throat. “I would never help you.”
Professor Lachlan tipped his head to the side, his expression calm. “What makes you think you’ll have any choice?”