Page 188

“I will never leave this city,” he told her, “but I still cannot claim it as my home.” He turned to her then, looked deeply into her eyes as though willing her to understand. “Even if tomorrow goes well, even if the fate inscribed in Nibsy’s diary can be changed, I have no future to offer you.”

Unease inched up her spine, made her heart feel unsteady in her chest. “Jianyu—”

“No,” he said gently. “You must understand this. In this land, I will never belong. But even if I could go back, even if I could pass through the Brink unharmed, even if I wanted to travel back across the seas to the land of my birth, I could not.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked. She’d never considered it before, never even imagined that he might want to return. “To go back to your homeland?”

“No,” he told her. “I also do not belong there any longer. I find myself a man between worlds, with no home in either.”

She slipped her hand into his. “So make your home with me.”

The city settled around them. The low, steady hum that had rocked her as a baby and guided her days seemed to wrap around Cela now as she waited for his decision.

He kissed her then, and though his mouth was firm and resolute against hers, it felt more like a question than an answer. “You make me want things I cannot have.”

“Why can’t you have them?” she asked, her mouth so close to his that she could taste the jasmine tea on his breath.

“Sometimes I forget the reasons,” he told her, and he kissed her again. But this time was no question. He wrapped her in his arms and claimed her mouth as his own.

She allowed him to, offering herself up and giving everything over to him, to what lay between them. Because tomorrow was another day, another danger. Because today was all they ever had. Here, this beautiful, terrible, impossible now.

They were both breathless when they broke away from each other.

“There is nothing I can offer you,” he told her. “I cannot even promise you tomorrow.”

“So give me today,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “Give me tomorrow as it comes.”

He pulled her into a tight embrace, resting his face against her neck. “It would be a difficult life. I would make you regret my choices.”

She laughed then. “Have you ever been able to make me do anything?”

“Your brother will want to murder me,” he murmured.

“Let me handle Abel,” she told him, but then she thought about his point.

“Cela—”

“No,” she said before he could go and ruin what they’d just shared. “Don’t you dare say another word.” She kissed him again, softly this time, so he couldn’t change his mind.

“Tomorrow is going to be fine,” she told him. “We’re going to stop Jack, and we’re going to get the Book, and then the two of us are going to have plenty of time to figure everything out. But until then, I have an idea that might help with your problem in the Bowery.”

A CHANCE

Esta Filosik was a thief, and a damn good one at that. She’d slipped out of a thousand impossible situations, had evaded her enemies countless times. But nothing in her life—no failure or mistake—had prepared her for the situation she currently found herself in. There was no slipping out of this, no evading her destiny, and there was no time left to steal.

Thanks to Ruby, they had an idea of what the Order’s plans were. They were going to use the street grid to charge the Brink with electricity in an attempt to display their power for the Brotherhoods. Thanks to Abel and his friends, the Order was running into the Conclave on the defensive. But they still didn’t know what Jack had planned, and they didn’t know how to evade Nibsy—or if they even could. And the time for planning was up. In just a few hours, the Conclave would begin, and one way or another their fates would be sealed.

“Once we’re inside, we need to find Jack,” Esta said, trying to focus on what they could still control. “If we can corner him before he does anything, maybe we’ll get to him before he can start the attack.”

“I still say we should just kill him and be done with it,” Viola told them.

Esta felt the same. But she knew it wouldn’t work.

“It’s not enough to kill Jack,” Esta reminded her. “If Thoth gets free, then he can find someone else to do his bidding, and we haven’t solved anything. And if he gets free tonight? There’s a few hundred likely options for him, each one of them every bit as willing as Jack was. We need to trap Jack first, so I can destroy Thoth before he can get free.”

“Then I can kill him,” Viola told them.

“No, Viola. You can’t,” Esta said, wishing it were otherwise. But she remembered the sickening suck of the dagger sliding into Jack’s chest, the way he’d looked at her—him, not Thoth—right before he’d died in Chicago, and she knew it wasn’t the answer. Not for her, and not for Viola, either.