The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

like a root cellar. There were blankets and pillows piled on the floor, along with a couple of carved wooden toys.

“Have you been staying down there?” Harte asked.

The boy nodded. “My father owed many people many debts, so my mother makes me hide when they come. She’s been afraid for me ever since the Committee’s men brought news that my father had been sent away.”

“He’s gone, then?” Harte asked, trying to keep himself awake.

“On a ship. He won’t be returning,” the boy said.

“Does that make you sad?” Harte asked, wondering if he’d made the wrong decision again.

“It should, but my father…” Sammie paused.

“It’s okay,” he told the boy. “You know it wasn’t your fault?”

But Sammie only frowned, clearly unsure. Then his brows drew together. “It was you, wasn’t it? This was your trick?”

Harte nodded, because he couldn’t lie to the kid. “Does that make you angry with me?”

Sammie considered the question. “I don’t think so. It will be harder for Mother with him gone, but she is strong, and she is smart.” His eyes widened. “Your hand feels like fire.”

“It’s nothing,” Harte said, pulling away from the boy’s grasp. “I just need to rest for a while.” His body suddenly felt every bit of the energy he’d exerted in escaping, in making it this far. “But there’s something I need you to do for me—”

From the front of the house came a loud, clattering noise—Sammie’s mother shouted something in German, which was followed by a crash.

The boy’s eyes went wide, bright with fear and anger as he urged Harte toward the hideaway. “Hurry.”

Without further argument, Harte stumbled down the handful of steps. His legs gave out before he reached the bottom, and he collapsed into the softness of the quilts as the boy began to replace the trapdoor that covered the hideaway.

“Wait,” Harte told him, which made the boy pause. “I need you to do something for me.…”

Or that was what he’d intended to say, but his vision went dark, and the words felt cumbersome on his tongue.

There was something he had to tell the boy, something he needed the child to do for him. He had to get a message to Esta, but Harte was too exhausted for words, so he reached out his hand to the boy, pleading silently for Sammie to take hold. He tried to focus on his affinity, but the darkness was pulling him down again, and he didn’t know how much longer he could fight it.

Why do you continue to lie to yourself ? Seshat asked, suddenly closer now than she had been for days.

If we want to defeat Thoth, I need to make him understand. Harte was reaching for the boy, and his brother was leaning down to him, taking his hand, but Harte had so little strength left. His affinity felt so far from him. Esta needs her cuff. He could send it to her. Or a message, he thought frantically. There had to be a way to tell her. Help me.

I already have.

Seshat’s power surged then, hot and sudden and so much stronger than Harte had expected. He felt his brother flinch and saw Sammie’s eyes go wide with confusion. With an expression too much like pain.

No. This wasn’t what he had intended at all.…

She will come for you, Seshat whispered as the power coursed through him. You knew that. You made sure of it when you took her cuff. And when she finally arrives, you will be too weak to fight me. When she comes for you, she will be mine.

THE RIGHT INCENTIVE

1904—Denver

Jack Grew crumpled to the ground, cupping his groin as pain radiated up through him and turned his stomach inside out. The world spun. The dingy walls of the tent tilted and swam, and all he could do was roll to his side and try not to retch as he watched Esta Filosik scoop up the Book of Mysteries from where he’d dropped it and begin to run.

Groaning, Jack gritted his teeth, willed himself up, but every movement was agony. His stomach churned, and the throbbing pain between his legs stole his breath.

But Esta didn’t get far. She hadn’t even made it to the opening of the tent when her steps faltered and then, right before his eyes, she disappeared. One moment she was there, destroying everything, and then it was like she was a ghost of a girl… and then, nothing at all.

The Book fell to the ground, its pages splayed open and the inscriptions upon the vellum glowing as though it understood how close it had come to being lost. The second she was gone, the silence that had plugged Jack’s ears while they’d argued drained away, and a great roaring took its place. With it came the continued cackling laugh of the girl they’d found tied to the tent post in their prisoner’s place.

“What the hell are you doing down there on the ground?” Clem Curtis asked, blinking in confusion at Jack’s position on the ground. “What’s wrong? You’re breathin’ all funny-like.”

“I’m fine,” Jack said, the wheeze in his voice betraying the lie as he tried to pull himself up.

“You don’t look fine,” Clem said, offering a hand, which Jack ignored. “You look practically apoplectic.”

A moment before, Jack had been railing at the clown for losing the Antistasi cowboy who’d been slinking around the grounds of the Curtis Brothers’ Show. They’d been so close to getting answers, and the Curtises had let the damn maggot get away. But Clem Curtis hadn’t been privy to everything that had happened—because Esta Filosik can control time. Jack would have laughed at the idea of it, but his stones were screaming.

Get up.

Jack ignored Clem’s question and listened instead to that voice inside him, that stronger part of himself that had guided him for years now. The voice had rarely been wrong, and so Jack obeyed. Forcing himself to his knees, despite the shooting pain that pulsed through his entire lower half every time