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

dream clinging to her. The heat of a desert landscape still brushed against her skin, and her mouth felt dry, as if she’d actually spent the night running through blistering sand, trying to escape whatever beast slithered beneath. Her body was sore, and her head ached as the room swayed around her. It took her a moment to remember what had happened, and even then, it came back to her in disjointed bursts.

Slowly Esta realized that the motion of the room wasn’t in her head. She was on a train, and from the rough, hard floor beneath her cheek, it wasn’t a Pullman berth. The noise was deafening, and the air was stuffy and hot. At first she couldn’t bring herself to do much more than lie with her cheek pressed to the floor, breathing in the dust and feeling the jarring vibrations of the track. When she finally opened her eyes, a shadow seemed to hang over her vision. She blinked, willing away the darkness, and tried to remember how she’d gotten there.

“Looks like Sleeping Beauty’s coming to.”

North. Esta rubbed at her eyes and forced herself to sit up.

She didn’t know how North and Maggie had gotten her onto this train, and when she started to ask, the words wouldn’t come. Her mouth felt like every bit of moisture had been drained from it, and all that came out was a hacking cough.

Maggie offered Esta some water and helped hold the canteen to her mouth so she could drink.

Esta only meant to take a swallow, just enough to be able to speak, but the water was like heaven, and she ended up nearly draining it. When she was done, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Where are we?”

“Not in Texas anymore,” North said, like it was the only piece of information that mattered. When he finally spoke again, he didn’t sound happy. “That was some show you put on back there. Causing an earthquake wasn’t part of the plan.”

“An earthquake?” Esta repeated, not bothering to hide her shock. “What are you talking about?” She remembered being on the locomotive now, remembered feeling a hesitancy that wasn’t like her. But she’d pushed herself onward, believing that if the darkness rose again, she could simply release her hold on time before it could take her. But after that—

“You don’t remember?” Maggie asked, her eyes soft with concern behind the lenses of her glasses.

“Everything happened so fast.…”

The darkness had come. Seshat’s darkness. Esta struggled to remember more, and it came to her little by little, in flashes of memory. This time there hadn’t been the slow seeping, like ink dropped in water. Instead, almost from the moment she’d pulled time slow, the blackness had rushed around her like a flood. She was only supposed to hold on to the seconds long enough to get off the train and out of sight, but too quickly she had been submerged beneath a different power. Esta had barely been able to push back the shadows, as her magic had turned into something wild and unhinged. The seconds had suddenly felt alive, and even as she’d climbed down from the engine and started to run from the train, she’d felt that time itself might turn on her. The darkness had pulsed and billowed, chasing her from the train like a phantom haunting her.

Hunting her.

It came back to her then, how the earth had started to quake. The ground had rippled beneath her as she’d sprinted away from the overheating engine, but before Esta could release her hold on time, darkness had pulled her under.

“The train… It did explode, though?” Esta asked. It was essential that the authorities believed the Thief was dead.

“Yes, but…” Maggie pressed her lips together and glanced at North.

“What happened back there was more than the boiler overheating,” North said. “The ground shook clear out where we were, and the earth cracked as easy as an egg. Swallowed men and horses whole. It was a hell of a lot more than what you told us you had planned.” His eyes narrowed. “Then you didn’t show up like you were supposed to.”

North wasn’t exactly wrong to be suspicious. Esta had planned to use the distraction of the train exploding to slip away from the two Antistasi. She had a dagger to find, and once the Thief was presumed dead, they would have been safer without her.

“But you came back for me,” Esta said. “Why risk that? Without the Thief, the two of you could have gone on and started over. You would have been safe.”

“You and your partner still owe us a necklace,” North told her.

“It wasn’t only about the necklace.” Maggie shot North a sharp look. “We couldn’t leave you there,” she said gently, touching Esta’s arm. “You were willing to risk everything in St. Louis to help us try to stop the serum from deploying. I told you before, you’re one of us now. The Antistasi take care of our own.”

Esta wasn’t sure how much she believed Maggie’s explanation. North’s statement about the necklace felt more like the truth. Still, without Maggie and North, the posse of marshals certainly would have found her, collapsed and unconscious somewhere between the train and safety. She owed them her life… again.

“You really don’t have any idea what happened?” Maggie asked.

The two Antistasi were staring at her expectantly, and Esta knew she had a decision to make. Since finding Harte gone, every time she’d tried to use her affinity, she’d been surprised by a power she could not control. One thing was clear—if Seshat’s power was somehow still affecting her, she might need the Antistasi’s help more than she originally thought.

“I honestly don’t know what happened back there,” Esta said, using this truth as an anchor for the lies that were sure to come. “But I think it’s tied to what happened back in St. Louis.” She glanced up at them, trying to gauge their willingness to believe her. “Or maybe it