"I'd be delighted to see you try."
"I'll bet Dario would be."
"So now we have our power source," Thomas said, and closed the box. He slipped it into his vest. "We make our mirrors. And then, we will nearly be ready."
Jess didn't share the optimism. He knew it was in Thomas's nature; he knew Thomas needed it right now to see his way through the nights spent in a room with bars, in a city that was a trap. But he couldn't share it.
In his experience, optimism got people killed.
One of Khalila's requests had been put in place by the time they were back in the prison; she'd asked for privacy walls, and Beck-probably as a bitter little joke-had ordered pieces of paper glued across the bars of their cells. The paper, Jess immediately recognized, had been torn from Blanks. A little sting in the tail of his gift. But it was a little better, Jess had to admit. More of a sense of safety, even if it was an illusion.
It put a tiny scar on Jess's heart when he saw Dario, of all people, escort Morgan into the prison that evening and extravagantly bow her into her private cell. The two of them were spending days together in a comfortable sitting room in Willinger Beck's office, where the most dangerous thing either would do was to collect a paper cut. He also knew that it gave Dario time to talk with Morgan, to propose to her the same thing he'd discussed with Jess: deception.
He just hoped that Dario wasn't playing him false, along with everyone else. And he hoped that if Dario was, Morgan would refuse to go along with it.
But he didn't know. He'd lost that ability, in the hot glare of jealousy that he wasn't the one walking with her, smiling at her.
Dario said something to her, and she laughed and shook her head. It was a free sort of sound, that laugh, which was strange because they were anything but free here in Philadelphia. Then again, Morgan's talent, her mind, and her body had all been the Library's property. By contrast, this might seem like real freedom to her.
Morgan's gaze skimmed across and snagged on Jess's, and he saw the laughter die away. Don't stop laughing, he wanted to tell her. I like it when you laugh. I just wish it was me.
But the smile that melted onto her lips was better, richer, deeper. It meant more, because it was meant only for him. And unlike the laughter, it lingered.
She held out her hand to him, and it felt right to take it. Just for a moment. She looked down at their twined hands and winced as she noticed his fingers. "What have you been doing? Your hands-"
"Glass cuts," he said. "Look, not even bleeding anymore. I'm fine. How-" He wanted to ask, How are you? because he was worried by the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the slight tremble in her hands. But he said, "How is Santi?"
"I haven't been there, but we're told he's better," she said. "Scholar Wolfe sent me away once he was moved to the doctor's house. Beck demanded me at city hall."
"Why?" Jess asked.
"He wanted me to reactivate the Translation Chamber. They'd walled it up over a hundred years ago, the day they took the city. The floor was covered in giant spikes. If we'd entered there, when we left London-" Jess winced, imagining them dropping into such a place . . . sealed, and full of deadly traps. When the Burners had kidnapped them and forced her to make the journey, she'd chosen the park outside city hall; it had been the largest space, the easiest to find. "He wanted it functioning, for use with his smugglers."
Jess lowered his voice. "Could you do it?" Because that might be exactly what they needed. But she shook her head.
"No chance. Translation Chambers work because they're places rich in quintessence-and they're rich because they're used, over and over. Because people pour energy out inside them. But a hundred years of disuse has stripped it bare. There's nothing left. I'm sorry, Jess." She'd been thinking the same, that she could lie to Beck and hold that escape route in reserve. But if it was dead, that left only the smugglers' tunnel and the desperate, last-ditch idea of the Ray of Apollo. Jess didn't much like the chances of either one.
Khalila came in soon after, with Glain, and she beamed when she saw Jess and Thomas. "It makes me glad to see you both at the end of the day," she said. "Sweaty and dirty as you are. I think we all worry, having you apart from us." Her smile slipped away, and she washed her hands and face in the cold-water bucket by the door. "If only Santi and Wolfe were here to meet us, too." She'd found time, Jess saw, to change to a clean dress-unbleached linen, something that Dario had found for her, no doubt. Neat, as always. "I'm not sure I trust the work of this provincial Medica . . ."