it in the back of her nose as her sinuses burned. She swallowed the last mouthful and clamped her jaw tight, teeth chattering, struggling to keep it all in. The empty plastic bottle rattled into a steel trash can on the corner. Seelie gripped the edges of the can and leaned against it while she took slow, shallow breaths.
Her head reeled. She wasn’t sure if it was the cough syrup or sheer revulsion, but she shoved herself away from the can, wiped the back of her hand across her wet lips, and staggered north.
Aislin had given her a sigil, but the lesson ended too soon. Intuition would have to drive her the rest of the way. Seelie walked serpentinely, tracing the curve of the symbol along the sidewalk, picturing the seven-pointed star in her mind’s eye. It exploded in jagged shards of glass, birthing chaos. Chaos steered her, pointing her left, then right, meandering down quiet backstreets. Somewhere here in Holy Ground, somewhere along a row of fast-food joints and office buildings, was the place where Patience died. The district was gone, but the dreams and the dead remained.
Seelie drew her straight razor. The blade swung open, locked in place under her thumb as she held it like a magic wand. A stray breeze pushed her, nudging her with cool fingers, and she walked until the wind died. This place felt right.
The dead wanted blood, and blood could give them a voice. She braced herself. Then she hissed through gritted teeth, drawing the razor across the pad of her thumb. She got down on one knee and drew the sigil of bridging on the damp stone of the sidewalk. It was crude, a finger painting in rust, but she felt it spark to life with a quiver in her chest. Her head was swimming, bees buzzing in her ears.
“Patience Foster,” she whispered to the wind. “You reached out to me once. I need you to do it again. I know it’s hard, but I’m weaving a bridge. I’ll meet you halfway if I can.”
She turned down an alley. Strange sounds washed from the far street, farther now as the alley seemed to narrow and stretch. She heard drunken laughter, clinking glass, the clop of slow, steady hoofbeats.
White brick walls became red brick, then turned to wattle-and-daub. Seelie was past the point of questioning it, caught up and swept along by the tide. This wasn’t her dream. It was the city’s. The city shifted, twitching, sensing her presence like a flea on the bedsheets.
“You have to make her listen,” Patience whispered in her ear, the girl invisible. “She’s going to hurt a lot of people. She doesn’t mean to, but she will.”
“I know. She’s trying to change history. But why? What caused all this?”
“A lie,” Patience said. “It all started with a lie.”
Black waves gently lapped against rough piers, the wood lashed with moldy rope. Two men strode side by side along the planks. They gazed out at the misty waters, a fogbank blanketing the harbor and a full moon in the starry night sky. Seelie followed them, unseen.
“You made contact?” asked one. He was short, chubby, with a tailored waistcoat and a walking stick.
The other man was Dieter Rime. The assassin nodded, amiable.
“The Howes agreed to my terms.”
“Good. But there are long-term interests in play.”
Rime gave him a sidelong glance. “Looking to sell more tea to the colonies? I think that ship sailed back in ’73. If you really want to make money, invest in coffee. The Americans are mad for coffee.”
“Amusing, but no. Longer term than that. John Company has plans, and to pursue those plans, we need special assets.”
“You have me.”
“We want her,” the man said.
Rime stopped walking.
“She worked with you once before, in India,” he added.
Rime waved it off. “She won’t work with me here.”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t understand. It isn’t about money. And if it was, you couldn’t afford her. She made a fortune in the silk trade. The woman could buy me a hundred times over and buy you at least twice.”
Rime started to walk but the man stopped him with his walking stick, holding it across the assassin’s chest. Rime lifted one slow eyebrow.
“We want her,” the man said.
“I assure you,” Rime said. “You do not want Arachne coming to America. Especially not New York. If she involves herself in the conflict here, it will not be on behalf of the East India Company, I can promise you that. Do not bring her here.”
“Make it