Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(91)

Garibaldi’s eyes widened, and Elsa let herself feel a grain of pleasure at surprising him. Whatever he’d expected they might try to do, he hadn’t considered this. “You wouldn’t,” he said.

“Wouldn’t I?” Elsa shook the bottle menacingly. “Do you know me so well you can be sure?”

“That book is your mother’s magnum opus, her greatest achievement, and you’ll throw it away?”

“My mother,” Elsa said, “wouldn’t want her greatest achievement falling into the wrong hands.”

“Disposing of the editbook in the wrong manner could damage the real world,” Garibaldi said with growing confidence. He took one step toward them.

Elsa narrowed her eyes and added some steel to her voice. “What do I care for Earth? I am Veldanese. I’d burn your world to the ground if I had to.”

Those words seemed to give Garibaldi some pause. She could see the indecision in his face as he considered the veracity of her performance. On her left, there was a click as Porzia flipped the switch and opened a portal to Elsa’s laboratory world.

“I’ll have the code now, if you please,” Elsa said.

Garibaldi ground his teeth, but gave it to her. “Up down down, up down up.”

Elsa held his gaze with her own as she said, “Faraz, if you would…?”

In the periphery of her vision, she saw Faraz nod and move toward the stasis machine. He flipped the switches, and there was an audible click as the lid unlatched. “I think we’re good,” he said, checking Jumi’s vitals.

“Get her through the portal,” Elsa told Faraz.

The whole apparatus was on wheels, though it proved so heavy that Porzia had to throw her weight in, too. Together, the two of them wheeled her mother out of her field of view while Elsa and Leo stood facing Garibaldi.

There was a scrape of wheels against the wood floor and a soft whoosh, and then Porzia and Faraz were through the portal with Jumi.

Elsa allowed herself the luxury of a triumphant smile. “A pleasure doing business with you. Don’t expect to hear from us again.” Then she backstepped toward the portal, Leo following at her side.

On the brink of the portal, Leo sheathed his rapier and turned to her, whispering, “Hand me the book.”

“What?” she whispered back, holding on to the editbook.

His hands moving almost too fast to see, he reached forward and neatly wrenched the book from her grasp.

“What are you doing? We had a plan!” she hissed.

“I’m sorry, Elsa,” he said, “but this was always the plan.”

He grabbed her upper arm and shoved her, sending her flying backward. The cold of the portal hit her like water and swallowed her whole.

Elsa fell out the other side, losing her footing and sprawling across the wood floor of her lab. The ink bottle flew from her grasp and shattered against the leg of a table. She scrambled to her feet, ready to lunge back through the portal, but it was already closing. “Ugh!”

“Oh my God,” Porzia said, taking in the scene. “Where’s the editbook? Where’s Leo?”

“Open the portal, we have to go back!” When neither Porzia nor Faraz replied, Elsa yelled, “What are you waiting for?”

Recovering from her shock, Porzia fumbled with the device, rushing to enter the coordinates. A black portal irised open halfway, then snapped closed again.

“What’s wrong?” Elsa shot over her shoulder as she ran to her mother’s side.

“I don’t know!” Porzia tried again with the same result. “They must be blocking the connection somehow.”

“Keep trying!” Elsa checked the rise and fall of Jumi’s chest, the slow but even pulse in her wrist.

“She’s stable,” Faraz assured her.

Elsa turned her attention back to Porzia, who was flipping the switch again. Another nascent portal aborted itself. “Elsa, what happened to the editbook? And…” She swallowed. “And to Leo?”

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. They had to get back and fix this and make everything right again. Shock warred with anger inside her, and Elsa’s jaw worked for a moment before she managed to squeeze the words out. “He grabbed the editbook and pushed me through the portal.”

“What!” Faraz shouted, looking up from Jumi’s medical readouts. “That’s not possible!”

“Well, that’s what happened!” Elsa shouted back. She couldn’t remember ever hearing Faraz raise his voice before. She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking, and she flexed her fingers in an attempt to steady her nerves. “We have to … we have to think, we have to get it back.” Get him back.

Porzia was staring at the portal device. She looked up, giving Elsa a stunned look. “Even if they weren’t planning to immediately move the editbook to a secure location, we have no leverage left. How would we, you know, avoid getting shot on sight?”

Faraz raised a finger in the air. He seemed to have regained his usual composure. “I, too, am somewhat concerned about the getting-shot-on-sight scenario. Also, I don’t fancy the notion of crossing swords with Leo.”

Elsa cast him a scathing glare.

“I’m sorry, are we avoiding the topic of how my closest friend decided to abandon us and join the evil side?” he said mildly, eyebrows raised. But there were cracks in his calm facade, lines of pain etched around the eyes.