I dropped the cup, and it smashed against the floor.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lily.
I stared at The Chicago Tribune. The headline read, “New Year’s Eve: The Biggest Celebration in Chicago History.”
“They didn’t cancel,” I said. “It’s happening.”
“What is?” Raphael stood, a map in hand.
I looked at the map, then at the paper. The sinister smell of last night’s fire taunted me, and I remembered my dream of blazing streets, of fire radiating across the city in a steady, planned pattern, swallowing everything in its path.
“Of course,” I whispered. “Meridian’s going to start the Great Chicago Fire.”
45
I snatched the map out of Raphael’s hand, but it didn’t have what I was looking for. “Do you have one with city firehouses on it?”
“Um, probably.”
“Find it.”
As Raphael sorted through his pile of maps, Taylor said, “Is this the part where you tell us what’s going on?”
“Yes. But briefly, because I need your help.” I almost shook with the effort of deciding how to explain in the quickest way possible. “What happened at Marsha’s … Conn arrested me. More or less just for being a Shade. After he brought me here, I agreed to help the IBI find out more about a rumor that the Society was plotting an attack.”
“You agreed?” said Raphael. “After he did that?”
“Wow,” said Jims. “You’re like a double agent.”
“The point is,” I continued, “there will be an attack. Tonight. I think—no, I know—that four Shades are going to set Cecil Deacon’s house on fire, probably at midnight, when thousands of people are gathered there to ring in the new year. Have you seen those wooden sidewalks near his house?”
“Sure,” said Raphael, holding out a map with the firehouses. “They’re a big tourist attraction.”
“And flammable. Give me that.” I took Raphael’s map and opened it on the table. “If they set fire to the house, it’s going to spread to the sidewalks. They’ll burn up like straw. The fire could destroy most of downtown, and people are going to die. The Shades will make certain of that, by steering them right into the path of the fire. This world never had a Great Chicago Fire. Meridian’s going to make certain it does.”
There was a silence. Then Lily said, “How can we help?”
“Are you sending us on a death-defying mission?” Jims’s eyes got round. “Listen, if something happens to me and I end up on life support, don’t pull the plug, okay? I can get better. And if I die, don’t embalm my body and don’t put me in a coffin. Putting me in the ground is fine, but I want a very shallow grave.”
“Jims—”
“I can get better,” he insisted.
“Jims! You won’t have to claw your way out of a grave. You’ll be fine. Look.” I grabbed a pen and drew a wide circle around Deacon’s house and the wooden sidewalks. “Go to all the firehouses inside this circle. Split them between you, and tell the firefighters they need to be on the scene and ready to put out the fire. Jims, use that IBI badge. The rest of you … be convincing. It’s”—I reached for Lily’s wrist and checked her watch—“eight o’clock? How did it get so late?”
“Um … we’re lazy?” said Jims.
“Never mind. We still have four hours till midnight. Plenty of time. Will you do it?”
“Why not?” Taylor shrugged. “Firemen are hot.”
“What’re you going to do?” asked Lily.
“I’m going to see Conn.”
* * *
HE WASN’T AT HIS APARTMENT. I thought that would be the case, but I still had to check, since it was on the way to where he almost certainly was, and where I certainly didn’t want to be: the IBI.
Once I got there, though, I cursed myself for having wasted time stopping at Conn’s house. I moved fast as a ghost, but not that fast, and it was well past nine o’clock when I began hunting the halls of the IBI for him.
Precious minutes ticked by, and I threw increasingly panicked glances at clocks sitting on desks and mounted on office walls. The IBI was busy for a Friday night, and as I wove through gray-jacketed agents I began to think that Conn must have already left for downtown. How would I ever find him on the streets?
It was almost ten-thirty.
Then I saw someone I recognized. Michael. Not the person I would have picked, but I was running out of time and couldn’t afford to be choosy.
We were in a crowded hallway, so I sidled up to him and whispered in his ear. “Michael.”
He jumped and spun around. A few passing agents gave him a curious look.
“Don’t freak out,” I hissed. “It’s Darcy Jones. I need to find Conn. Do you know where he is?”
Michael muttered, “He’s getting ready to leave with his division. He’s head of security for New Year’s Eve.” He slipped into a quiet corner office set apart from the hallway traffic, and I followed.
“Take me to him.”
Michael had recovered from his surprise, and now his attitude got cocky. “Well, sure, if you want him that bad. Why don’t you manifest, Darcy, and we’ll take a stroll together, like two civilized beings? I hear you’re very civilized.”
“Nice try. Do you think I’d give you the chance to slap firecuffs on me? Just lead the way.”
Somewhat to my surprise, he did. He also didn’t attempt to trick me, as I’d feared when he led me downstairs into the wing of training rooms, interrogation rooms, and prison cells. Once, he glanced behind him and grinned. “So it’s true,” he said. “I can see your shadow.”
“Find Conn,” I reminded, and Michael shrugged, turned back around, and led me directly to him.
Conn was in a training room with dozens of IBI agents. He walked among them, checking their flamethrowers and other gear I didn’t recognize and didn’t want to. He looked alert, his body moving in quick lines. Clearly skilled. Clearly ready.
He was intimidating.
This was the same Conn I’d seen in the truck on the day of my arrest. Yet I almost manifested, almost let my longing fling me back into my body.
“McCrea,” Michael called.
Conn glanced up in surprise. “Michael? I don’t really have time to—”
“Someone here to see you.” Michael jerked his head toward the empty air behind him.
Conn’s eyes fell on my shadow and an emotion flashed across his face. Then his expression went dangerously calm. “I see,” he said. He turned to another agent, presumably his second-in-command. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Without another word, he stalked out of the room and down the hall.
Michael followed, and I followed, my gladness eroding into something else.
46
Conn opened the door to what looked like an interrogation room—one for humans, since it didn’t have iron walls or the iron chair I remembered from my conversation with Ivers.
“Leave us,” he told Michael.
“Hey. You’re welcome.” Michael shut the door behind him.
Conn folded his arms and waited. “Well?”
I manifested.
He leaned back against the wall as if the sudden sight of me had pushed him there. “What do you want?” His face was hard, armored. Completely closed off.
Something was wrong.
I had been afraid as I’d flown through the city to find him. But I hadn’t been afraid of this.
“Well … I…” I stammered.
“Yes?”
My thoughts got shaken up. I tried to reorder them, but the most important thing didn’t come out of my mouth first. “Why didn’t you cancel the New Year’s Eve celebrations? I told you. I told you to tell Fitzgerald and the mayor. In my letter.”
“Your letter,” he repeated.
“You got it, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Then why…?”
His eyes flickered with impatience. “It’s an election year. The mayor didn’t want to
show any sign of weakness.”
“That was a mistake,” I said. “A big mistake. Meridian’s going to set fire to Deacon’s house, the sidewalks, too, I’m sure of it.”
A stunned expression appeared on his face.
“I sent my friends—”
“Your friends?”
“Yes. Lily and the others. They’re here—it’s a long story—and I sent them to the firehouses in the area, to warn them.”
“And you are here…?”
“To warn you,” I finished lamely.
“Well.” He nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to leave.
“Wait,” I called.
He looked back at me as if I was chaining him to the room and he wanted nothing more than to walk out the door and never see me again.
“Why are you acting like this?” I demanded.
“I’m not acting like anything,” he said coldly.
“You are.” Then I understood. The knowledge bored into me, flooding me with horror. And loss.
“You know,” I whispered.
“Do you mean”—he raised his brows—“I know what Kellford told you? What he told me?”
“He told you.”
“Yes.” He opened the door. “Are we done?”
“Listen, I know how you must feel—”
“No.” He slammed the door. “You don’t. You don’t know how I felt when I woke up, and you were gone.”
“Conn—”
“I waited for you. I waited for you all day. Were you there? Were you watching?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No.”
“Do you think that I wouldn’t have figured out that you’d gone to Kellford on your own? I went there, Saturday night, and he told me everything.”
“He can’t have,” I shot back with anger of my own. “He can’t have told you everything. He can’t have told you how it feels to have been the cause of my parents’ deaths, and how confusing it is to love two people who could do something so horrible. I saw them tortured, Conn.” I stared at him and felt accusation mount in my face. “You are being unfair. This is hard for me, too.”
Conn closed his eyes, and when he opened them they looked desolate. “You have no faith in me,” he said in a low voice. “You think I blame you for what happened. For something you didn’t do. I read the transcript of your interrogation, Darcy. After I talked to Kellford, I moved heaven and earth to dig up that document. Anyone reading it would understand that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that you were just a five-year-old girl who adored her parents. Because if you’d been anything else, you would have confessed it. You were saying everything. You were telling the Vox Squad that you had a loose tooth, that it was your birthday, that you had an uncle who gave you crayons, what your favorite color was … all of that mangled and mixed with the real information they wanted until everything got so mangled and mixed they gave up. They broke you. Couldn’t you trust me a little, enough to know that that was what I’d care about?”
“I do trust you.” Only then did I realize it was true.
He kept speaking as if he hadn’t heard. “And then there was that letter. That impersonal, empty letter. There was nothing of you that I could hold on to. Nothing. You just vanished. You were gone. It’s been nearly a week, and I had no idea where you were. No idea what had happened to you. You could have been hurt. You could have been dead, killed by Orion or Meridian or God knows who else. Or you could have decided I simply wasn’t worth it.”
“Conn, no.” I groped for the right words. “I was afraid you’d hate me.”
“Hate you?” He shook his head. He started to say something, then stopped. A silence stretched.
When he spoke, his voice was even but sad. “I shouldn’t have said this. I’d take it back, if I could. You’re right. Of course you’re right. Kellford’s news can’t be easy for you. I only wish…” He glanced down at the cuffs of his uniform. “I’ve got to go.”
“Wait. Listen. I do trust you. I didn’t come here just to warn you. I need your help.”
His brow furrowed.
“We could stop the attack,” I said. “Zephyr would never let it happen if she knew about it, and she could command the entire Society to track down Meridian and the others to stop them. Only a few Shades are involved in the plot, and I think the rest of the Society would be against it, especially if they could believe in Zephyr’s plan for peace. If they could believe there is a way for humans and Shades to live together. Come with me to the Sanctuary and help me convince them. We still have time. The Sanctuary’s not far by car. It’s beneath Graceland Cemetery, and there are entrances a human could use, below gravestones—”
“I think that’s about all we need to hear, don’t you, Michael?” said a new, metallic voice broadcast into the room by a speaker.
Conn looked suddenly sick with the same sinking feeling I had.
Seams appeared in the wall, forming a rectangle that turned into a door. It slid aside, and Ivers and Michael walked into the room.
“Really, McCrea.” Michael smirked. “An interrogation room? It’s like you were begging us to listen in on you. Frankly, I don’t get the fuss everyone makes over you. You’re sloppy.”
Conn ignored him and turned to Ivers. “Sir, we need to adjust our strategy for New Year’s Eve—”
“We? Must? There is no ‘we.’ Because this”—his thick finger waved between Conn and me—“is a sickness, and I sure as hell am not going to catch your disease. Thank God Michael came to get me when he did. Now we have the chance to strike a big blow for the IBI. Can you imagine? I’ll be responsible for the destruction of the Sanctuary.” He switched on his flamethrower, and Michael did the same. I stopped breathing.
“Darcy, ghost,” said Conn.
“Darcy, don’t.” Ivers pointed his flamethrower at Conn. “He’ll burn as easily as you.”
I stayed where I was.
Ivers smiled. “I probably won’t hurt you two, if only because I don’t have the time. But if you don’t do as I say, I’ll make time. Got it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then follow me.”
Ivers led us to the room down the now-deserted hall, with Michael right behind us. Ivers opened the door, and I backed into Conn when I saw what was inside.
It was solitary confinement.
Conn held me steady. “Ivers—”
“Shut up, McCrea.”
Michael leaned forward and danced his flame into the ends of my hair. It caught fire, and I clamped down on my scream as Conn put it out with his hands. I went dizzy from the smoky stench.
“You see?” said Ivers. “See what happens when you don’t listen? Now”—he pointed at the tall glass box in the center of the room—“get inside. Both of you.”
“Remember,” Conn murmured in my ear.
Nothing here could hurt me.
I remembered, but my memory only made things worse as Conn and I walked toward the large box.
Ivers pushed us inside and turned to Michael. “Take McCrea’s agents,” he said, “and call up six more divisions. We’ve got a Sanctuary to burn.”
“This is the wrong move,” said Conn. “The last thing we need is for the IBI to start a fire. We need to stop one—”
Ivers sealed us inside the coffin. “Bye-bye, McCrea. Enjoy yourself, and later on you can thank me.”
He and Michael left the room. Then there was a hiss and a click and everything burst into flames.
47
I couldn’t close my eyes. Flames thumbed my eyelids back, burrowed into my mouth, my ears. The fire was climbing inside me.
I had to get it out.
I tore at my skin.
But something grabbed my hands.
“Darcy.”
Something was holding me. Something hard and strong.
No. Someone.
I shoved back, struck out, felt my hand connect with solid flesh. I hit again. He didn’t move.
<
br /> “Darcy,” he said. “This is an illusion. Remember?”
I remembered fire burning my mother’s hair, and I sobbed.
“Shh. Nothing here can hurt you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
His hands folded over mine again, and the panic in me eased a little. My hands are safe, I thought. The fire can’t reach them now.
That sense, that certainty, that at least part of me was protected helped chase away the red-orange blindness that filled my eyes. I saw a network of fingers. I focused. I knew those hands on mine. Large and long and kind of messed up. Lots of old cuts. A vague memory stirred, and I realized that, once, I had wanted to touch every single one of those scars.
The fire continued to flicker at the edge of my vision, but as I blinked clarity began to return. I went still, and could feel that those hands felt my stillness, and that the worry in them lessened.
I glanced up. There was a face that I knew was dear to me, that sometimes slipped into my dreams. When I would wake up all I wanted was to sleep again. “Conn?” I whispered.
A shudder of relief went through him. “Yes,” he said. “The fire can’t touch us, Darcy. You know that, don’t you?”
I considered this. The fire tried to drag my gaze away from Conn’s face, but I stared back into his lake-colored eyes and thought about that: a lake. Dark and deep. “Yes,” I said.
“Ivers and Michael locked us in, but we won’t be in here forever, someone will come eventually…” Conn began to ramble. I remembered enough to know this was odd behavior for him. Conn did not ramble. He’s trying to distract me, I realized.
“I know,” I told him, though I didn’t mean it. I had wanted to comfort him, and his comfort seemed so dependent on mine. Then, as soon as the words left my mouth, I did know. I remembered how we had gotten here. Everything became clear.
Conn’s gaze dropped to somewhere near my neck. His eyes immediately met mine again, but I had noticed. I touched the skin beneath my collarbone. It stung, and my fingers came away bloody. “I did that,” I said. “I thought the fire was inside me.”
“It—”
“I know,” I stopped him. “It isn’t. I’m okay, Conn. Really. Just a little case of temporary insanity.”