I ignored him, leaning against the fire truck. Finally, Jims gave up and did the same.
Just as the firemen were ready to go inside the burning building, dark figures appeared on the roof, settling at its edge like a flock of crows.
Shades.
Zephyr and Savannah manifested in front of the firemen, who staggered back with surprise. But even from a distance, I could see that Zephyr was at her most intimidating, pointing at the windows of the building, then at the Shades, and then in the fire chief’s face. Whatever she said must have been convincing enough to make the chief nod before he moved his men into the building. Zephyr and Savannah ghosted. Shades burst in and out of being around the apartment building, clinging to ledges, smashing the windows.
It took a moment to realize what they were doing, even though this had been my idea. I had suggested this to Conn, remembering how my parents had broken a window in the Ravenswood Medical Center so that I could breathe. The Shades were helping.
Which meant that Conn had talked with them, and they had listened. If they had listened, surely they wouldn’t have hurt him.
Hope slowly crept back.
The wail of an IBI siren grew nearer, and cars pulled into the street. Fitzgerald stepped out of one of them, and I began running toward her, so glad to see her harsh face, because it was good that she was here, good that the Shades were here. This meant that Conn must have succeeded. He had to be okay.
But I didn’t see the hypercycle, and he didn’t get out of an IBI car, and he wasn’t with the other agents.
I kept running anyway.
My cuffed hands threw me off balance, and I ran awkwardly. I stumbled, but didn’t fall, when Conn stepped out of the crowd and saw me.
I thought the expression on his face was relief. I thought it might be delight. But it vanished so quickly that I couldn’t quite tell, because suddenly there was nothing there but anger and a sick horror.
He rushed forward and caught me by the shoulders, holding me at arm’s length.
“Conn.” My giddiness at the sight of him drained away with the knowledge that he clearly didn’t feel the same way. “What’s wrong?”
“Who did this to you?” he demanded.
“What?” I followed his gaze to my wrists, and the firecuffs. “Oh.” I laughed, because now I understood. “I did.”
Conn took my hands in his, inspecting the cuffs. He went pale. “Darcy. Don’t move.”
It was the first time I ever saw his fingers tremble. He carefully deactivated the cuffs, and the light in them vanished. Yet even when he slipped the cuffs from my wrists, Conn still looked like he couldn’t breathe.
“The cuffs were set to kill you,” he said finally.
I didn’t really care, because, well, I wasn’t dead. And he wasn’t either. I wanted to spring up on my toes to kiss him, I wanted to touch him with hands that were free, completely free.
“No big deal,” I said.
He shook his head. “Only you,” he said with a faint laugh. “The Sanctuary’s fine, you know.”
“How did you do it? How did you stop the fight?”
“I talked to them.”
“That’s it?”
“Well”—he smiled—“and how did you save the day, Darcy Jones?”
“I, um, talked to them.”
“In the end,” said Conn, “it was easy. Fitzgerald showed up in time and reined in the IBI. As for the Society, I knew exactly what to say to them.”
“What?” I asked. “What did you say?”
His smile deepened.
Then his eyes lifted away from mine, glanced over my shoulder, and grew serious. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Well, Ms. Jones,” said a voice behind me. I wheeled around.
It was Director Fitzgerald.
“Come with me,” she said.
50
Conn shot me a warning look.
Fitzgerald darted sarcastic eyes between the two of us. She opened her mouth to say something, but the mayor stormed up to us, asking furious questions about the lack of security.
Conn pulled me behind a fire truck as I heard pieces of Fitzgerald’s calm reply: “… warned you … Ivers … no lives lost…”
“Ivers was fired,” Conn told me. “Michael, too.”
“What about Fitzgerald?”
“The mayor won’t replace her, because if he does she’ll go public with the fact that he pushed for this celebration despite our intel.” Conn paused. “It may not seem so right now, but in the end tonight is going to be a victory for the IBI. For the first time, the Society is working with us—under certain conditions. There are going to be a lot of changes in this world. But, Darcy … they’re not going to happen overnight. Fitzgerald wants you. She won’t imprison or harm you—if only because you’re going to be a hero in the eyes of everyone here. But she will use you. She will use you to get advice about how to bargain with the Society. Advice about any secret weaknesses Zephyr has, or Savannah has, or anybody else on the Council. If I were you—” He broke off, then started again. “If I were you, I’d go home now. Tonight.”
“Now?”
“Don’t you want to go back to the Alter?”
“Yes,” I said, because it was the truth. But I said it slowly, since I hadn’t heard Conn mention anything about coming with me. It was becoming painfully clear that I had my world, and he had his. Neither of us fit in the other.
Conn nodded. His face was firm. Convinced. I saw that he had decided that this was the Right Thing to Do.
The gladness inside me withered. “Fitzgerald can’t force me to do anything.”
“Trust me,” he said. “She’ll find a way.”
“I don’t see why I have to sneak away like some kind of criminal.”
“You’re not.” He frowned. “Why are we arguing about this? You said you wanted to go, and I think you should.”
I couldn’t speak.
“You should ghost,” he said, “before Fitzgerald wrangles herself away from the mayor. The Couch Mausoleum portal won’t be guarded right now. Even on a good day it’s badly monitored, and tonight practically every agent has been brought here. The dispatcher will have pulled all agents from unimportant posts, and that’ll include the Couch guards. I’ll find your friends and tell them to meet you there. Once you’re together, don’t waste time. Just go.”
“And you?” I managed.
“McCrea! Jones!” we heard Fitzgerald shout close by. “Where are you?”
Quickly, he said to me, “I’ve got to stick around. I’ll see you later, okay?” He touched my cheek. His fingertip sent a shard of ice into my heart.
I didn’t say, Why are you pushing me away?
I didn’t say, How soon is later?
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
I ghosted.
* * *
TAYLOR WAS, PREDICTABLY, the last to arrive at the mausoleum, and when she did the sun was rising and she was lugging her suitcase.
“You stopped at the apartment?” said Lily. “Conn said not to waste any time.”
“Since when do we obey his every word?” Taylor replied.
“Don’t you have a ton of clothes back home?” said Raphael.
“Yes, but they’re not imported from another world.”
Lily sighed. “Let’s get out of here.”
Which was what we were going to do, when Savannah appeared.
“I am very angry with you,” she told me.
I winced. “I know. I’m—”
“Sorry? For lying, spying, and giving up the location of the Sanctuary? I don’t think ‘sorry’ cuts it. You could have come to me, you know. If you’d told Zephyr and me about Meridian’s plot, we would have stopped it. Now we have to negotiate with the humans.”
“But … isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted to become citizens. Doesn’t that mean, you know, laying foundations for how humans and Shades will deal with each other? You would have had to do that at some point.”
“Don’t get smart with me!”
“And won’t the human population be grateful to the Society for what they did tonight? No one died, did they?”
“Zero. That’s not the point. The point is I don’t forgive you.”
There didn’t seem to be anything I could say to that, so I muttered something lame like, “Well, okay. Goodbye, then,” and turned to leave.
Savannah stopped me. “I’m surprised to see you taking off so soon, though I suppose your young man is rather persuasive. Among other things.”
I stared at her. “You were spying on us?”
“Turnabout is fair play. How do you think I knew you were here?” Then Savannah said impatiently, “Oh, just go. But when you visit me—”
“Visit?”
“Yes, visit. That’s what people who share an acquaintance do. They visit. That”—Savannah pointed at the mausoleum—“is a perfectly decent portal, and if you don’t use it I will be even angrier than I already am. When you visit, you can work on getting back into my good graces.”
I thought about how easy it would be to ghost through portals to this world, and things no longer seemed so grim. I realized that I had an uncle here, somewhere. Maybe he was someone I’d want to find. Plus, there was Savannah.
And Conn. “I will,” I said.
“It won’t be easy. You will probably have to come back many times before I even speak to you.”
“Like you’re not speaking to me now?” I laughed. “Okay, Savannah.” I echoed Conn’s words, which no longer seemed quite so empty. “I’ll see you later.”
* * *
WE WERE QUIET ON THE DRIVE back to Lakebrook, until Taylor cranked some Cuban rap I swear Raphael must have given her. Then that noise became a different kind of silence.
I couldn’t stop fidgeting, even though it was making Lily crazy. All I could do was wonder whether Marsha would be home when we got there.
That became too hard to think about, so I stared out the window once Taylor got off the Route 355 exit ramp and we began driving through the strip malls and near-identical houses of Lakebrook. I saw the skeletons of deserted playgrounds. Spindly winter trees. Cars huddled around a grocery store. Everything looked as sleepy as it always did on Saturday mornings. Everything seemed the same. Yet it felt different.
I felt different.
A light was on in Marsha’s house when we got there, but it was the living room lamp she left on twenty-four hours a day. “I hate coming home to a dark house,” she’d say. “And what if I wake up in the middle of the night and want a snack and some TV?”
She wasn’t there.
Without saying a word, my friends settled around the living room, waiting with me. I sat on the sofa and glanced at Taylor. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Nah,” she said. “I want to see what happens.”
We heard a car chug up the driveway, and a door slam.
Marsha was home.
51
“Darcy?” Marsha clutched a grocery bag to her chest, and a rip split the brown paper. Her eyes cast about the living room, blinking as she registered each one of us. “All of you. You’re here. And you?” Her wide forehead furrowed at the sight of Taylor. “Who are you?”
“Everyone’s always so glad to see me,” said Taylor.
A pint of ice cream squeezed out of the torn grocery bag and hit the floor. Raphael scooped it up and grabbed the bag from Marsha. “We’ll take care of the groceries. Right, Jims?” He set the bag on the kitchen table, and he and Jims hustled out the front door to unload the car.
As soon as Marsha’s hands were empty, she glanced down at her palms like she had no idea what to do with them. Then she looked straight at me. “You’re okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
She sat down next to me on the sofa and pulled me into a big hug. “What happened to you?”
“I…” My voice was muffled against her soft shoulder. I thought about how easy things would be if I didn’t answer that question honestly. If I told some crazy horror story about being held captive for two months. I could pick up right where Marsha last saw me, assaulted in her own living room. I was kidnapped, I could tell her.
I vanished? No, I didn’t vanish. Your eyes tricked you, I’d tell her.
She would believe me.
I’d fool Marsha, and then maybe I could move back in like nothing had happened.
No.
I put my arms around her. Marsha wasn’t a fool, and I couldn’t bear to make her into one. If I lied to her and she took me back, she wouldn’t be sharing her home with me. She’d be living with a stranger. When you’re a stranger to people you care about, you become a stranger to yourself.
I said, “You’re not going to believe me—”
That made her mad. She pulled away. “Don’t give me that. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through these past two months? I have been going out of my mind.”
I cowered, sinking into the corner of the sofa. “Well—”
“Don’t ‘well’ me, young lady. I want answers, and I want them now.”
Jims and Raphael came back through the door and plunked more grocery bags on the table. “I think that’s it,” said Raphael.
“Hey,” said Lily, looking between Marsha and me, “why don’t the rest of us get some takeout for lunch? We’ll get Thai food.”
“Or I could cook,” I said, a bit desperate at the thought of them leaving me alone with Marsha. “There are groceries.”
“No,” said Lily. “I want Thai. We’ll get your usual. Pad thai with extra lime and peanuts, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Come on, guys,” she said to the others.
“You’re all in big trouble,” Marsha told them. “Your parents—”
They looked at each other with dread.
“—are going to ground you within an inch of your lives.”
“Just so long as they don’t spank me,” said Jims. “I hate it when they do that. I only like getting spanked by—”
“We’ll be back.” Lily grabbed Jims and then all of them were gone, the front door banging behind them.
It was hard to face Marsha, so I looked around her house—at the water-stained carpet where the fish tank had been, that ridiculous raccoon painting. I fumbled into my pocket and pulled out the silver bird spoon. “I got this for you.” I offered it to her. “Now your collection’s complete.”
Marsha stared down at the spoon, at the word “Alaska” inscribed in cursive letters across the bowl, and the bird perched on the handle. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Have you been in Alaska?”
“No, I—”
“That’s not the willow ptarmigan. That’s not the Alaskan state bird. I don’t know what kind of bird that is.”
Of course.
I had clung to this spoon for weeks like it was a talisman, some magical object that would win Marsha’s heart and make her keep me forever. And of course Conn’s Alaska hadn’t chosen the same state bird.
Hopeless. This was hopeless. I couldn’t explain to Marsha. She would believe a lie, but she’d never understand the truth. I dropped the spoon, stood woodenly, and began to walk toward the front door.
“Darcy Jones, you get your little butt right back here!”
I stopped.
“You owe me an explanation.”
I did. I owed her more than that. So I told her the truth, because that was all I had to give her.
Though I might have toned down some of the Conn-related stuff.
She interrupted me once, to ask me to ghost and manifest in front of her. I did, and she was only a little freaked out, I guess because the last time she saw me vanish things were more dramatic. When I finished telling her everything that had happened since she’d thrown the kitchen knife, there was a long silence.
“Well.” She let out a big breath, and her hands flopped to her sides. “I see I have my work cut out for
me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am going to have to lie until the cows come home. To the DCFS, the police—” She caught me staring. “No one would let a crazy person be a foster parent, and if I told the truth I’d sound like a nutcase, wouldn’t I? I suppose you could prove that you’re not human, but you’re better off keeping that to yourself.”
“Doesn’t it bother you … what I am?”
“Darcy.” She gave me a firm look. “I have always known exactly what you are. You are a good girl.”
A feeling bubbled up inside. “Does that mean you’re not kicking me out?”
“Kicking you out would get in the way of punishing you, which is exactly what I’m going to do once I figure out how many chores I need done around the house.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You know, getting kidnapped wasn’t really my fault—”
“Zip it. You could have come home a lot earlier, and you know it.”
Then Marsha, having learned that there was another dimension and that her foster kid wasn’t exactly human, did what I should have guessed she’d do. She began unpacking the groceries. I helped, putting everything where I knew it should go.
When I opened a cabinet to put away some sugar plum herbal tea, I paused. I pulled out the Lapsang souchong tea tin and turned to Marsha. She saw what I held and stopped unpacking.
“I know what’s inside,” I said. “I found the money months ago, back at the start of school. I wasn’t looking for it. It was an accident. But I’ve been thinking … I could help you. I could help you save up, whatever you’re saving for. I’ve got some money from the coffeehouse, and if I can get my old job back I—”
“Darcy,” she interrupted.
“Please let me. Please. You don’t have to tell me what it’s for, but—”
“Darcy.” She took my hands and held them tight around the tea tin. “You’re going to go to a good college.”
“What?” I looked down at my hands and her hands. Then I understood. The label on the tin began to wobble, and the letters got fat and watery. Tears spilled from my eyes.