This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2012 by The Inkhouse
Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Cliff Nielsen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lawrence, Theo.
Mystic city / Theo Lawrence. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In a Manhattan where the streets are under water and outcasts called mystics have paranormal powers, Aria Rose is engaged to Thomas Foster and the powerful Rose and Foster families—longtime enemies—are uniting politically; the only trouble is that Aria cannot remember ever meeting Thomas, much less falling in love with him.
eISBN: 978-0-375-98642-0
1. Memory—Juvenile fiction. 2. Rich people—Juvenile fiction. 3. Paranormal fiction. 4. New York (N.Y.)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Memory—Fiction. 3. Wealth—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction. 5. Science fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title
PZ7.L4378Mys 2012
813.6—dc23
2012010878
Random House Children’s Books supports the
First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For my grandmother,
Eileen Honigman
and
In loving memory of my uncle,
Mark Honigman,
who inspired me with his vast knowledge
of literature and his love of learning,
and who is missed by all
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Part Two
Making Love, Not War
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Part Three
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
• PROLOGUE •
So little time is left.
“Take this.” He folds the locket into my hand. It throbs as if it has a pulse, giving off a faint white glow. “I’m sorry for putting you in danger.”
“I would do it all again,” I tell him. “A thousand times.”
He kisses me, softly at first, and then so fiercely I can hardly breathe. Rain falls everywhere, soaking us, splashing into the canals that twist through the hot, dark city. His chest heaves against mine. The sound of sirens—and gunshots—reverberates between the crumbling, waterlogged buildings.
My family is drawing closer.
“Go, Aria,” he pleads. “Before they get here.”
But footsteps are behind me now. Voices fill my ears. Fingers dig into my arms, tearing me away.
“I love you,” he says gently.
And then they take him. I scream in defiance, but it is too late.
My father emerges from the shadows. He aims the wicked barrel of his pistol at my head.
Inside me, something bursts.
I always knew this story would break my heart.
• I •
The party has begun without me.
Slowly, I descend the main staircase of our apartment, which curves dramatically into the reception lounge, currently packed with important guests. Tall ceramic vases line the room, overflowing with roses of every variety: white albas from Africa, pink centifolias from the Netherlands, pale yellow tea roses from China, and roses altered with mystic dye right here in Manhattan to produce colors so electric they hardly seem real. Everywhere I turn there are roses, roses, roses—more roses than people.
I reach behind me for assurance. My friend Kiki gives my hand a squeeze, and together we slip into the crowd. I scan the room for Thomas. Where is he?
“I hope your mom doesn’t notice we’re late,” Kiki says, careful not to trample on her dress. Gold, but not garish, her gown falls to the floor in luxurious waves. Her black curls flow past her shoulders in delicate dark loops; both eyelids are dusted with a shimmery pink that makes her brown eyes sparkle.
“She’s too busy schmoozing to care,” I say. “You look mag, by the way.”
“So do you! Shame you’re already taken.” Kiki eyes the room. “Otherwise, I’d marry you myself.”
Practically all the members of the New York State Senate and Assembly are here, as well as our most prominent judges. Not to mention the businessmen and society folk who are indebted to my father, Johnny Rose, or his former political rival, George Foster, for their own success. But tonight isn’t about them. Tonight, the spotlight is on me.
“Aria!”
I quickly find the speaker. “Hello, Judge Dismond,” I say, nodding to a large woman whose blond hair is swept up into a tornado funnel.
She smiles at me. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you,” I say. Since the wedding announcement, the entire city has been celebrating the end of the war between Thomas’s and my families, or so I’m told. The Times is going to do a profile on me as a political darling and a champion of bipartisan unity—Kiki’s been mocking me about it ever since I told her. My best friend, the darling, she says in her best phony newscaster voice. I have to cross my eyes and smack her just to get her to stop.
Kiki at my side, I continue my meet-and-greet duties, floating through the party as if I’m on autopilot. “Thank you for coming,” I say to Mayor Greenlorn and our state senators, Trick Jellyton and Marishka Reynolds, and their families.
“Quite an engagement party,” Senator Jellyton says, raising his glass. “But then, you’re quite a girl!”
“You’re too kind,” I say.
“We were all surprised to hear about you and Thomas Foster,” Greenlorn says.
“I am just full of surprises!” I laugh, as though I’ve said something funny. And they all obligingly laugh with me.
I’ve been groomed for this since I was born—practicing the art of small talk, remembering names, graciously inviting senators’ daughters to sleepovers and birthday parties and smiling even when their horrible, zit-faced brothers pretend to bump into me so they can cop a feel. I sigh. Such is the life of a political darling, as Kiki would remind me.
We make our way along the edge of the party, dodging guests and waiters dressed in white who weave through the room carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres and never-ending champagne. I search for Thomas but don’t see him.
“Are you
excited?” Kiki asks, plucking a miniature lamb burger off one of the trays and popping it into her mouth. “To see Thomas?”
“If by ‘excited’ you mean ‘about to vomit,’ then, well, yes.”
Kiki laughs, but I’m being serious—I am full of nervous jitters. I haven’t seen my fiancé since I woke up in the hospital two weeks ago with partial memory loss. After my accident.
From a distance, the guests seem happy, Rose family cronies mixing easily with Foster devotees. When I look more closely, though, I can see that nearly everyone is shooting nervous, shifty glances around the room, as if the social niceties will be cast aside any second and the families will go back to treating each other as they always have.
As enemies.
My family has despised the Fosters since before my father’s father’s father was born. Hating them and their supporters is part of what it means to be a Rose.
Or rather, part of what it meant to be a Rose.
“Aria?” A young girl rushes up to me. She’s around thirteen, with frizzy red hair and a burst of freckles across her forehead. “I just want to say that it’s so upper about you and Thomas.”
“Oh, um … thanks?”
She closes in. “How’d you pull off so many secret rendezvous? Is it true that he’s moving to the West Side? Do you—”
“Thaaat’s enough.” Kiki takes over, pushing the girl to the side of the room. “You’ve got more questions than you do freckles, and that’s saying something.”
“Who was that?” I ask Kiki once the girl is gone.
“Dunno.” Kiki huffs. “Boy, but do they make ’em small these days. And round. She was like a little potato. Definitely a Foster supporter.”
I frown, curling my fingers into frustrated fists. People I’ve never even met seem to know every detail of my torrid affair with Thomas Foster, when I can’t even remember meeting him, let alone falling in love.
When I was released from the hospital and arrived home, I was told of our engagement. I asked my mother why Thomas wasn’t at the apartment, why he hadn’t visited me in the hospital. “You’ll see him soon enough at your engagement party,” she said. “The doctors say your memory might still return—perhaps when you see Thomas, it will all come flooding back.”
And so here I am. Waiting. Watching for Thomas, so that I can remember.
Kiki must sense that I’m struggling. “Just give it some time, Aria. You loved Thomas enough to defy everything for him—for now, just trust in that.”
I nod at her good advice. But time is the one thing I don’t have. Our wedding is planned for the end of the summer. And it’s already almost July.
Guests move all around me, the women swathed in bright colors, parading their jewelry, tattoos, and mystic decals. The men are mostly tall and wide, with rough-looking faces and slicked-back hair.
A distinguished gentleman I don’t recognize approaches and extends his hand. His fingers are rough, calloused. “Art Sackroni,” he says.
Nod, smile. “Aria Rose.”
He is older, with a handsome, weathered face and the black vines of a tattoo creeping up his neck. The Foster family crest—a five-pointed star—is inked in navy blue above his left eye. “I hope you and Thomas will be very happy together, Aria.”
“Me too,” I say, half meaning it. Two incredibly large men—one black, one white—stand behind him with puffed-out chests, their bow ties looking ready to burst from around their throats. They, too, have tattoos that snake from under their collars.
“It’s not every day a young princess finds her prince,” Sackroni says.
It sounds corny when he says it like that, but I’m hoping he’s right—that once I see Thomas, it will all come rushing back to me and I’ll be thrilled to be marrying him instead of terrified.
I think back to when I overdosed on Stic, an illegal drug made of distilled mystic energy. People take it to feel what it is to be a mystic, to experience super speed, incredible strength, a greater harmony with the world, for a fleeting few moments.
I was told that my parents found me unconscious on my bedroom floor, vibrating as if my body were filled with a thousand bees. I can’t imagine how I even got hold of the pills. None of my friends use. But I must have gotten them somehow, and leave it to me to screw things up. It’s so embarrassing. Rich people in the Aeries do Stic all the time. I can’t believe I was so stupid—and so unlucky—that the first time I tried it I ruined everything.
I remember almost everything else, like what I ate for lunch one day last month (oysters, flown in by my dad from the West Coast) and how it affected me the next morning (two hours hugging the toilet and tossing them all up). So why can’t I recall anything about Thomas?
Thankfully, there wasn’t any bad publicity. No one outside my immediate family, the Fosters, Kiki, and a handful of doctors and nurses know what happened. Apparently, while I was in the hospital, Thomas came to my parents and confessed that we’d been dating secretly for months. That we wanted to get married.
Now here I am. I should be happy. Overjoyed. But mostly I’m just … bewildered, especially about how well my parents took the news.
“There you are,” my father says, guiding me toward where my mother is talking to Kiki. “Claudia, dear,” she is saying, “you look gorgeous. Truly ravishing.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Rose,” Kiki says. “You look stunning, as always.”
My mother gives a small, tight smile. Her hair is sculpted into a French twist, her normally blond locks now a mystic-infused scarlet so radiant I nearly have to close my eyes. Her face is slathered in makeup, designed to attract attention and inspire awe.
I look tame compared to her: my makeup is all neutral tones, my brown hair blown out and tucked simply behind my ears.
“You look good, Aria,” my father tells me. “Respectable.”
I glance down at my dress, the cream-colored silk, the neckline detailed with tiny blue and pink roses, exposing my collarbone and plunging toward my waist in the back. Of course I look respectable, I want to say. I’m a Rose. But others are watching, so I thank him politely. He nods but doesn’t smile. My father never smiles.
My mother’s eyes flash around the room, darting over the grand piano and the series of blue period Picassos, past the windows, whose curtains are drawn back to reveal a moonlit city. Then her face lights up and she sings, “Thomas! Over here.”
My fiancé.
Thomas happens to be gorgeous, with clear tan skin and short brown hair parted on the side. His eyes are dark, like mine, his lips full and inviting. I recognize him immediately from posts on e-columns and pap shots and whatnot, but he’s far more striking in person than on any TouchMe screen. He has a magnetic energy. Any girl in all of the Aeries would be thrilled to marry him. He’s worth billions, and one day he might even run the city.
My stomach begins to flutter. For a second something tickles the back of my mind: My hand in another person’s hand. A pair of lips brushing against mine. A feeling of … warmth.
Then it’s gone.
Thomas winks at me confidently. Staring at him now, I imagine how I could be attracted to him, how I should still be attracted to him, even though my memory gives me nothing. And so I pretend: I smile as my parents do, as Thomas does, as our guests do. Because this boy must be what I wanted—I defied my family for him, after all.
“Mr. and Mrs. Rose.” Thomas shakes my father’s hand, lightly kisses my mother’s cheek.
It’s incredibly disconcerting. When I was little, if I even said the name Foster, I was chastised and sent to my room. And now …
I exhale a long breath. It’s all happening so fast.
“Aria,” Thomas says warmly, pecking me on the lips. “How do you feel?”
“Great!” I say, squeezing my clutch and shifting my hands behind my back. They’re shaking, and I don’t want him to take them in his. “You?”
He narrows his eyes. “Fine. But I wasn’t the one who—”
“Overdosed,” I reply.
“I know.”
This is it? Where are all the memories? I was supposed to remember meeting him, falling in love, and … Damn. I’m still a blank slate when it comes to Thomas.
My parents exchange a curious glance, no doubt wondering what I’m thinking, but then things get even stranger: Thomas’s parents appear.
“Erica! George!” my father says, as though they are his dearest friends. He draws Thomas’s father into a masculine hug.
“Everything looks beautiful,” Thomas’s mother says to mine. Erica Foster’s dress is an emerald green that matches the dozen or so delicate circles tattooed along her neck. “Absolutely breathtaking.”
“Thank you,” my mother says with a forced grin.
My father takes a champagne flute from one of the waiters and raises it. “Everyone! Your attention, please.”
When my father speaks, people listen. Guests stop talking and turn in our direction. The string quartet stops playing. Thomas slips his arm around my waist, and I am reminded of how oddly we are on display. It’s a show for all the most important people in the city, but also—maybe especially—for me.
“It is no secret that George and I have had our differences, and so have our families for generations,” Dad says. “But that’s all about to change. For the better.” There’s a quick burst of applause—people know what’s coming. “Melinda and I are proud to announce the engagement of our daughter, Aria, to young Thomas Foster. A couple has never been more in love than these two.”
There is loud and sustained applause—it goes on just long enough that my father has to fan his right hand to silence everyone. This, too, feels staged. I can feel Thomas’s hand on my bare arm. He rubs his thumb along the back of my elbow and my pulse begins to race.
“I’m sure most of you were surprised to hear of the engagement. Initially, Aria and Thomas hid their affair from all of us. But admitting the truth had a positive effect: it forced our two families to … rethink our rivalry.
“We decided to bury the hatchet. No more will we fight among ourselves. Aria and Thomas have brought us all together using the oldest power in the book: true love. So, Thomas, thank you. And Aria, my dearest darling daughter, thank you, too.” My father kisses me on the forehead. I’m dizzy with the attention.