Standing inside the bank, you could hardly tell it had once been a church. A row of teller stations followed the right wall, locked behind overlapping plates of inch-thick bulletproof glass. In the middle were the high standing desks with the deposit slips and big boxes of pens plastered with the company logo. You were encouraged to take one. I took two. A round woman in a red tweed jacket suspected I was lost and came to ask if I needed any help. It was a big fancy place—Swiss, I think—for rich people and criminals to hide things from the government. All privacy, minimal records. It didn’t matter who you were. All that mattered was that you had the key.
I showed the one Lily had dropped in her wake, which Hammond had kept for me separate from the rest of my possessions. The woman in red took me to the back through a swinging half-height door to a fancy computer terminal where a tall man with pencil-thin eyebrows waited. Then she left. Once the door was closed, the tall man turned the machine to face me and asked for the password.
“Password?” I asked.
“Yes,” he explained with mock patience. “Each key has a unique passphrase that accompanies it. To verify authenticity,” he added.
I looked at the screen. A cursor blinked at a long text line. It could be anything.
The tall man waited.
I typed: vanity, vanity, all is vanity and hit enter.
The screen turned red and the machine emitted a tone.
The tall man fake-smiled and told me in soft words that I may have mistyped and I had two more tries before my key would be confiscated.
I sighed. I was sure that was it.
Wait.
“Stupid . . .”
I started typing again: vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas.
The screen turned green and I spun the machine around with a gloating face. I was led into a steel-lined room to one side of the big vault at the back. I stepped into a cage, which the tall man shut and locked behind me, and then into a closet-sized nook, like a dressing room or voting booth maybe, one of several in a line, and was asked to wait. After a few minutes, a different man came with the long metal safety deposit box and left it on the standing counter at the back. There was no chair. He shut the curtain on his way out and I slipped the key into the lock. It went in smooth.
My hand lingered on the lid for the longest time. I must have stayed like that for several minutes, long enough for my arm to grow tired and start shaking. Finally, I took a long, slow breath and lifted the top. The joint at the back creaked once. Inside was a fancy red hand-towel with gold stitching at the ends. It was thick and soft, like something a rich man would keep in his bathroom. The Maleficium logo was printed on both sides. It was wrapped to make a long bundle. I lifted it. It was heavy. I pulled back the cloth like I was peeling a banana and pulled out the dagger. It was cold. I mean, you’d expect something made of stone and metal to be cold. But it stayed cold. It never warmed next to my skin. It was beautiful, too—in an absolutely brutal sort of way. It was so crude and yet so elegant, like the carved “Venuses” they find buried in the ruins of prehistoric Europe. It was bigger than I expected. No one would confuse it for a letter opener, that was sure. It looked more like a snub spear than a dagger. The red-gray blade was triangular and had three edges, like a Tibetan phurba. It wasn’t made of metal, but it didn’t feel like stone either. Maybe a mix of the two—raw ore or meteorite slough. The edges were irregularly chipped, presumably from use, which made it appear serrated, like it had been pulled from a snaggle-toothed cosmic shark. The metal hilt was twice as long as the blade and looked like it had been crafted much later, although it was clearly ancient as well. It was one long chunk of tarnished copper alloy, turquoise-hued and speckled in flaws. The handle was wrapped in straps of cracked leather. The cross guard was a pair of faces—a heavily bearded man and wild-haired woman—twisted in anger. They were carved crudely, one on each side, facing opposite directions, like an arguing couple who’d never see eye-to-eye. You could just tell. It was wicked. The sower of discord.
I wrapped it back in the towel and put it in my bag and closed the box and locked it and pulled back the curtain. I waited for the gate to open with my heart pounding in my ears. I had no idea when they would descend on me. I’d signed a contract. I had read part of it and vaguely recalled it only lasted through Lily’s discovery, but of course I couldn’t be sure. They could come at any moment. I walked through the smartly decorated lobby toward the front, which is when I noticed a familiar face sitting in one of the chairs off to the side. He didn’t seem to have any business. He was just waiting. His face was still gaunt. His clothes were still pressed sharp. He had the same hat, the same thin tie, the same pocket heavy with coins, the same polished alligator shoes, the same skull-topped cane. He smiled at me as I passed and tipped his hat politely, like we were members of the same church who just happened to pass each other at the supermarket or something. I stood a little straighter and pulled the strap of my now-heavy bag farther up my shoulder and stepped out the front door and walked down the street for one block, two blocks, five blocks, half-daring anyone to jump me right there in broad daylight. But no one did. No one even looked at me. They passed with their faces in the screens or laughing with the person next to them or lost in the worries of tomorrow. I was just some Asian chick with flower-print Keds and one eye that was a tiny bit crooked. No one noticed me at the train station either. I glanced at every face I passed on the steps to the platform. I wanted one of them at least to scowl or gasp or do anything that suggested they might understand something here was very, very wrong. That I shouldn’t be carrying what I was carrying, certainly not in some ridiculous lavender bag. That such a thing should even exist. But no one made eye contact, except for one guy in jogging clothes who almost ran into me as he hurried to the gym. But he looked away just as quickly, before the word “sorry” even escaped his lips.
The heavy bag had slipped a little on the walk and I pulled the strap back up my shoulder as I waited on the platform. A man in jeans and a sport coat stood behind, and I had visions of him leaping forward to push me in front of the train and snatch my cargo, so I wandered farther down, and I kept moving like that, turning every ten feet or so like I was just impatient to get where I was going. The train came and the people sitting on benches got up at nearly the same moment and waited for the doors to open. I let them pass so I was the last to step aboard, ready to jump back through the doors at the last second if need be. I stood in the same spot on the train, never budging, for the entire trip out to Brooklyn Heights. The sun was getting low in the sky. It shone yellow-orange between the buildings. It hit my face and I had to squint. No one looked at me as I zigzagged between blocks toward my destination. No one called me a silly girl. No one shrieked at the evil I carried. There was just the people and the city.
I stopped in front of the lot and looked at the formidable black-and-white signs that completely filled the temporary wall in a repeating pattern down to the corner and around the other side:
WATCHTOWER
Rex Magnus & Associates
Property Development
The wall had been erected to keep pedestrians like me from wandering into the construction site. The building inside, visible over the top, was barely more than a skeleton. Steel girders crisscrossed to a height of about five stories. They were bare at the top like the ridges of a spine, ready to accept the weight of more levels. A large crane rose from the center and dangled its hook over an empty lot. No one was working. The entire structure was completely silent. It was a crime scene after all, and two strips of yellow caution tape had been stretched across the plywood door built into the wall. It didn’t have a lock or anything—there wasn’t even a handle—but a large sticky legal seal was taped across the gap. It had bold red letters at the top and lots of tiny print underneath. A cluster of signs on both sides of the door warned me that the interior was under video surveillance, that trespassers would be prosecuted, and that a hard hat and safety goggles were required past that point.
I tore the seal and ducked under the tape. The door swung shut behind me.
Standing on the other side, a mere three feet from the sidewalk, it seemed like I had passed into another world. The whole of the city faded to background noise. I saw a backhoe, several pallets of materials, two large trucks for hauling, a cement mixer, and—off to the side—one of those temporary offices for the foreman or whatever that looked like it had been made from a shipping container. Anything that might have been easily pilfered—nail guns, table saws, hand tools—seemed to have been removed.
I walked forward and saw the slab with spires of rebar where Luke met his end. You couldn’t miss it. Orange cones surrounded it, along with three wraps of police caution tape. The sides of the metal bars and most of the base were still covered in dried blood. I looked for a moment before walking into the husk of the oval structure, just as it got dark enough to trigger the automatic floodlights. They clicked on and I looked all around, to every nook and shadow. The hollow, concrete-walled basement dropped two floors into the earth. Lines of rebar poked from the floor and walls. The space was only navigable via a network of wood planks the workers had laid between square gaps in the concrete. To the right and toward the back corner, exactly where a structural pylon was supposed to be poured, there was an open dirt pit that descended even lower.
That was when I realized why Detective Rigdon had mentioned the name, Watchtower. I recalled seeing something about the project in passing on the news, one of those stories that pop up and fade away—like a bombing in some distant country or the unexplained murder of a billionaire. Construction of the Watchtower building had been halted because of what had been unexpectedly unearthed under its foundation. The workers hit something old. University people were called and now there was a fight between the developer and the historical society and the city over what to do and who would pay for it.
It was also where Étranger had said he would make his stand. So I would, too.
A partially finished platform rose above me, and I climbed the bare concrete stairs as high as I could go. I stood on the edge and stared down three stories. In the center of the square dirt pit there was a dead tree. It sprouted from the floor in the middle of a kind of stone vault, bounded by a circle carved into the floor. Its bare branches were wide but blunted, and they ended in round and uneven nubs, as if the sprouts had been trimmed each year to keep them from filling the space. There were no leaves, either on the tree or the floor. Instead, there were candles, dozens of them, unlit and resting inside cups of old wax. In fact, so much wax had accumulated it seemed doubtful that the tree had ever been cleaned of it. Rather, when one candle was done it was simply replaced with another. The wax melted into cup-shaped nests, where it either overflowed and ran in dribbles and cooled into waxy stalactites that hung from the branches, like sinewy arms, or else it fell in drops and formed stalagmites on the floor. In a few places, the two had met to form narrow pillars. When it was lit, I’m sure that tree was an amazing sight, an altar to light and life. But it was dark now and stained with dust and centuries. Several of the branches had snapped and lay on the ground like severed limbs.
The stone vault that held it had walls of cut stone slabs, apparently adorned with a continuous mural, faint with age, that moved clockwise around the space. I could see a great darkness out of which a few faint stars appeared. I saw the dome of the earth under a tangled conflagration of dark figures bearing swords and pikes and standards. I couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe, nor was there enough detail even to tell if the combatants were human. One group emerged victorious and they stood, weary, in a staggered formation with one figure at the center, raising a lighted staff.
My eyes stopped on the last segment. I saw the northern hemisphere of a crude Earth, like something from an old map, with a tilted band separating night and day.
“Once the earth was covered in darkness.”
The voice, accented and resonant, penetrated the quiet. Its owner stood on the floor below me, only he was no longer in his fantastic coat. He was wearing a kind of parka made entirely of colorful bird-of-paradise plumes. Under his arm he held a decorated tribal drum. There was a carved wooden mask on the top of his head. His bare legs and feet jutted out from the parka, under which he seemed to be naked. He looked ridiculous, like a chicken.
He lifted his mask and pointed to the beginning of the mural.
“One speck of a vast empire which persists to this day. You can see it whenever the night sky is not obscured by clouds.” He looked up. “It will rain again.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Mankind rebelled and threw off the shackles of the dark in a great cataclysm that lasted a thousand years.”
The chef motioned to the black stillness at the beginning of the mural. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were faint shapes hidden in the darkness, behind the marks and scuffing—snarling, grasping, tentacled things with wings as large as mountains.
“That is why they covet it so, the earth, despite its insignificance. It stands as a beacon to the other realms, a scion to the singular truth that evil can always be defeated.” He turned to the other side, to the tilted earth. “But although mankind rejected the dark, we were not strong enough to embrace the light, which is why our planet rocked and turned crooked on its axis and now spends half its days in light and half in darkness. And there she has spun, for millennia, waiting for us to pull ourselves up. Or to fall back down.”
I looked at the amazing tree. “What is it?”
“It was a beacon, once. And a sanctuary. Built when the Dutch still commanded this place, built to overlook the island across the river. There used to be a dozen such places, in all the great cities of the world. The tree was lit when darkness fell, so our allies beyond would see and know we required their aid, and they would send a champion.”
He was looking at it. “He will destroy it soon, now that he’s discovered its location. As soon as his agents have legally secured this property, he will hack it to pieces. To isolate us. There will be no champion this time.”
“You let her die,” I said.
It took him a moment to respond. “Yes.”
A lump sprung up in my throat. “Why?”
“Any answer I give will sound cruel.”
“Don’t listen to him,” another voice interjected insistently.
Bastien. He walked up the metal stairs at the back of the open structure and stood opposite the chef on the platform below. My perch was above and between them.
“Don’t listen to him,” he repeated. “Whatever he’s told you, he’s lying.”
“And you.” I glowered.
He held up his ringed hands to show he was unarmed.
“I know how it looks,” he said defensively. “I do. But it’s not what you think.”
“It can’t be.” I laughed. “It can’t be what I think because I have no idea what to think. Not anymore.”
“Ask him about the book,” Bastien said. “Ask him what happened to The Masters. Ask him whose fault all of this is.”
I expected some retort from the chef, but nothing came. He was as calm as the tree in the vault below, as if all of this were a scene in a rehearsal, that none of it really mattered, that we were just going through the motions and he was waiting for his turn to read from the script.
Bastien pointed to him. “He is the Lord of Shadows!”
I swallowed. “You’re lying.”
“He needs you to give him the dagger, Cerise. If he takes it from you out of greed or power-lust or jealousy, he will be cursed, same as the others.”
“You’re lying!”
“Yes! So you would lead him to the dagger! Surely you’ve realized it called you.”
I hadn’t actually.
“Come on . . . Why do you think Rottheim hired you? Because of your skills? The dagger called you down to that room, but your soul sparked and threw off the dark enchantment. He only had to wait for it to call you again and you would lead him right to it.”
“You’re lying . . .” I said, less confidently. “I mean, dude. Just look at him. Does someone called the lord of shadows dress like a clown?”
“What did I tell you at the theater? It’s the people who don’t believe in a thing who think they know the most about it. You don’t know magic, Cerise. But I do.”
He pulled off one of his rings and immediately his appearance changed. Actually, that’s not right. He looked the same. I just saw him different. We all think we’re too clever to see the world differently than it is, but we all do. Our lovers always look different at the beginning. Later, when we know who they are, they seem diminished somehow. That’s what happened to Bastien. He looked the same, only more ordinary. Less dashing. Less confident. Less cool. He had been creeping closer and he held up his hands. Nine more rings.
“This is the real me, Cerise.” He nodded quickly to the chef. “He can do the same. Only vastly more powerful. Think about it. Why do you think he always wears the fantastic coat?”
It occurred to me then that I hadn’t actually seen him do battle with the figures in the basement. I turned to Etude, expecting him to defend himself. But he didn’t. He just stood there in his feathers, carved mask on his head, like whatever would happen, I had to figure it out for myself.
“The Lord of Shadows is a master of deception,” Bastien said calmly next to me. “But you only need courage to see through it.”
He touched me, and I felt myself wanting to relax. I looked into his eyes. They were ordinary, but all the more inviting for it, for the absence of magic.
Then a thought occurred. I squinted at his face.
“You don’t look anything like her,” I said.
His head dropped.
“Look me in the eye and tell me she was your sister.”
But he couldn’t.
“Would it really make any difference if I told you she was my half-sister?”
I stepped back, but there wasn’t far to go, and my feet hit the edge.
“You said I don’t know magic. But I know a little. You taught me.”
I pulled the tarot card from my back pocket, the one I had drawn with the chef but never scanned. I held it up.
“Who should I trust?” I asked it.
I looked between the two men. One of them was a talented deceiver. Well, that wasn’t true. They were both talented deceivers. But one of them was also an agent of menace, while the other was just a giant prick.
I heard Irfan’s words, then.
No matter which one of them you choose, you’re still going to die. It is written.
“Cerise,” Bastien urged. “Just listen to me for a sec. Please.”
“No! I’m not listening to either of you.”
I lifted the seventh tarot card and showed them the 2D bar code on the front. I held it out like a talisman.
“I had a lot of time to think in jail. And I’m listening to this. I drew it. Me. Just me. From a deck I purchased myself.”
There were three cards I had drawn singly. I was certain they were us. I was pretty sure I was Le Mat, The Fool. That was no stretch to figure out. The Devil was meant to represent one of them. The third card was hidden behind a QR code. I pulled out my phone and loaded the app.
“You think he can’t manipulate that?” Bastien accused. “How do you think magic works?”
“STOP!” I yelled. “Stop talking.”
I scanned the code. There was a beep and an image filled the screen. An androgynous figure in long robes stood behind a table that encompassed all four suits. On it were a wand, a sword, a pentacle, and a chalice, as if they were all his tools and he could draw any of them he chose. He looked directly at the viewer, resolute but calm, without fear or menace—just like Etude. His belt was the snake eating its own tail. His right hand raised a candle lit at both ends. His left hand was lowered toward the earth. Hanging over his head like a halo was the symbol of infinity. Bright blooming flowers burst from the base of the card, while above, the crackling glow of ethereal power turned the stars and planets to his will.
The label read: The Magician.
I blinked once—just once, I swear—and there they were. Six of them. Each held a two-edged sword with a dull, charcoal-colored hilt above a white blade. Or maybe the blades weren’t white. Maybe they were just brightly reflecting the floodlights above. Either way, when held before their robes, they almost seemed to glow. They had surrounded us, seemingly in an instant.
I heard a fell voice say You have failed.
I watched in horror as Bastien’s head was lopped off in one stroke. It bounced like a dropped melon and rolled down the steps. His body slumped, revealing the robed figure behind him. Its shining sword was streaked in red.
The chef yelled suddenly and angrily to the air. “Even still you sacrifice your pawns! Coward! Show yourself!”
I heard overlapping laughs, human laughs. A man’s voice rose over the breeze, but it was impossible to tell where it came from. It fluttered on the air like any other pair of wings. It seemed to be whispering, but I had no idea what it said. It faded in with the wind and then was swallowed by it.
I ran, but a second robed figure moved up the far staircase and trapped me. I would’ve died right there if the chef hadn’t raised his fists to the sky, arms in a V. The floodlights cut out and we all heard a sound. The white-faced figures looked up in unison, so I did as well.
Birds descended. Thousands of them. All kinds. Pigeons and sparrows and ravens and finches and gulls and ducks and falcons. They dropped down in a swirling mass and filled the construction site, looping and turning in a wild chirping mass. They twisted and through all the passages and corners, never stopping. They fluttered and spiraled about in such enormous number that a continuous breeze whipped my hair.
It was cover.
Not only did that raucous flight hide our movements, their cacophonous overlapping calls blocked all sound. We had an escape. It was, I think, part of the preparations Milan and Mr. Dench had arranged.
In the momentary confusion, I planted my foot against a wall, grabbed an exposed bar, and swung around it to the other side. Everything was dark. Only the quarter-moon behind the clouds and the pale lights of the city lit that place. In shadow, a third figure rose up, as if it could step through shadows like a door. The continuing loop of birds swooped around it, and it swatted in anger, giving me the moment I needed to reach the edge. It was three stories straight down. I tossed my bag to the floor below, but it was heavy with the long dagger and I missed. I watched it disappear.
“Shit!”
But I had no time to fret. A sword swung over me, slicing through a bird, which squawked as I dropped, grabbing the edge and swinging my feet down to fall to the floor one level below. I looked over the edge for the bag. Another robed figure came up the side and I ran. I dropped down again and saw my handbag hanging from exposed rebar. I stared at it. Too long, really. I knew it wasn’t an accident it was snagged there.
I knew then I was meant to have it.
I heard a noise behind me and turned. A dark figure came up the stairs. I still had time to escape. But when I saw what the figure was holding, I didn’t want to.
“Oh, no.” I dropped to my knees. “Silkie . . .”
He was on his knees as well, glowing sword over his head. He’d been badly beaten. His glasses were gone. His track suit was torn. His face was bleeding and one eye was badly swollen.
“Cerise . . .” His voice was broken.
They’d been watching me. When I was under contract. It seems my instincts had been right and rejecting Abdul and Daria had spared them.
But there was Silkie.
“I’m so sorry . . .” I sobbed.
“Don’t be.” He forced out the words, as if it hurt to breathe. “Was always gonna end like this for me.”
The dark figure raised an open hand. It wanted the dagger.
“You owe me,” Silkie said.
I bent low for my bag and retrieved it from where it hung. I was about to walk it forward when Silkie caught each other’s eyes.
“You owe me,” he said. “You find a way outta this and you live. You hear me? You live!”
He pulled free suddenly, and, in a flash, his head rolled free.
Others had come. This time I really was trapped. With a wall to my left and a large wheeled machine on my right, there was nowhere to go. The figure to my left raised its blade with no hesitation. It was going to cut the bag from my hands, as if that would do the trick, as if that would sever it from me.
I was trapped. But I still had a choice.
The dagger had seen to that.
I could do nothing and be killed. Or I could defend myself with the only weapon I had.
The robed figure raised its sword and all I could think about were Silkie’s last words. I had promised him. He had made me swear.
I ducked and spun like I had wanted to of the roof of the theater, pulling the dagger and thrusting it into the creature’s side.
It shrieked continuously, but not in exhale. It shrieked as if it were inhaling continuously, like something inside it was being sucked away.
That was the exact moment I knew. It was as if, in using the blade, I had been allowed to know. Everything that had happened—Luke, Lily, Bastien, Silkie—had happened for one single reason. I’d been right. It was a set up. All of it. Everything that had happened had been orchestrated. Deliberately. But not by a person. Not by the chef or Fish or even the Lord of Shadows.
I saw it all. Luke’s acquisition of the dagger from overseas, his years of searching, his army of investigators, the countless dead ends, a fortune in leads lost like whispers in an alley. And when finally it came, everything started to change. Bad luck on the market, large losses, an emergency board meeting where he fell over and was rushed to the hospital. The diagnosis: a rare genetic disorder, something not even his billions could fix. He sends the dagger away to be wielded by his minions instead. But it doesn’t want to be hidden. It wants to be found. And a crazy thing happens. Some chick in her underwear breaks into the club and reveals the existence of the crypt and its treasures. The dagger is stolen, and without it, Luke is betrayed. Sideburns, his driver, was paid a small fortune to leave a side door unlocked. And so Lykke Rottheim, the man born to be king, is killed by his foes.
I’m not sure when Lily realized something was wrong. Maybe when she turned up miraculously pregnant, despite being on the pill. Perhaps the appearance of that new life within her broke Bastien’s enchantment and she realized the man she thought she loved had been using her, just as she had been using Luke at his request. She was in danger. She needed to hide. So she asked a friend, someone she thought was safe, the closest thing she knew to a holy man—who erupted decades of anger and resentment. I expect that’s when she realized the truth, that the dagger would take everything from her, when that once-kindly old man took her to the basement. That’s when she knew the tortures would not end until she did.
So, she did.
Everything that happened, all of it from the beginning, wasn’t a riddle needing to be solved. It was a curse. A curse that fed on weakness, on lies and resentment and shame.
I looked down at the spearlike dagger in my hand. The blood on it disappeared into the blade.
Étranger was right. It was destruction incarnate. With no effort, it took everything from Luke Rottheim. It didn’t like being stuck in its stone coffin. It didn’t like being used. It had its own plans. It had waited for centuries. Now, it was free and it radiated misfortune. After swallowing vast sums of Luke’s money simply in being found, it disappeared from underneath him. It abandoned him to his death and turned on its rescuer. It hadn’t simply killed them. It had ruined them, their lives, their legacies. It made them watch as it took from them everything and everyone they loved.
And now it had passed to me.
That’s what it wanted, I think. It had been locked away too long. It was weak. It needed to feed, to be wielded in sin. To be bargained in greed. To be stolen and loved. Over and over and over. To betray. To deceive. To kill. The promise of money. The promise of power. And with each vile, covetous act, to build into a great storm, stronger and stronger, until finally whole nations fell before it, as they had to Alexander. Before it betrayed him, too.
I held it in my shaking hand and tried so hard not to think of those I cared for, everyone I loved. I was terrified that merely bringing them to mind would cast them before it. But in having the thought, the inventory came.
Mom & Dad.
Uncle Wen.
The Suleiman family.
Shanna.
Kai.
My God, Kai.
I kept seeing his face. His smile. His eyes on the pillow next to me, watching me sleep, like all he wanted to do was stay there forever. And how he looked when I told him I was leaving. Not hurt. Just confused. Like it wasn’t what he’d been promised. I started hyperventilating. Was the curse starting already? Could it work that quickly? Before I even had a chance to catch my breath? Were Kai and Mom and Dad right then in danger? It wasn’t that its magic made false things true, I realized. Everything that was had always been, just as Bastien’s attempts to charm me meant that we had met before, at the Couch. And yet I knew, if I hadn’t been cursed just then, things would’ve somehow been different. That’s magic. Real magic. The power to unfold the world as you want it without changing a thing. I didn’t know whether Bastien had come to salvage the fortune he had been promised, or whether it was to save himself from retaliation, or whether it was genuinely to save me. I only knew then that I couldn’t know, that any of those were possible.
The dark figures converged and I ran—right into someone’s chest. Like a wall. I felt strong arms encircle me. I was held fast. A gun was raised. A really, really big gun. It was aimed right at the sword wielder. The shot rang out and the bullet struck a passing crow, which didn’t have time to squawk before being obliterated on the wing. And the things kept coming, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from so crude a mechanism, as if they knew every shot would miss. My savior wrapped both hands around my waist and pulled me, still clenching the dagger with white knuckles, down the stairs to the lot. There didn’t seem to be an escape. They were nearly on us when the avian swarm broke out in all directions—blindly and wildly, like a winged explosion. The force knocked our attackers to the ground, and the chef appeared. He didn’t seem afraid, just annoyed—like he’d arranged a big dinner party and no one had showed. He walked down the steps after us, barefoot, as the monsters got to their feet.
In a blink, a black car crashed through the barrier wall. Its tires spit dirt as it swung to a hard stop in front of us. Milan was at the wheel. She looked like she knew what she was doing, too. She had leather gloves and everything. The engine roared like a great cat. My savior threw me into the back as the chef climbed into the passenger’s seat. Our pursuers closed the distance in another blink and were reaching for the car with long-fingered hands as its spinning tires caught something solid under the dirt and we were propelled onto the road with whiplash force.
One hand went to my mouth. I started shaking. I watched the big man cleaning his gun next to me, like it was just another chore he had to do. I was aware that my left ear was still ringing from the shot and I couldn’t hear anything out of it. The chef wasn’t even looking at me. It seemed like he was pouting, like things hadn’t gone his way and he was mad at everyone.
“What the hell?” I yelled in between gasping breaths.
I felt so cold. Not in my hands and feet, but cold inside. I wasn’t shaking, I realized, I was shivering. I was going into shock, but I was panicking, too, and didn’t know what to do. And yet, I couldn’t let go. Even though the muscles of my hand burned, I clenched it tight—cold and hard and unyielding.
The car roared down the street, turning left, then right. I saw the signs for the freeway to Jersey. The big guy who had been following me turned, expressionless. There was nothing. It was eerie. And I was afraid.
I pressed my free hand to my ringing ear, the same ear Irfan had struck. It had started bleeding again. I coughed. I had bile in my throat. I coughed again and cried in slurping sobs.
“You lied to me!” I yelled finally.
The chef turned. “We could not afford a lengthy courtship, if only for your sake.”
He had taken off his parka and sat naked with it in his lap. He had a scar on his chest, like a swipe from a five-clawed animal.
“You could’ve asked!” I leaned forward and grabbed my scalp through my hair. I was angry. Furious. I wanted to choke the smug bastard. “This is my life! I’m not an ingredient in—in one of your stupid recipes!”
He stayed calm. He was always calm. “I have been doing this a very long time. You would not have accepted the plan. But it was the only way to save you.”
“SAVE? How am I saved? I’m cursed! It’s going to kill my—”
I doubled over and started bawling. I clutched my stomach and heaved. I dropped it then. Finally. It hit the floor of the car with a thump. It seemed so harmless there.
“It’s started already. Hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “It will take everything from you. You will watch, powerless, as all you hold dear withers and dies like a flower in winter. And then it will consume you as well, and so be passed to another, and another, and another. And with each passing, the storm of ruin will grow.”
I sniffed again and wiped my nose.
“I . . . I—So . . .” I looked around in confusion. “So, I mean, what happens? I mean. What do I do? Where . . . Where can I go?”
My lips turned and I broke down again.
“I can’t go anywhere, can I? It’ll find me. Irfan was right. Wherever I go, it’ll follow. I’ll hear about Uncle Wen or something and I’ll go home and I’ll find out Kai is married and has a kid and is all happy and he’ll pass me on the street and not even recognize my face, and I’ll call out to him and he’ll look at me like I was just somebody he used to know, and while I’m there, there’ll be a freak fire at the restaurant and my parents will burn to death in front of me while I scream—”
I covered my mouth, if only to stop the words from coming out, words that did not feel like my own.
The hostess gave a worried glance to the chef. “Do something,” she whispered.
“I am,” he said to her indignantly. Almost too indignantly, as if being scolded by her actually hurt, as if she were the only one who could do it. “The young lady and I made a bargain.” He turned and looked out the window. “I will honor it.”