Mystic City (24 page)

“Did you have a nice weekend?” he asks.

I can tell by his tone that he doesn’t actually care to know. I look away for a second and realize that most of the floor is paying attention to us, their heads poking up over the cubicles.

“What do you mean?”

Benedict waits for a moment, then he reaches over me and logs into his email account on my TouchMe. Within seconds, he’s able to bring up a series of pictures from when Stacy overdosed Saturday night—someone in the room must’ve taken photos on their phone. They’re mostly of me, a mirror with crisp lines of Stic in the background, my body leaning over the girl as she’s OD’ing.

“A very concerned citizen sent me these this morning,” Benedict tells me. “Do you have any idea what this could do to the election if they get out? Your stupidity is risking everything your family has worked
years
for.”

“But I didn’t do anything
wrong
,” I say.

Benedict shakes his head. “A picture says a thousand words. Don’t you know by now that some people will do anything to get ahead?”

People like you?
I want to say, but I hold back.

“Your family is a prime target, Aria. We were able to keep you out of the public eye during your first overdose.” He smacks his lips together. “I doubt we’ll be able to do the same if you suffer a second one.”

I curl my hands into fists and hide them behind my back. I
know I never ingested Stic—Lyrica confirmed that much. Something else is going on; I just don’t know what it is.

Yet.

“What do we do now?” I ask, motioning to the screen. “Maybe we can explain to the press that I tried to save her, I wasn’t doing any drugs myself.”

Benedict closes out his email. “It’s already taken care of. We traced the email to a teenager on the East Side. We found the digital shots and erased them before they were sent to any tabloids.”

I’m immediately relieved. “Oh, well … thank you.”

“I did not do this for you, Aria.” Benedict squints, looking meaner than before. “I did it for your father. I’m not even going to tell him about this, this incident, because he’s busy focusing on the election.” He leans in closer. “Which is what you should be focusing on, too.” He straightens up. “This is precisely what I
shouldn’t
be doing—wasting my time on snotty little kids when there’s important work to be done, when there’s—”

“That’s enough, Patrick,” says a woman’s voice, cutting him off.

I look up, and there’s Elissa Genevieve. Her silky blond hair flows past her shoulders, and she’s dressed in a smart pair of gray pants, black heels, and a lavender blouse open at the neck.

“Aria gets your point. Don’t you?” she asks me.

I nod.

“Honestly, Patrick. You don’t need to harass the poor girl.”

Benedict is clearly shocked that Elissa has come to my defense. He stares at her, then at me, and rubs his eyes. “Fine,” he says. Then he walks away.

Once he’s disappeared into his office, Elissa turns to me.

“Thank you,” I manage to say.

“Any time,” says Elissa, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “He’s right, though, Aria. People look up to you in this city. I know that can be a lot of pressure sometimes, but that’s your lot in life.”

I can tell Elissa is trying to help, but she doesn’t know what I’m going through right now. So I just say, “I understand,” and get back to work.

That night, I wait for Hunter.

I don’t want him to think I dressed up
too much
to see him, so I select a sleeveless orange dress from my closet and step into a simple pair of tan flats. I brush my hair and pull it away from my face, dab some moisturizer on my cheeks, and run a light coat of lip gloss across my lips.

I’ve been poised on the edge of my bed for what seems like hours when I hear a light tap on my window.

Eagerly, I press the touchpad on my wall. The curtains part, and I can see a shadow on my balcony. I easily pull the windows open, feel the hot air against my face, and stare up into the eyes of—

Turk?

The outside light glints off his Mohawk. His eyes are dark and metallic-looking, and a grin plays across his angular face. He’s wearing a sleeveless yellow T-shirt, the lines of his tattoos accenting his defined muscles, coiling around his arms like snakes.

“Miss me?” he asks.

I shake my head and take a step back. “What—what are you doing here?”

He hops inside and closes the windows behind him. “Hot out there,” he says, wiping his forehead. “Thanks for inviting me in.”

“I didn’t.”

Turk collapses into the chair in front of my desk. He looks around my room and whistles. “Sweet pad,” he says.

“Seriously,” I say, crossing my arms. “Where’s Hunter?”

“Story of my life,” Turk mutters. “Hunter, Hunter, Hunter. You know, I’m a pretty skilled guy myself.”

“Apparently,” I say, gesturing to my window. “Did you use the loophole to get here? How does it work? How did you get past all the security measures in the Aeries?” I ask, thinking about all the people on the night shift monitoring the Grid. “Can’t the loophole be detected? Or is it … invisible?”

Turk scratches his chin. “You ask a lotta questions.”

“I’m serious,” I tell him.

“Who do you think
designed
these so-called security measures?” Turk scoffs, standing up from the chair and pacing around my room. “Who do you think designed the entire Aeries? Mystics. We built up this entire city.” He points out my window, to the surrounding buildings. “Security measures? The Grid? They’re nothing. If need be, we can take down the entire Grid.”

“So why haven’t you?” I ask.

“We’re not looking for a war, Aria. We want to win the election fairly.”

“Who’s
we
? You and Hunter?”

Turk shakes his head. “Everyone. All the drained mystics in the Block and the rebels underground. We don’t want anything
more than what you have, Aria. We just want to be treated equally, like human beings.”

But
are
they human beings? The magic they can do, the powers they have, they’re not natural. After watching Stacy OD, what Stic did to her body, knowing that Turk’s or Hunter’s touch has the potential to kill in a mere instant …

“What are you thinking?” Turk asks softly.

No
, I tell myself.
That’s an awful way to think. I’m not my parents
. I think of Davida, of Hunter. I want everyone to be treated fairly.

“I’m confused,” I say. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“You don’t have to figure it all out right this second,” Turk says, widening his eyes, “but one day soon, you’ll have to choose a side. I hope you choose the right one.”

“I hope so, too,” I say.

Turk stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Hunter couldn’t make it. Obviously. So he sent me—he didn’t want you to think he was standing you up.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I’m disappointed. I didn’t realize how much I want
—need
—to see Hunter until now.

“No problem,” Turk says.

“Why couldn’t Hunter make it?” I hear my voice falter, nervous that Turk will tell me what I don’t want to hear—that Hunter thinks I’m annoying, a nuisance. A child.

Turk is about to speak when my door opens. “Aria? Who are you talking to?”

Turk and I freeze immediately.

Kyle stops in the middle of the room when he sees Turk. His
entire body goes rigid; the veins in his neck and forehead bulge, and his cheeks flash tomato-red. He looks like he’s just seen a ghost. I’ve never seen Kyle so angry.

“What the hell?” Kyle turns to me, then back to Turk. “Who are you? And what are you doing in my little sister’s bedroom?”

Turk doesn’t wait around to answer. He hops out onto the balcony and opens the loophole—the green circle blazes wide. Turk looks back over his shoulder, winks, then plunges through. With a snap like a rubber band, the loophole shrinks and fades to nothingness, as though it were never there in the first place.

Kyle bolts through my room and onto the balcony. He swipes the air with his hands, as if there is anything there to grasp on to, but the air is just air—hot and thick and heavy with moisture.

He screams, a scary, primal roar. “I’ll find you!”

I’m frightened. Kyle has always been laid-back. Why is he reacting like this, like it’s the end of the world?

“Explain yourself,” he demands, coming back into my room and shutting the windows behind him. “What do you think you’re doing, Aria?”

“Nothing,” I say, realizing how ridiculous that must sound. My brother walked into my bedroom and saw a dangerous-looking boy standing there—a boy who disappeared into a mystic loophole. As an answer,
nothing
doesn’t really cut it.

“You’ve been seeing a mystic behind everyone’s back?” Kyle asks, spitting out the words as if they’re poisonous. “Behind your
fiancé’s
back? How could you?”

“No, Kyle.” My entire body is shaking. “It’s not like that—”

“What’s it like, then? Do you have any idea what Mom and Dad would do? Are you insane, Aria? You’re playing with fire.”

“He was nobody.” How can I explain that Turk means nothing to me? That
Hunter
is the one … the one I love? The thought nearly makes me laugh. I barely know Hunter. Maybe Kyle is right. I am insane.

“Kyle,” I say, “you don’t—”

“Understand?” he asks, glaring at me. “These people aren’t like us, Aria. They’re barely human. They’re
using
you, and you’re too foolish to see that. What you’re doing is dangerous, and more than that—it’s disgusting. I can’t believe you’d stoop to that level. Just like before.”

Is he referring to my overdose? I can’t tell whether Kyle is about to scream again or cry, his face is so twisted up. I’m about to tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that I never took Stic in the first place, when he continues yelling. “Don’t you have any respect for Thomas? For me, for your family?” He nearly chokes on his words. “For
yourself
? A mystic like that—someone undrained—could
kill
you.”

“How dare you throw words like
family
at me,” I snap. “My family doesn’t care about me—forcing me to marry someone I can’t even remember!”

“And whose fault is that?” Kyle yells back. “No one forced you to be an addict.”

“That’s
not
what I am.”

“Prove it,” Kyle says, raising his eyebrows. “Oh, right—you can’t.”

I don’t know why, but at that moment, I think about my brother
as a little boy. How we’d play together when our parents were away, how we’d sometimes stay up late and sneak into the kitchen, eating colored ice pops from the freezer. How after my father would yell at him, I would sneak into his bedroom and comfort him while he cried, even though
he’s
the older one.

But I haven’t known that Kyle for a very long time. “You’re just like Dad,” I say. “You care more about money and politics than you do about me. You’re too busy kissing ass to see past yourself.”

In a split second, Kyle’s anger morphs into an intense sort of sadness. He doesn’t answer me—instead, he looks away and walks out.

My bedroom door shuts behind him.

All those things he said to me, those awful insults—did he truly mean them, or was he just upset to discover a part of my life that he wasn’t privy to?

And what exactly did he mean,
Just like before?

• XVII •

When I awake the next morning, I expect to be under total lockdown.

Magdalena enters my room early to help me prepare for the day. Usually, she assists my mother, but since the weekend, she’s been helping me in the mornings; I wonder if this is something my mother requested or if Davida has purposefully made herself scarce. I’m not sure why she would do this, since we need to talk.

I study Magdalena’s face for any sign of strangeness—a quirk of the eyebrow, a judgmental glint in her eye—but she seems unaware of what happened last night.

Downstairs, my mother is eating apple slices and reading. She looks up as I enter the kitchen. “Did you sleep well, dear?”

I nod. “Where’s Kyle?”

“He went off early with Danny to get fitted for a new tuxedo,” she says. “Speaking of which, we have an appointment this coming weekend for a gown fitting.” My stomach knots. The last thing I want to do is try on my wedding dress and imagine myself walking down the aisle.

To meet lying, cheating Thomas.

“I know,” I say, still not ready to reveal what I’ve learned about Thomas’s infidelity. It’s too big a secret to drop at the moment; who knows exactly what it might be worth. Plus, if I
do
tell, I’m worried it will somehow backfire on me: my parents might think I’m hesitant about the wedding and keep a closer watch on me, maybe even assign me a bodyguard. And I certainly don’t want that.

Even early in the morning, my mother’s makeup is perfect—a light shimmer of blue on her eyelids, a dusting of blush on her cheeks—and her hair is wrapped into an exquisite French twist. “Good, then. Maybe I’ll add a spa appointment on top of that, and we can make a girls’ day of it!”

I realize that she has no clue about last night. Which means Kyle must have kept his mouth shut. I’m relieved but also frightened—if he didn’t tell my parents about Turk, he’s planning on handling the situation himself.

“Is Davida here?” I ask.

“She’s out running errands.” Mom looks at her old-fashioned wristwatch. “You should be running along to the office, Aria. A Rose never blooms late.”

At work, I try not to call attention to myself.

Most of the day, I lie low in my cubicle, doing my best to stay out of Benedict’s way. Thomas calls me twice, and I ignore him both times. He texts
Answer me, please
to my TouchMe. I want to keep ignoring him, but I know how important this wedding is to our families, so I reply,
I’m fine, just busy, talk to you later
and hope he leaves me alone for the rest of the day.

Then I search the Internet on my TouchMe for information on Violet Brooks.

Forty-nine years old, daughter of the now-deceased Ezra Brooks, Violet seems like the perfect mystic representative. She’s been fighting to increase mystic rights for years and has served on several government-sponsored committees, both in New York and in Washington, D.C.