Mystic City (25 page)

But most of America is frightened of mystics—they only populate the major cities, so few people in the Midwest have ever even
seen
a mystic. After the Conflagration happened and the mystics were blamed, they were seen as terrorists within their own country.

Violet Brooks is trying desperately to change that image. Interestingly enough, none of the articles profiling her mention that she has a son.

After I run out of Violet Brooks articles, I read up on the drainings themselves. But no one writes any details about what the process is actually like. The only one that refers to it paints it as “euphoric” for the mystics, “who long only to cede their powers for the betterment of people everywhere—mystics and nonmystics alike.” I don’t believe that for a minute.

I usually break for lunch in the cafeteria on one of the lower floors, but today I stay and eat a sandwich Magdalena made for me. Most of the other cubes are empty—the floor is silent, almost creepily deserted.

I’m heading to the bathroom when I see Benedict leave his office with my father. I duck behind one of the cubicles, poking my head out just a bit. The two of them walk over to the stainless steel
door and it opens. A high-pitched beep sounds for a second. Then they slip into the room, and the door closes with a click.

I’ve never seen anyone use that door. I wasn’t even sure anything was behind it.

I go to the bathroom and then finish my sandwich. About half an hour later, I see that Benedict is safely back in his office, surrounded by a group of assistants. I figure my father must be, too, so I tread softly down the hallway, making sure nobody’s looking, and approach the door.

There’s no scanner, no place to insert a key card. How did they get in?

I stare at the shiny metal door for a few moments longer, trying to understand how it works, until I hear someone approaching, and I scurry back to my desk.

Only, I can’t seem to get much
work
done. All I do is think about Hunter.

At first, I thought he sent Turk to visit me last night because he didn’t want to see me. But what if that isn’t the case—what if something was stopping him from making the trip himself? What if he got in trouble with his own kind for visiting me?

After work, I take the light-rail back toward my apartment building. Instead of going home, though, I take one of the bridges to the closest POD and pray that no one is tracking me. I wait in the shadows until the rush hour traveling subsides; then I approach the scanner, ready to descend.

Only, when I submit my hand, the sign over the POD terminal blinks red instead of green.

ACCESS DENIED

flashes across the tiny screen adjacent to the scanner. This has never happened before. Immediately, there’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’ve been locked out of the Grid.

Has my father done this? Or Benedict, because of what happened with the pictures? Or some Grid monitor who has noticed my frequent trips to the Depths? Whoever the culprit is, it’s even more imperative now that I find Hunter. I have to warn him: if someone knows where I’ve been going, they’ll know who I’ve been going to see.

I hurry back home, keeping my head down. I’m about to enter my building when I realize that Davida’s gloves are still in my clutch. If they do what Lyrica said, I should be able to use them to travel the rail undetected. I’ll head downtown toward the Seaport and find Hunter. My parents have tickets to the opera tonight, so they won’t be home for dinner, and no one will be expecting me.

I yank out the gloves and slip my hands inside. Immediately, I feel the fingertips warm and come alive. I double back to the light-rail station.

Inside, a rush of cool air meets my skin. The entire waiting area can’t be more than the size of a city block in the Depths, and I cross it quickly, getting on the line of people waiting to head downtown.

I’m at the terminals in mere seconds. I’m about to submit my hand to the scanner when my stomach lurches. This has got to be illegal. What if I get caught?
Oh well
, I think,
here goes
.

I press my hand to the scanner and watch the laser read the prints on my gloves. A name pops up on the overhead screen—

REBECCA GEMINI

—and I am directed ahead to Terminal Three. The doors slide open, inviting me to enter.

I almost yelp in relief. The gloves worked!

I slip nervously into the light-rail car. Just as the doors close, however, I see two hulking men dressed in black suits rush through the crowd, pointing at me. They must have been sent to trail me once I was denied access to the POD. They have badges of some sort, which they flash as they push their way to the scanner.

They are approved and slide into a rail car directly following mine.

“Please state your destination,” the overhead electronic voice tells me. If I say “South Street Seaport,” the men will surely follow me. I have to lose them.

“Seventy-Second Street,” I say, and my car speeds away into the night.

The city buildings whir by, blurring, then flickering into existence at each transit point. There, gone; there, gone. The car stops at Seventy-Second and the doors open. As I exit into the station, another car blinks in right behind mine. The doors open, and the men in black step out.

This confirms my fear. They’ve been assigned to tail me.

Before the doors have a chance to close, I dart back inside the car I just left. “Hey!” screeches an overweight woman with a few grocery bags. “I’ve been waiting here—that’s my car!”

“Sorry! Not anymore!”

“Correction,” I say. “Forty-Second Street.” The goons try to
enter my car—the doors close just as one of them sticks his hand inside. I hear the cracking of bone; then the doors open again. I can see the men’s faces clearly through the glass: two of my father’s lower assistants, Franklin and Montgomery.

Franklin is cursing at me; he yanks back his hand and the doors close again. The car surges through a few more stops and I’m there.

I step out at Forty-Second Street, knowing that the men are likely right behind me. I run through the waiting area, pushing past people, maybe knocking an elderly woman to the ground. I’m moving so fast, there’s no time to look back. I hear “Watch it!” “Hey!” “Look where you’re going!”

I cut the entire line of people heading uptown and rush over to a car going in the opposite direction. “The line starts back there, sweetheart!” someone says, but I ignore him and submit my fingerprints; this time, the scanner reads the gloves and the name

STEPHANIE MONTELL

lights up overhead.

My car’s doors have just opened when I hear a man shout, “There she is! Stop her!”

It’s Montgomery, rushing toward me. Franklin is only a few steps behind him.

They leap over children and hurdle benches, but they’re still too slow: I rush into the open rail car and press the Close Doors button, announcing “Ninety-Sixth Street.”

Montgomery is still in the terminal, pounding his fist against the wall as I blink away.

My heart is pounding. Where do I go? What do I do?

I get off at the Ninety-Sixth Street stop, then reverse my steps, rushing across the waiting area to snatch a car heading back downtown, again pushing through the line of people until I get to the scanner. Then I hop into another car. Thank God for Davida’s gloves.

I watch as another car blinks in on the opposite side of the station with Franklin and Montgomery on it. Franklin runs at me as though he wants to wring my neck.

I punch the doors closed and head downtown.

I have to curl my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

At the next station, I again dash out of the rail car and over the station platform and press my hand to another touchpad. This time I am
Gustav Larsson
. My new car whispers uptown as another downtown train blinks in across the way. Are my father’s stooges aboard? I can’t tell.

I switch cars again around Canal Street, this time as
Terri-Lynn Postlewait
. Once I’m inside, I crouch down out of sight until the car rushes away. Maybe they won’t stop to question why an empty car has taken off for Battery Park. Maybe they’ll think I’ve ditched the light-rail altogether and headed toward a POD. Maybe they’ll just be too tired to chase me, as tired as I feel.

Finally, I reach the Battery platform. Mine is the only car, and after the doors open, I say, “Union Square!” and leap across the threshold before they can close me in. Then I make a mad dash for the platform stairs thirty feet away.

If my father’s men are following, I need to be out of sight before they arrive.

I’ve always thought I run quickly, but it seems to take hours for me to close the distance to the stairs. When I’m ten feet away, I hear the sharp whine of another car about to arrive.

Desperate, I fall to my belly and slide headfirst into the stairwell just as another car shoots into the station with a whump of displaced air.

Maybe they’ll be looking up, looking high, and won’t have seen me. Surely they’re onto the gloves by now.

I go slowly down the stairs, so as not to make noise, but not too slowly, and I’m out of sight below the top step within a few seconds.

I hear a high-pitched trill—the preacceleration whine of the car I was on—then the soft pop as it blinks away uptown. It’s followed by two pairs of pounding feet crossing the platform, a shouted, “Damn her!” and then the hiss of a car’s doors opening, its engines warming, and the pop as it quickens away toward Union Square.

I let loose a ragged sigh of relief. I’d like to curl up on the stairs and catch my breath, but I can’t afford to risk it: if Franklin and Montgomery figure out I’ve ditched them, they might retrace their steps. I need to get home. Fast. Warning Hunter will have to wait.

At home, I strip off my clothes, hop into a warm shower, and scrub my skin until it’s red. I squeeze the locket between my fingers and wonder at its powers. How am I going to find Hunter?

I dry off, slip into my white terry cloth bathrobe, and wrap a towel around my hair.

That’s when my father bursts into my room.

He’s still in his tuxedo, even though the opera isn’t over for another hour and I didn’t expect him and my mother home until after midnight. His hair is slicked back, his cheeks are smoothly shaven, and he looks incredibly handsome tonight, save for his eyes, which are red with anger.

Directly behind him is Franklin, whose shirt is soaked with sweat. He’s breathing heavily, and pointing a crooked finger directly at me.

“She sent us on a wild-goose chase!” he says. “We had to follow her all over the city as she jumped from light-rail to light-rail. Montgomery and I had no idea how she was doing it, her name wasn’t showing up anywhere. She must’ve been using some kind of … magic.”

Franklin exaggerates the chase—in his version, I jumped a dozen trains, went all over the city, and endangered myself by running across the platform bridges. I can’t help but smile a little bit, and that sets my father off.

“I give you a bit of freedom, and you use it to play games?” he says.

“Games?” I’m surprised at how angry I feel. “
You’re
the one playing games!”

My father slaps me. It stings, but not nearly as much as the knowledge that he’d strike me at all. “Fess up and tell me where you were going. Do you have some sort of mystic-enhanced goods?”

I work my jaw for a few seconds, then pull the ties of my robe
tighter around my waist. The gloves are hidden under my bed; I hope he doesn’t check for them. “I have absolutely no idea what your dog is talking about. I’ve been here all night. And I have no such
goods
.”

“Bull,” Franklin says. “I saw you! And so did Montgomery!”

Be confident
, I tell myself. “You must have mistaken someone else for me,” I say, pointing to the towel around my head. “I just got out of the shower.”

Dad peers sidelong at Franklin; I can tell that a speck of doubt about his assistant’s story has entered his mind.

“Look at him, Dad”—I motion to Franklin—“he’s all red and sweaty and disoriented. He’s probably on Stic.
He’s
the one with the goods, not me.”

My father clearly doesn’t know what to say.

We hear a knock and look up to see Davida standing in the doorway, wearing her uniform. “If I may, Mr. Rose,” she says, “Aria has been here all night. Mrs. Rose asked me to keep an eye on her, and I did.”

A flush of relief fills my body. Davida isn’t mad at me about the roof incident with Hunter. She’s covering for me.

My father seems more confused than anything. He shakes his head and says, “You better hope you’re telling the truth. Good night, Aria.”

Then he drags Franklin out of my bedroom by the neck.

• XVIII •

My bedroom door zips closed behind my father and Franklin.

Davida leans against the wall, looking concerned. “Aria, we need to talk. Now.”

I sit down on the edge of my bed, and Davida sits next to me. I remove the towel from my head and toss it on the floor.

We sit and stare at each other for a few moments, not saying anything. Then we both burst into tears and envelop each other in a hug.

Davida blurts out, “Do you love him?”

“Thomas?” I say. “I don’t know … I don’t think so.”

Davida’s dark brown eyes are brimming with tears. “No, not Thomas.
Hunter
.”

I think back to that night on the roof. What must Davida have thought of me—cheating on my fiancé? Of course, she doesn’t know about Thomas and Gretchen, but that doesn’t make what I did right.

“There is so much I can’t explain,” I say, trying to decipher my feelings. “I don’t even know Hunter, not really—and yet there’s something between us, something that makes me feel as if I’ve
known him forever.” I hiccup, then smile. “That probably sounds ridiculous, but … my feelings for Hunter are real. That much I know.” I wipe some tears from my eyes. “Is it love? I don’t know. Maybe. I’d like for it to be.”

I’m shocked by my outburst, and a little embarrassed. I look at Davida, waiting for her to reassure me that I’m not crazy. Or maybe tell me that I
am
crazy, and to stop seeing Hunter, to figure out things with Thomas, to—