Catacomb (29 page)

If any of them was going to die, though, it should be
him
. He’d meant what he said to Finnoway in the Catacomb. Jordan and Abby really felt like family to him, only deeper because they were the family he’d chosen. And if he died now, all those faces in the coffee-shop window would see Finnoway lose his temper, and it would be too big, too messy to cover up.

“Get in the car,” Finnoway roared, stabbing the gun harder into Dan’s lower back.

He moved inch by inch, watching a shadow appear next to Oliver on the roof, then take form. Even from his spot on the ground, Dan could make out the rough, terrible shape of the person’s rabbit mask.

“No!” Dan shouted. “Oliver!” He spun to face Finnoway as best he could. “You said nobody would get hurt! I told you to leave my friends alone.”

A visible sweat had broken out on the Artificer’s face, his calm demeanor shattered. He let out a hoarse laugh and prodded Dan again. “I lied.”

D
an had never watched someone fall like that—slow at first but then all at once, picking up speed and barreling to the ground so fast there was almost no time to blink between fall and impact.

Someone screamed, a woman, and Dan lost sensation in his arms and back. He knew the gun was there, ready to fire, and he knew Oliver had just tumbled three stories to the pavement. He heard the cry and the dry crunch of Oliver’s body meeting the ground, but nothing else seemed real or important in that moment.

He threw his weight against Finnoway, hard, ducking down and smashing his head into the man’s sternum. Something cracked under his skull, not his bones but Finnoway’s, and he heard the
click-clack
of the gun skimming across the paving stones. Someone was shouting again, screaming, and he felt Finnoway’s sweat slide across his skin as he pushed and pushed.

Pain exploded in his back, again and again. But the feeling was gone, and he shrugged off the hurt, rearing up and throwing himself at the Artificer again. He was blind, crazed, but maybe that was what he needed now.

Dan tumbled with Finnoway, first onto the hood of the car, then into the street. The blows at his back stopped, but now
he could feel the aches creeping in. He was on his knees, half-tangled with Finnoway, who scrabbled onto his back, trying to push Dan off. Dan didn’t feel strong, but he felt desperate, and the constant screaming and blood rushing in his ears only fortified that feeling. He tried to crush Finnoway down into the pavement. There was no plan anymore, no reason, just a terrible urge to watch this bastard’s skull crack open on the road. He managed to slam his knee into the man’s stomach, his wheeze of surprise coming just as Abby’s voice broke through the roar in his ears.

An engine screamed furious and metallic in the distance.

“Dan! Dan, look out!
Go!
”

Dan glanced up from Finnoway’s rumpled and dirtied shirt to see the single bright light of a motorcycle racing toward them. Black. The rest of it was black. That single light flew toward them in a blur of midnight steel.

Finnoway seized his chance to pin Dan to the ground. He reached behind him and pulled out a knife, his face its own terrible mask of many years of rage.

He moved to strike, but Dan rolled hard to the left, toward the curb with Abby and Jordan. He was still riding out the last of that momentum when he heard the quick
pop-pop
of tires colliding with bone and flesh, and the collective gasping shriek from everyone in the street.

He didn’t want to turn and see what was left of Finnoway. It wouldn’t be something he wanted to carry with him. The pain surged up in earnest now, his whole body spasming from the blows he had taken. Abby and Jordan were lifting him up out of the gutter and into a kneeling position, holding him aloft just
long enough for him to smile faintly at the disappearing rider, a burst of engine smoke obscuring her escape.

“Dan? Can you hear me? Dan?” Abby shook him roughly, but his light was going out.

“Dan? Someone call an ambulance. Dan! Please, someone help us. . . .”

A
small, soft hand held his, squeezing him back to life. Dan blinked once, twice, letting the blue-white haze of the hospital room come into focus gradually. His head fell to the right, buoyed by a heavenly soft pillow, and there he found Abby, tucked against the hospital bed with her palm cradling his. His right palm. Some of the bandages had been removed and lessened, he saw with a thick gulp, and they showed more clearly the outline of his missing finger.

“Am I going to prison?” he wheezed.

That brought a relieved round of laughter from the trio gathered around his bed. Uncle Steve stood at the foot of the bed, out of his robe and slippers and looking healthy except for a few fading bruises. “Finnoway was waving a gun in the street like a lunatic while one of his pals pushed a teenager off a roof. That’s not something you can cover up with a few bribes,” Steve said, winking. “But I think you knew that, didn’t you?”

“I had a good feeling,” Dan whispered. “The motorcycle was a nice touch, though.”

“Hit-and-run,” Jordan said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “Not sure if there’s such a thing as a
lucky
hit-and-run, but I’ll take it.”

“How did you know where to find me?” Dan asked. “I thought
you would all be at the police station.”

“The
Metairie Daily
,” Abby said, “if you can believe it. When I called them in a panic, they thought I was a crazy person. But not long after that, they got an anonymous tip from a ‘trusted source’ who said to call us, said you were being held under the old funeral home. We came as fast as we could.”

Thanks, Mom.

“Police raided the building,” Abby told him, stroking his hand gently. “I don’t know if the Bone Artists are gone for good, but I’m sure the story will run in the papers soon. I bet Maisie’s coworkers are eager to give her memory some peace,” she said. “And Finnoway himself is dead.”

“And Oliver?” Dan braced for the answer. He had no idea if a fall like that was even survivable.

“They’re not sure if he’ll walk again,” Jordan said, leaning onto the bed just slightly behind Abby. “Again, not sure if you’d call that luck, but . . .”

“I think I’m glad he’s alive.” Dan nodded, realizing the weightlessness in his body was from the IV hooked into his arm. Whenever that stopped, he had a feeling his back would ache for weeks and weeks. “And I’m really not going to prison?”

Part of him couldn’t believe it. He didn’t
think
he was capable of murder, but Finnoway’s setup had been so ironclad—and Dan’s mind had been so scattered lately—there was a moment there when even he had believed he’d killed Tamsin.

“Some of his ‘employees’ were bending over backward to rat on him and avoid getting charged as accomplices to his crimes,” Uncle Steve said, leaning onto the metal bedframe. “We’ll see how long it takes for the police to figure out how
deep Finnoway’s influence goes, but it sounds like he’s done this sort of thing before.”

Dan shuddered, remembering the terrible chill of that dark interrogation room and the sound of teeth spilling across a metal table.

“I’m sorry I ruined our trip, and . . . I hope I didn’t mess things up too badly for you here, Jordan,” he murmured, trying to squeeze Abby’s hand back. The drugs singing through his veins made his limbs feel detached, but he saw his fingers tighten around hers. His friends looked like they hadn’t slept in days, dark circles smudged under their eyes.

Still, Jordan mustered a smile, resting his arms flat on the mattress and laying his head down on them. “You two still have a few days left. Once you’re out of this bed we can probably sneak in a few hours of fun. And I still need help setting up my room. And there are like a thousand Xbox games you need to catch up on.”

Dan shook his head slowly, looking from Jordan to Abby and then down at his bandaged hand. “No, I think I need to go home as soon as I can. I owe Paul and Sandy an explanation . . . for a lot of things.” He paused, reveling in the weightless feeling keeping the pain at bay. For a second, things were kind of all right, and he wanted to remember how it felt. “Thanks for coming back for me,” he added.

“I don’t know what we would’ve done without the tip, Dan,” Abby continued, entwining her fingers with his, “but we would’ve done
something
.”

“I know,” he whispered, leaning back against the pillows and feeling himself start to drift. “Thank you.”

T
he university was like a little slice of history and old-world charm. The campus and the neighborhood around it felt like they were from a bygone era, but thirty minutes on the El and the fast, dirty bustle of Chicago sprang up to pull you out of the academic bubble. It suited Dan just fine, the feeling that while the campus might be old, something new was always just a stone’s throw away.

It wasn’t anything like New Hampshire College, tucked away as it had been in that little hilltop city, isolated and lonely. Here he could watch the colors change, walk beneath old stone arches, and get just about the best pho a kid could hope for.

And that he was doing, maybe too much. But putting on a few pounds would go a long way to making Paul and Sandy worry less. He had toyed with the idea of joining a gym, thinking it might impress Abby if he showed up to visit her looking less like a string bean and more like a linebacker.

He had taken to bringing a blanket and his bag to the Midway Lawn to study. Being surrounded by the wide open greenery and the trees transitioning from green to gold reminded him of the better parts of being at NHC. Sometimes he wished Abby and Jordan were right there with him, walking to class like they had once done—Jordan teasing Dan about his hopelessly ugly
clothes, and Abby trying to keep them from getting into a real fight.

At least he’d get to show Abby a bit of his life in Chicago soon. He was already the darling of his history class, which he didn’t want to brag about, but which he knew Abby had picked up on during their Skype conversations. A family friend had invited Abby to join an artist’s commune for a semester in Minnesota, which worked well with her decision to take a year and work on cataloging their adventures in a photo essay to show at a little gallery in the spring. She wanted him to visit her in New York for winter break, but getting Paul and Sandy to go along with that would be difficult, to say the least.

They knew everything now. For better or worse, they knew everything. It had made things a little easier, in the end, and after the tears and confusion and long talks into the night, Dan felt unburdened. They knew, and he didn’t have to lie about his finger or who his birth parents had been or what he had seen at NHC. . . . It had been the last test of their love for him, and it still shocked and amazed him that they had passed it with flying colors.

Dan’s phone buzzed on the plaid blanket. He grabbed it and huddled down into his scarf, a bitter wind coming off Lake Michigan.

Hey dork, u going 2 MSP for fall break? U should. Gonna see Abs & then I’m flying to NYC. Cal is dragging me 2 some dumb show. He is the worst. Come visit 2, miss u.