The last time I felt panic like that was when Maggie smuggled me out of the house in the middle of the night and told me we had to leave my father. He was the only person I ever loved, and when he was taken from me, it was as if something was ripped from my body. My heart, maybe. I can’t withstand pain like that again.
My mouth dries, and I look over his shoulder at the door.
There is something happening between us. Something dangerous. Something that cannot last. Nothing in this world is supposed to last.
My death is written on his skin.
The Creators want us both dead.
I swallow. ‘I . . . uh . . . They’ll be waiting for us.’
‘So?’
‘I want to know how Priya got here. It could help us get to the library.’ I give him a light push and pull up my trousers. ‘Come on. I said we’d tell them our story.’
His expression darkens. I feel his eyes boring into the back of my head as I brush past him and walk to the door.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jay
Is she fucking serious? She wants to spend time with a bunch of kids and a terrorist? Now?
I pull up my trousers. When she reaches the door, she turns to look over her shoulder. There’s a light sheen of sweat on her face, and her cheeks are still flushed. I lean against the wall and fold my arms across my chest.
I felt a moment of relief as her nails dug into my skin and her legs tightened around my back. I felt a moment of quiet as I tore a cry from her lips and held her body against the wall. But now, I feel it again—the thoughts nagging at my brain, the frustration building in my chest, the itch raging beneath my skin. And the ink burning in my veins.
‘We’ve got dry clothes, little Twist. We’ve got what you wanted. Let’s just get some food and get across Draft Three. Try to find this library you’ve been going on about. Come on.’
‘We will. But Priya might have information that can help us. You come on.’
‘No, she won’t.’
‘She might.’
‘It’s pointless.’
‘It’s not.’
I’m not going out there. I’m not spending my time with a bunch of kids who’ll probably shit themselves the moment I walk out of this room, and a Darling who thought she could threaten me.
‘Jay.’ She looks at me as though I’m a child misbehaving.
I shake my head.
She exhales. ‘Fine. Suit yourself.’
‘Little Twist . . .’
She turns and heads into the warehouse, closing the door behind her and leaving me alone.
I stand there, and something squeezes around my throat so tight I can hardly fucking breathe. I don’t want to go out there.
Creators. Blotters. Twists. Darlings. Circuses and dandelion seeds and revolution and fire. Not doing what is written. Hurricanes and tornados. Monsters in the river. Death. Stories. Ink. Elle. Elle and that misplaced wonder in her eyes. Fucking. Feeling. Feeling something. Feeling something that’s not certain, not empty, not hollow like before—but not freedom. I don’t feel free. I feel full. Too full. The weight of it crushes down on my chest. It’s crippling. I can’t move with it. Too many decisions. Too many outcomes. Too many questions. It’s so fucking heavy.
There’s too much.
Too much time. Too much time to fill. Stagnant and stale. It drags on and on and on and on.
And yet there’s too little time, each second slipping away until it’s gone forever.
I can’t stop it. I can’t go back. I can’t go forwards either. I’m trapped.
It’s too much.
I just want everything to be still for one fucking minute. Just want everything to start moving and making sense.
I don’t know what I want. That’s the problem, isn’t it? There’s too much to lose.
I look at the little dandelion seed she painted on the concrete. Illegal. Forbidden. Curious. It’s a shit painting. It doesn’t look much like a dandelion seed—it’s smudged and fat and the wrong colour.
It’s weird, really, when I think about it—that the Creators would forbid ink and paint and stories. That something as small as this shitty painting could be dangerous.
But it is dangerous. And it’s not weird. Because it is a dandelion seed. But it isn’t.
It’s a painting about her father, somehow, and her stories, and her stupid revolution. It means something more than what it is.
Lightly, I touch it, then I look at the wet blue paint on my finger. I draw the shape of the dandelion seed in the air. Then I touch the wall with my fingertip, my heartbeat racing.
I wipe my hand against my jeans and stuff it in my pocket.
What am I doing? This is insane. I can’t paint something on the wall.
Yet I’ve defied the Creators and killed Blotters. I’ve followed a Twist and told a story in a Circus. I’ve swum across a forbidden river.
What was that thing in the river anyway? It stirs a memory, but I can’t quite grab onto it.
I sit down against the wall, legs spread, forearms resting on my knees. I stare at the door. I don’t move for an hour as I try to get rid of the tight feeling in my throat and all of the thoughts and words and questions that feel as if they’re choking me.
I don’t know what I want.
Except that’s not true, is it?
I exhale, rub my mouth, and get up. I walk past the cargo boxes and forbidden crap from the Twist’s rucksack she’s lined up by the wall. I flex my fingers and put my hand on the door handle.
I do know what I want.
I want her.
I head out into the warehouse.
‘Once, there was a world. And the world was dark. And so dark was the world that people were afraid to dream,’ she’s saying as I quietly close the door. ‘And in this world, there was a factory . . .'
They’re sitting on dusty cargo boxes and broken plastic chairs around a fire cracking in a metal bin on the floor. There are six teenagers and Priya, all leaning towards Elle, their attention rapt.
Slowly, I make my way over to them.
‘The factory was run by a man. The man never told his workers what the factory really did, so they did not know they were working on a machine that stole the stars.’
A smile spreads across her face as I approach. Peter, the ginger kid, looks as if he’s about to shit himself when I sit down on the crate between him and Priya.
‘One day, a group of teenagers started work at the factory.’
Priya leans towards me, passing me a few of the cheap processed food bars they eat in the Outer Drafts and a flask.
‘We got off on the wrong foot, Blotter.’ She speaks quietly as the kids turn their attention back to Elle and her story.
I nod, not looking at her as I unwrap one of the bars—grains fortified with artificial protein and vitamins. Tastes like shit, but better than nothing.
‘She told me what happened. That you didn’t do what was written. She said you saved her and the kids at the Circus. That’s pretty decent.’
‘Yeah? And what did you tell her?’
‘The teenagers noticed something about the people who worked the machine. They started to become different. Tired. Less.’
Priya’s lip twitches. ‘Okay. Straight to the point.’ She reaches for a flask between her boots and takes a sip. ‘I told her about the Underground railroad we used to get across the Draft unseen.’
‘They realised it was the machine. It was doing something to them. To the world. To the night. It was stealing dreams and spreading darkness.’
I unwrap the next bar. ‘If there were an Underground railroad, I’d know about it.’
‘No. It’s been forgotten by most. Not functioning anymore, obviously. Most of it’s barricaded or flooded or worse. But so long as you take the right route and head in the right direction, you can get into Draft Four.’
‘So one day, they rebelled. They fought the man. And they broke the machine.’
‘And you know the right
direction?’
‘Yes. I’ve drawn it out for Elle.’
I shake my head and bite off half of the nutrition bar. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘And yet here we are.’
‘Suddenly, on breaking the machine, all the stars that had been stolen scattered out into the night.’
Elle’s eyes glint as they catch mine. I lift up my flask to her and then take a sip of tepid water.
‘A million dreams lit up the sky. And the world changed. It was no longer dark, but filled with light.’
My lip twitches. What a load of crap. And yet I like it. I like the sound of her voice. Her words seem to ease something inside of me.
‘And all because of a group of teenagers who dared to dream,’ she says. Her face lights up as the kids start to talk to her. I can’t take my eyes off her. I watch the way her eyebrows move when she speaks and note the peculiar straightness of her back. Her hair is wild, and her eyes glint with wonder.
How is this happening? How am I falling for a Twist? How am I falling for a Twist who tells stories about dreams and factories and stars?
As I watch her, she gets to her feet and meets Priya’s gaze. ‘We’ll get a couple of hours’ rest and then move on. Thank you. For everything.’
Priya nods and gives her a half-smile. ‘Likewise.’
Elle crosses the circle and stops by my side. She lightly touches my shoulder, and I feel the heaviness again. The weight. I don’t want to lose her. But we won’t make it out of this alive.
‘Coming?’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
Together, we head back to the storeroom. As soon as I close the door behind us, she turns and looks up at me. Lightly, she touches the dandelion seed on my chest. My skin hums at her touch.
‘Are you okay?’ she says.
‘Yeah. No. Maybe.’ I exhale. ‘I don’t fucking know, Elle.’
Vulnerability flashes across her face. It’s the same vulnerability I saw when we were in the river. She closes her fingers, scrunching my shirt in her fist.
‘Yeah. Me too.’ She sighs. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Jay.’
The heaviness lifts just for a second. I envelop her small fingers in mine and hold them to my chest.
‘Yeah. Me too,’ I say.
And despite everything—defying the gods, and not doing what was written, and getting involved in a revolution, and setting myself up for what will likely be a horrible death—it’s true.
I am glad I’m here. With her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Elle
Jay’s heart thumps beneath my fingers. Our eyes lock. Something seems to push and pull in the air between us, taut. Our bodies move with it. Slowly, I undo the buttons of his shirt, revealing the hard, tattooed muscle beneath. His breathing deepens as I trace one of the black shapes that stop just above his belly button.
‘What does it mean?’ I ask.
He touches my cheek and shakes his head. ‘You don’t want to know.’
I slide the shoulders of his shirt down, and it drops to the ground behind him. His scent washes over me as I brush my lips against his chest, tasting the salt on his skin. He tenses then relaxes.
‘Elle,’ he says.
He kisses me. And it is different than before. Not hard and urgent but slow and deep, his tongue hot as it moves against mine.
And when he picks me up and takes me to the corner of the room and we have sex on top of the sleeping bags laid on the floor, that is what it is like too. Slow and deep.
Afterwards, while we lie on our backs looking up at the damp spots on the ceiling, panting and covered in sweat, something between us feels different. It’s suffocating.
Because Jay knows just as well as I do that it is not wise to become attached to anyone in this world.
But somehow, even though I am a Twist and he is a Blotter, even though it was written that he would kill me, even though he is bound by ink to those I seek to destroy, I am attached to him.
I don’t want to lose him.
When I catch the raw glimmer of fear in his eyes, just for a moment before he looks away, I know he feels it too.
We rest for a few hours, say our goodbyes to Priya and the children, and then set off.
It’s just before dawn, and the dark has faded to a milky grey. The faint wheeze of the factories drifts over the river with the scent of stagnant water, but the shadows here are quiet. Ahead, the skyline is jagged with tall buildings.
A heavy silence surrounds us as we navigate the warehouse district. Jay’s arms are taut with tension, and there’s a lump in the back of my throat. Something is different between us. The stakes are higher somehow.
I do not want to lose him. This was not supposed to happen this way.
I try not to let it distract me as I quickly spray a couple more dandelion seeds onto the abandoned buildings.
When we reach the road, Jay pauses and curls his fingers around my arm. It cuts directly through the Draft, and the first of the skyscrapers stand before us, black and glinting as the sun starts to rise. There’s a faint thrum of engines in the distance—Blotter vehicles, or perhaps the goods vehicles distributing food from the factories.
‘How much farther?’ he asks.
Priya’s scribbled map sits in my pocket, but I do not need to consult it. I memorised the route to the entrance of the underground network before we set off.
‘Not much. She said there’s an entrance by the warehouses.’
‘It’s getting light.’
‘I know.’
He lets go of me and runs a hand over his light stubble. When he exhales, his hot breath mists in the air in front of his face. ‘We should have set off earlier.’
‘We’re almost there, Jay. I promise.’
For a second, our eyes meet. Then, almost imperceptibly, he inclines his head.
I lead him down the road, sticking to the shadows. We slip past a group of people with their backs to us, lined on the pavement looking up at the recording of a Teller talking about The End. Ahead, large heavy goods vehicles are parked in the middle of the street. We hurry past.
I take us through an alley, and Creator Michael’s severe face looks down at us from a billboard the length of one of the buildings. The muscles in Jay’s jaw tighten.
‘Did you meet him?’ I ask. ‘Michael?’
‘Yeah, I met him. He was my Patron.’
‘Patron?’
‘Every Blotter has one. The Creator who’s in charge of writing their story.’ He shrugs a heavy shoulder. ‘I dunno. I dunno how it works. Doesn’t matter anymore, does it?’
Ahead, there are two rusty doors in the ground by a row of bins at the end of the alley. Some of the darkness lifts.
‘There!’ I say. There’s a thick chain wrapped around the handles. Priya didn’t mention this. I crouch down, locating a metal padlock. ‘If I had a hairpin, I could pick the lock.’ I look over my shoulder at Jay’s hulking figure.
‘Yeah, well, unfortunately, I’m not wearing my hair in my pretty updo today, so I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that, little Twist.’ He rubs the back of his neck and turns his gaze warily upwards to the surrounding skyscrapers. Some of the lights flicker on as the dawn approaches.
I grab my rucksack and start rummaging through the damp contents. Maybe there’s something in here that can help.
‘Run.’ Jay’s tone turns my blood cold.
I look up, and my heart stops. There’s a Teller standing at the other end of the alley. He’s large and hooded, wearing robes the colour of blood. He raises his gun.
Jay yanks me to my feet and pushes me behind him. ‘Run.’
‘No.’
I won’t leave him.
Jay throws me against the wall as the Teller shoots. I stumble, winded for a moment. Then the two of us dart down the alley to the left, my hip knocking one of the bins. A crackling noise follows us, but I don’t have time to figure out what it is.
The Teller’s boots thud after us, steady a
nd slow. It’s more menacing somehow than if he ran. What does he know that we don’t? We turn the corner into a backstreet, and Jay stops and pushes me behind him. He roars, lunging forwards, and I cry out when I hear the click of a gun.
Jay falls to his knees and slumps, lifeless, to the ground.
I’m back in that river again, ice-cold water crashing over my head, and everything is faraway. Through my blurred vision, I see there’s a Teller ahead, leaning against the same heavy goods vehicle we saw earlier. He has a gun and a radio in his hands. My heart pounds. Footsteps approach from behind.
I try to breathe. I try to think. But I’m too cold.
Jay is dead.
A hot scream builds in my stomach, thawing the ice that has its hold on my limbs. I charge. Someone grabs me from behind and clamps a hand over my mouth. I smell damp and must and old parchment. This cannot be the end. I buck against him, kicking and screaming.
The hooded figure ahead pulls down his hood.
I still. Long brown hair spills over the front of her robes, and a pretty heart-shaped face with turquoise eyes and soft plump lips is revealed. It makes no sense. Women are not permitted to be Tellers.
‘You must be Elle. We’ve been waiting for you.’ Her eyes glint mischievously in the shadows. ‘I’m Mary, although you may have heard of me by another name.’ She nods at the man holding me. ‘That’s my brother, Tom.’
‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’ His voice is cheerful—a sharp contrast to the strong, vice-like grip he has around my waist.
‘And I take it this is Jay. Sylvia told us about him.’ Mary looks down at him sprawled at her feet and then lifts up her weapon. ‘Sorry about that. Tranquiliser gun. Didn’t much fancy my chances against a Blotter. Not looking forward to when he wakes up, but I’ve heard he’s pretty sweet on you, so perhaps you can smooth things over for me.’ She slides up the door at the back of the goods vehicle.
My heartbeat will not stop its relentless thrumming in my ear. The woman’s words seem to float in the air around me. I can’t seem to catch them. Nothing makes sense.
And then I notice the gentle rise and fall of Jay’s back as he breathes, his cheek pressed against the pavement. I release a breath, and the world comes into focus.
A Circus of Ink Page 21