Bella leans against the wall. “So you’ve been friends a long time?”
“Since first grade. I changed schools after my family died and I had to move in with Gia. Some of those kids had known each other since they were two. But Ursula came right over to me, handed me an orange marker, and told me to come and color with her. So I did.”
“And now she’s missing and you need to check on her mom and sister.”
“Right.”
“And that’s not easy because you feel like this is your fault.”
The thought bulldozes over everything else. “I do?”
“Well, I don’t know why else you would feel squeamish about seeing her mother and sister. They’ve probably been waiting for you to come over. So you must feel guilty about something.”
I look at my partner, and for the first time I don’t feel irritated or annoyed by her. I only feel grateful. I wish I could tell her that, but when I open my mouth, instead I say, “You’re really perceptive, you know that?”
“Thank you, Mary Elizabeth,” she says, her cheeks coloring.
Of course I feel guilty about Ursula’s disappearance, and the truth is I should. I was so self-centered I didn’t pay close enough attention to what was going on. And I don’t want to admit it, but it’s true that she has enemies. Ursula has made so many people angry with her deals and threats.
“You ready?” Bella says.
“Yeah, I think I am.”
Bella knocks on the door and then stands back so I’m the one in front.
“Mary Elizabeth?” Morgana cracks the door. Ursula’s monstrous tabbies circle the living room behind her. “We were wondering where you were!”
The weight and intensity of the responsibility that immediately descends on me leaves me feeling one thousand times as wretched as I did when I walked in the front doors of the building, especially when I see she’s looking even more skeletal than usual. She throws the apartment door open and hurls herself against me and closes her arms against my waist. Holding her is like clinging to sticks.
“Morgie,” I say, “are you okay?”
Ursula’s mom is a weak woman and is probably not taking care of Morgana at all. If I know her, she’s in bed being sick, which is what she does whenever there’s the tiniest bit of stress. Morgana’s legs jut from a white shift, and she has thrown a black coat over the top that is far too big and crinkles loudly. Her feet are bare and her toes are blue, and inside the apartment the TV flashes against the wall as the cats watch me judgmentally from where they’ve settled on the doormat.
“Are you alone?” Bella steps forward.
Morgana eyes her suspiciously. “’Course not,” she says. “Ma is sleeping. Anyway, I’m eleven. I can be home alone.”
I touch her shoulder. “That’s not what she meant. She was only asking.”
“I was sort of only asking. When’s the last time you ate a proper meal?”
Morgana shrugs. “Ma is home, but she isn’t doing very well.”
“I’m sorry, Morgie. If you let us look around a little, I promise we won’t bother your mom.” I give her a reassuring pat.
She clutches herself and lets us pass, then steps to the threshold and closes the door, so we’re in the apartment along with the familiar smell of mold and cats and coffee.
“The police said she left on purpose.” Morgana roots around in the cupboard. It’s almost entirely bare. “Do you want some tea?”
Bella holds up her coffee. “I think we’re okay but thank you.”
“She would never just leave you,” I say. “You know that, right? Your sister would never leave you on purpose.”
“I know that. She always said that to me,” she says, closing the cupboard and coming to stand close.
“Can I go in her room?” I say, feeling suddenly shy, like a stranger, even though I’ve spent so much time here. It’s been two years since they lost their dad, but this apartment feels like a box of doom right now.
Morgana takes me by the hand and leads me down the small hallway. A space heater groans from behind her mother’s closed door, and I’m glad to pass it without going in. Even with the perfect weather outside, this apartment is always cold and wet-feeling.
Bella follows behind me into Ursula’s usual mess. Posters line every piece of her wall: bands she loves, #LegacyLoyalty flags, movie stars and comic book covers and pictures of all of us together. Her closet is cram-packed with boas, tiaras, leather, lace, latex, glitter, sequins, snakeskin boots, and unicorn onesies and black, shiny gloves, and rows upon rows of chunky high heels.
“Wow,” Bella says.
“That’s my girl,” I say.
This whole room smells of her rose-and-sea-salt perfume. And then of course there’s her record player and collection of music in crates along her wall.
I can’t be here. It hurts too much.
Bella goes deep into Ursula’s closet and Morgana tugs on my sleeve. “Come here,” she says.
I leave Bella to follow Morgie.
“Can I tell you something, Mary?”
“Of course,” I say.
She hesitates. “If I do, will you promise not to tell Ma or anyone?”
“Sure. Of course!”
“Because I don’t want anyone to get mad.”
“Okay.”
Morgana pulls me back into the living room, away from where Bella and even her mother might hear.
“Ursula. She came last night.”
I laugh before I can fully register what she has said. Then I grab her by the elbow. “What? What do you mean? Tell me,” I say. “What are you talking about?”
The cats, Flotsam and Jetsam, weave between us.
“She left water in my room so I know it was her,” Morgana says. “I didn’t see her, though. She was gone before I could. Do you think she’s real?”
I think of the dreams of Mally Saint, of the one I had just this morning, of the slap as her body met the floor and the whine of her being dragged across shiny waxed linoleum. Then I remember what she said. That Ursula had escaped and had put everyone in jeopardy.
“I think we can make almost anything seem real when we want it so much,” I say. “But I don’t know. Maybe.”
Flotsam meows as Bella comes back in the living room. She gives me a look that tells me it’s time for us to go.
“I’m going to find her and bring her back to you,” I say to Morgana.
Morgana holds the door open for us, then hugs me hard. “I hope you do,” she says, “because we really miss her.”
She slips away, shooing the cats back into the dank apartment.
When the door is closed, Bella rubs my back and I let her. “We’ll get them some groceries later. She’ll be okay.”
“Her mother didn’t recover very well from the Fall. That’s when Ursula and Morgana lost their dad.”
Bella is unreadable. “And now they’ve lost Ursula.”
“Exactly.”
“No one has any parents,” she says.
“What about you?” I say. “Do you have parents?”
Bella acts like she didn’t hear me. “Make yourself useful,” she says, ignoring me. “Do something with all your Scar contacts. What about Wonderland? Anything new there?”
I take in a huge breath of relatively clean air as Bella strides ahead.
“Deflection is a defense mechanism!” I call after her. “Don’t think I don’t notice you avoid talking about anything personal!”
“I don’t know what you mean!” she says.
“It could be worse, you know! You could be patrolling with Tony.”
She stops and turns around, an unexpected smile on her face. “Mary Elizabeth, you be careful, or I’m going to start really liking you.” She waits for me to catch up to her, then pulls something out of her pocket. “Oh, and look what I found.”
It’s a burner phone, a little black flip. I’ve seen Ursula with it a couple times but had completely forgotten it existed. “Where did you get this?” I say
.
“There’s a wall compartment in Ursula’s closet. You didn’t know about that?”
I shake my head. I never much messed with Ursula’s secrets. That was a part of her that was never completely open to me.
“This was also in there.” She holds up a notebook full of scribbles.
“So we should turn all this in to Colman and Mahony, right? Do what the chief said and adhere to the letter of the law.”
She arches her eyebrow at me. “Well, of course we should.”
My heart sinks. “Oh. Okay.”
“After we charge this phone and find out what’s on it!”
“Oh!” I squeeze her. “You’re a genius! An annoying high-strung genius! Thank you!” This is the first time I’ve felt any hope at all since Mally disappeared, and now that I’m thinking about it, possibly ever.
“My dear Mary Elizabeth,” she says, slipping the phone back into her pocket, “that is the best compliment anyone has ever given me.”
BELLA AND I TRACK DOWN A CHARGER IN ONE OF those stores with phone parts and we hover over it like it’s a sleeping baby and we’re waiting for it to wake up. When its lights come on we’re delighted, elated, but then it turns out the stupid awful secret phone has a stupid awful secret password. We spend all day trying to guess what it is and can’t. Finally, Bella forces me to leave, tells me to go home and get rest and she’ll call me if she can get it open. She tells me, with cute, smug assurance, that she’s very good at breaking into things.
But something is bothering me, and as much as I try to quiet it, I can’t. The fact that I’ve tried every combination of four letters and numbers I think might have meaning, but can’t figure out Ursula’s password, depresses me. It signals, once again, that even though Ursula is my best friend, there’s a ton I don’t know about her. Maybe she has a secret boyfriend, too, or a secret cat, or a secret yacht, for all I know.
Maybe this means I don’t know anyone, and that puts me on an extremely shaky foundation I don’t like one bit. I’m sitting on the steps under the Monarch flag, which is next to the United States flag, and I can’t move as all the people wrap themselves up to shelter themselves from the cold and move quickly from one place to the other. I’m frozen on the police precinct steps thinking I don’t know where to go.
I can’t go back upstairs because Bella will throw me out, and if she doesn’t, Mona or someone else will. Nights at Wonderland are all about James and Urs and me fighting over who will end with the number-one spot on pinball croquet. They’re about dancing to Stone’s band and James and Smee leaning into corners and Dally running everything from behind the bar in his white suit and glittering pink-lens glasses. They’re about all of us being together, and I can’t go down there and do all those things without Ursula because that would mean life is just going on and it can’t go on without her because I won’t let it.
So, as I explain to James in what feels like a perfectly reasonable tone to me, I won’t be going anywhere at all until someone can provide me with a reasonable alternative. James tells me to stay where I am, and then I can hear as he and Smee start arguing about how Smee always gets the shaft when it comes to me. James threatens to throw Smee out onto the street corner, tells me he loves me and that he’ll see me soon, and then he’s gone, and I hold my phone and keep watching the people walking here, walking there. I’m imagining they have homes to go back to and people they love and best friends and that their lives aren’t like puzzles losing a piece at a time until nothing makes sense.
James rumbles up to the station alone thirty minutes later and double-parks on the curb right next to a cop car. James can’t stand Midcity, but he’s here, and he guides me wordlessly from the steps into his car. We sit in silence as we drive back to the Scar, and the weather goes from dark and tempestuous to a pleasant midsummer calm.
When we get back to the flat safety of the Scar, the long boulevards and swaying trees, I say, “I don’t want to go home or to Wonderland.”
“I thought we’d go for a walk by the lake,” he says, one hand loosely on the steering wheel, so easy it looks like the car is driving itself. Everything is like that with James. So easy, so laid-back, but under that there’s a fighter ducking and weaving.
“The lake?”
“Yeah,” he says. “While you’ve been busy I’ve been busy. I did a thing with Ursula’s ring.”
“A thing?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You asked me to do a thing and I did a thing. And while I was doing that thing, I got a vision or something…of the lake.”
“A vision?”
“That’s the best I can do to explain it, Mary. I had Ursula’s ring, I saw the lake.” He taps on the steering wheel, the only sign of any nerves. “Take it or leave it.”
I watch the streets outside as we inch closer to my apartment. It feels like even though James is right here he’s also far away. I don’t like that feeling. Maybe I’m making it up. It’s not like he hasn’t been here.
But everyone has these bits of themselves that are hidden in shadow, personal, or too tender to show. Or maybe just too scary.
“I don’t know her password.” By admitting this I’m showing him one of those scary things, that I may not have the claim on Ursula that I thought I did.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know her password. Ursula. Bella and I found a phone and it’s locked and I don’t know what the password is. Just four numbers or letters and I don’t know it. I can’t figure it out. I thought I knew everything important there was to know about Ursula, but I was dead wrong.”
James puts his hand over mine. “It’s going to be okay. Life gets crazy sometimes like you’re being squeezed by some giant snake, but then it eases up.”
“When you’ve been digested?”
“Yeah, maybe.” He pulls into the lakeside parking lot, gets out, and opens my door.
I thread my arm through his as we weave between parked cars. James suddenly stops cold. “Hey, you see that?”
I see nothing except the lights by the lake and the red phone by the giant sign that says, IN DESPAIR? CALL THE MONARCH 24-HOUR HELP LINE!
James goes over to a white car with dents in it. “Look,” he says.
The car is blackened with markings like double Os.
James follows the path to the next car. “There’s more of them over here.”
It’s true. The markings go all the way down the line of cars. We follow them right to the lake, then look at each other wordlessly.
“Whatever made those marks came right up to the edge.”
There are signs all around us, all different sorts, but the most terrifying are the ones asking people to report anyone leaping into the lake, to hit the red buttons they have set up everywhere if anyone jumps the rail. Whatever it was definitely went into the lake.
James drops a couple coins into a hat as we pass a man sitting under a tree. “You seen anything out here?”
“You mean the sea monster?” the man says, with more than a slight slur. “Couple times today, once last night. She comes and goes.”
James and I meet eyes. “She?” he says.
“Yeah. It’s definitely a she.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You two take care, now. Don’t go falling in the lake!” He cackles until his cackle turns into a cough, and we leave him there, coughing violently.
“James, you’re thinking something. What are you thinking?”
He furrows his brow. “Nothing. That guy’s wasted. I don’t know. I’m not thinking anything.” But he’s staring at the lake with new intensity and has a tight hold on my hand.
“I want to try something, okay? Don’t freak out.” James checks to make sure there’s no one around. Then he raises one hand and the blue light dances off his fingertips. It glows from his eyelids.
“James,” I whisper, but he’s utterly focused on the water. Within seconds there’s a splash. Something wet and slick and black surfaces and then di
sappears again.
We look at each other, still. “Something is alive in there.” I whisper this impossibility to convince myself it’s true. But it can’t be.
“Something sure is.” He holds his hands out in front of him. Blue light weaves its way to the water.
“James, be careful.” The water is deadly and the blue light is connected to James. I don’t know if it conducts like electricity or something, but if it does James could be in real danger. We’ve all seen pictures of how people disintegrate when they come into contact with Miracle Lake. By the time they’re fully submerged there’s nothing left of them. The fact that there’s anything alive in there at all is…well, a miracle.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” James singsongs into the night.
The blue light dips into the water. Nothing happens for a minute or two, but then a head emerges up to its eyes. The hair is a slicked-back blond, the eyes hard to see in the dark, but I already know who it is and she is looking my way. She’s not happy to see me, and by the time her head is fully above water I can say her name.
“Ursula,” I choke out.
James puts one arm out protectively, the other one still managing the light. He looks to be somewhere between horrified and relieved. Because Ursula is alive. She is 100 percent completely alive.
“Stop it,” she says, when she’s out to her torso. “I’ll do it myself. No need to bully me.”
James pulls the light back and everything goes dark around us. For a second I think I imagined the whole thing and that Ursula’s gone or she was never there and I just wanted to see her so badly I hallucinated. But then there’s the sloshing of water being displaced as she climbs over the edge of the lake, water dripping off her, sizzling as it hits the pavement.
She has tentacles, black ones that look to be part of a backless dress. She smiles and then makes a quick motion from feet to head and the tentacles disappear. It’s Ursula again, with legs, dry like she was never in the lake, beautiful as always. My best friend, right in front of me. I reach out to touch her. She’s cold but she’s real.
It’s only then I realize I never thought this day would come, that even though I wanted to hope, I was sure Ursula would be taken like my family and would be returned to me lifeless in a box if ever at all.
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