Nix started to rise when Evelyn stopped him.
“You can’t go down there now. It’s not safe for you. It’ll be crowded now and no one knows you down there. You have to wait till morning.”
“We don’t have time, Evie.”
“You don’t understand. You won’t even get past the first room. You have to go only when there aren’t people around. They’ll think you’re a narc or something.” She leaned toward the boy, still grasping Finn’s hand. He was looking down now, at his feet. “Look. This isn’t like some squat you’re happening upon. Really bad people are down there. They’ll hurt you.”
She turned to Finn and he looked up at her, his eyes sad. She returned to Nix.
“He’s trying to make her OD. But for whatever reason … I don’t understand it. I’ve never understood it, he needs us —” She caught herself. “He needs the girl to do it herself. It’s some sick thing in him or something. He won’t force it on her. He’ll just keep her there until she does it to herself. And then … and then I don’t know.” Her eyes fell. “I got out before then.”
Nix stopped and thought about what Evelyn was telling him. If it was true, that Bleek needed the girl to do it herself, was it because of Bleek’s own history? His mother was kept in unwilling isolation, on dust, in the limina. Perhaps, he hypothesized, the cutter didn’t want to do what had been done to him. Which would mean — Nix tentatively allowed himself the thought — Bleek had some kind of a conscience? Small, misshapen, but real? He wasn’t sure how this would help him, but he tucked it away and again addressed Evelyn and Finn, who were both lost in the campfire’s flames.
Nix couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“How? How’d you get out? And where were you?”
Finn shook his head. “Too much, man. This is bringing up too much.”
“No,” Evelyn replied, her eyes fixed. “No. I want that asshole caught. I don’t remember where it was. Somewhere farther, beyond that first room. No one was there. Except something … something woke me up. It wasn’t Bleek. He had gone somewhere. Something else. When I woke up, all I remember is that there were all these tunnels leading off in different directions. Like in a star shape.” She forked her hands out to indicate lines radiating. “Or something. It was really confusing. I didn’t know which one to choose, so I just … walked. And eventually I was outside. I was so fucked up I don’t even remember opening that last door. I just kept thinking: Follow the light, Evie, follow the light. I kept saying my own name. And the next thing I knew I was under the Burnside Bridge. I swear. It was like I just … appeared there. A couple of times I even went back there to try to get in” — she glanced away from Finn — “and there was this grate thing there, but it was locked.”
“But didn’t he try to stop you?” Nix asked. “Keep you from leaving?”
“Bleek?” Evie looked sad. “No.” And that’s when she started crying. “No, he didn’t try to stop me. I mean, he tried to coerce me; he told me I didn’t really want to leave him, but he never, like, grabbed me, or tied me up or anything, or even locked the door. It was like it wasn’t interesting to him to just capture me. He wanted me to want to be there. And Neve is doing it, too. It’s like he won’t — can’t — do anything unless we let him.”
Finn was shaking his head and Nix noticed he was crying too.
“No, baby. No.”
“Yes, Finn. It’s true.” She turned back to the dark-haired boy. “You have to wait until morning, and then if you go you have to be very, very careful. I don’t know what Bleek would do to you. I don’t even know what he wants with Neve, why we were there in the first place. And in the Shanghai Tunnels? No one but tourists and junkies go there. But you can’t go now.”
“No, dude. You need sleep,” Finn said.
It was true. Whatever was heading his way, he needed to rest to endure. He — his body—was tired. “Yeah, okay,” Nix agreed.
He sat while they made ready for bed, Evelyn spreading out a few blankets in the red tent to the left of the blue one they slept in. Nix sat in his chair, watching the fire.
“But the teeth. Evie, you said something once about the teeth —”
“Yeah, that was weird. I guess it was some kind of hallucination or something.” She started to zip open the lining of the tent, motioning for him to climb in. “They weren’t exactly sharp. More like pointy. Like yours.” She tipped her head and Nix felt a clamp of panic in his gut. He ran his tongue over his teeth. He’d never thought of his teeth as pointy. But were they? Had the inhabitation already started to wear on him?
“You need to go to sleep now, Nix. We’ll wake you up before dawn. Then you can go down. When the sun rises it will be better.”
“C’mon, buddy.” Finn helped his exhausted friend from his seat and led him toward the red tent. Nix imagined soft blankets cupping him. He longed to sink into them, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the tunnels, and that room Evie described.
“But how did you know? How did you know which way to pick?” He was just next to her now, nearly limp in Finn’s wiry grasp. She looked stronger, less pained than before.
Her voice was a whisper. “I don’t know, Nix. I just wasn’t ready to go. I don’t know how else to explain it.” She stopped zipping. “Now go to bed. You have a long day ahead.”
A hoarse “yeah,” was all he could muster. He ducked into the darkness and heard a last zip behind him. Just how long was anyone’s guess.
CHAPTER 21
MORGAN D’AMICI IS A TWAT. Morgan D’Amici is a cold-blooded bitch. Morgan D’Amici is a frigid, neurotic Ice Queen. No. Ice Witch. Snow Sorceress. Popsicle-licking Princess of the Below Zero. Morgan D’Amici is a —
Fairy.
The word made Morgan laugh and she grabbed her pillow and held it over her head to calm down. Everyone in Yvonne D’Amici’s one-step-above-a-trailer home was still in bed. It wasn’t yet dawn. Out of a thick, dreamless sleep, she had awoken, snug under her covers, cracking herself up.
Nix had said it best: Flying fucking fairy.
Shouldn’t she have felt worse that her darling brother’s darling girlfriend was lost somewhere under the sway of an evil cutter named Bleek, whom she herself had been tweaked by only a day before? (No. She rather liked it.) Shouldn’t she have been upset that Nix hadn’t called to tell her where to meet him in the morning? (No. She knew he would.) And Yvonne. Poor, dilapidated Yvonne, hanging on her children’s successes like a kiddie-pageant mother, slugging Long Island Ice Teas at the Spaghetti Factory, picking the garlic off her breadsticks so as not to ruin her breath for Todd, hugging her children compulsively every time the waitress came by to ask if they wanted refills of their Cokes — shouldn’t Yvonne have annoyed her, like she usually did? (No. Morgan lurrved Yvonne that day.) Even K.A. seemed to sense something was up, the light in his room still on when she woke up sometime in the early morning to pee. Shouldn’t she have been worried about this, at least?
No. No. No. Everything was a mess. Yes, everything was a mess. And somehow, it felt —
Delicious. Thrilling. Sexy.
The day had come. How easily she had caught on, Morgan thought, staring into the warming darkness above the bed. Of course she hadn’t told K.A. about Neve. Why would she have? She had called Neve’s father — fat old man — after she got home from the park, told him K.A. wasn’t home, and that she’d call him as soon as she heard anything. A lie. She’d have to make something up about where her brother had been, but that wouldn’t be so hard.
You’re a frigid bitch, a cow-eyed college boy she’d once rejected told her. She took it as a compliment.
She sat up and rolled the covers down from her T-shirt-warm shoulders. Dawn was breaking, and Morgan could make out lemony green streaks in the sky above the rosebushes. She hadn’t gone into the forest the night before, she realized; she must no longer be under the sway of her subconscious. Good. It meant she had more control now.
A plan was in the making. Shadowy, long-term, but a pla
n nonetheless. So Nix was a ringer. Good. She would need one. And Moth — she’d show him. And not just for his stunt in the park. No. The boy needed to pay for messing with her that first night at Ondine’s. He had promised a kiss. Morgan never forgot a promise.
Moth she would seduce, Nix, use. Bleek she would learn from; Viv she would conquer. Ondine she would destroy. Neve, well, it didn’t much matter what happened to her.
She wouldn’t be called a frigid bitch for nothing.
An hour passed; she watched the aqua lines of her digital clock morph into other lines. The only thing that mattered was Nix’s call. She already had messages from Jacob on her phone. She ignored them.
At last her phone buzzed.
“Corner of First and Ash,” he said. “Now.”
She had no time to reply before he hung up, and he didn’t have a cell so she tossed the phone on her bed and got dressed quickly in the half dark. Jeans, bra, dark long-sleeved T-shirt, hoodie. She smoothed her hair back and eased on her white baseball cap. Over her hoodie she put on a thin black ski vest. She slipped her wallet into her pocket, grabbed her cell phone, and shook out her duvet cover and her sheets. Morgan D’Amici always made her bed.
She was ready to go. She crept down the hallway past K.A.’s room and started to edge open the kitchen door when she remembered that she should leave a note for Yvonne. There were Post-it notes by the phone. She’d just scribble something about needing to be at work early —
A hand on her shoulder made her jump, and she was about to scream when she felt broad fingers across her mouth. She was struggling to see who it was when she heard the familiar soft scratchiness.
“Calm down, Morgue. It’s just me.”
K.A. loosened his grip and she turned around in her brother’s arms. She hadn’t counted on him being awake, and here he was in front of her, fully dressed. Tousled blond hair poking out from under a trucker’s hat, running shoes, jeans. Just like his sister.
She whispered, but her voice was stern. “Do you want to wake Mom?”
“What’s going on?” He looked sad.
Morgan turned and shrugged. “I have to go to work. They need me to do some accounting before opening today.”
Mom, Had to go to work early, she wrote in an even hand.
“Jesus Christ. Do you think I’m an idiot?” Morgan could hear the mounting anger in K.A.’s constricted whisper. “Jacob’s been calling me all night, asking me whether I’ve heard from Neve.” He leaned closer. “He said he saw you last night with Nix, up at the park, after we had lunch. He said he told you Neve hadn’t come home and you said you were going to try to find out where she was. Why didn’t you tell me, Morgan? What the hell is going on?”
She gripped her pen and looked up.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She knew what her face must have looked like — cold and blank, the face of a liar — but she didn’t care. Nix was waiting for her; she had to meet Bleek in the tunnels and nothing, not even her brother, was going to stop her.
“Look, they’re expecting me at work, and I have to go. I don’t know what Jacob Clowes is telling you about where he saw me, or whom he saw me with, but it can wait. He’s upset. His daughter is a mess and I guess he doesn’t know where she is, and he’s trying to draw you into the drama.”
Be back later! xxxx Morgan
She put down her pen and started to slide past her stunned brother when she realized he was trying to beat her to the door. Was he … was he trying to stop her?
“Are you kidding me?” Morgan stopped in front of the sink, her hands perched on the counter behind her. K.A. turned the toggle on the knob, locking it, and situated himself in front of the door. “You’re going to stop me from going to work? That little bitch really has you wrapped around her coke pinkie, doesn’t she, Kaka?”
She tipped her chin up but he didn’t move.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” he demanded.
She sighed, playing the concerned sister, though the gestures, she knew, were undermined by the amount of hatred she felt. She wanted K.A. out of her way. Now.
“You don’t need this in your life and I certainly don’t. It’s really too crazy.”
Her brother only stared.
“We can talk about it at work,” she tried. He leaned farther into the door.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you know about Neve.”
The expression on her brother’s face would have broken her heart, if at that moment she’d had a heart to break.
“I. Don’t. Know. Anything.” Morgan forced the words through tight teeth and felt a chilling inside of her. She was conscious of the room around her: the one she knew so well, the one she had spent many evenings in with K.A., washing dishes, joking, having soap fights. Now he had her cornered. Which is exactly how she felt: trapped, like an animal.
She barely heard the first knife slip off its magnetic strip before it went whizzing by.
K.A. jumped away from the door, his jaw open, staring. The knife had lodged itself a few inches inside the door frame, right where his body had been a moment before. Morgan followed its trajectory.
“Did you —” He squinted and stared at her, now beside him. “Did you just throw a knife at me?”
“No,” she replied, her hand now firmly on the doorknob. This time she wasn’t lying.
She ran into the driveway, started her car, and accelerated. First and Ash. This was all that mattered now. She never noticed the black Mustang trailing behind her.
V
ONDINE
CHAPTER 22
GREEN BEAN.”
Ondine felt a soft hand on her shoulder. She rolled over but the hand stayed. Off. Want it off. She was sleeping. She registered that it was her mother’s hand, which she was glad about, but Ondine didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay in bed and dream about — what was that she was dreaming about again? — Pollen — a hazy sky — coral pink petals — blue beyond.
“Green bean, honey. Time to wake up,” her mother whispered again. Oozily Ondine started to remember. A plane. Spilled club soda. Her father picking her up. A dark drive. Lights on water. Then a house, not her own. She opened one eye and then another. Trish Mason was sitting on the edge of the unfamiliar bed Ondine lay in, her face smiling above a taupe silk sweater. She felt a swelling of love and sat up to hug her mother. Behind her the light coming through the white-curtained window was bright and there was a single pink rose in a vase on the desk next to the bed.
Tomorrow morning. Rose Garden. Grant Park.
“What time is it?”
Trish must have seen her daughter’s eyes rolling around in her head because she put a hand on Ondine’s forehead. First the palm, then the back of the hand.
“I’m not sure. Nine-thirty or so? Are you okay, honey? Do you have a fever?”
Ondine shook her head. “I’m fine … much better. I … I just need to know what time it is. I promised to call someone at … at ten. Is it ten?”
Trish sighed. “Hold on; I’ll check the alarm in the bedroom.” At the door she looked back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I just need to know what time it is, Mom.”
Her mother walked out the door and down the hall. Ondine could hear Max bounding down the stairs, calling to their father, who must have been in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
“Nine twenty-three,” Trish called from the other room, already walking back toward Ondine. She would sit on the edge of her daughter’s bed then, like she often did. To see how the plane ride was, to spend time. To talk.
Ondine was already out of bed and yanking on the clothes that she had worn the night before. Underwear, bra, jeans, hoodie mini, RVCA jacket. She was slipping a foot into a tennis shoe when her mother walked back in.
“What’s going on? Why are you putting your shoes on?”
“I … I have a …” What, what the hell did she have? Ondine scanned the small room for her other so
ck, which she located under the bed. “I have a school friend who’s here for the summer … at Evanston. At Northwestern.” She groped for a name, choosing a girl she vaguely knew from gym in eighth grade, who was good in kickball. “Lissa. Lissa Griffiths. She could see me only this morning, and I promised. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“What?” Trish’s hands were limp beside her in the doorway. “Why are you going now? And who is Lissa Griffiths? You’ve never mentioned her. What’s going on, Ondine? You just got here.” The woman stepped closer to her daughter, her voice gaining in intensity, her hands moving from her side to her hips. “We need to talk.”
Ondine nodded and avoided her mother’s eyes, working the other foot into its tennis shoe. “I know. I know. I want to. I want to talk. I just have to meet this girl. Lisa … Lissa. Lissa Griffiths. I must have mentioned her to you. She’s a new friend of mine.” God, she was terrible at lying. What kind of teenager was she?
“Supercool,” she added pointlessly, avoiding eye contact. “Lissa’s supercool. Helping me with physics. You know how hard physics is for me.”
She knew she’d better stop before she started inventing an entire backstory for Lissa involving various science fair victories, favorite nonsuspicious extracurricular hobbies (amateur filmmaking, squash), and which college Lissa would be applying to for early admission after her summer spent taking sailing lessons at Northwestern. Ondine grabbed her wallet off the desk and was at her mother’s side giving her a kiss before Trish could say another thing.
“Tell Dad, okay? I’ll be home by one…. And don’t worry,” she added, in a voice that would make any mother suspicious.
Bewildered, Trish received her daughter’s brief, tight hug and then it was just Ondine, bounding down the stairs toward what she dimly remembered from last night to be the front door. She was in Chicago. She’d have to remember to look at the house number as she left, and the street name. She hoped her mother wasn’t following her, but really she didn’t care. She had to go to the rose garden to meet whoever was supposed to be there. The dream she’d had about the sky, the pollen, the blue beyond — abstract and mystifying but insistent, too, like someone’s name you’ve forgotten, or the particular bend of a tune — had told her to.
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