whr u at?
I turn around and take a photo of myself making a silly face with Buckingham Fountain in the background.
hawt! :D
I laugh to myself and send, No! Coooooold. brrrrrrr
We text back and forth for a while, and for the first time today, the minutes seem to fly by. No tumbles and rolls in my chest and stomach. But as soon as Jensen says goodbye for the night, heading to a party with his basketball buddies, the nerves are back.
I round the fountain for the fifth time, obsessed with finding the right red nose in the right winter coat. I weave in and out, the crowd growing as thick as brambles in the woods behind Gran and Pops’s old barn. I push my way through the coats now. I bounce from one side of the fountain to the other, always thinking I’ve spotted Blue, but when I get closer the red nose is never his.
Just before midnight, the crowd is almost too thick to move through. Everyone is a shadow in the deep darkness. I pull my hood up and tie it tight under my chin. It muffles the sounds of the crowd, the laughter, the shouting, the squealing, the general excitement of being out under the stars to kiss the one you love as the clock strikes twelve. I stake out a spot beside the railing where Blue and I climbed over and stay there, hoping he’ll remember which side we were on.
Music begins to play over loudspeakers across the park. The crowd cheers. A man beside me grabs his partner, and they sway and dance. The twinkle lights on the fountain shiver in the wind. Camera flashes ripple across the crowd every few seconds. The atmosphere is electric, just like it was in 1927.
But I still can’t find Blue.
A few minutes before the countdown, colored spotlights flood the fountain. The crowd cheers again as fireworks shoot from the top tier in time with the music, whooshing into the sky right in front of me. Pinwheels of sparks ignite all around the perimeter, and the camera flashes come in droves.
Everyone’s clapping. Everyone’s cheering. Everyone’s oohing and ahhing.
I use the strobing lights to scan the crowd one more time. My eyes dart from face to face, nose to nose, until at last I see him.
Blue.
Chapter 2
Assholes and Saviors
Blue is standing by the railing, about thirty feet away, his face lifted toward the sky, watching the fireworks.
At first I can’t move. My boots are rooted to gravel. My palms are sweaty, and I’m shivering, but not because of the cold. The crowd starts chanting, counting down from ten, and I burst forward. I push my way along the railing, elbowing bodies out of my way. I have to get to him before midnight.
Six.
Five.
Four.
There’s a stroller in my way, and I swerve around it. Just a few more steps and I’ll be at his side. Just a few more winter coats to push through.
Three.
Two.
I can still see him, the light from the fireworks flashing on his face. Why isn’t he looking around for me?
One.
Happy New Year!
The crowd closes in tighter as everyone embraces, and for a moment I’m stuck between couples. More fireworks explode like machine gun fire, filling the sky over Lake Michigan with blasts of color. Noisemakers erupt all around me. The cheering is deafening.
When two people in front of me stop making out long enough to come up for air, I shove my way between them and reach for Blue’s arm. “Blue.” I snag his sleeve, a black hoodie with a red stripe down the arm. He turns to face me, surprised.
Within seconds all that elation, all that relief, all that longing to be in his arms dissolves. This boy isn’t Blue. He has the same build, the same profile, but it isn’t him.
I let go of his arm, embarrassed for snatching onto a complete stranger. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you were someone else.”
I turn to push my way back through the kissing couple, but the boy grabs my elbow. “Alex?” he says.
I whirl around at the sound of my name.
“It’s me.” He smiles and takes both my elbows in his hands, gripping them tight. “It’s Blue.”
For a moment I believe him. Who else would know to meet me here? Who else would know my name? But one look in his eyes gives the truth away. He’s not Blue. He can’t be. I feel no connection to him. No attraction between our souls at all. No tug at the edges of my memory.
“No,” I say, trying to pull away from him. “You’re not.”
But he doesn’t let go. His grip tightens. A man bumps into me from behind, flattening me against the boy’s chest. I’m stuck between the two bodies. They’re crushing me, and I can’t move.
“This her?” the man behind me says. At least I think he does. The adrenaline pumping in my ears makes it hard to hear anything at all.
“Definitely,” says the boy. “She called me Blue.”
Once I realize that they’re pinning me on purpose and they’re not going to let go, I shout for help, but I can barely hear my own voice over the percussion of the fireworks, the music from the speakers, the noisemakers, the cheer of the crowd. No one is going to hear me. Not Micki, not the other chaperones, not the other students.
Something sharp presses into my ribs, and I suck in a breath.
A gun.
“No more of that yelling now, sweet stuff,” the man behind me says.
Fear slicks my spine. The only person to ever call me sweet stuff was the Descender I met in 1876. The one who tore holes through my flesh and painted a cliffside with my blood. I bite my tongue, forcing myself to stay quiet. If it’s the same Descender I battled in 1876, then I know he won’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Not with a hundred fireworks blasting above to muffle the sound.
How did they find me? How did they know I’d be here?
The boy, the decoy who pretended to be Blue, pushes my head down and shoves me through the crowd. The two of them cling to each side of me as we make our way through the throng. The gun bites into my side. I keep my face down, watching shoes shuffle out of our way. The fireworks light up the pink gravel beneath our feet.
The crowd thins, and soon we’re no longer on gravel but on cold, frosty grass. We’ve passed through the evergreen hedges that surround the plaza, and we’re hidden in the dark within a grove of trees. Bare branches are woven overhead like fingers laced in prayer. The Descender pushes me to my knees. The barrel of his gun kisses my temple.
No one will hear me if I cry out. We’re too far away from the crowd. No one will hear the gunshots over the blasts of fireworks.
I slip my hand into my pocket and fumble for my cell phone, but Decoy Boy seizes my wrist and rips the phone from my hand. The Descender makes me link my hands behind my head, elbows out, and Decoy Boy walks off with my phone. I hear him crush it against a tree trunk a few seconds later.
“You survived,” I say to the Descender, still looking down. The frost beneath my knees melts and soaks into my jeans. A cold shiver works its way up my skin.
“What was that?” he asks, bending down.
I dare to look up at him, to see his face, but he pushes my head down again. It’s too dark and I can’t get a good look. “I crushed you in Limbo,” I say. “I crushed your soul. Your little smoke monster friends had to come rescue you.”
The Descender sniffs like he’s amused.
“Where are your friends now?” I say. “Who’s here to save you this time?”
He stoops down further to whisper in my ear. “Who’s here to save you?” He laughs, and Decoy Boy laughs too, as he walks back to us.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know of at least two ways I can knock the gun out of the Descender’s hand. Call it a residual from my past life as Shooter Delaney, the sharpest shooter west of the Mississippi. If it were just me and the Descender one-on-one, I could kick his ass, gun or no gun. But Decoy Boy keeps getting in my way. He rips off my hood, scarf, and coat, leaving me cold in my thin plaid collared shirt. He kneels in front of me and pats me down, paying extra attention to my chest. His hand
s rake and paw over me.
I glare at him, anger pulsing through me. “Why don’t you rip my shirt off, asshole? Get the full experience?”
He pauses and looks at me with a snarl-like grin. His face is too elongated, too sharply featured to be Blue. And he’s older, too. I can see it now. I’m such an idiot.
“Plenty of time for that after we throw you in the van,” he says, lip curled.
That’s when I take my chance. I spit in his eye, and his hands fly to his face, giving me time to act. I grab the Descender’s gun with both hands, twisting it away from my face to break it free from his grip. The Descender stumbles back, but he’s still clinging to the gun, so I use the momentum of his stumble to pull myself to my feet. I slam a boot into his groin, and he doubles over. We both clutch the gun as I try to keep the barrel pointed away. Decoy Boy tackles me from behind, and all three of us collapse into a heap. The gun fires twice into the treetops beside my left ear. Sharp ringing pierces my skull. I sink my teeth into the Descender’s hand, his blood coating my tongue, and he writhes beneath me, yelling out, but doesn’t let go of the gun. Neither do I, until Decoy Boy drives an elbow against the side of my head, splitting my ear. Warm blood seeps down my neck and into my collar.
Everything becomes a blur.
From behind, Decoy Boy yanks me off of the Descender. I grapple for the gun, but the Descender’s hand is too slippery, too dark and slick with blood. I scrape at his skin but can’t hold on.
Two more gunshots shatter the air. Decoy Boy slumps on top of me. My arms give out and my face smacks into the hard, frosty ground. My fake glasses snap into two jagged pieces, digging into my cheek.
The Descender scoops me up under my arms and drags me to my feet. I can barely stand without his help. The gun returns to my ribs. My head feels swollen and hot; my broken glasses hang from my ears. I have sticky blood all over my mouth, all down the side of my neck. Decoy Boy is lying facedown on the ground, unmoving.
“Not another step,” the Descender says, but he’s not talking to me. He’s talking to someone else, someone in the darkness. Someone I can’t see.
“Drop the girl,” a voice says from the shadows, “or I’ll drop you.”
I recognize the voice. Female, dark and smoky. But I don’t understand.
“My orders are dead or alive,” the Descender says. “I’ll put her down if I have to. Don’t think I won’t.” The gun digs deeper into my ribs, and I let out a yelp.
Two shots. One. Two.
I squeeze my eyes shut, wincing, prepared to feel the bullets tear through my side. I remember how it feels, to have a hole torn into your body. It’s not something you forget.
But I feel nothing.
At first. Then the Descender releases his hold on me and sinks to his knees. He sways for a moment, a gurgling sound in his throat, eyes wide, then collapses nose-first into the grass.
My hands find their way to my mouth, and I stumble backwards, fingers shaking. My broken glasses fall to the ground, but I don’t reach for them. I want to scream, but I don’t remember how.
Not even when Micki steps from the shadows, calmly, a gun in her leather-gloved hand.
“You all right?” she asks me, stepping up to the Descender and giving him a nudge with the toe of her high-heeled boot. The kind, concerned chaperone is long gone, like a disguise she left back at the fountain, dropped in the pink gravel like a candy wrapper. Now she’s all business, with a serious frown and purpose-driven brow.
“You killed them.” It’s all I can say. Both bodies lie flat in the dirt, souls snatched right out of them, ascending to Limbo. To Afterlife.
“They were going to kill you.” She squats over the Descender and pats at his pockets. “Either that or hand you over to Gesh. I’m not sure which is worse. And I couldn’t risk letting them go. They saw your face.”
“Who are you?” I’m shivering more now. How could she know about Gesh? How could she know about me? My head swims. From confusion, from being elbowed in the head, from my busted ear and the blood oozing down my neck.
From everything.
“I’m Micki. I told you that. Or do you want my call number? That would be MCI.” With one swift, fluid movement, she flips the dead Descender over onto his back, so easily and casually she must have done it a hundred times before. The Descender’s eyes are open and vacant. Dirt and blood are smeared on his cheeks. Micki pats him down like she’s rifling through a duffle bag. Like her hands aren’t slipping into the pockets of the dead.
I’ve never watched someone die before. Not unless you count Gesh shooting Blue in our most recent past life, but that was different. I ascended to Limbo before Blue took his last breath. This feels like part of my soul was snatched out of me, too, right along with theirs. Even though both of them were vile dickheads of the highest order, working for Gesh, they were still human. They had breath and a beating heart.
Now they don’t.
“Who do you work for?” I manage to ask.
Micki picks up the Descender’s gun, pops it open, and checks the bullets. So casual about everything. She doesn’t seem worried about anyone finding her kneeling over two dead bodies with a gun in her hand.
She looks up at me, her eyes dark, black in the shadows. “Number Four.”
My muscles tense. Number Four, IV, was my name, my call number, in my most recent past life, when I worked for Gesh and Porter. Porter and Levi gave me the nickname Ivy. Gesh was the only one who called me Number Four. He spoke it in Danish, Nummer Fire, but still. Hearing Micki say those words brought back a host of nasty memories from when I met Gesh face-to-face, when I went back in time and rescued Blue. It made me feel like Gesh was here, standing in front of me. Barking at me, ordering me around, having his henchman hold me down so he could run his hands over me, his property, his creation.
I take a step back from her, my fingers curling into fists. I want to run from her, get the hell out of here, but my head’s too swimmy and I don’t think I could make it two feet. “Why would you call me that?”
“You asked who I work for. I work for Number Four.” She stands up, both guns in her hands now. “I work for you.”
I try to reply but my body won’t let me. My knees wobble, then I slump to the frosty grass. Micki dives to catch me before I smack my head. She eases me to the ground.
“Shit,” she says. “Your ear.” She smooths my hair from the side of my face, dabs at the blood with her sleeve.
My eyelids flutter. I can’t hold on to consciousness. It’s slipping away.
“Hang on, Four. We’ll get you out of here. They’ll be here any minute.”
I want to ask who, but I can’t form the words.
Sleep. I just want to sleep.
The next thing I know I’m lifted by strong arms. Hauled through the dark trees. Slid into the backseat of a car. Leather squeaks beneath me. Streetlights shine through the rear window. I smell pipe tobacco and something earthy, like tea. Doors slam shut and the car takes off, the gears shifting, faster, faster.
“She’s delirious,” a man’s voice says over me, deep and gentle. Two large, warm hands cup my face, turning it back and forth. Two fingers press against the hollow of my neck, checking my pulse.
“A concussion, I think,” says Micki.
Nausea comes, up, up, and I sit bolt upright. “Heyyy, Micki,” I say, my voice slurred, my eyes still squeezed shut. If I open them, see the city rushing past outside the car windows, I know I’ll puke. “You said to let you know if I had to barf. Well, the time has come.” And then I laugh, a sputtered, tiny thing, as I slump back into the man’s arms.
“What did she say?” A second man’s voice, this one from the front of the vehicle. It sounds fatherly. Familiar.
“Porter?” I say, too softly for him to hear.
“Shit,” says the man holding me. “I think she got hit.”
“You shot her?” That’s Porter. I know it is.
“Of course not,” says Micki.
The man
holding me unbuttons my shirt. Spreads it wide, pats my ribs, my stomach. “There’s blood all over her.” Panic and concern. It’s a voice I swear I recognize, like I recognize Porter’s.
I try to say I’m OK, that I didn’t get shot, it’s not my blood, but my throat is raw.
“Alex, can you hear me?” the man says.
My eyes flutter open, but they can’t focus on the face looming over me. I close my eyes again, my head cradled in his palms.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
It finally clicks, where I’ve heard his voice before. The last time I saw him he was in the backseat of a car like this, racing away from AIDA Headquarters an entire lifetime ago. The air was tinted red with blood then, too.
“Levi?” I force myself to say, all raspy and breathless.
“It’s me,” he says.
I manage a smile, small and weak. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”
And then I pass out.
Chapter 3
Brain Frequencies and Panic Attacks
Within the deep, deep of my unconsciousness, thoughts and memories swim and swirl. I don’t have the strength to drown them out, so I drown in them.
The Descender. Decoy Boy. The flashes of firework light, the cheers ringing in my ears, grubby hands pawing at my chest, gunshots, Micki with the gun, two bodies slumped and bleeding out. Levi pulling me to safety.
Blue not showing.
I had plans. We were going to take one of those stupid horse-and-carriage rides, huddle next to each other under a blanket, and let the snow fall around us. We were going to eat greasy burgers at Billy Goat Tavern and wear the stupid paper hats they give you. We were going to stand on the shore and watch the sunrise. We were going to try to find Peg Leg, the speakeasy Blue took me to, see if the building still stood. See if we could climb up and sneak inside.
Stupid, stupid.
Where are you, Blue?
He has to be safe in Base Life. It’s the only way I can cope with not finding him at the fountain. He’s with a loving family. He didn’t show because he doesn’t remember descending like I do. Maybe once he returns to Base Life he has no idea he’s been traveling at all. Maybe he only remembers me when he’s in the past.
The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare Page 2