1503951200

by Camille Griep

  I search back through my memory of my one and only science and infrastructure class at the arts academy. New Charity used to take only the water it needed to fuel its tiny power station, sending the rest downstream to the City, where our own dam redoubled the water’s force and converted it to electricity. Now the extra water is diverted instead to their own reservoir.

  Sheriff Jayne continues. “We can see the floodgate Ward through this window over here, though we won’t be getting any closer.” She closes the door to the power controls behind her. Ten to one it is locked, but I wait until they are well out of sight to try it.

  And locked though it is, upon examination I find the tumbler to be very old. Another bobby pin and a thankful prayer to Danny’s insistence on teaching me the trick, and I’ve picked my second lock in New Charity. It’s darker in the control room, and I don’t want to risk an overhead light, so I wait for my eyes to adjust. There’s constant sound, the rush of water and the hum of energy, and if I weren’t trying to figure out my next move, the noise would be almost calming.

  I can’t save the lives of my friends in the City by destroying the entirety of New Charity. When I set out, I was okay with the idea that I might have to get hurt to open the reservoir. But there’s no way I can confront the Ward, not with all these lives to account for. Not even the lives of my so-called enemies.

  The door behind me opens and I wheel around. Cas has stopped crying and resumed fuming. “What are you doing? I just told you opening the reservoir will kill us all. Are you really that cruel?”

  “Calm down. This is just the control room for the power station,” I say. “Says so right over the door.”

  She glowers at me. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. Something.”

  “Let’s go, Syd. Please.”

  The control room is simple in design. Some indicators in a bank at the top of the desk. A console below. Under the desk sit a couple of servers. I suppose racks and racks of computing power aren’t necessary to power the tiny grid of the town. All the same it’s bad design to have a single point of failure—something I’d managed to retain from my two years at City High.

  Someone’s left their notepad on the end of the control panel. “Can you hand me that pad?”

  Cas looks at me strangely, but passes it to me without saying anything. I pull my lighter out of my hip pocket.

  “Syd, stop!”

  “I’m just going to shut down the power for a bit, Cas. Give New Charity a taste of what City life is like. It won’t hurt anyone, I promise.”

  “You can’t.”

  It’s stubborn at first, but the notepad finally catches. “I can, and I am. Now go find a fire extinguisher before I actually burn this place down.”

  Cas stands mesmerized as I shove the notepad between the servers, and blow softly to fan the small fire. I want to thank Cas for saving me from doing something catastrophic, for keeping me from becoming the monster the Bishop has been waiting for. In this moment I both love her and want to kill her, which I just might do if she doesn’t find me a fire extinguisher with a bit more alacrity. “Look, we don’t have time for an existential crisis. I just want to burn the computers, not the room. Fire extinguisher. Please. Now?”

  And that’s when the sprinklers start.

  Klaxons. Flashing red lights. Water cascades down the walls.

  “Shit.”

  “What did you do?” Cas is almost hysterical, her voice part squeal, part scream. The green lighting is off for a moment, then something chugs to life and it flickers back on.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say, shielding my eyes from the water.

  I can tell she’s trying to convince herself to breathe, her hands flapping in the wet air. “If they catch us . . .” I push her out of the control room and we make it halfway to the main door before it swings open and I duck into an alcove.

  Sheriff Jayne enters the deluge, looking murderous. She stomps up to Cas and peers around the corner at me.

  “Don’t say anything,” she says to me. “Cas, out. Outside. Now. Tell them you accidentally tripped the sprinklers when you came in to look for the group.”

  “But,” Cas starts.

  “Just do it,” the Sheriff growls. “And hurry. Tell everyone to stay out while I’m still securing the alarms.”

  Cas gulps once and bolts out the door.

  “Please don’t arrest me. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—” I am babbling. She looks over my head at the gushing sprinklers, uninterested in what I wish to volunteer.

  “What were you doing in here?”

  “I . . . Everyone else was here. I wanted to come on the field trip?” I try to ply her with a smile. “Not much of a market for ballerinas around these parts.”

  A mix of pity and disgust crosses her face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to go to battle with your eyes closed swinging blindly?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Did Cas tell you about the Ward?”

  I nod. “Just now.”

  “So you knew not to mess with the floodgate.” She motions to the smoking control room. “But what was this supposed to accomplish?”

  If I’m going to jail, I would like someone to understand why. The Sheriff peers down at me with a hazel glare, unblinking even as water falls from her long eyelashes. This is a woman who seems to be both right and fair. Like I want to be someday, provided I’m not rotting away in a jail cell. “I wanted to give New Charity a taste of their own medicine. A few days in the dark. I just meant to mess up the computers. Something easily fixable. I didn’t mean for . . .” I trail off, holding my hands in the still-cascading water.

  “These sprinklers, these alarms are ancient—installation probably predates your birth. The fact that you only did some old-fashioned damage, and we knew Cas was still in the building, is the only reason the Bishop isn’t in here tearing the place apart.”

  “The Bishop is here? Outside?”

  She nods. “How did you set the sprinklers off anyway?”

  “I set a notepad on fire and shoved it between the servers in the power control room. I tried to get Cas to get an extinguisher but she froze.”

  She curses to herself. “Don’t you even think about blaming this on Cas. This is all you, pumpkin.” She picks me up by the shoulders and stuffs me behind a stack of pallets.

  “Jayne,” the Bishop bellows from just outside the doorway. “What’s the meaning of this? Can’t you shut these accursed things off?”

  “I just thought I’d make a sweep of the floor first.” Jayne’s voice is calm and authoritative. She is the first person I’ve seen in New Charity who doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the Bishop—or anybody, for that matter. “Make sure there’s no actual fire.”

  His giant frame fills the doorway. “Has this happened before?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Explanation?”

  She approaches a large white panel on the southern wall. She throws a switch and the water slows to a drip. I glance at the control room and there’s no smoke inside. “Before, I’d imagine it was rodents. This time, Cas must have accidentally brushed up against something.”

  “Mm. Perhaps it’s best if she discontinues her training with you.” The Bishop still hasn’t crossed the threshold. “Fewer opportunities for . . . mistakes. More time for being an Acolyte.”

  Jayne stops just short of a huff. “What good will that do? It was an accident, for crying out loud.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I watch her reset her posture and her jaw. This isn’t a battle she’s going to win. She nods, turns, and, using her own pocketknife, cuts the entire shock of wires inside the alarm panel. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was looking at me while she did it. “The generator is running things here. But I’d imagine the town’s out for a while. Until we can get someone in here to look at things.”

  “The tech is on the rounds in Meadow and Klein,” the Bishop says through g
ritted teeth. “He won’t be back for at least two weeks. We’ll have to make a plan after services.” He whirls around to leave and the doorway fills with light again.

  “I’m going to ride around the perimeter once,” Jayne says in a low hush as she passes by my pallet stack. “You make yourself scarce in the meantime, you hear?”

  I want desperately to ask her why she’s covering for me, why she’s not arresting me. But I can’t even eke out a why above my shivering adrenaline. I still have to hike another wet mile back to my fizzled plan to conquer and run, which now consists of a backpack strapped to a horse who has, in all likelihood, worked himself free and returned to the safety of home.

  Whatever that means.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Syd

  The river is slightly lower by the time I get back to the rope, but my ass is still doubly soaked when I reach the other side. I look toward town, where the evening streets are devoid of lights. The Willis mansion and the diner are lit—likely off generators like the station—but the rest of the buildings are woefully dark. I don’t know what else to do except to start laughing. In that moment, this was exactly what I wanted.

  The dusky shadows lose their novelty when, as I feared, I find the horse isn’t where I left him. I whistle, low and soft the way my dad taught me long ago, making my way around the clearing.

  I hear a rustling, and the horse appears with Cas atop her own mount on the other end of his lead. “Found him at your house. Figured you wouldn’t want to walk.” Her voice is simmering; she’s doing that thing where she’s a crystalline version of nice.

  “Thanks,” I venture, though I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to walk. Alone. I want to be out of these clothes, whatever else. Hot mess, Danny would have said, though I would have vehemently disagreed about the temperature of said mess.

  Spurred on by the chill, I mount up for the short ride back to the ranch when I realize the saddle doesn’t feel right. “Cas, did you take my pack off?”

  “I’m not the one in the habit of messing with things I don’t know anything about.”

  I start to try to explain but there’s more stirring on the other side of the clearing. Becky Purcell steps from the shadows dangling my backpack.

  “My stars,” she says. “If it isn’t the saint and the sellout. Looking for this?”

  Why was I so stupid to leave it? It would have been better off totally submerged than with Becky. “Can I have that back?” I try to ask as nicely as I can, but my teeth are chattering.

  “Let’s see what’s inside first, shall we?”

  “Let’s not. Just hand it over.” I’m back off my horse, handing the reins to Cas. I’ve had it with Becky Purcell and her inner thirteen-year-old’s inferiority complex. The day has been way too long for this kind of shit.

  “Let’s see. Seven cans of tuna? You live next to a river now, you know.”

  “Just give it to her, Becky,” Cas says. The horses are getting antsy, and she’s having trouble managing both as they dance around, sensing our unease.

  Becky roots through the pack. “Ooh, a key with a keychain! Exciting. Clothes. Lots of clothes. Tummy pills. And, what’s this, Er . . . Erythro . . .”

  “Don’t.” Mina’s medicine. I am alight with rage. “You don’t want to mess with me.”

  “The good stuff, eh?”

  “Antibiotics, you cretin.”

  She scoffs at the bottle, but throws it back in the pack. “Look at you, Cressyda Turner. Here I thought you were all washed up, but you got the wonder twins at your behest, the Governor’s son on his knee. Don’t have time for an STD, eh?” She’s doubled over laughing.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on, keep up. Mama says nobody gets anywhere in those dance companies without sleeping their way to the top.”

  How was it possible she had held on to so much anger toward me when I hadn’t even remembered her name? “I was fourteen when I got into the Company. I didn’t . . . You know what, never mind. Just because you’ve been humping on your inbred cousins your whole life—”

  “Syd, don’t say things you can’t unsay.”

  I wave Cas off.

  “Here we go.” Becky pulls out the journal and drops the rest of the pack. “This looks like a bestseller in the making.”

  “That’s not yours.” I’m within five or six paces of launching myself at her when she steps sideways and holds the book over the water. I freeze. “No. Please. I’m sorry.”

  The journal is the only way left to communicate with my dad. It’s not much, wouldn’t be worth anything to anyone else, but it’s more than I’ve ever had. “Pick one,” Becky says. “You can have one thing. The rest, you overrated attention whore, is mine.”

  “You made the right decision,” Cas is saying, as she throws her dry fleece over my shoulders. “Everything but the journal is replaceable. We can get more drugs, right, and key chains, and the Spirit knows you have a tuna collection like no other.”

  She doesn’t sound as angry now, though she’s still not happy with me. We ride in fits and starts of silence, Cas essentially towing me home with my own reins as I clutch my dad’s journal to my chest. I feel monumentally guilty for choosing it over the antibiotics. But Cas is right, it doesn’t matter right now anyway. I’m not going anywhere tonight.

  “You were planning to leave, weren’t you?” Cas asks, as if reading my mind.

  “I thought I might. If I could get the floodgate open, and break it so it couldn’t be closed right away. I expected it to be a door, not a Ward comprised of all the collective magic in New Charity. I made a mistake.”

  “But you weren’t even going to say good-bye?”

  Good old Cas: zero further concern for the fact I almost accidentally killed all of us, because I have committed the larger hurt of omitting a farewell. “I didn’t want to get you and Len in trouble. I didn’t want you complicit.”

  Cas is quiet for a minute. “The Bishop says rejecting the Blessing means taking it away from ourselves and those around us. For that we get the requisite punishment: the eradication of everything. No one person would be selfish enough to disrupt the reservoir. Except you.”

  “You are the ones who gave the Bishop the permission to make things this way.”

  “No, Syd,” Cas says, her voice edging toward tears. “It’s more complicated than that. But you’re the only one who cared little enough about the rest of us to undo it anyway. Don’t you have any feelings at all? For me and my brothers? For your uncle?”

  “I told you, I didn’t understand about the Ward until you told me. I was willing to give my own life, but not yours. I stopped, didn’t I?”

  She hands me my reins.

  “What more do you want me to say, Cas?”

  She asks Windy to halt. “Say you’re sorry. Apologize. Even if the Ward didn’t exist, hurting yourself would have hurt us too. Are you really that cruel?”

  I’m not, at least not anymore, but there seems to be little use in saying it. The horse underneath me has assumed navigation, angling his way toward the paddock that has come into sight. Cas looks up toward the mansion, garish and beacon-bright on the hillside above the dim town. She purses her lips. I’ve plunged New Charity into darkness, which was my on-the-fly plan B, though I am now lamenting the lack of a hot shower. I’m also lamenting Cas’s disappointment, which feels a lot heavier than her ire.

  I don’t want to be her enemy. I don’t want her to be sad about the Sanctuary. I want her to forgive me, to understand me, to root for me. I want her to switch sides. To help me. For the first time I’m scared I won’t be able to do this alone. I have to find a way to save everyone, and I don’t know how.

  “I don’t have much to offer,” I say, dismounting. “But you could stay for dinner.”

  “No thanks. I don’t think I’m in the mood for tuna.” Her attempt at mean falls flat, and I snort. She snorts, too. “Besides, I have to get to services.”

  I dismount at the gate an
d lead the gray through. Cas rides in behind.

  “Meet me at the social hall after?” She doesn’t look at me when she asks.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s probably going to be nothing anyway. What can we do without power?” She frowns, already disappointed again.

  I think she’s frowning because she realizes these moments we’re having together—as we slip into our younger, better selves—aren’t forever. I’ll bet she knows it’s just a matter of time before I destroy them altogether.

  I don’t open the fridge, not wanting to deal with the soon-to-be-rotting food inside, and having no clue how to start our own generator. I eat a can of tuna and the remainder of my breakfast turnover alone by candlelight, a taper pulled from the bag of the decorative ones I made in the City during my stint as a wax worker.

  My dad’s journal lies open in front of me. Wherever I am in time—there are no dates, but I can tell it is in the last year or so—his words find him reflective.

  I have squandered opportunity after opportunity and continue to do so. But what would they say after all this time? Had I known the choice would be final, I’m not sure I would have made it. J and P make much of the idea of second chances, but I’m not so sure. Would I want a man as unworthy as I am in her life? So why would I make the exception for myself?

  Besides, I am needed here, as well, perhaps? P is taciturn, but I can tell he’s increasingly uneasy with the Bishop. In some ways, I wish he’d never come. I wish P had found the courage to step into the Bishop’s role himself.

  P’s failures are in part my doing, basking in my father’s affection while P wilted in the withering scorch of his criticism. Had I known then . . .

  The things I’m doing now won’t atone for any of it, but perhaps I can change her stars for the better. In my heart I know M is right.

  There is so much I don’t know. My dad’s pervasive sadness is starting to change over the pages, especially since “M” came on the scene—whoever that is. Maybe Pi will know.

  For the first time ever, though, I’ve started to wonder if my mother acting as if my dad hadn’t existed had maybe done more harm than good. The older I get, the more I realize I didn’t know my parents very well, and yet I do. They made mistakes, and I still love them. My dad, who believed whatever he was doing here was important, and my mom, who continually sacrificed everything for a day that never came, swung blindly for the best lives they could. That’s all any of us can do.