1503951200

by Camille Griep

  The starting harness. I remember the day Doc explained how to hotwire the car if the starter went out. Instead of using the harness to start the car, maybe I can figure out how to make sure it never starts again.

  In our first stroke of good luck in a while, Len is pushing at the left mirror, right beside me, and James, on the right, is refusing to even glance down at me—though whether because of his own handiwork or his sheer hatred of me, I don’t know, and don’t care.

  As surreptitiously as I can manage, I lean forward on the wheel, as if stretching my back. With my left hand, I feel underneath the steering wheel and fish around until I find the harness. Doc didn’t bother to replace the housing, and had marked the starter bundle with a red piece of electrical tape.

  Len looks down at the wires in my hand. He nods at me and walks to the back bumper, where Paul is pushing with Mangold. “Do you have a bandana or anything? Syd’s nose is bleeding again.” Mangold and James look away, but Paul hands him a greasy cloth from his back pocket.

  When Len drops it in my hand, the cloth is heavy with his pocketknife. Not real magic, but a parlor trick. And a good one too.

  I cut the wires, twice, leaving a wide gap so that they can’t be pulled back together. I shove the wire section into my pocket, the bandana bloody from cutting into my palms, trying to act without moving, trying to avoid drawing any more attention to myself.

  They probably have another way to detonate the car. But at least I’ve tried something. Len smiles down at me. I know he’s trying to say something tacitly, like he does with Cas. And for a moment I lament not having siblings. I lament it for Mina, too. I lament that if we can’t stop this, she’ll never meet Cas or Jayne or Pi. And my chances aren’t that hot either.

  As it is, too much has already been lost. When I think about Troy, my heart swims in my empty chest with seven kinds of aching. Anger, disbelief, regret. We almost had everything we’d dreamed of as kids. Now there’s no possible future for us together, with or without compromise. Was it my fault, his fault, the Bishop’s fault? Did it even matter?

  This last push to the gate takes what seems like an eternity. I’m so nervous. I begin thinking ahead to when we get inside, how we can warn as many people as possible. If I sent Pi and Cas and Jayne and Nelle, Becky, Tess, and whomever they wanted to take to the ranch or even the bramble house—maybe they’d be far enough away to be safe.

  But Mangold has one more surprise.

  We’ve stopped about a quarter mile from the gate, and have huddled up behind the car.

  Mangold smiles at us. “I want to thank you both for your contributions to this project. Without you, well, we wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure. Here’s to the restoration of the City and its surrounding communities.”

  I squint, trying to find some humanity in his features. “Dr. Mangold, please. What if the tables were turned?”

  “Paul, James, it’s time.” Mangold unlocks the trunk and the two men climb in awkwardly.

  Mangold steps into Len’s position, with his right hand on the wheel. “Len, you get the right mirror, would you? Syd, you’re in back.”

  The arrangement is strange. But I can’t put my finger on why. It’s not until we’re at the gate that I realize Mangold knows full well Len and I have been expressly forbidden to reenter the gates. We should be in the trunk, and yet here we are, unarmed and undisguised. Unadmittable.

  “This is the end of the line for the two of you,” Mangold says.

  “You lying bastard,” Len growls. “New Charity doesn’t deserve this. The Bishop used them. You’re choosing to hurt people. Innocent people. Please listen.”

  But Mangold has turned to talk to the guards. One says he’ll send someone to check with the Governor, who is a few blocks away, setting up the stage for the relighting ceremony. A few minutes later, the gate opens, and three guards take up positions around the sculpture, and while marveling, heave their way forward, escorting their own deaths through the town gates.

  Those same gates close on Len and me, even as we beg and plead. We offer our bodies, our souls, our first-born children, but our offers fall on deaf ears. One of the guards laughs. “You are the danger,” he says. “I’m not stupid, you know. I can read orders.”

  We stand for a moment, on the outside looking in, the great steel horses of the gate looking down from their tossing heads. They’d once let me through with ease, with the wind of my dad’s spirit, my mother, with Danny alongside me.

  “Pray with me?” Len asks. I’ve never been more frightened, and I don’t know what to do, so I take his hand. When our knees touch the ground, something happens. Half migraine, half carnival ride, everything shifts.

  The car rolls into the Sanctuary square and people are milling about, children delighted. The Bishop and the Governor climb into the car and turn the key. The car blows sky-high, leveling the square. There is smoke and blood everywhere, screams are coming from every direction—

  “Stop, Len. Please.” I pry my hand away from his. “Is that what you’ve had to see all this time? What Cas had to see?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you would be able to . . .”

  I thought it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than I had before, but I was wrong. “I thought I had the right wires, I swear.”

  This time he doesn’t tell me it’s okay. There’s no way to make those sorts of assurances, or even believe in them anymore.

  Len’s head is bowed low, his hands on the ground. “Pray, Syd.”

  He’s right. The Spirit—or maybe just the idea of it—is all we have left.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cas

  The morning of relighting day dawned cool and bright. Jayne and Becky had taken the night watch, while I slept in Syd’s old pink bedroom, sheets thrown over the piles of tulle and sequin.

  The night before, Jayne had held my hand, and then it was done. The exchange had been silent, and ideally undetectable to the Bishop. The new power in my body felt strange, heavy, as if my feet were connected to the very ground, as if I were dragging the soil behind me. I wondered if I was strong enough. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, how to use it—I couldn’t practice if the Bishop was still wasting his Hindsight—but skill or none, surprise was our edge.

  Pious was slow to wake. Jayne and I asked Becky to watch him while we went to find Nelle. To tell her that the Bishop suspected her plans. That she was trapped.

  White chairs with streamers were being unfolded in rows facing a large stage half a block from the Sanctuary. The Governor was front and center, accepting condolences and well wishes as he ordered volunteers around.

  A buzz floated over the crowd as we passed the mercantile. At first I thought it was because of us, but everyone’s attention was on the gate, shielding their eyes from the morning sun with the shelves of their palms. From some angles, the object rolling toward us looked like a jumble of metal.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Looks like art,” Jayne mused. “What in the hell are we supposed to do with art?”

  “Don’t let Syd hear you say that.”

  And then the piece came into view from the side. It was a shining sculpture of the land. Two hundred miles west to here. The City, whose skyline I’ve known only on posters and in books, the mountains in the distance, and, at the back of the car, the river running into our town, the bumper a small-scale replica of the gates.

  It felt like someone had clubbed me over the head. I twisted in agony, the edges of my sight blurring red, an oncoming vision—unstoppable.

  When I’d had the vision about Nelle, it had contained the worst images I’d ever seen. And yet, it was vague in cause. Consequences of something unknown. This time, though, the vision showed how the sculpture would come apart, tearing into yielding flesh and flaying buildings. How could Syd and Len have let this inside the gates? Were they so angry they’d given up completely? Did Len think I could protect myself because I’d be able to see?

  I tried to push back
my panic. I slowly worked my way back to reality, Jayne on the edges of it, shaking my shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. I opened my eyes. “You were making this . . . this sound.”

  “I’m sorry. I saw . . . the car. The sculpture. We have to get it out of here.”

  “It’s a bomb, then, isn’t it?”

  I looked back at the statue. Four men were pushing, though none of them were Len. Syd was nowhere to be seen, either. A thousand possibilities ran through my mind. What if they hadn’t been involved in the sculpture at all? What if they’d been hurt trying to keep it from coming through the gates?

  The Governor was on the stage, fussing over the placement of the town seal. “To the right. No, right. No, my right.”

  “Governor?”

  “Not now.”

  “Governor, please, it’s important.”

  He turned to look down his nose at me. “I thought I was clear on where we stood, Casandra.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. The statue—”

  “I don’t care.”

  I followed him anyway. “You have to get rid of it. Tell them to take it away.”

  “That heap of junk? It’s probably put together with pinesap and spit. What harm can it do?”

  “I had a vision. After the dinner with Nelle. Just now. I swear this is important. It’s a bomb. You’ll kill everyone in New Charity if you don’t do something.”

  “Hyperbole and nonsense. Getting everyone all riled up, reckless. Your brother is dead.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? You’ve lost all of your children. What else will you give up for power over—what—this, this place, this patch of ground? Why? If you ever loved any of us, even a little bit, you’d listen to me.”

  “Out of my sight. Now. Before I call someone.”

  I wished the Bishop hadn’t lifted the curse. At least then he’d have a reason not to listen to me. At least then, I wouldn’t be looking up into eyes like mine, like Len’s, like Troy’s, looking back at me as if I were the monster.

  The statue had been moved so that it sat next to the stage. Undoubtedly the piece had started its life as a car, but it was impossible to get close enough to see how it was put together since so many people were wandering around, running their hands over the metal. Down the side of the car, an inscription: In the hope of a peaceful tomorrow. The words made me shudder. In exchange for a violent today?

  I was still pondering the underside of the sculpture when I saw Nelle and Perry making their way down Main Street. Though the Bishop was nowhere in sight, I knew he was resting, waiting for the final pieces to be set in motion, watching me react to the statue. Planning a way to hide, to escape. I doubted he’d be wasting much more energy on Hindsight, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Best he thought we were trying to deal with the crisis at hand.

  “Jayne, would you let me talk to Nelle for a moment?”

  To her credit, the confusion passed quickly over her face. She followed a few paces behind, then launched into distraction mode. “Perry,” she said. “Is your mother holding up?”

  Perry struggled for words. Which was a shame, really. As repellant as his personality could be, I missed the sharp-witted, intelligent Perry who might have assisted in helping me clear the square. He groped at Nelle as if she were a safety blanket, even as I pulled her away.

  “Nelle, that thing, that sculpture. It’s going to blow.”

  She peered over my shoulder, then ducked a bit. “Mace. Goddamn him.”

  “Mace?”

  “Mangold. My husband. I’ve never seen that thing before. Paul must have sculpted it. And you’re probably right. Ten to one the rest of our explosives are inside.”

  “Nelle, make a run for it now. Take your people and fight your way out of the gate.”

  “I’m going to the reservoir today, Cas. I’m supposed to head over to finish the repairs for the power station in a few minutes. I can’t just not—”

  “We have a plan to neutralize the Bishop, Nelle. Don’t touch the Ward.”

  Almost silently, Dr. Mangold had walked up behind me. I backed away from Nelle, and ran smack into him. My head rushed with relief. “Is Syd with you? Len?”

  “No, no, no stomach for action. They were going to pieces at the gate last I saw them. Join them, should you see fit, but do it fast.”

  I tried to catch Jayne’s eye, but Perry had already talked himself out of her orbit and was making a beeline toward Mangold.

  Perry put an arm around Nelle and held out the other to Dr. Mangold. “This is my fiancée, Nelle,” Perry said. “And you are . . .?”

  Mangold let loose a big laugh. “Poor boy. I’m Mace Mangold. Nelle’s husband.”

  Perry drew back and looked at him. Then, down at the ground. Then he looked at Nelle, as if coming to for the first time in a week. “I’m afraid I don’t understand?”

  “Once, a very long time ago,” Nelle said, her voice dropping an octave, “I understood you and, once, I loved you. And I thought we could help each other. That’s all.”

  We’d all been blaming Syd—in whole or in part—for Nelle. But really, this was my fault. I brought Perry back when he should have stayed out wherever he was. He would have been able to make a difference, help some small community build itself back up.

  Nelle was still trying to explain. “Your obsession with our lives at school—lives we led as children. It’s not real.”

  “Stop, Nelle,” I said. “You’ve said enough.”

  “You’ve done enough,” Perry said, face vacant.

  I put my arm around my long-lost brother. “Perry, come back from wherever you are. Please. I need your help. You have to get the Governor to move that statue away from the square.”

  Perry looked at me, dubious. “Are you telling me the truth, Casandra?”

  I would have felt better if Perry was listening to me because he believed me. Instead, he was listening because he was out of options, but at least he was listening. He hesitated a moment, and then he turned and made his way toward my father. A queue of people vied for the Governor’s attention, but he ignored them all, talking into Cedar’s ear and pointing in our direction.

  “I wish you weren’t here, Mace,” Nelle said, looking up at the sky.

  “We have to find shelter,” Mangold said, grabbing her hand. They started west toward the bridge, and Nelle turned back to stare at the Sanctuary.

  I’d no sooner followed her gaze than Jayne fell backwards. Cedar clamped one hand over my mouth and the other around my midsection. Once he’d put me off-balance, he stuck a syringe into my arm. The world, once again, went dark.

  I woke up tired of serums and injections. Tired of shadows and hands and people depositing me wherever. I woke up as angry as I’d ever been. It seemed to please the Bishop when I flung myself from the couch of the candlelit Acolyte apartment. But for once I was prepared for what was to follow.

  He beckoned, fingers thin and crooked. “Perhaps reconsider: You and I, Casandra.”

  I took a deep breath. “Why don’t you simply ask for my gift if you want it so badly?”

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, my dear. I don’t want your gift; I want to combine our gifts. To be the sire of gods—that is my immortality, so to speak. And that of my children. Never again in danger of being lured away from the Spirit. Never again in danger of forgetting my name. Children who are never again in danger at all. What if your mother was immortal? Would you dream of leaving her side?”

  “That’s a stupid question. My mother hates me.”

  “Only because she never became her own best self. It was left to you, instead. She wanted everything for you. And yet the spotlight was ill fitting, wasn’t it, Casandra? Pity you can’t accept your true greatness, her dream, my offer.”

  “Your offer? You think your offer has any meaning? After all we’ve lost?”

  “What would you know about loss?” he said, storming across the room. “What would you know
about pain?”

  “Six days ago, nothing,” I said. “Today, everything.”

  I finally understood Syd’s desperation, how she could just swing blindly, hoping to save a piece of whatever was left. “What kind of world will you leave behind? Will it honor your daughter, this future wasteland?”

  “I made New Charity for you,” he said. “And yet you continue to reject my gift.”

  I squinted at him. “For me?”

  “For my future bride. I rid the world of that which the Spirit disapproved of. I am as good a God as any. I simply need a Goddess.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be that, Bishop.”

  “Ah, but you can. You simply are choosing not to.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. “So we shall remedy that.”

  I turned my face away as he pawed at my shirt. I tried to take a deep breath for what came next. “Good girl,” he said. “Just relax.”

  “You’ve made an error,” I said. “Looking backwards too often blinds you from what’s ahead.” I grabbed his wrist. Inside the curtains of his mind, I began to push.

  He was ready, pushing back into my Foresight. I watched as he anticipated the impending bloodshed of New Charity, laughing at the easy way the town had let itself be slaughtered, the confused faces of Mangold and Nelle walking into his cadre of guards at the floodgate.

  I pushed back harder into his memories and I found Cal on the couch, choking down the poisoned wine. Cal writing in his journal. Still before, when the Bishop collected the gifts, under the guise of genuine need. Earlier: The Bishop inoculating the town. The Bishop losing his daughter, on his knees sobbing as my father had over Troy. I tried to push back even further, but he finally stopped me.

  I allowed myself a moment to look out the window. The Governor was about to take a seat in the sculpture car, one of the Survivors giving a thumbs-up from about twenty paces out. Just as the Governor clambered in to take a seat, Perry was there, hauling him from the car and running toward us. Toward the Sanctuary.

  Currents of air began to swirl around the room, and I let them. I wanted the Bishop to think the advantage belonged to him. I wanted him to believe he’d escaped the worst of things.