And Hunter is hunched over it, arranging the utensils.
“Hunter?” I say quietly.
He looks up, startled, like a young child doing something he’s been told not to do.
“I woke you,” he says. “I wanted this to be a surprise.”
He creeps over and sits down gently on the bed. I prop myself up on my elbows to get a better look at him.
“It’s so early,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
Hunter sweeps back his hair from his forehead. Even in the darkness, I can see the piercing blue of his eyes, staring straight at me. He is freshly shaved; I press a hand to his smooth cheek and feel a light buzz of mystic energy run through my fingertips and into my palm, stirring my blood.
“We received information about the location of one of the Foster bases on the East Side,” he tells me, speaking softly as not to wake up Ryah and Shannon. “We’re leaving to check it out, but first, I wanted to do something special for you.”
I shift my gaze from Hunter to the breakfast he’s prepared for me. “Thank you,” I whisper back.
He leans down and presses his nose to mine, giving me a soft kiss on the lips before wrapping his strong arms around my waist. I scoot over to the side of the bed, making room for him; he rests his head on the pillow next to me. His breath warms my neck, and the way he’s holding me makes me feel safe and secure.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
For a moment, I let myself forget how we haven’t been connecting like we should, how neither of us has been completely honest, how the sheer number of questions I have about us and the rebels and the city and the war is enough to drive any sane person mad.
Instead, I focus on the simple things: the way Hunter’s warm hand feels pressed against my stomach; the way our breaths mirror each other; the feel of the strong, capable muscles of his chest against my back; how he smells faintly of citrus shampoo; the gentle, ghostly kisses he’s leaving along my shoulders.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I say. “More than you know.”
“I doubt that,” he says softly. “I know I’ve been distant, Aria. Please just trust me. I promise things will work out in the end.”
Trust me. Words that strike me like poisonous barbs.
Turk told me I should give Hunter time. Maybe Hunter is right. Maybe things will work out in the end.
“I’ve gotta go,” he says. The sheets rustle as he gets up and plants a kiss on each of my cheeks. “I love you,” he tells me. “I’ll see you later.”
I sit up and watch him disappear from the bedroom, his lingering scent the only reminder that he was here in the first place. Well, that and the breakfast in bed.
I reach over and sample the bacon. It’s delicious—crunchy, just how I like it. Which makes me feel even worse about what I’m going to do next.
I’ve already picked out some clothes—more of Shannon’s—and hidden them under my bed. A pair of black leggings and a stretchy midnight-blue shirt that might as well be black. I slip on my borrowed sneakers, sliding a plain gray cap over my shaved head. I stuff a pouch full of coins in my pocket, then grab a pair of sunglasses from Ryah’s dresser, glancing at myself in the mirror.
I look nothing like myself. I could be anyone.
I send a message to Turk on my TouchMe, letting him know that I’m leaving. He won’t travel with me in case I’m being followed. I hope he’s still coming, that he’s not going with Hunter to track down the Foster army instead.
Then I’m down the stairs and out the door and off to the Magnificent Block.
“This is good?”
“No.” I yank on the brim of the cap, trying to cover my eyes. “Inside the Block.”
The gondolier glances at the mounds of rubble towering in the water. “It’s too dangerous,” he says. He’s about my father’s age, with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair. He has a bruised eye and cracked lips and is missing most of his teeth.
We have slowed to a stop. “Here is as far as I will go,” he says.
“Look,” I say, yanking out the tiny pouch full of coins. “I have money. Please, just a bit farther.” I open the pouch so he can see inside.
“Crazy,” he says, gripping the wheel and steering us ahead, into the Block. “Crazy girl.”
The imposing brick wall that used to line the Magnificent Block is nothing more than broken fragments of red and brown stone that poke out from the water. There is debris everywhere, and we have to inch along like snails to make sure the boat doesn’t get snared on metal rods or the fallen pieces of lumber that dot the canals like tombstones.
The smell grows sour as we move forward, like a mixture of old milk and seaweed. I keep expecting there to be bursts of red and blue fireworks, like when Hunter took me to one of the mystic carnivals.
But this is different. The mazelike steel walkways that allowed people to traverse the Block by foot have all tumbled down after being bombed by my family and the Fosters; pieces have lodged in the muck at the bottom of the canals, sticking up like metal ghosts of what used to be.
None of the tenements, where the registered mystics were forced to live, remain. As we float farther toward the center of the Block, I can’t imagine what the scene must have looked like when the Block was blasted apart and law-abiding mystics suddenly lost their homes and even their lives.
The dark, early-morning shadows are evaporating into soft light that trickles over everything, casting a gray sheen on the green-black water. Tiny ripples from the gondola sweep through the canal.
“Sort of pretty,” I say to the gondolier. “Don’t you think?”
He crosses his eyes at me, and I realize what a stupid thing I’ve just said. “Not the destruction, I mean, I was just talking about … Oh, never mind.”
After a few minutes, we reach the point where, before the bombing, the land rose out of the water and blossomed into grass and trees and life. Where Hunter and I walked and he told me about his grandfather Ezra Brooks, who fought for mystic rights until he died and his daughter, Violet, took his place.
And now Violet is gone, leaving Hunter the only surviving member of his family.
What a huge burden.
We quickly approach a mound of brown earth solid enough to walk on and dotted with the remains of a handful of blackened trees.
A roundish piece of wood—likely one of the stilts the mystic tenements used to rest on—juts out of the water. “Can you tie up here and wait for me?” I ask.
The gondolier licks his dry lips. “No.”
I glance around. There isn’t a soul in sight. I don’t want to be stranded here if Kyle doesn’t show. “I won’t be long. Fifteen minutes at the most.” I shake the bag full of coins. “And if you take me back uptown, I’ll give you everything that’s here.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Fifteen minutes. Then I’m gone. But I want half now.”
I nod in agreement and stand up on shaky legs, careful not to topple into the water as the gondolier helps me onto the bank. I drop a handful of coins into his hand, then pocket the rest. “Good luck,” he says as I plant a foot in the mud.
“Thank you,” I say. I’ll need it.
Kyle said he would meet me at Belvedere Castle—what remains of it, anyway. Turk hasn’t replied to my text. Is he here yet? Hiding? Or has he changed his mind?
I head toward where the Great Lawn, the center of the Block, used to be. Or at least, where I think it used to be. It’s hard to gauge where I am, since all the landmarks are gone. The Great Lawn is higher than the rest of the park, so it has never been underwater.
When I was here with Hunter for the carnival, there were rows of booths where mystics were selling their wares, and the air was scented with fresh muffins and cookies and breads. There was light everywhere—from the fireworks, from the jovial displays of power by the mystics themselves—and everything around me seemed to glow. I glowed, too, happy to be with Hunter, to hear about his powers and the mystic cause. And to beat him at the ring toss, of cours
e.
But there are no more mystics here, and certainly no more carnivals. Even the most recent time I was here, with Davida, for Violet Brooks’s political rally, seems like a memory from someone else’s life.
Now Davida is no longer alive, and neither is the Block: gone are the patches of yellow and brown grass, replaced with mucky brown goop. Gone are the lily pads in tiny pools of water and the ivy-covered iron bridge. The only things left are tiny clusters of rock. And there, past the rock, is Belvedere Castle.
I remember the first time I saw it. It’s falling apart, Hunter told me. Crazy unsafe. But sometimes I like to come here to sit and think. Probably sounds silly to you.
But it didn’t sound silly to me, certainly not that night, when I was falling in love with him—for the second time, unbeknownst to me. And now, well, I stare up at the maimed castle. The basic gray stone structure is still there, but there are craggy holes where the arched windows used to be, and the walls are uneven. The tower is missing its conical cap.
“I’m surprised it’s still standing,” comes a voice behind me.
Kyle.
I turn around and there’s my brother. The blond hair that was always too light for my dark-haired, olive-skinned family; the green eyes, full of hatred; the pale skin, as though he’s never spent a second in the sun. He would get so red as a child—our maid, Magdalena, used to slather him with sunscreen every morning before school.
“After what we did.” Kyle smiles, as if proud of what my family has done to the Block. Which, I suppose, he is. “No more mystics here,” he says.
I wipe sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “Yeah, you really showed them.”
“So here we are,” Kyle says, blinking the sun out of his eyes. He’s wearing a navy suit and a white dress shirt, open at the neck. A tan satchel is slung over his shoulder, and a white circle the size of my thumb is stuck to his temple. Must be a mystic cooling patch, which explains why he isn’t even sweating. “You look … different,” he says, staring at my cap. I wonder if he suspects that my head is shaved underneath it.
“I am different,” I say as boldly as I can. I motion to the cooling patch on his temple. “It’s funny how you can hate a group of people so much and yet capitalize on them at the same time.”
Kyle shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Aria. I don’t hate mystics.”
“But you’ve—”
“Mystics have their place,” Kyle said. “And we have ours. What I hate is when the equilibrium that our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents have fought so hard to maintain is disturbed. By people like you and your mystic … lover.”
He laughs, and the sound makes me queasy. “Are you still on Stic?” I ask.
Kyle straightens up. “Is that why you agreed to meet with me? To discuss my recreational drug use?”
“I don’t care what you do on your own time, Kyle. You may be my brother by blood, but you’re nothing to me. You sold me out to our parents and nearly got me killed—”
“You betrayed us!” Kyle’s cheeks turn cherry red; a vein in his forehead begins to throb. “You have no idea what you’ve done to our family.” He takes a few deep breaths. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes, Aria, but that can be forgiven. You were blinded by love—or however you want to label your time with that … mystic. Come home. We can spin it to the media that you were sucked in by the rebels, brainwashed, that you didn’t know what you were doing—”
“But that’s not true!”
Kyle sighs. “Who cares if it’s true? It only matters whether people believe it. And besides, you know a whole lot less than you think you do.”
Why does Kyle have to put me down? “I know that the mystic population wasn’t responsible for the Mother’s Day Conflagration,” I say, “which is the main reason we started draining them in the first place. That was all Elissa Genevieve, who’s still working with you and … our father.” I’m so angry that I can’t even bring myself to say Dad.
Kyle nods. “Elissa Genevieve is a mystic who understands that her own kind are a bunch of mongrels, and she’s risen above them to secure a place within the Rose entourage.”
“Elissa Genevieve is a traitor and a liar,” I say. “She’s with you now, but she’d betray you in a second if she thought someone else would offer her more.” I clench my fists in frustration.
“Whatever you say, Aria. Are you coming with me or not?”
“The peace summit,” I say. “You’re going to follow through with it, right?”
“I said I would,” he tells me. “And I called Thomas and your boyfriend. We’re meeting two days from now—Thursday at noon, on the top deck of the Empire State Building. One bodyguard each. A lot of good it will do, though.”
“Maybe it could do some good if you’re open to it,” I suggest. “If the city can get back to how things were before the drainings, before the Conflagration, maybe everything can work out.”
Kyle tilts his head, curious. “And how will everything ‘work out’?”
Think, Aria. Think.
“Maybe the mystics can agree to use their powers to help rebuild the city if they’re promised equal rights. Everyone can live in the Aeries.… There’ll be no more Depths, and—”
“No more Depths?” Kyle’s eyes are nearly popping out of his head. “Aria, are you insane?”
“No.”
“Where would all the people go? Where would they live? And you’d expect people in the Aeries to suddenly accept the fact that disgusting, smelly poor people and mystics are living in the same buildings as them? Eating at the same restaurants?” Kyle shakes a finger at me. “That would never work. Never in a million years.”
“Then help us figure out something else!” I say, growing more aggravated by the second. “At least I’m offering suggestions. What are you doing—besides killing people and wearing suits that make you look like you’re seventy-five years old?”
“I resent that,” Kyle says. He brushes off his sleeves. “This was handmade for me in Italy.” Behind him, in the mud, I think I see something moving. Turk?
Kyle adjusts the strap on his satchel. “You can still come home, Aria. You know how Dad gets when he’s upset. He just wants you safe.”
“I can’t believe you’re still defending him,” I say. I think back to when my father called me into his office and told me that Manhattan was my city. That he and I were alike. “He thinks you’re weak.”
Kyle goes silent, and I can tell I’ve struck a nerve.
“Why do you even care if I come home?” I ask.
Kyle’s left eye begins to twitch nervously. Suddenly, I understand what this meeting is really about.
“You don’t care,” I say. “You’re just trying to get me to come home to save face with Dad. He must be pissed about the triage center bust, that you weren’t able to get me. Did he threaten you?”
“Fine,” he says, holding up his hands. “Don’t come home. Stay with that mystic you’re so in love with.”
“His name is Hunter,” I say. “Hunter Brooks.”
“I know what his name is. I’m just choosing not to say it.” Kyle sweeps his hand through his hair, then smiles. “You know there’s a tracker on you, right?”
I find this comment incredibly strange. How could Kyle possibly know that I suspected the same thing—especially when Thomas was the one who tipped me off initially? “Incorrect,” I say. “Hunter already checked for one.”
“Tsk, tsk, Aria Rose,” Kyle says. “Who do you think put it on you?”
“What are you saying, Kyle?”
“I’m saying”—he leans forward—“that you shouldn’t trust that boyfriend of yours.”
“And why not?”
Kyle shrugs. “I can’t give you all the answers. If you don’t want to do the right thing and come home with me, then you’ll have to figure that out yourself.” He opens his satchel and removes a small box. “Here.”
He hands me the box, which is only slightly l
arger than my hand. The wood is stained a glossy black, the edges trimmed with gold leaf. Spread across the top, seven female figures are pressing palm to palm, each one outlined in a different color of the rainbow. I recognize them as smaller versions of the figures I saw back at the compound and in the mystic hideout. The Sisters.
“What is this?” I ask.
I try to open the box, but there are no hinges. The colors are so bright they nearly burst off the top. The blue is like a thousand crushed blueberries, the yellow like a pure drop of sun. I watch as a deep red swirls into an exotic orange on the far right of the box. Mystic dye.
“It was Davida’s,” Kyle says.
It can’t be. “I’ve never seen this before.”
He notes my confusion. “She kept it hidden. We found it underneath one of the floorboards in her bedroom. There was a note on it that said it was for you. Apparently, it has something to do with being a mystic and their heebie-jeebie religion. Dad was going to burn it, but I saved it. I know how much you liked her.” He sighs. “Come home with me, Aria. This is the last time I’m going to ask.”
I stare again at the female silhouettes. I still don’t know what they stand for, and I’ve never seen seven of them linked together. I can’t wait to ask Hunter what it means.
“No,” I say. There’s a stillness to Kyle’s face that makes him impossible to read. Is he upset? Frustrated? Relieved? “But thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” I hold up the box. “And for not turning this meeting into an ambush.”
“Oh, it’s an ambush,” Kyle says. He raises his fingers to his lips and emits a piercing whistle. “You thanked me too quickly.”
“What?” I say.
And then all hell breaks loose.
Swiftly, a man rises from the mud behind Kyle. He must have been here this whole time. A towering figure, he shoots up from the ground with such force that mud splatters everywhere, covering my legs and part of Kyle’s chest.
“Ugh!” Kyle says, wiping his lapel. “My suit!”
Now dozens of men rise from their camouflaged positions, strings of hulking soldiers bursting from the earth. Even though they’re covered with muck, I can see that they’re all holding guns.
Toxic Heart Page 13