He nodded, as if this made all the sense in the world.
A shudder went through my frame. The cold was seeping in.
I turned from him, and saw more of them. More ghosts, spirits freshly torn from their bodies and set wandering loose on the snowy ground.
“I think I’m here to help you,” I said.
Psychopomps were needed here, so the river had brought us.
“You’re an angel, then?” the ghost asked.
I had to laugh at this. In my shredded shirt, I probably looked more like a madwoman than a heavenly creature. I was certainly no valkyrie.
“I’m just a girl.”
“But the prophet said there would be angels to greet us. Angels of death.”
A chill went over me as I realized the obvious. The river had brought me to the mountains of Colorado, to the home of a certain cult with an Armageddon mentality, an isolationist dogma, and a charismatic leader. A place that had been surrounded for the last week by two hundred federal agents—a massacre just waiting to happen.
But right now I didn’t care much about souls who needed guidance to the underworld. What I cared about was keeping Yama alive. And, strangely, the dead cultist had just given me a glimmer of hope.
There were FBI agents here. They had to have doctors with them.
“I’ll be back soon,” I said, pulling myself gently from Yama’s side.
He opened his eyes, nodding weakly, but awake again. The overworld and my crude bandages had helped a little, at least.
The ghost was kneeling now, his hands clasped together in prayer. I ignored him and stepped from the shadows into the searchlights sweeping the compound. My arms were wrapped around me in the cold, but I pried them loose and forced myself to hold my hands in the air. Freezing cold was better than bullets.
“Hello!” I called into the darkness. “I need help!”
A moment later a dozen flashlights pointed at me from the trees, like the glimmering eyes of beasts.
An amplified voice called back at me, “Down on the ground!”
I hesitated, staring at the snow and wishing I was wearing more than a shredded shirt. But the voice had sounded impatient, and I dropped to my knees, then face-first into the snow.
“My friend needs help!” I shouted. “He’s bleeding!”
They didn’t answer, and it seemed to take forever before boots thudded across the hard ground, surrounding me. Rough hands pulled my arms behind me, and the click of handcuffs reached my ears. By then I was too cold to feel the metal against my skin.
They pulled me up into a sitting position, and finally I could see them. Six men and one woman in bulky vests with FBI in bright yellow across them.
“My friend’s bleeding, unconscious, unarmed,” I said through chattering teeth, and jerked my head toward the cabins. “Please help him!”
“Check it out,” someone ordered, and three of the men headed toward Yama.
I looked up at the man who’d spoken, trying to utter some kind of thanks, but the words died in my mouth. Behind him was another agent. He stood among his fellows, looking a little confused. His raid jacket was full of bloody holes, and he cast no shadows in the floodlights angling through the trees.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
He looked at me, a little surprised that I wasn’t ignoring him like all the others.
I wanted to tell him it was okay, that there was more beyond the veil of death. That some of the underworld was sane, well tended, even civilized. But the cold had frozen my tongue by then, and a moment later someone shoved me back down into the snow.
CHAPTER 39
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, PATEL. YOU’RE ten minutes late!”
Darcy sighed. “Nice to see you too, Nisha.”
“This place is terrifying.”
Darcy looked around, shrugged. Penn Station was a bit cold, and crowded, and the marble floors were streaked with rain tracked in from the streets outside, but it wasn’t scary at all.
“Is it the sandwich shop that frightens you, little sister? Or the Lox Factory?”
“It’s everything.” Nisha presented her duffel bag to Darcy, and took the handle of her rolling suitcase for herself. “The general ambiance distresses me.”
Darcy smiled. She’d never thought of herself as tougher than Nisha, or tougher than anyone, really. But it was true that almost ten months of living in New York had left her with no dread of shabbiness, underground tunnels, or crowds.
Then the weight of the duffel bag hit. “What the hell, Nisha? You’re only staying a week. What did you bring, bricks?”
“Books. You know, in case your fancy friends want to sign them. At my cocktail party.”
“What cocktail party?”
“Carla and Sagan got a party.”
Darcy let out a groan. “That was my housewarming. And I haven’t been doing parties lately.”
“All the more reason to have one now.” Nisha headed off through the crowd.
Darcy followed, wondering why the heavy books weren’t in the rolling suitcase, and why she’d been stuck carrying the duffel bag, and how Nisha had, annoyingly, chosen the exact right direction out of the warren that was Penn Station.
* * *
Half an hour later they were in apartment 4E’s guest room. Nisha was unpacking her suitcase, displacing Darcy’s dress jackets from their hangars in favor of a wide selection of gothic attire.
“That looks like a lot of clothes for seven days.”
Nisha paused. “Are you having second thoughts about my visit, Patel?”
“Of course not,” Darcy said, though her conversation with their mother the night before had been somewhat daunting. Phrases like “in loco parentis” had been thrown around. Phrases like “cocktail party” had not.
“You don’t look very happy, is all.”
Darcy shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“I mean, you’ve got an apartment in New York, your first novel coming out in five months, and me visiting for a whole week! You should be as happy as a unicorn fully jacked on Zoloft, all rainbows and bliss. But you look like someone just drowned your bag of kittens.”
“Way to mix your metaphors,” Darcy said.
“Those were similes. I thought you writers knew that stuff.”
Darcy stared at her little sister, wondering why she was being so clueless. Nisha knew everything that had happened a month before, thanks to dozens of texts and emails and three long phone conversations. It seemed cruel of her to pretend ignorance, unless she simply needed to hear it in person.
Maybe the subject was unavoidable. These days, the breakup was measured not in the weeks since it had happened, but in the minutes after awakening it took Darcy to remember it was real.
“I miss Imogen.”
Nisha nodded sagely. “You still haven’t seen her?”
“Only by accident, last week on Canal Street. We talked and were polite and everything. She hugged me at the end.”
“Hugs are good, right?”
“Hugs are crap! Hugs are zero.”
“Yeah, hugs are the worst,” Nisha dutifully agreed. “But I thought you guys were still emailing each other.”
“We are. But not the screeds we should be writing. Just these stupid little notes that say nothing—hugs in email form. Imogen says she has to focus until she’s done with her book. We used to work together, but I’m no longer conducive to work. I am drama. I am turmoil.”
Nisha listened to this quietly, then sat down cross-legged on the floor, her position of wisdom. “But she hasn’t written a savage and lengthy essay about your faults, has she?”
“No. She wouldn’t do that.” Darcy had always been certain of this.
“For that matter, she hasn’t even officially dumped you.”
“She says it’s just until she finishes her book. She’s trying to be nice, I think, but it’s just taking longer and hurting more.” Darcy flopped back on the guest futon and stared at the ceiling. “Like jumping off the Chrysler
Building and hitting all the flagpoles and gargoyles on the way down.”
“Why would she do that, Patel?”
“Because I’m too young for a proper dumping! Imogen thinks I’m too young for anything.”
“Yeah, that is kind of a general problem with you.”
Darcy raised her head to glare at Nisha. “You are younger than me, you know.”
“Not for my age.”
“Crap,” Darcy groaned, her head falling back onto the futon again. “You’re probably right. I fucked up everything. I snooped on her all the time, and I didn’t tell her when I was upset, or listen when she needed space.”
“So you told me in great detail.” Nisha drummed her fingers on the floor a moment, then asked, “But snooping isn’t a dumpable offense, is it?”
“I guess the really bad thing was not trusting her.”
“So trust her now.”
Darcy sat up. All these questions were making her restless. “How do I trust someone who barely talks to me? What’s there to trust?”
“The one thing she’s telling you: That this isn’t the end. That she just needs space to write.”
“But that’s what we did together,” Darcy said. “That’s who we were. If we can’t write together anymore, what’s the fucking point?”
Nisha was silent for a long moment, as if she was really considering this. Her supercilious tone had shifted into something else. Something more mature.
“Did Imogen say she never wants to write with you again?”
“I guess not. She claims it’s just this book making her crazy. But it was me making her crazy, Nisha.”
“Not if you trust her, Patel. Don’t give up just because she can’t be with you right now.”
Darcy didn’t answer. She wasn’t giving up. Not in a hundred years.
But she was ranting in despair at her little sister, who’d only walked through the door ten minutes ago, which was pathetic. The weird thing was how calm and collected Nisha looked, as if events were unfolding exactly as she’d planned.
“Is this how you wanted to spend your time in New York?” Darcy asked with a sigh. “Listening to my misery?”
“I’m here to learn. And what you have taught me is to avoid love as long as possible.” Nisha rolled her empty suitcase into the corner. “Is there food anywhere?”
Darcy managed a smile. “This is Manhattan. There is food.”
* * *
Their first stop was the ramen restaurant with the giant cat statue. It was one of the places where Darcy had lurked back in the lonely days just after the breakup, hoping to bump into Imogen. Things had never worked out that way, but Darcy still felt a little trickle of hope whenever the bell above the front door jangled.
Also the noodles were exceptional.
“I named a book here,” Darcy said after they’d ordered.
Nisha looked up. “Untitled Patel finally has a name?”
“Alas, it remains untitled,” Darcy said. It remained mostly unwritten as well, except for a few rough ideas. “But this is where I came up with Kleptomancer. That’s the name of Imogen’s second book. Pretty good, huh?”
“Dude.” Nisha shook her head. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure. Whatever. How about my budget? That should be fun.”
“Indeed.” Nisha produced her phone and flicked at the screen, always happy on the familiar ground of numbers. “I have all the details right here.”
What followed was unpleasant.
It wasn’t just the prodigious rent of apartment 4E, nor the many one-way plane fares purchased while tagging along on Imogen’s tour. There were also the clothes that Darcy had bought for the tour, and various furnishings acquired over the last nine months, and her curious inability to keep her daily expenses under seventeen dollars. (Food was so delicious. Beer so necessary.)
But the worst thing, it turned out, was the fact that she hadn’t kept any of her receipts for business expenses, and her first-ever income tax return was due in a week, along with a titanic check. According to Nisha’s calculations, Darcy was almost an entire year ahead of schedule when it came to running out of money.
“Why so surprised, Patel?” Nisha said when her presentation was done. “Sooner or later there had to be a reckoning.”
“Yeah, but it’s all reckonings these days.” Darcy snapped her chopsticks apart, and splinters flew in all directions. “I think my whole life might be reckonings from here on out. I just got my lease renewal form. My rent’s going up, starting in July. Ten percent.”
“Whoa.” Nisha made notes on her phone. “I told you to sign a two-year lease, Patel.”
“I think Lalana would’ve noticed.”
“What are you going to do?”
Darcy shrugged. “I still love my apartment. But it isn’t like it was.”
“So find a cheaper place. Or come home!”
“Nisha, I love you guys, but I have a sequel to write. I’m not going to get anything done sitting in my old bedroom.”
“You wrote Afterworlds in your bedroom. In thirty days!”
“That was easy—I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Nisha shook her head. “Patel, you’ve got almost three months left on your lease, and you have no love life anymore. So why not get writing for real and see what you can do? I mean, after you’re done entertaining me this week.”
“Maybe.” It seemed like a decent idea.
“You know,” Nisha said. “The elder Patels still think you’re going to Oberlin in September.”
“That’s unlikely. The application deadline was three weeks ago.”
Nisha blinked. “I thought you had a place saved?”
“Yeah, I missed that deadline too. Like, almost a year ago.”
“You’re pathetic, Patel.” Nisha laughed a little. “Not that it matters. Your financial aid is a smoking crater anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t just look at this year’s income, Patel. They look at this year’s tax return. Which shows the money you made last year.”
Darcy swallowed. “You mean, the money that’s mostly gone?”
“You’ve got more payments coming in for publication, and for Untitled Patel, but those will be an issue if you apply to Oberlin next year. As your accountant, I advise you to stick with the plan of being a writer for three years.”
“Um, could you have mentioned this earlier? Like, back at the start, before I tossed away my college career?”
“You said that’s what you wanted! And I didn’t know you were going to blow your advance on rent and noodles.”
Darcy slumped down into her seat. She was doomed.
The food came then, but Darcy found no solace staring into the murky and expensive broth of her ramen. First Imogen’s phone and autocorrect had conspired to destroy her life, and now her landlord, the IRS, and her future college were joining in. It was only a matter of time before the entire universe was arrayed against Darcy. Even her chopsticks were misbehaving, letting the udon noodles slip away, flicking broth into her face as they slapped the surface.
But the ramen’s taste was exquisite, and soon the two sisters were talking about less depressing things: Nisha’s classes at school, her plans for college, the foibles of the elder Patels. Darcy filled her in on all the gossip from Carla and Sagan, whom she’d talked to almost daily since the breakup, one of the small silver linings of the last month.
Darcy wondered if she should look for more silver linings. Nisha was right about her not having a life. Perhaps writing was something she could still do alone.
“I just wish another idea would hit me,” Darcy said. “Something big and weird, like when I found out about Mom’s friend getting murdered.”
Nisha looked up from her empty bowl. “Oh right, about that. You know how she didn’t say anything when she read your novel?”
“Yeah? Did she talk to you about it?”
“Not a word, ever. So I did some research, and i
t turns out that was a different Annika Sutaria.”
Darcy stared at her sister. “What?”
“It turns out that India is, like, really populated. As a result, many people share the same name. The Annika who knew that murdered girl is a month older than Mom. You suck at research.”
“Fuck,” Darcy said. The little ghost had never been hers at all.
Or maybe this meant that Mindy really was hers, because she’d invented her from a case of mistaken identity. Or perhaps it meant she’d used a tragedy she had even less right to steal. And what if by now that other Annika was also dead, and Darcy was the last person to remember Rajani at all, the last keeper of her ghost?
Darcy knew only one thing for certain: a ghost with a mistaken identity wasn’t a bad idea for Untitled Patel.
“Can we go to a bookstore?” Nisha asked.
Darcy’s mind clicked back into the present. “You know, I’ve sort of been avoiding the publishing thing.”
“You’ve got a book to write, Patel. How can you avoid the publishing thing?”
“That’s the writing thing,” Darcy sighed. “The publishing thing is book blogs, YA Twitter feeds, mock Printz Awards, reviews. I’ve been offline for weeks.” Everything reminded her of Imogen.
“Yeah, well, bookstores are the reading thing. Come on.”
* * *
Book of Ages was one of the last big indie bookstores in Manhattan, more than half its floor space dedicated to young people’s lit. The walls were covered with vintage children’s art, the shelves thick with YA and middle-grade. There was a graphic novel section the size of half a tennis court, centered around a red-and-white-checked Tintin rocket as tall as Darcy. A visit to the Ages had been a highlight of every family trip to New York when the two sisters were little.
“So are you, like, a rock star here now?” Nisha asked as they passed through the doors.
“I am a rock star nowhere,” Darcy said. “I don’t even have a book out yet, remember?”
“A hundred and sixty-eight days and counting! So they won’t recognize you? Will there be no discount?”
Darcy glanced at the woman behind the counter. She wasn’t one of the handful of Ages employees that Darcy had met. “Sorry. Full price.”
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