City of Villains Read online

  “Go to class, Lucas,” I say, so low it’s like there’s only the two of us in the hallway, and not a hundred Legacy kids and him. He glances around, showing his first sign of nerves. “You’re outnumbered, and if you stay and fight this fight, you’re going to lose.”

  Lucas takes a slow look around, at all the bright colors and eyes, everyone’s stance taut and ready, and he snorts in obvious disdain, letting his eyes linger over my heart birthmark, eyes blazing with hatred. “There’ll be nothing left of the trash bucket you call home by the time you realize your mistake, and that’s going to be a better payoff than fighting Stone…and winning.” Lucas shrugs, like he’s shaking off unpleasant thoughts. “I guess you’re right, though. These are soft Italian leather.” He looks down at Stone, who is glaring up, still clutching at his side. “I don’t want to sully them.” He tips his shoe upward, puts his hands in his pockets, and as though there isn’t an entire mob of Legacy kids staring at his back, he saunters down the hallway.

  When the crowd disperses, Mally Saint, the coldest girl in Monarch, is calmly depositing books from her locker into her very expensive-looking leather bag. Her raven, Hellion, sits on her shoulder watching the kids disappear into their classrooms. He gives a low caw.

  “Shhh, pet,” she says, stroking him. Her black hair is cut into a sharp bob, and her inky clothes look like they were tailor-made from French silk draped to fit her body, which they probably were. Her black dress transitions smoothly to high-cut boots, and her signature epaulets and double-buttoned military-style jacket make her look like she’s ready for war. Her dad is rich. Super rich. Only he’s not from the Narrows uptown. He’s Legacy. And as though everything and everyone is in agreement about Mally being bigger and better than everyone around her, instead of appearing on her wrist, Mally’s black Legacy heart creeps from her chest up the side of her neck like a creature. She closes her locker, not a hint of stress, and looks over at us.

  “Well, hi, gang,” she says.

  “Mally,” James says.

  She saunters by, Hellion watching all of us as she goes. “I would have let the boys fight,” she says to me. “That would have been real entertainment.” She lets a finger trail over my shoulder and I shudder in spite of myself. “That would have been…priceless.”

  When she vanishes around the corner a few seconds later, Ursula says, “You know, the more I think about her, the more I like her.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Smee says. “She’s like some kind of soul sucker. Gives me the willies.”

  “Soul suckers can be useful when they’re on your side.” Ursula gives Smee another thump on the head.

  “You remember when she got in a fight with Flora and them,” Smee says. “I thought they were going to end up skinned.”

  It’s true, that fight was epic. Fauna confided in me one night that Mally bossed them all around so much they decided not to invite her to their annual fairy feast to honor their fairy grandmothers. Mally took that as an act of war. She showed up at the party and stood there with her arms crossed while Hellion flew everywhere, digging his talons into the rose blossom cake, knocking over the vat of ginger beer, pecking into the chestnut-roasted suckling pig. I was at that party, and the scariest part about it was that look on Mally’s face. No one would get near her because of that half smirk, but mostly it was just her cold, dark knowing. She would not be crossed lightly. But even ruining that party wasn’t enough for her. Mally cut Flora’s brake lines, left roadkill on Fauna’s doorstep, bleached Merryweather’s grass. They still don’t speak. Ever. Now Mally is always alone, slipping through the hallways like some high-fashion untouchable ghost.

  Anyway. Just another typical Monday morning at Monarch High. Violence. Territorialism.

  It’s just that lately it feels like things are getting worse.

  THERE ARE THREE MORE FIGHTS BETWEEN Legacies and Narrows over the next two days. I don’t think anyone knows it consciously, but I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that the thirteenth anniversary of the Death of Magic and the two-year anniversary of the Fall is coming on October 31. A huge Acknowledgment Ceremony is planned for those who died in both cataclysms, and tensions are running high between the factions.

  The wind cuts through me as soon as I emerge from the train in Midcity and walk the three blocks to the police station for my after-school internship. My stinging cheeks feel good. I like storms: rain, dark brooding clouds, umbrellas turned inside out by wind. Sometimes the Scar’s relentless good weather gets on my nerves and it feels good to be in Midcity, the huge neighborhood between the Scar and the Narrows. Here, people are paying tickets, going to corporate jobs, shopping, and fighting crime, the way they do in the rest of the country. The weather changes, there’s industry of one kind or another, and the streets aren’t littered with lost souls, skaters, and performers, like they are in the Scar.

  The station is bustling with action. Nestled into one of Monarch’s older buildings just over the border between the Scar and Midcity, the station has high ceilings, beige walls, white crown molding, and even some stained glass. There’s something grand and beautiful about it, but what is delicate and finely crafted is overpowered by the work that’s done within its walls.

  Desks are clustered all throughout the enormous room, and at the far end are glass windows specifically positioned so the person in the office on the other side can keep an eye on everything that’s happening in the station. That person is the chief, and as usual the blinds in her office are drawn. There’s a small snack station with constant coffee brewing and baked goods, and a small pool of desks for the secretaries. That’s where I am, wedged all the way into one corner so no one even remembers I’m there except the secretaries who love to hand off their boring transcribing jobs to me, and a Legacy officer named Bella whose desk is close to mine. I don’t mind when they forget I’m here. It makes things so much easier. The sounds of everyone talking and the constant ringing of phones melt into one unintelligible din. Outside of the main office are smaller rooms for interrogations and private meetings, but the energy in the main space builds on itself, so I always feel that even though it’s frustrating doing paperwork, at least I’m here. One step closer to my destiny.

  Everyone is milling around, conversations are heated and clustered, and they all seem terribly busy. I would like to join in, to find someone to talk to who would tell me what’s going on, let me in on some new and exciting case, but I know they won’t. I already wasted enough days when my internship started, feeling like the five-year-old at the big-kid party, trying to be a part of important conversations and banter, and it didn’t work.

  I scan my badge to clock in, trying not to look as eager as I feel. It’s true this is not what I had originally imagined when I trained with guns and learned how to defuse bombs, how to talk someone off a ledge and negotiate; when I learned how to get through a building safely and check all the places someone might be hiding. I was imagining I would be out on the streets of the Scar, making them safe for everyone, infiltrating spaces most others couldn’t get into because I’m Legacy. I blush now, just thinking about my naivete, because it didn’t stop there. I imagined myself sitting in the chief’s place by eighteen, office filled with Ever roses, a medal of honor in a glass case on the wall.

  No one talks to me or directs me in any way. I’m expected to come in, sit at my desk, do as much as I can, then leave without making a fuss. What I’ve learned since I began this internship is that, although it isn’t at all what I thought it would be, I’m here. I’ve taken one step toward the thing I want. It’s just going to take me a lot longer to get where I want to get than I originally thought.

  I’m not like so many of the detectives and officers milling about in here, though, hands on their guns, thickening at the middle, droopy eyes—beaten.

  And also, there’s another thing I can only sometimes admit to myself. The afternoons I’m here, I’m closer to the chief than I have been since all those years ago when she solved
my family’s murder, when she and Mayor Triton each held one of my hands at the press conference. She strides by with her assistant following behind and a constant entourage of people vying for her attention while I watch her from a distance.

  Someday, she will see me.

  I think.

  Actually, probably not.

  Jeanette, one of the secretaries, comes by and deposits another folder on top of my pile. “I have another Mad Hatter report for you,” she says. Jeanette has two kids at home and I’m pretty sure she feels sorry for me. “You should do this one first. And put it back you know where when you’re done reading.” She taps the folder. “Body parts in boxes. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

  It’s been going on since just before I started here. Body parts showing up all over the Scar, which is of special interest to me because everything that happens in the Scar is interesting to me. So far there’s been a thigh, an arm, a hand with the fingerprints cut from the skin. They all seem to belong to the same person, and they come in these boxes wrapped up like holiday gifts, frozen in dry ice. Studying this case is my afternoon dessert.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  She winks at me and moves on, smoothing out her gray skirt as she goes. “You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she says.

  I can hardly wait for her to be gone before I open the file. I’m faced with pictures so grotesque they should make me throw up, but they don’t. They interest me. This would make even Ursula gasp. It’s on par with something Mally would do on her very worst day. And it’s so compelling. I know I’m just supposed to transcribe reports and then file them, but times like these I wonder if there’s another way for me. A more exciting way. Maybe I could forge one from nothing.

  I breathe deeply, and then when I have it together again and the room has stopped its dizzying kaleidoscope and my mind has stopped thinking all its treacherous thoughts, I carefully set the file aside. I will come back to it when I have time to sink into its contents, and revel.

  BY NEARLY SIX O’CLOCK THE STATION HAS CALMED. The daytime shift has gone home, the nighttime shift is on the street, and patrols are up so there aren’t as many uniformed officers in the building. There’s a lazy intensity in those who are left. Phones ring sporadically, a few officers have interrogations going on inside rooms, and the rest seem to be researching and typing.

  I should be off, home or with James or at Wonderland, but instead I’ve transferred my in-box to the floor next to my desk so I have more room to lay out photos and one of the giant maps of Monarch the detectives keep rolled up in a basket. This one is battered and faded, but it’ll do. I’ve marked it with a pencil everywhere the gift-wrapped body-part boxes have appeared. I examine the pictures of the cards that have come with the packages, the curlicue writing, the distinctive black ink that almost looks like it’s still wet, like it came from a fountain pen.

  With Love,

  Mad Hatter

  What does he want? I take a pencil and draw lines connecting each location and then sit back.

  Interesting…all the locations seem to be in places that are meaning-ful to the Magicalists. Outside the Ever Garden, where flowers bloom all year long, the Lower Monarch Bridge, where the Magic March took place ten years ago, and in front of the Wand Emporium, which got taken down just after the fairy godmother craze, located as rumor would have it over a huge bed of crystals that some say is the source of magic itself. The person doing this has to be from the Scar. But why? Is it some kind of threat to its citizens? Some Amagicalist trying to send a message?

  I hear the sound of throat-clearing and pop out of my cocoon, alarmed. This is technically a confidential file Jeanette shared with me, which she’s done a couple of times to keep me from total boredom and despair. I’m so used to going unnoticed I’m not being as discreet as I should. I cover the map and file protectively, then realize who it is.

  Bella Loyola, a young officer who is also the only other Legacy in the building besides the chief, sits across from me, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised from behind her horn-rimmed glasses. In a vest, white button-down shirt, and plaid trousers, she looks every bit the bookish Goody Two-shoes she is, even though I have to admit she is stylish in the way she does it. And that hair? Dark brown and lush, thrown into a messy ponytail it’s easy to see took her half a morning to get just right.

  She smiles warmly at me, giving me a little reprimanding look. “Confidential?” she mouths, pointing to my desk with one finger, which she then turns into a light wag.

  I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s pointed out things I’m doing wrong before. I think she might be trying to be helpful in a big-sisterly way, but I don’t like feeling that I have to answer to her. She even corrected the way I made the coffee once, gently informing me the detectives don’t like it too strong because they drink it constantly. She’s barely above me in the station hierarchy. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only really one person who can tell me what to do, and it’s not Bella.

  I wave at her like I didn’t understand and then point over her shoulder. Tony, her partner, is approaching from behind her. Our eyes meet for a brief moment before she turns her attention to him.

  “You ready to go get a bite to eat from downstairs?” he says.

  “Oh,” Bella says, “uh, actually I’m working on the report from the Narrows case we covered yesterday. I don’t want to get too behind on all that.” She smiles at him.

  “No no no,” he says, laying a hand over her folder. “We should go. You need to learn to relax. You’re wound up so tight.”

  She pulls the folder from under his elbow. “You go on,” she says.

  “Uh, Officer Loyola,” I say, “can you help me with something?”

  Tony looks over at me. “She’s trying to take a break.”

  “I just need a second.”

  “She’s new. I’m going to help her. Go to dinner, Tony.”

  He stands and stretches, overpowering the space with his weirdly developed shoulders. “Fine,” he says, “but one of these days you’re going to come sit down for a real meal with me.”

  Bella gives him a small smile then comes over to my desk. “What do you need?”

  When Tony’s gone she says, “Thank you,” under her breath, and then she goes back to her desk and stares straight down at her paperwork. I may be wrong, but I think I see tears welling up.

  I go back to my file without saying anything. I know that feeling of frustration and anger at not being able to say something you really want to say. I also know that no one wants to be watched when they’re trying to recover from it.

  I try to focus on the Mad Hatter again, and before I know it, I’m sucked in. I hope the person who’s been chopped up was a really bad person, deserving of this punishment. Because I think bad people should have this end. I think if you hurt someone, you should be hurt.

  I flash on my parents as I saw them that day, and my sister when I accidentally caught sight of the crime scene photos, all that blood. There was no mercy for them and there should be no mercy for Jake Castor, either, the predator who took their lives while I was at school. He said he just wanted to know what it would feel like to take lives. He had been tracking my mother’s comings and goings for days and when she was likely to be home. It was both random and planned. He didn’t know my sister or my dad would be there, both sick and home unexpectedly. He said, when he finally admitted everything, that he panicked when he saw there were three people in the apartment instead of one, but he knew he would be able to overpower them because they were Legacy, and Legacies without magic are sitting ducks.

  And he was right.

  The idea that he’s languishing in some prison instead of in pieces makes me so furious, I have to concentrate to get my cheeks to stop flaming. But I guess that’s better than the alternative—that he’s still out there. I have the chief to thank for that.

  I comfort myself, thinking someday I’ll be the one bringing people to justice, making the Scar a safe place to live again
. I might even be able to unify everyone. I picture myself waving from a float, a ticker-tape parade, throngs of people worshipping me, thanking me for saving the city.

  My reverie is interrupted as someone speaks in a low but certain baritone that carries across the space and sends shivers all through me. “Get your hands off of me,” the voice says, calm in spite of the words themselves. “I will see the chief immediately.”

  “You can’t see her, sir,” a female officer says in a nasal voice, obviously incredulous at his tone. “She isn’t taking visitors today. And there’s a no-pet policy here. Unless it’s one of our K-9 unit, and that is not one of our K-9 unit, you’re going to have to leave and come back without that…”

  The bird on the man’s shoulder, sleek and inky, snaps at the officer’s pointed finger, and she withdraws it and steps back as the man caresses the bird’s head, slipping something from his pocket into its beak. “Hellion,” he says, “we’ll find her.”

  “That’s Mally Saint’s dad,” I murmur, realizing it as I say it. And that’s Mally Saint’s bird. I’ve never seen Hellion anywhere but on Mally’s shoulder, his shining eyes enough to keep everyone at a distance from her. Apparently, he’s an emotional support bird Mally got after her mother died in the Fall. At least that’s what she says. More like a guard bird.

  Bella, who has been taking notes on something, has a pencil dangling from her mouth, and she’s so engrossed in watching what’s happening she tries to speak with the pencil still between her lips. It comes out gibberish. She pulls out the pencil, glances my way, and whispers, “You know Jack Saint?”