City of Villains Page 5

  I can’t help but smile a little.

  “Shouldn’t you show me your badge, then? Let me know this is official questioning?”

  I don’t want to admit that all I have is a temporary badge and a can of pepper spray.

  “This is wonderful, Mary,” he says. “I couldn’t be more excited for you. And you’ll find her, I have no doubt.” He leans on his elbows. “That girl has more enemies than just about anyone in the Scar I can think of. You have plenty of people to talk to, that’s for sure. I wish I could help you, be part of your first victory, but alas, I am but a poor little bartender.”

  I had been half hoping I would walk in here and Dally would solve the case for me and I’d be on my way to glory and fame walking out the door tonight, but I don’t let my disappointment show. “Was she with anyone?”

  “From what I can remember she left here alone. She’s always alone, you know.”

  “But I’ve seen her dancing.”

  “Yeah, she dances alone, always alone. It’s sad, really. Dangerous way to live, if you ask me. Safety in numbers and all that.”

  I let everything Dally said sink in. Somewhere between here and her father’s apartment, something happened that disappeared Mally right off the streets. I try to think through it. She lives in the same building as Ursula, about six blocks from here, and there are four blocks of busy businesses and bright lights before it turns into the warehouse district and things get a lot darker. Maybe someone snuck up on her there.

  One thing’s for sure. Ursula isn’t walking home alone tonight.

  Like she heard me, Urs comes running out of the crowd, sweaty and smiling, her blond hair sticky against her cheeks, bosoms practically bursting from the front of her tight black dress. “Finally!” She pulls on my arm. “Come on, let’s go dance!”

  “Don’t dance. Stay here with me.”

  Ursula rolls her eyes but smiles and takes my drink. Arms wrap around my waist. I lean back against James and it’s like my whole body relaxes for the first time since school. He squeezes me in closer and I spin around on my stool and kiss him.

  James and I met after my family died, when I moved onto my block to live with Gia. His father was in prison and his mother had moved to Michigan to get away from everything. She had promised to come back for James, and for a few years we lived in a state of terror, imagining her returning to steal him away. He wanted to see her. He may have even wanted to live with her. But James is a part of the Scar and the Scar is part of him, and the idea of living outside of it was far worse than that of living without his mother. She did finally come back once to visit, but she and James didn’t have much to say to each other. By then he had been living with his aunt Della for years.

  And then, one day when we were thirteen, while we were staring up at the clear blue sky from the fire escape at my apartment, he said, “I don’t think you’re just my friend.”

  I had been contemplating the way the clouds in the Scar change shapes differently than in other places, how when I thought a cloud looked like an elephant, it began marching across the sky, trunk held in a high salute. Clouds hadn’t done that when I’d gone to Midcity to pay taxes with Gia. I turned to him questioningly. “You don’t think we’re friends?”

  This was an impossibility. We did everything together. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten dinner without James. I was either at his house or the Layer Cake, or we were at my apartment.

  “I didn’t say that. I said I don’t think you’re just my friend. I said”—he rolled onto his side, rested his head into a hand and stroked my cheek like it was something precious—“that you’re going to be my everything. For this lifetime, it’s going to be me and you against the world.”

  What I remember most after that is that the clouds overhead blossomed into flowers with heart-shaped petals. I also remember feeling like something was being repaired, something shredded was stitching itself back together, ragged but no longer open to the world. And then I remember the terror that followed knowing that now I had something I didn’t ever want to lose. Even then I had lived long enough to know nothing is really safe.

  “You guys are nauseating,” Ursula says now. She bounces on her heels to the beat of the music and sends out half a dozen chats, then snaps a picture of herself smiling around a slice of lime. “Truly.” She pulls the lime from her mouth with a suctioned slurp. “Get in a fight once in a while.”

  “Why would we do that?” James says.

  “James the Loyal,” Ursula says, adjusting her cleavage and pulling at her skirt. “James the Magnanimous. Good thing you’ve got some mischief in there. Otherwise you’d be too boring to hang out with.”

  “Aw, Urs. It’s nice to know I have your vote of confidence. Makes me feel so much better about my life.”

  Dally slides a couple of raven wings, a mix of cola and grenadine, their way, and James hands over some of the money he just took off those other guys playing pool. I hold on to his sleeve, one finger inside the cuff, like I’ve been doing since we started dating. He slides himself behind me so we’re both facing Ursula.

  “So what happened today in the great grand land of the peacekeepers?” Ursula says.

  “Well, actually, something did happen.”

  “Tell! Tell!”

  “I got a case.”

  “What?” James pulls back so he can see me.

  “Yeah.” I don’t know why I’m suddenly shy about it. “It’s Mally Saint. She disappeared.”

  “Oh, she’s pushing daisies for sure,” Ursula says without missing a beat. “Sort of sad. I was beginning to think we might be friends someday.”

  “Urs!”

  “Well, she’s been just awful to everyone. There are people who would like to see me go down, too. But I give them reasons not to try to retaliate in any way. A girl’s got to protect herself, and I don’t think Mally has those kinds of smarts. She has no self-restraint.”

  “Yeah, well, the point is she vanished and hopefully is not pushing daisies. And if she’s not, I’m going to find her. You shouldn’t talk about her like that.”

  “Oh, come on,” Ursula says, “why do you care?”

  “I don’t know…because she’s a person?” Even to them I can’t admit the truth. I want Mally to come home alive and well to satisfy my own ambitions.

  “Your first real case,” James says. “You’re going to do great. You’re going to find her.”

  “We’ll help!” Ursula says.

  “We’ll help if you want us to,” James says, giving her a look.

  “Yeah, I’m hoping you guys will just tell me if you hear anything on the streets, since, you know…” I say.

  “People won’t talk to you because they think you’re betraying the Scar?” Urs says, as if they might be right.

  This is the second time this has been mentioned tonight. I got a little bit of a hard time when I first got the internship, but it seems like that’s mostly burned off. And yet, maybe it hasn’t. I can’t think of anything to do to change anyone’s mind other than proving to them my goal in working for the government is to help fix it, to fix the Scar and return it to its former glory.

  James says, “You find Mally and bring her back, people will start to trust you’re on our side. Even though no one likes her, she’s still one of us.”

  “Oh, man, people suck,” Ursula says, raising her glass. “But not you guys!”

  “But not you!” James and I agree, and we clink our glasses together.

  “What do you think?” she says. “Want to go play some croquet?”

  “Yes.” I slip off my stool. “Gotta keep my name on top of the list.”

  “You’re always on top of my list,” James says.

  “Actual vomit in my mouth,” Ursula says, pulling at the top of her dress, hoops swaying in her earlobes. “I don’t know why I hang out with you.”

  They laugh and keep insulting each other, but I can’t keep the feeling I have at bay: that a storm has been brewing under our
feet, one I can’t even see from here, and that this is the last moment we will all have together before it reveals itself to us. I want to tell them. I want to hold all of us in this moment, safe and sound. I want to put all of us in an impenetrable bubble and float us away from here. But I can’t because magic is dead and wishes don’t come true anymore.

  So I sling my arms around my boyfriend and my best friend and we play croquet in the dark and then we dance hard enough to make the roof come down, because there is nothing else to be done.

  NO MATTER HOW MUCH PEOPLE WANT TO DENY that magic is or ever was, Legacies know Monarch isn’t like other places. Traces, like tremors, are all around us, reminding us that we don’t know everything and that some things can’t be explained. There’s the weather, the clouds, Miracle Lake, and the black hearts resting like seeds waiting to be fed so they can blossom. People have Traces of magical abilities that are supposed to have been dead for eleven years now, like the way James knows if I’m in a room or if I’m sad or in danger, or the way my dreams sometimes feel like they’re telling me something. And then there’s also this inexplicable place, where we’ve always come to hide. It’s the best of anywhere, my favorite bread-crumb trail of fairy dust in all of the Scar.

  The Ever Garden.

  They say the reason the Ever Garden remained is that so much good happened here and so many wishes came true that even after the Great Death it stayed as it had once been. The park spans an entire block right in the middle of the Scar, and is covered from stem to stern in luscious flowers, trees, and bushes that can’t be found anywhere else. Humans only have three color cones and can only see dimly compared to butterflies and hummingbirds, but when you set foot in the Ever Garden it feels like the veil has been lifted from your eyes and suddenly you can see everything as it really is. Colors here can only be perceived within its gilded gates. Lilacs shimmer with opalescence. Dahlias drip from porticos in the most exotic persimmon and dragonfruit colors, glittering and diamondlike. Black roses, shiny as oil slicks, blast rainbows from one to the other. A brook runs through its center, crystalline silvery water with votive lotuses floating on top.

  But the best part of the Ever Garden is that its infinite nooks and crannies bend to hide its visitors, so if you cross the threshold into the Ever Garden, you will always be alone with the people you came with. There will always be a perfect patch of green grass to lie on for a picnic or to watch the stars overhead. Nothing bad has ever happened in the garden. If anyone even tries, the garden comes alive and ejects the offender. That includes anyone stupid enough to try to prune its branches or change its landscape. Once someone tried to sell hot dogs from a cart and was hurled out by a redwood. It is the one place in the Scar and maybe in the world where nothing bad can happen and nothing is allowed to change.

  So this is where James and I come sometimes to be quiet and alone. Unlike the rest of Monarch, this place is slow and safe.

  We duck behind a patch of marigolds, and two weeping willows drape their branches around us. We settle onto the grass, the earth warm as a blanket beneath us.

  “James?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think Mally is dead?”

  “You really know how to make a date sexy and special and not at all homicidal,” he says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s important. You might save someone.”

  “Not if she’s already in a dumpster somewhere.”

  “No.” He settles onto his back and pulls me in close, so his heartbeat taps steadily against my ear. “I don’t think so.”

  I’m relieved to hear it. Even though it’s only his intuition, his is extra-good. It’s what makes him near untouchable. He knows when someone is betraying him and he knows when someone is loyal. He also knows when someone is a lost cause.

  “I don’t think she’s dead, either,” I say. “But I’ve been thinking she might have just left town. Her life is a mess. She is angry, shunned, and spiteful. She has nothing but her father’s money and her bird. Maybe she decided to leave it all behind and went to reinvent herself somewhere where she’s not completely despised.”

  James seems to think. “No. Mally would never leave that bird. Never. She might leave her father and his money, she might even leave the Scar, but she wouldn’t leave Hellion behind.”

  “How do you know?” I prop myself onto my elbow and stroke his hair back from his brow.

  “Because she loves him and he loves her, and she got him right after her mother died, and that’s how people work, especially here. We’re tied to arbitrary people and things we’ve been assigned to by fate. That bird is her familiar and she wouldn’t go anywhere without him by choice.”

  “Which means…”

  “Which means she’s probably somewhere against her will or maybe hurt. But I don’t think she’s dead.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because people are like maps. They have lines on them just like the ones in the palms of their hands,” he says. “Those lines tell stories and that’s not how her story is going to end. You only have to look at her to know it. Mally Saint doesn’t just die. That’s not her fate. Mally Saint goes out in a blaze of rage.” He takes my hand from where it was resting on his chest and holds it up so it’s under the light of two glowing bushes, examining it.

  “Why are you reading my palm? You already know my lines.”

  “Just making sure they haven’t changed.”

  “And how do they look?”

  “The same.”

  “And how does our story end?”

  He hesitates, his face darkening for a moment before he casts his doubt aside and grins.

  “Happily ever after, of course.”

  He’s not exactly lying. I’m sure he wants a happy ending for us both, but things are so jagged and unpredictable in the Scar, he can’t really believe everything will be peaches and cream from here on out. That’s not the way it works. Not for anyone.

  He presses his thumb into the center of my palm and I close my eyelids and let everything drift away: Mally, Hellion, the chief, Bella, Gia, all my worries, the infighting in Monarch, everything I can’t explain, and even my family. I fade into the drumbeat of James’s heart, and for several minutes it’s the only thing that matters.

  “I just want…” I say. I can’t find any more words, but the feeling inside is like flint and rock waiting for enough of a spark to ignite in earnest.

  “I know,” he says. “You want. I want, too. And someday we aren’t going to want anymore because we’re going to have. I’m making sure of that, Mary.” He doesn’t move, but after some silence he says, “It feels like something is happening, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like there are forces at work. The Fall, Miracle Lake, you getting the internship, Mally going missing. It’s like we got on a ride no one told us about, and we’re strapped in and going to have to stay aboard to see where we end up.”

  A sprig of mistletoe dangles overhead and covers us in a fine mist of something that smells like holidays and warm fires. It’s true that in the rest of Monarch the holidays are coming, the weather getting colder and harsher. I pull myself up the length of his body and we kiss.

  He runs his fingers up the back of my hand, over my ring finger. “Do you remember our first dance?”

  “Eighth grade.”

  “You came rushing down your apartment stairs to meet me.”

  “Smee went with Ursula. They fought the whole time.”

  “But you,” he says. “You came down in a cloud of gold, your hair even brighter than usual. You had that necklace.”

  “My mother’s pearl choker—”

  “And you were beautiful.” I kiss him until he laughs. “Don’t try to distract me. I’m trying to tell a very important and touching story.”

  “Oh, fine,” I say, “go ahead. But make sure you say more stuff about me being beautiful and perfect. Don’t leave out any of the deta
ils.”

  “Well,” he says, pulling me in close again, “when you came down those stairs I looked at you and I didn’t just see this beautiful girl who was legit going to a dance with me, James Bartholomew. I saw someone who had already stuck by me. You didn’t listen to them when they told you I was trash or bad news or never going to amount to anything. You didn’t listen to anyone, ever.”

  “That’s the night I gave you this.” I kiss his wrist, just above where he still wears the alligator-skin watch.

  “You stole it for me from your grandfather’s box. Gia tried to take it back the next day.”

  “I wouldn’t let her. You deserved something fine. She said the watch was a family heirloom and I said—”

  “You said I was family. You made me feel like somebody,” he says. “You have always been the only one who didn’t see me as someone I’m not. You don’t ask me to be any better than I am and you don’t think I’m any worse. You know everything about me. Someday,” he says, slipping two fingers over my knuckle, “even if it’s a long time from now, I hope you’ll marry me.”

  I’m not shocked at the idea of marrying James. This is something I’ve always assumed. James and I will never find better than each other and we would never want to. Since the day we kissed on that rooftop, I’ve known he would be my partner in life. If that means being a wife to his husband, I would do that. I wouldn’t hesitate. But it isn’t something we talk about. We’re only seventeen, so I know it’s not relevant right now, but it will be, and it feels good to have at least one piece of my life approaching certainty. I’m going to have to fight for everything else.