Mystic City (21 page)

I give a tiny wave. “Hi. Is Bennie here?”

“Stacy, who is it?” a boy’s voice calls out.

Stacy steps aside, and most everyone in the circle gapes at me.

“Aria Rose,” says the boy, who I now see has blond hair parted on the side and bright green eyes. “Come on in!” he says. “What’s up?”

The group is small. I don’t recognize any of them and wonder why they would be on Bennie’s VIP list. They’re a strange mix of preppy and alternative. The boy who knows my name is wearing a pink shirt with a popped collar and a pair of tight slacks. But Stacy is dressed sort of goth, and a few other kids have several piercings and tattoos. These kids have the same sickly look as the boys downstairs, I realize. What is it with everyone?

“I’m just looking for Bennie,” I say. “Do you know where she is?”

The boy takes a swig from a metal flask. “Nah,” he says, grimacing as he swallows. “Haven’t seen her. I’m Frank.” He makes room for me on the rug. “Take a seat.” A white-haired boy next to him is smoking a cigarette; he shoots me a bored stare and moves over, as well.

“We know how you love to
party
,” another guy says, this one with so many piercings in his face that he clicks and rattles when he talks.

Party?
What is he talking about?

The kids laugh. Someone’s aMuseMe is playing a psychedelic rock song I don’t recognize. A bunch of electric-green pills are clumped together on the floor in the middle of the circle, beside a tiny mirror with a pile of fine white powder resting on it.

A red-haired girl with a spiked necklace leans forward and snorts some powder off the mirror. Behind me, a boy and a girl
outside the circle are sitting on a plush leather couch, making out and ignoring the rest of us. The flat-screen TV is on and muted, and a few other kids are chatting at high speed—they sound like actors in a movie that’s locked on fast-forward.

“No, man, it’s not like that at all,” one of the boys is saying, shaking his head. “I love her. I
love
love her. She just doesn’t realize it.”

“That’s because you never call her,” one of the other guys says, taking some of the white powder and rubbing it on his gums.

Frank is breaking up one of the green pills into powder and fixing the powder into thin lines. And then I realize the obvious: everyone here is doing Stic.

“Where did you get that?” I ask Frank. One of the girls stares at me like I’m a cop about to arrest her.

Frank chuckles and continues grinding up the pill with his fingers. “Why you asking? Thomas holding out on you?”

He drops the rest of the pill onto a triangular mirror in front of me. Then he looks at me oddly. “Ooh, pretty,” he says, reaching out and grabbing my locket, which has fallen out of my dress. He closes his fist around the silver heart.

I push his hand away—as soon as we touch, I scream out in pain. His skin burns like when you jam your finger into an outlet. My muscles contract; I flinch, my body going as stiff as a board, my jaw snapping shut. All the kids laugh at me.

It only lasts a moment, though. Then I feel my muscles relaxing back to normal.

Still laughing, Frank is doing a line of Stic. “Powerful shit.” He passes the mirror back to Stacy, who pushes all the powder
together into a fat line before dropping her nose over the mirror and snorting.

Wild, Frank stands up and grabs hold of a metal lamp a few inches away. He raises it in the air, then bends it in half as though it were a thin piece of copper. The lamp is now in two pieces, and he throws them to the floor. Some of the other kids applaud. Snot is running from his nose; I can’t help but think how powerful Stic is.

“What did you mean by ‘Thomas holding out on you’?” I ask.

Frank wipes his nose. “Shouldn’t you be asking
him
that?”

“Are you telling me that Thomas is a Stic—”

My question is cut short by the sound of Stacy dropping to the floor. Her head smacks the wood with a sickening thump, and she starts convulsing.

“Babe?” Frank says cautiously.

Beads of sweat have popped out on Stacy’s forehead; she seems instantly wet and shiny. And her skin is turning a bright, bright red. Something bad is happening.

Stacy doesn’t say a word, just moans. Her limbs twitch, and within seconds her entire body is shaking, her back arching up off the ground while her heels drum against the carpet. She’s having a seizure, foaming at the mouth, spit running down her chin.

Frank is on his feet, shoving the other kids away. “Everybody stand back!”

Everyone seems to be screaming now. The couple who were making out on Bennie’s couch are now holding each other tightly, and a few of the girls have left the room and are shrieking away down the hall. Stacy’s skin gets redder and redder with every second,
so red it’s painful to look at, like the worst sunburn I’ve ever seen, as if she’s being boiled alive.

There is the stink of scorched
something
. I glance around to see if someone’s stray cigarette has accidentally lit the carpet on fire—and then I realize the smoke is coming from Stacy herself. She is literally burning up.

She moves like a fish out of water, flopping a few feet in each direction, rising from the floor and falling back down again. The smoke grows stronger, thicker, and then—

Stacy bursts into flames.

“Shit!” Frank looks around frantically. “Somebody do something! Help!”

Without thinking, I dump my glass onto Stacy’s body.

Then the kid next to me takes
his
drink and dumps the liquid on Stacy. The water briefy quells the flames, but then they rise up again. Another girl pours her drink on Stacy, as well—a cosmo, from the looks of it—but the flames only grow stronger.

I rush over to the cabinet in the corner and rifle through the drawers until I find a pea-green blanket. I unfold it and cover Stacy’s body, smothering the flames as Frank helps hold her down.

“Oh my God,” the girl with the spiked necklace is saying next to me, fanning herself with her hands. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God!”

I back away from the smoke. My eyes are tearing up, and it’s hard to see. Suddenly, a bunch of EMTs burst into the room. I don’t think anyone called them, but no one in the Aeries ever has to: I’m sure there’s a fire alert on the Grid. One of the benefits of so much of the city being monitored electronically.

We all back into the hallway while the EMTs do their work.

They are quietly efficient. While two strap Stacy onto a gurney, a fireman sprays down the room with an extinguisher. When they leave, Frank follows the gurney, and I wonder what will become of Stacy.

“That was wicked awesome,” one of the boys beside me says.

I shove him against the wall. “Shut your stupid mouth,” I say. He’s too shocked to respond.

Downstairs, the party is still raging, the kids completely oblivious to what happened upstairs. I feel so much hatred for these people—my people—that I’m choking on it. Kiki’s not in the kitchen, so I just start opening every door in Bennie’s apartment to find her. At this point, I’ve completely given up on locating my missing fiancé.

First is an office of some sort; a couple is sleeping something off with their heads under a desk. Then I find Bennie’s father’s library, empty save for his collection of books and three guys smoking pot out of a tiny glass bowl. Next is a long exercise room—tons of machines that probably never get used. I open the door, press on the lights.

And there is my fiancé, kissing a girl who is not me.

Thomas is standing in the middle of the room in a pale blue dress shirt that is open at the neck. His belt is unbuckled, and Gretchen Monasty has one of her hands down his pants. The top of her dress is rolled down, exposing her pink lace bra.

Thomas looks over, lipstick on his chin. His dark hair is cow-licked, as if Gretchen has been running her fingers through it for
the past hour. His expression is priceless: a mixture of surprise, fear, embarrassment, and lust.

He pushes Gretchen away so quickly that she almost falls to the ground.

“Aria! It’s not what it looks like,” he calls out, but I’m already gone—out the door, down the hall, running as fast as my heels will carry me.

• XV •

There is only one person I can talk to, one person I
want
to talk to.

Hunter.

The nose of the gondola breaks the waters of the canal, moving swiftly down Broadway, tiny waves rippling on either side of us. It’s sweltering hot, and my head is still spinning from the chaos at Bennie’s party. Remarkable that Thomas managed to take my focus away from a girl who literally ignited before my very eyes—but he did.

I want to feel hurt, to feel devastated beyond belief by his actions—sneaking around with Gretchen Monasty behind my back. How long has this been going on? But really, how can I be mad at Thomas for kissing someone else when I did the exact same thing?

I’m surprised by how easy my escape was, and confused that no one has detected my movement on the Grid so far, but I’m not complaining. I have no destination—I came to the Depths to find Hunter, but I have no way of contacting him. So I’ve instructed the gondolier to take me to the Block, and I’ll figure it out from there.

We sail past high, dark buildings, underneath arched bridges, and past other gondolas and water taxis. I don’t know how long we’ve been motoring along when I notice the spires along the main canal. I’ve never seen the energy within them act like this, pulsing on and off, surging and diminishing to the beat of some invisible music. I glance at the gondolier to see if he notices anything strange, but his eyes are focused ahead, his hand on the steering wheel.

Suddenly, I feel the heart-shaped chunk of metal around my neck heat up against my skin. I yank it out from underneath the fabric of my dress—and it’s
glowing
.

A golden light radiates from it. I cup the locket in my palms and try to open it, but I still can find no seam or latch. I drop it back inside my dress before the gondolier notices; it’s hot against my skin.

What
is
this thing? And why is it reacting like this now? When Frank grabbed it, he had just taken a dose of Stic. I wonder if the overload of energy coursing through his system activated it somehow.

Some spires brighten as we draw near, while others dim almost to darkness, and the locket throbs as if there is a human heart trapped inside. I think back to when I timed the rush of color in the spires from my window. I noticed that the pattern of light—white, yellow, and green—was different in each spire, but it didn’t mean anything to me then. I couldn’t figure out the pattern.

Only now, with the way the locket is reacting …

Follow the lights
, Tabitha told me.

Okay, Tabitha. I’m listening.

“Excuse me?” I call out to the gondolier.

He raises his head.

“Can we stay straight, please?”

He points left. “But the Block’s that way, miss.”

“I know,” I tell him, “but I’ve changed my mind. Straight ahead, please.”

He obeys, and we stay on track. Up ahead, the canal is about to fork: on the right, the spires seem to churn a bright green light that flashes on and off. The locket warms and the beat inside it seems to quicken. To the left, the spires seem to dull, the light fading to a soft white.

“Turn right up here,” I say.

He obeys without another word.

We pass a series of ramshackle buildings with ratty awnings and even rattier docks. A cluster of gondoliers idle with their boats tied to the pilings, waiting for passengers and smoking cigarettes. They watch us and talk among themselves.

Up ahead, a particular spire pulses dramatically, and the locket around my neck begins to purr.

“This way,” I tell the gondolier. “I mean, left, please.”

He turns onto a narrow side canal. Here, the waters brush dangerously close to the doors and windows on the first floors of the buildings, showing just how much the water level has risen over the years. Higher up, mystic sconces line the buildings.

I watch as the sconces blink in ways I cannot understand but am driven to follow. I give a few quick directions—left, then right, then left again—and our waterway opens up onto a larger canal. The gondola picks up speed, and soon we’re moving very
fast. Wind whips my hair every which way, and the locket thrums against my chest.

The spires lead us farther and farther south, until finally the locket calms and a sense of relief washes over me.

“We’re here,” I say, not knowing where here is. I hand the gondolier a few coins from my clutch.

He pulls alongside the nearest dock and I am out and on my way.

I have no idea where I’m going. I walk on cracked pavement and over a tiny bridge—this part of the city is more run-down than near the Block, if that’s even possible. Store windows are boarded up, and there don’t seem to be as many apartment buildings. Gaps mark the skyline—places where buildings must have plummeted and crumbled into nothingness. And then I realize that the water I see up ahead is not a canal, but the ocean.

The misty outlines of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges come into view.

I must be at the very southern tip of the city, in the area that used to be called the South Street Seaport. I look for a spire and spot one a half-block away. Its tip glistens in the night, the light swirling with a silvery-white glow.

As I walk toward it, the locket seems to awaken.

I must be heading in the right direction.

Few people are out on the streets, and no one is dressed like I am—for a party in the Aeries—so I try to blend into the shadows by the closed storefronts along the street. I stride down the sidewalk as though I belong here. I pass a couple walking arm in arm; a few homeless men sleeping on the ground beside overturned hats,
hoping for spare change; a teen not much older than me who whispers “Stic?” as I sweep by.

Then a figure catches my attention.

Someone in a dark hooded cloak is walking a hundred feet ahead, heading swiftly in the same direction I am. The figure glances around mysteriously, passing underneath the post that I noticed swirling only moments before.