Mystic City (29 page)

“Where’s the exit?” he asks.

“Upstairs,” I say. “This is part of our apartment, too. My dad owns all of this.”

We hear pounding footsteps above—it sounds like an army is running through the halls. “Come on,” Hunter says, grabbing my hand. “They’ll have to take the elevator. We can outrun them.”

“This is crazy!”

We hear the ding of the elevator. Hunter kisses me fiercely. “We can stop anytime, Aria. I’ll surrender. Just say when.”

“Never,” I say, squeezing his hand even tighter. “Let’s go.”

In a flare of energy, Hunter pulls me through the wall. For an instant, I feel like I’m being crushed in a vise. Then I pop through and I’m free, in the hallway, stumbling toward another apartment, following Hunter.

His hand is sweaty, but I don’t dare think about letting go.

At the end of the hall, he grabs me again and we drop through the floor as though we’re a building during a plummet party—
bam!

And through another, and another, into a deserted apartment.

We always land lightly on our feet; somehow Hunter is able to control our density.

The wall closest to us is painted a dark green and adorned with gold-framed paintings, while the far wall is all glass, with metallic silver curtains seeming to frame the sky.

“Come on,” Hunter says, pulling me along one of the corridors, opening the front door and looking left, then right.

At the elevator bank, we see the lighted numbers counting down.

“They’re coming to this floor,” I say. “These elevators only run between my family’s floors.”

“Where are the express elevators?” Hunter asks.

I point to the other side—a wall with an enormous painting of Manhattan along its length. “In there. They go straight from the penthouse to the lowest floor.”

“Good idea,” Hunter says. He picks me up and cradles me in his arms.

“Hunter?” I say, watching the lighted numbers over his shoulder. “They’re here.”

The elevator dings.

“Yeehaw!” he says, sticking his head through the wall. As the doors open, he leaps through the wall—and into the express elevator.

We slam against the elevator car’s far wall, startling the lone
passenger inside, one of my father’s men, whose name is Bizwick. He struggles to pull a pistol from his belt.

Hunter punches the man. His head snaps back against the wall, and he falls on the carpet, unconscious.

I give Hunter a peck on the cheek. “Good job.”

We reach the first floor; the elevator dings, and we emerge. No one is expecting us to come out of the express elevator bank. Instead, twenty men with guns have their sights trained on the stairwell.

Before anyone can even shout, Hunter has yanked me through the wall of the building. We’re in some sort of cement-walled access hallway beside the elevators. He leans through the next wall, then grabs me and pulls me with him, and we’re outside on the walkway that encircles my building.

We’re alone.

“Run,” Hunter says, urging me toward the silvery bridge that links this building to the one across the street. He catches my hand and we sprint across the span, turn, and pass the light-rail station.

We stop in the shadows on the other side to catch our breath.

“I can’t keep running,” I say, my breath ragged. My shirt is soaked with sweat, and my eyes are stinging.

From here I can see my father’s men flooding out of the building, hurrying toward us, guns cradled in their arms. Inside the terminal, a cluster of onlookers stare, no doubt wondering what the fuss is all about. There’s no way we’ll be able to catch a car.

“Stop!” a few gunmen shout. “Or we’ll shoot!”

“What now?” I ask. There’s nowhere to go.

“We’re gonna get a little wet,” says Hunter. He leaps onto one of the platform railings, pulls me up with him, and wraps his arms around me.

We jump.

I’ve heard of people who go skydiving. They jump out of a moving plane wearing a harness. They fall a few hundred feet; then a parachute opens up, and they glide through the air until they land safely on the ground.

I’m told it’s fun. But I can’t imagine doing it myself. I’m too terrified.

Falling with Hunter is what I imagine skydiving would be like, only without the parachute.

I scream all the way down.

The wind takes my breath and my scream away, blows my skirt up around my waist and my hair across my face. Hunter’s fingers dig into my shoulders; he’s holding me close, it feels like we’re one person plunging to our death. It happens so quickly I don’t even have time to say
I love you
.

And then, as when he took me through the floors, we seem to grow lighter, less dense, and the air seems to be passing through us.

By the time we reach the canal below, we’re falling about as fast as a balloon that’s lost most of its helium.

We splash down so slowly that we barely make a ripple.

The water is colder than I imagined. And we sink deeper than I expected. It takes me a moment to remember that I don’t know how to swim. Water rushes up my nose, murky liquid fills my mouth, and there’s no air anywhere.

Then Hunter heaves me up, and we break through the surface of the canal. He swims us over to a dock and lifts me as though I’m light as a feather, then climbs up beside me.

“Aria?” Hunter says.

“You said a
little
wet,” I sputter. “I’m … soaked.”

“I lied.” He starts to laugh. “We don’t have much time. Your father and his men are likely taking a POD even as we speak.”

I nod and get to my feet. My throat feels raw, my eyes are blurry, but I’m all right. A few gondoliers are chatting idly at a nearby deli, smoking and paying us no attention.

Hunter eyes one of their empty gondolas, then helps me step in. I don’t question him. He hops in behind me, unties the boat from the dock, and guns the motor, and we speed off. We get a few feet before the gondoliers realize what has happened. “Hey!” one shouts, running over and waving his fists in the air. “Come back here!”

“Sorry!” I yell behind me. “I’ll buy you a new one once this is all over!”

Then I give a little wave and look at Hunter. We burst into laughter—we can’t help it. Dropping through walls, jumping hundreds of stories into the Depths.

“This is insane!” I tell him as I wring out my skirt.

It’s dark now. I don’t see or hear my father, but he and his men are surely close behind.

We travel south, losing ourselves among some of the smaller canals off Broadway, taking as many turns as possible.

Just when I’m sure we’ve lost them, I hear motorboats.

“They’re using police watercraft.” Hunter motions to the gondola’s engine. “This thing can’t compete. They’ll be on us in minutes.”

I point at a dock up ahead. “I’m slowing you down. Get off there and make a run for it. You’ll be faster without me.”

“I already lost you once.” Hunter shakes his head. “I won’t lose you again.”

“What? What are you saying?”

Hunter pulls up to the dock and hitches the gondola’s rope around a post. He lifts me onto the raised sidewalk and clambers up beside me. Then he yanks the locket out of his jeans pocket.

Just then, the gray storm clouds overhead rumble. Lightning fractures the sky, and before I know it, raindrops are falling on my already wet clothing.

Hunter pulls me off the street into a darkened alleyway. The police boats have put on their sirens, which cry into the night, growing louder and closer.

The sirens are nearly deafening by now.

“I recognized it as soon as you showed it to me. It’s a capture locket,” Hunter says. “These things are extremely rare and powerful. Use it carefully, and only when you’re alone.”

“But how?” I search for an explanation in his face—only, I can’t see it. His features are hidden by a mask of darkness. I try to push him into the light, under a streetlamp, but my feet are plastered to the broken cobblestone beneath me.

“I don’t know,” he tells me. “Each one opens differently depending on what’s inside.”

So little time is left.

“Take this.” He folds the locket into my hand. It throbs as if it has a pulse, giving off a faint white glow. “I’m sorry for putting you in danger.”

“I would do it all again,” I tell him. “A thousand times.”

He kisses me, softly at first, and then so fiercely I can hardly breathe. Rain falls everywhere, soaking us, splashing into the canals that twist through the hot, dark city. His chest heaves against mine. The sound of sirens—and gunshots—reverberates between the crumbling, waterlogged buildings.

My family is drawing closer.

“Go, Aria,” he pleads. “Before they get here.”

But footsteps are behind me now. Voices fill my ears. Fingers dig into my arms, tearing me away.

“I love you,” he says gently.

And then they take him. I scream in defiance, but it is too late.

Out of nowhere, a circle of gunmen surrounds us. Someone grabs my arms, twisting them forcefully behind my back. I kick and scream, trying to free myself, but the hold on me is too strong.

“Hunter!” I scream.

“Aria!” he calls back, but then his voice is muffled. A gag has been shoved into his mouth, and I see Stiggson and Klartino saying something to him. In the distance, I think I see Davida at the edge of the street, hovering near one of the gondolas. I wonder if anyone else can see her—but the hulking figures are much closer to me, focused only on Hunter.

One of the men pulls a bag over Hunter’s head and clamps his hands behind his back with a silvery pair of handcuffs. He is
carried aboard one of the superior police gondolas that followed us, then tossed belowdecks like a piece of cargo.

“Hunter!” I cry out.

But my call isn’t answered.

Someone shuts the hatch, and the boat pulls away from the dock, heading off to deeper water. There’s a crunch behind me, as if someone has just stepped on a branch or broken a piece of pavement.

I turn my head.

My father emerges from the shadows. He aims the wicked barrel of his pistol at my head.

Inside me, something bursts.

“I hate you,” I say to him.

He steps forward. “You’re going to watch this. As a lesson.”

I shake my head no and close my eyes.

“Open your eyes, Aria.”

Grudgingly, I do.

The boat slows. My father calls out a few orders; the men get Hunter from the hold and wrestle him into a standing position. The bag is yanked off his head, and I see his face—that gorgeous, beautiful face—look for me in vain. One of the men presses his gun to the back of Hunter’s head.

“You’ve led us on quite a chase,” my father says, “but this is the final stop. You
will
marry Thomas, our family
will
unite with the Fosters, and Garland
will
win the election. That is how this story ends.”

He raises his hand into the air—a signal.

There is a flare of light and the sharp report of a gunshot.

Hunter’s body falls forward, hits the side of the gondola, then folds over and drops into the water with a sickening splash.

I try to shriek but my voice has shriveled up. I feel my eyes roll back into my head, and then I slip through my captor’s hands, falling again, this time into black oblivion.

• XXII •

I wake up in my bedroom with a throbbing headache.

It’s a searing, wrenching pain, as though someone is beating at my skull with iron fists. And the pain is not just in my head; it shoots up and down my arms, it slithers along my legs. It scrapes against my skin, making me feel raw and worn and tired.

I glance down: everything
appears
normal. I am wearing my favorite pair of flannel pajamas, and my curtains are open slightly, letting in slivers of light. I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry, so I reach for the glass of water I usually keep on my nightstand.

This is when I realize I am handcuffed to the bed.

And as if that isn’t bad enough, my mother is hovering over me.

“Thank goodness,” she says, leaning over to press one of the buttons on my wall. “I’ll have Magdalena bring you some fresh orange juice.”

“How long have I been asleep?” I ask groggily. I try to sit up, but the handcuffs make it impossible. There’s a bruise on the inside of my arm where there must have been an IV.

“Not long,” my mother says, taking a seat in one of the oversized chairs near my closet. “Just a few days. We had you tranquilized.”

I feel my eyes bulge in shock. “You had me
what
?”

My mother adjusts her light pink Chanel jacket. “You’re too melodramatic, Aria.” She purses her lips. “You’ve put us through so much. Everything your father and I have worked toward … what your grandparents fought for … thank goodness they’re dead.”

There’s a knock on the door. Mom presses it open, and Magdalena enters, carrying a tray she sets at the foot of my bed.

“Here you are, ma’am,” she says, more to my mother than to me, then leaves.

Mom raises her eyebrows. “Aren’t you going to eat? You must be starving.”

“How?” I ask, raising my arms. The handcuffs clank against the metal bedpost.