Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
I’d never liked Beverly. She had an opinion about everything and loved to critique other people’s work.
You got to know someone after two years in neighboring cubicles, though.
I’d learned that she had a secret vice for torrid romance novels, an elderly father suffering from dementia, and three rescue beagles who would never see her again.
Maybe, once the humans were gone, those beagles would join up with all the other dogs and rule the city at last.
I was thinking about Beverly’s unexplained propensity for applying lipstick roughly fifteen times a day as I left the relative tranquility of Central Park at its northwesternmost corner and headed toward Morningside Park a block away.
The MTA had finally ground to a halt, so I was walking back to Hamilton Heights, staying off the streets as much as possible to avoid the convoys of soldiers enforcing their citywide curfew.
At least while walking through Central Park, I could pretend that everything was okay.
The trees softened the sound of distant gunfire.
Thinking about Beverly’s lipstick meant that I didn’t have to think about Eric’s betrayal, so I spent the next couple of blocks asking myself why she’d chosen such unflattering colors.
I mean…burgundy? With her skin tone? Despite my best efforts, though, my mind kept drifting to Eric as I left Morningside Park and walked north.
“Nope,” I said aloud as I crossed a deserted MLK Jr. Boulevard.
“We’re not going there, brain. He ripped out our heart and stomped it into a million pieces. He can go straight to Hell.”
But you love him, my brain pointed out, traitorously.
“I do not! I’m just a big fan of his abs. And those dimples. And the way he…oh, I see what you’re doing. Stop that right now!”
Fine. Sooner or later, though, you’re going to have to think about what he’s done.
Cutting through the empty campus of the City College of New York, I veered west to Amsterdam Avenue.
There were a few signs of life here, people hurrying along sidewalks or peering out of windows, even a couple of cars cruising along.
There were looted storefronts, too, just like in Midtown, and empty bodegas picked clean of everything that wasn’t nailed down.
A block from my apartment, I heard shouting coming closer and jogged the last hundred feet or so, slipping into my building and making sure the door was locked behind me.
Abandoned mail and circulars littered the lobby floor, along with a plushie rabbit dropped by some fleeing child. I wondered if they would ever return.
When I let myself into the apartment, Amira was lying on the sofa, asleep. The blinds were drawn across the windows, leaving our home cloaked in gloom. When I turned on a lamp, Amira stirred and opened her eyes. “Colin?” she asked fuzzily.
“It’s me.”
“I’m so glad you’re home.” She sat up and ran her hands through her tangled curls. “Are you okay?”
“Not really, no.” With a long sigh, I sank onto the sofa next to her. “You?”
“I’m going stir-crazy.” Rubbing her eyes, she gave me a stern look. “You were supposed to be checking in.”
“I texted you a while ago. It didn’t go through?”
She reached for her phone on the coffee table. “Oh. I forgot I turned it off after the two hundredth emergency alert. Sorry.” Slumping back, she closed her eyes. “Between that and my parents calling every ten minutes, I needed a break.”
We stayed like that for a while, surrounded by the unnatural silence of a dying city, until Amira let out a faint gasp. “Colin, you’re hurt!” Her fingertips brushed against the ruined bow tie still knotted around my wrist, stiff with dried blood. More blood streaked my hand. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I told her wearily.
“It doesn’t look like nothing. C’mon, let’s get this cleaned up.
” She jumped up from the sofa and pulled me to my feet with gentle but inexorable insistence, then led me into the tiny bathroom.
I stood at the sink as she carefully untied the bow tie and then muttered all kinds of exclamations over the thin, precise cut underneath. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“It’s fine,” I responded. “Really. It barely hurts anymore.”
Shaking her head, she washed my wrist with warm water, sluicing away the blood until our sink was spattered with pale red. Then she swabbed the cut with hydrogen peroxide before smearing it with antiseptic cream and wrapping everything in a clean bandage.
“You should’ve gone to med school,” I told her at last, smiling faintly.
“You sound like my mother.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “How did this happen?” she finally asked. “Did someone attack you?”
Looking down at my bandaged wrist, I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
“If someone did this, we have to call the police.”
“No, we don’t. They have plenty to deal with right now. Besides, this is practically a paper cut.”
“It isn’t! You could have bled out!”
Meeting her gaze in the mirror, I thought for one uneasy moment that her reflection was watching me with a predatory gleam in its eyes.
No, there were no haunts here, just my best friend—the only person I had left.
I wanted desperately to tell her everything, to unburden myself and come clean about my job, the Thing, all of it.
That was a terrible idea, though. So, instead, I told her the safest truth I had.
“Eric has been lying to me.”
Amira peered up into my face. “What do you mean? Lying about what?”
I made a helpless gesture. “Everything.”
“But I thought things were going so well.”
“They were, until—” My eyes prickled with unexpected tears and I had to stop.
“Oh, Colin.” Her arms wrapped around me in a fierce hug. “I’m sorry.”
Sniffling, I hugged her back. “I really thought he was the one,” I mumbled into her hair. “I had it all planned out, down to our tasteful midcentury modern decor and our two pugs.”
Releasing me, she stepped back and grabbed my uninjured arm. “Listen to me. The army or the president or someone is going to stop what’s happening in the city, and then I’m going to find Eric and…I don’t know, beat him up.”
“You would never beat up anyone. You’d use math somehow.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Painful math.”
We returned to the sofa and curled up next to each other, taking what comfort we could. After a while, Amira asked, very quietly, “Do you think we’re going to be okay?”
I thought about The-One-Who-Hungers disappearing into Hell.
Maybe the Lords of Sin and Vice were strong enough to defeat it, or at least keep it there.
And if not, Management would have to involve Themselves now that one of Their offices had been attacked.
They’d bound the Abominations once before—surely They could do so again.
The real question was whether any of us would survive Their attempt.
“I don’t know,” I said at last. “I hope so. We just need to hang on a little longer.”
Hours later, after Amira had fallen back asleep, my phone buzzed. Wondering if it was Lex, finally responding to my frantic text from earlier, I checked and saw that I’d received an email.
From: Personnel Department
To: General Employee List
Subject: An Important Update
As you’re probably aware, we’re experiencing a Level 5 event here in New York City.
But don’t worry! Your safety remains one of our top concerns.
We’ve increased our onsite protections so you can do your job while enjoying valuable peace of mind.
Please note, however, that these protections are available only to DE employees.
If your family and friends try to shelter onsite, they will be removed and sent to a fun, action-packed stay at one of our many corporate retreats.
In these challenging times, it’s important that we all step up and do our part.
That’s why, though it’s the weekend, we’re asking our employees to return to work first thing tomorrow morning.
Employees who fail to report for work will be considered in breach of contract and will be dealt with by our remediation teams. So don’t be late!
Let’s keep making the world a better place.
After reading the email twice, I slumped back into the sofa and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow morning I’d have to walk back into Dark Enterprises, right over the shiny stone floor where Beverly had met a fate worse than death, and pretend like it was just another ordinary day.
I’d sit at my desk, down the hall from the boardroom where Tamsin had shrieked her last breath, and update Ms. Crenshaw’s calendar.
It sounded awful. Unless I wanted to spend whatever remained of my life running from the Firing Squad, though, I didn’t have a choice.
All I’d wanted was to save myself from certain death and maybe also become powerful beyond my wildest dreams. I didn’t think that was unreasonable. Sure, I’d made some ill-advised choices with unforeseen and disastrous consequences, but who doesn’t in their twenties?
I kept reminding myself that, however bleak things seemed now, options remained.
Dark Enterprises had taught me that anything was possible—you just had to be willing to pay for it.
Maybe I could sneak Amira into DE somehow, grab Lex if they ever bothered to text me back, and we could take a one-way trip through a gateway in Transportation.
Safety had to exist somewhere in an infinite multiverse.
And Eric? I imagined him fighting his way through hungry, encroaching shadows, that sword of his glowing with brilliant fire as he struggled to reach me.
Even if I saved him as well, what kind of future would we have?
He was a knight sworn to eradicate dark magicks, and I was willing to use the blackest of arts to get what I wanted.
Heartsick, I waited for answers to come and found only more questions.