Chapter 39
The gentle rustling of the train rocked me like a lullaby. I nestled in the wicker seat, my legs crossed under me. It was night, and the ghost train was an apparition flying through the city on elevated tracks that no longer existed.
I looked over at Finn. I wasn’t surprised to find myself here, and I wasn’t surprised to find him. There was only one surprising thing.
“You’re a kid.”
His smile seemed to take up his whole face. “So are you.”
I’d forgotten how big his eyes looked when he was young, and how his nose was too grown-up for a little boy.
He’d been a funny mix of adult and kid, with parts of him growing faster than others.
His black hair flopped over his face, blowing in the train’s ceiling fans and the wind from the open windows.
I peered at his eyes. They were more moss-green than woodsy-brown tonight. When he was happy, excited, or content, they always tended to look like a forest glade still glistening from a summer storm.
He was eleven. I knew this because both of his second molars had come in when he was eleven and pushed his left bottom front tooth to the side, so it was a tiny bit askew. I could see the beginnings of that tooth migration in his wide grin.
While I was cataloguing his appearance, he was doing the same. I could see myself in the window’s reflection. As the buildings flew past, I noted my brown hair, muddy eyes, and the freckle over my lip. Ah. I remembered this face. I was eight and had only just met Finn.
He hadn’t had his growth spurt yet. His voice hadn’t deepened. He still had his cowlick and that happy-to-see-you smile—the one he wore when he left me slivers of mica, daisy chains, and pebbles that spelled out secret messages on park benches and stone walls.
This was the Finn I’d first met and eventually let into my heart.
“I wonder why I keep dreaming you.” My voice was high, not husky or melodic like now.
Finn kicked his feet, swinging them happily. As a kid, he’d always had to move or fidget. He hadn’t yet acquired his stillness and discipline. That came after his dad stabbed him.
“I already told you why. It’s to set you free.” He wrinkled his nose and then blew upward, sending his hair out of his eyes.
I settled back against the wicker seat, inspecting the scuffs on my knees, my bitten fingernails, and my sneakers with their poorly tied laces.
I frowned over at Finn. He was still swinging his legs, checking out a man reading a newspaper and two women in long skirts giggling behind their hands.
“Do you think they know they’re dead?” he asked.
“They’re figments, not spirits. Except . . . this is a dream, so they aren’t even figments.”
Finn swung toward me, grinning. “What makes you think this is a dream?”
I gestured between the two of us. We were kids.
He laughed. It was short and delighted, and it sounded like a hiccup. I smiled at him.
“If this were real . . .” I paused and searched for Jagger’s will. It was even more distant than last night. “I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
I threw my arm around his middle and laid my head against his chest. Although I couldn’t see him, I could feel his smile. He grabbed the end of one of my braids and tugged it.
“Stop it,” I said, but my voice was warm, and he knew I didn’t mean it.
He played with the end of my braid while I smiled and watched the city pass.
We were heading south, down toward the tip of Manhattan.
We’d already passed Midtown and its diffuse glow of city lights blinking in the dark.
Now, we were shooting toward the crowded streets, old churchyards, and historic markers of old New York.
It only hurt a little to lie against Finn. It was like the sting of a sunburn instead of the burning of acid.
Suddenly, I thought of something. “Do you remember last night?”
“Course I do.”
I pushed off his chest and looked him square-on. “You do?”
He nodded. Smiled.
“And you’re not mad?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Why would I be mad?”
“Because I didn’t save you.”
His smile grew bigger. “I know.”
My shoulders relaxed. I hadn’t realized I’d been bunching them nearly up to my ears. Maybe these dreams were a retreat, where I could rest in the locked places in my heart and remember what it was like before Finn died and I became a mine.
“Mari?”
“Hmm?”
Finn reached out and brushed his hand across the back of mine. “I love you.”
I couldn’t say it back. Not by word, action, or deed. But I wanted to. I wanted it more than a desert wants rain.
He waited, swaying with the train’s rocking, and when I didn’t say anything, he nodded. “Did you know, when I died, I caught a glimpse of heaven?”
I pictured the soft blush-pink curve of a radish flower’s petal. “What was it like?”
“It felt like loving you.”
I turned away from him, toward the window. We were among the short stone buildings constructed centuries ago. The train was slowing, its wheels clacking over the invisible track.
“I’m not good,” I said.
In the window’s reflection, I saw him nod. “That’s what he’d like you to believe. The first step in ruining someone is convincing them they’re already ruined.”
I turned back to him. “No. In real life, you aren’t good either. There’s something wrong with you, Finn. You came back so . . . hateful. You came back wrong.”
He frowned, his expression as mournful as the Madonna’s on an icon. Just like last night, he was covered in thousands of knots. If I unfocused my gaze, he glowed like he was coated in gold dust.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have opened the lock inside you. Then you wouldn’t be a conjurer. You’d still be yourself—”
Finn grabbed my hand, and the pressure of it burned.
“You wouldn’t be wrecking the city, killing innocents . . .”
“Do you trust me?”
I kept silent.
“Mari? Do you?”
Did I trust the Finn who came to me in the night swamped in illusion?
No?
Yes?
I couldn’t give an answer.
The train pulled to a stop, and the doors slid open.
It seemed we’d been gliding along the Third Avenue El.
In the 1880s, the tracks had run like metal centipedes over the city streets, blocking out both sun and rain.
They were dirty, noisy, and they ejected coal and steam onto everyone who walked under them.
I didn’t see the El tracks very often. They tended to flicker in and out of reality at very infrequent intervals.
I was glad for that though. It was awkward walking down the street feeling as if a giant insect had squatted on top of you.
“I think this is our stop,” I said, not answering Finn’s question.
We were outside City Hall. The tower was lit from below and shone brighter than the moon. City Hall was old. There were Corinthian columns and arched windows, a beautiful rotunda, and of course, plenty of rag men slinking outside in the shadows.
Why?
I didn’t know. They were there before I was born. Maybe they were there before the hall was completed in 1812, spanning back to the Revolution. I couldn’t be sure. Rag men didn’t speak. They’re only the faceless, wordless wraiths spawned from a soul’s abandoned hopes and dreams.
Once we were on the street, the ghost train clattered away. Finn grabbed my hand, and then, smiling at me, he said, “Come on.”
We raced past the rag men, under the shadow of City Hall, and down the empty street. There was a park, and its trees were still and quiet, drenching us in inky shadows. Finn ran, pulling me after him, grinning over his shoulder.
It was strange. I was myself, but I was a kid again. Eight years old. My legs were short—shorter than Finn’s—but I ran with a loose, happy glee I hadn’t had in years. I was soaring. My chest was wide-open, and I was weightless and free. It felt like I could fly.
Finn’s cheeks were pink as he darted forward, pulling me through the park.
He was playing. Dodging and ducking, and when he let me go, I ran after him. We used to play in Central Park—games of tag, games of chase. They always in ended in us rolling down a hill or in a pile on the ground.
We’d fallen back into our childhood selves, chasing each other through the park.
“Finn!” I shouted, and he looked back at me, laughing.
Then he caught me and tugged me onto the tiered fountain. I saw the glint in his eye, and I knew.
“No!”
But it was too late. He jumped in the fountain, and I rolled in after him, splashing in the water.
I came up sputtering and laughing. I splashed water, and Finn chased me in the hip-deep water. Coins and wishes were slippery under my feet, and I fell, swallowing a mouthful of water.
I coughed, and he pulled me upright.
Water dripped down his face, and his clothes were sopping-wet. “I forgot how your laugh used to sound like—”
I narrowed my eyes. When we were kids, Luvic would tease me that my laugh sounded like a chicken being chased with a cleaver. I grew out of it, but . . .
“It does not.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Angels singing.”
I snorted and then shoved him. He gasped, slipped on the coins, and then dunked underwater. I was laughing when he came up.
“Really, Mari?”
“Yes!”
He lunged at me, grabbed my ankle, and pulled me under. When we surfaced, I threw my arms around his neck and gave him a tight, soaking-wet hug.
Not by action, deed, or word.
Pain lanced through me, eating away the lightness. I flinched and yanked back.
“Hey! You kids, get outta the fountain!”
I glanced across the park. A spirit—an officer from a century ago—was speeding toward us.
Finn grabbed my hand, and we jumped out of the fountain.
We laughed as we raced from the park, leaving sopping-wet footprints on the stone pavers.
Blocks later, my heart was pounding, and I was filled with a happy, fizzy feel that Jagger’s teeth barely nipped at. His will was a distant shouting echo.
Finn collapsed onto a grassy lawn, and I dropped down next to him. My chest rose and fell as I dragged in the hot night air. My skin was wet, and although the water had been cool, it was now warm as it ran off me in rivulets.
I smiled up at the gray night sky.
“Look,” Finn said, a warm, happy note in his voice. “It’s a forget-me-not. I haven’t seen one of those since—”
“Don’t!”
I bolted upright, but it was too late. Neither of us realized what we should have the moment we’d landed at City Hall. We were only blocks from the Clarks. We’d run through the park, down past the old church, and found a stretch of lawn.
There weren’t many places with grass in this part of the city. There weren’t any forget-me-nots.
Except for at the Clarks’.
The second Finn touched the pale blue flower, the grass became chains, and the air became water. His eyes widened, and he mouthed, “Mari!”
He fought to get free of the chains. They wrapped themselves around us in vine-like coils. Air was just above us. All I had to do was untie the knots of illusion and I’d free him. Then, unlike last time, I could also free myself. I was stronger. I was better. I . . .
I shook my head. The knots covering him and the knots that made up the Clarks’ illusion had intertwined. Every time I tugged at one, he flinched, and then his skin grew more translucent. I shook my head, air bubbles rising over us. I couldn’t unknot the chains without unknotting him.
I was running out of air. Finn had never been able to hold his breath for as long as me. His eyelashes fluttered. He’d been trying to conjure, but when he twisted his hand, nothing happened. When he jerked at the chains, they only grew tighter.
It was all right. I’d untie him. I’d untie the whole thing.
But then, outside the water trap, past the lawn, I saw another Finn. Not my Finn, the boy trapped with me, but the cruel, awful one who haunted me and had promised to destroy me.
He smiled, his lips turning up at my struggles. He lifted his hand, joining his fingers in the conjurer’s pose. The boy with me didn’t notice him. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and his body was limp. I had to free him. I had to save him from . . .
The cruel Finn threw a wall of flame at us.
I sliced through the chains holding eleven-year-old Finn underwater.
I don’t know if it freed him or killed him—I only know, as the fire hit the water, I jerked awake in my bedroom, desperately gasping for breath, the sulfuric firelight from the electroliers spraying down over me.
Finn was dead. Finn was alive.
Finn was illusion.