Chapter 35
Do you think a wolf could kill him? Inge had asked just a few days ago. I revise the interpretation of her question from Inge trying not to mock me to Inge genuinely wondering if that was a viable option.
There’s no time to try to understand what happened up there. I know Inge’s eyes. Somehow, she’s also a wolf. She’s bought us the time we need, but it won’t last long.
“Maher, take Inge and run!” I shout.
Maher looks at me like I’ve lost my senses.
“It’s Inge,” I say, lowering my voice. “I promise. Can you carry her?”
He’s still troubled, but he’s Maher. He believes me without needing proof or explanation. I don’t know if I’ve ever appreciated what a genuine honor Maher’s trust is. He bends down and gathers Inge in his arms. It’s awkward, but he manages to get her up.
“Back the way you came. It’s us he wants; he won’t chase you if we split up.”
Maher shakes his head. “You can’t stay here.”
“We won’t. Now go.”
After one last worried look, Maher hurries through the mirror room. I let out a breath once I hear the distant clang of the front door. And then I hold it once more as something begins moving above us. There’s a creak, and the ping of metal falling and hitting the floor.
“I have an idea.” I take Diavola’s hand and tug her into the alley.
I leave the door open behind us, just in case, but I have no doubt the Watcher will follow us easily.
He can smell pain the way I can track him by his stench.
And he’s right about me. Being with Diavola, knowing that we can never truly be together, is the most exquisite pain imaginable. I couldn’t hide from him if I tried.
“He won’t fall for your trap,” Diavola says as we run. “Not now that he knows we’re all working together.”
“We’re not trying to trap him.” I dart in front of a carriage and cross the street, grateful that for once luck is with us and we’re on the correct side of the fair.
We’re coming at it from behind the Palace of Electricity.
There’s no entrance gate here, but I don’t need one.
Not this time. Up ahead I see exactly what I’m looking for: a bridge.
Not a soaring stone and steel bridge over a river, but a flimsy, low wooden bridge over a train track. “We’re ending this.”
“How?”
“The way your family was telling us to the whole time. Lightning. On demand, courtesy of human progress over the last century. He might have been unkillable then, but he isn’t now.” I climb up on the railing of the bridge. Diavola lets out a low sound of alarm, but then does the same.
Barreling toward us is the train that delivers fuel directly to the Palace of Electricity. I silently send a prayer of gratitude to the pedantic tour guide, and then another prayer toward the goddess standing guard over the palace, hoping she blesses our efforts.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Little Fox. This is too much even for you.
” Exasperated, Diavola wraps her arms around me and falls backward into one of the open-topped train carts.
It takes me several seconds to be able to breathe again.
Without her cushioning my fall onto the coal, I would have broken some crucial bones.
“Easy,” I gasp.
“Get up,” she says, helping me sit. “We need to be ready for—”
There’s a thump farther down the train. Over the clacking of the wheels, a whistling drifts toward us. There are no notes. Just a steady, mournful sound.
Diavola grips my hand so hard it hurts.
“What is it?” I ask.
“That’s the sound of the wind in the cave. He’s going to—he’s going to make me pay. He’s going to make me suffer. I can’t let him do that to you.” She grabs me around the waist to throw me off the side of the train. “Run and hide. Leave me.”
I wrap my arms around her neck and pull her close. “I won’t leave you. Not ever. You’re not alone.”
“Everyone leaves this world alone,” she whispers.
“Not this time.” I press my forehead against hers. “You and me, until my last breath. You don’t fall alone again. And neither do I. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she whispers.
“Good. Now, let’s run.”
We leap from our train car to the next and then the next.
I curse my heavy skirts, but Diavola is burdened by neither fashion nor gravity and she steadies me as we go.
We reach the front of the train just as the brakes scream and it begins coming to a halt.
As soon as we clear the outer fence and it’s almost slow enough to be safe, we leap from the side.
We sprint for the chimneys. But in the chaos of stoves and pipes and steam, wires and poles and sparks, I realize a crucial error. I have no idea how any of this works.
I’ve gotten so used to the facade of the fair—the beautiful, elegant, organized exteriors plastered on to flimsy metal frames—that somehow I thought the rest of the Palace of Electricity would be easy to navigate.
But nothing here is accessible. This is the truth of progress: Beauty and leisure and the performance of advancement is only possible through soot-stained, dangerous, painful work.
Work that is hidden so those who benefit from it never have to acknowledge the cost.
Maybe that’s what the Watcher is a reminder of, in the end. That no matter what comforts and assurances we surround ourselves with, the truth is always blood and chaos and death. And he’s coming for us now.
“Anneke!”
I stare up at a metal platform above us. Inge is there, wearing nothing but Maher’s coat.
“Inge?” Before I can ask how she beat us here, or why she’s no longer a wolf, or what she was doing as a wolf in the first place, she points. I follow the line of her finger to a row of poles and giant springs. It’s blocked by a chain and signs in multiple languages warning of danger.
“The fourth one,” she says. “Make him touch it.”
“How?” I shout.
She gives me an exasperated, full-body shrug. “Figure it out!”
“Three minutes!” Maher shouts from somewhere I can’t see. My heart squeezes in relief. He’s still alive. They both are. “You have three minutes!”
Inge nods once at me and then runs back along the platform and out of sight.
“She really did figure out how electricity works in two hours,” I say. Then I turn to Diavola. “Did you know? About her? Is that why she avoided you?”
Diavola smiles. “You have a habit of collecting remarkable people.”
“And I don’t let them go once I’ve caught them.
” I tug on her hand and we duck under the chains.
I can feel the charge in the air around us.
Even still mostly contained in a bun, my hair lifts at the roots.
The tiny hairs on my arms rise, too. The low hum has turned from background to foreground, an angry buzzing like the cicadas in Athens three summers ago.
We’ve only made it a few steps before the chain clangs to the ground behind us. I whirl around. Diavola takes a protective step in front of me, one arm extended to block me.
For the first time, I see the Watcher.
He’s my father.