Chapter Forty-Five
Stella, you’re in pain.
You should stop.
I limp, and Pax’s eyes fill with concern. William asks if we should stop. “It’s nothing,” I insist. “Small cut.”
Glass. Always glass, ripping me apart.
Fifty-Two East Second Street, number 104.
This was the address we memorized as our meeting spot after the heist. Where we’d all finally converge, divvy up our spoils, and figure out our next steps.
In the back of my mind, I dreaded this stage, because who knew what the next step might be.
Each of us going our separate ways? My heart aches thinking of it.
Pax had drilled the information into us: “Say it with me: 52 EAST SECOND STREET, NUMBER 104. Good. Do NOT go there before the party; we cannot be seen anywhere near there beforehand.”
It was supposed to be me, Nirav, William, Kiyoko, and Clarice meeting Pax here. That plan changed, obviously. We’re all silently hoping, of course, that the other two show.
Pax selected this location precisely because none of us had ever been here before.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I assumed it would be a building of some sort.
An abandoned storefront or a bodega with a secret room or the home of an ally.
We thought we shouldn’t return to Julia’s Bureau; Blanck had been there in person, after all.
Clarice insisted that her hypnosis trickery would make him forget the Bureau, but Pax was convinced: If Blanck connected the dots, going back there would be akin to walking into a bear trap.
Sharp pain shoots through my foot and up my leg. I wince. Pax halts. “Stella, take off your belt.”
My face tilts into a half grin. “Excuse me?”
Pax matches my grin—oh, that dimple!—and waves his hand in a come on motion. I slowly untie the paisley-patterned belt from around my waist, part of my elaborate fortune-teller getup.
“Sit, please,” Pax requests. I perch on the edge of a concrete planter.
Pax ever so gently removes my ballet slipper, then examines my cut. My ankle, the arch of my foot, caressed by Pax, steals my breath away. I want to pull him toward me, place my lips on his, and steal his breath from him.
No. Why do these thoughts sneak into my mind? I knew before the heist that my loneliness was making me yearn for things I don’t need. That is still the case.
Pax looks to William. “Do you have a flask?”
“Always.” William digs out a flask and passes it to Pax.
“This will sting,” Pax says, but before I can react, he pours whiskey over my open cut. My breath sizzles through my teeth.
Pax wraps my foot gingerly but firmly and tugs the belt tight. “Better?” He’s kneeling at my feet, eyes shining, and I’m reminded of the day we met: prince and pauper. Cinderella and her slipper, placed on her foot by a prince. Her Mr. Princip.
No, I reprimand myself again. I cannot trust my own thoughts.
“Better,” I say, but I still wince when I walk. We continue until we stop abruptly at 52 East Second Street.
“Are you joking, Pax?” It’s a wrought iron fence, and it surrounds the next several blocks. His gaze won’t meet mine.
We are at the New York City Marble Cemetery.
Pax swings open the gate with a loud creak. We step inside, into a small park filled with trees and tombstones, moss and mausoleums.
The voices that bombard me are immediate:
Oi, I need ye to help an old man apologize to his brother, lass.
You can hear us? Oh, I have so many regrets I need you to right.
Died of the yellow fever, we did. Most of us here, anyways.
Help us!
Help me!
Help!
I squint and instinctively cover my ears, though it does nothing to muffle these voices that speak directly into my soul. “A cemetery, Pax?” The trees reach for us with their long, spindly arms, and the darkness feels alive here among the dead.
Pax’s voice strains: “This is where Julia is buried.”
My husband!
My mother!
My sister!
These messages echo the rise of my own guilt and regret. “Julia is here?” I say, too loudly. They are here, in the shadows: the Dark Trio, their Legion. I can smell their rot.
“I thought you said you haven’t been here before,” William adds in a whisper.
Pax chews on his thumbnail. “I haven’t.”
My choices!
My regrets!
My shame!
My shame.
We wind through a maze of pathways, ducking in and out of shadows, my heart quickening, wondering which shadows hide the Dark Legion. Pax seeks the correct row, the correct headstone, for Julia. Number 104. He finds it, and we stand in silence, looking at the simple marker.
Julia Mila Princip
Beloved Daughter, Sister
Pax drops to his knees, touching the headstone gingerly. He slides the red carnation from the buttonhole of his catering uniform and lays it at the base of her stone, his eyes iridescent.
I need to confess something…
I must confess…
I have a confession to make…
“I have a confession to make,” I echo.
Because here? Looking at Julia Princip’s headstone, these voices peppering me with their regrets, their guilt? It cuts too close, too deep. Especially tonight—the veil is thin. The others turn to me.
“I’m the one who killed Daisy. I killed my sister.”
The shadows roar. They are here to feast on my guilt.
I droop to sitting in the dewy grass, my head in my hands. I’m not crying; I suppose I’ve cried every tear I can over this.
Pax furrows his brow. “No. She died in the Shirtwaist Fire.”
My voice is like sand. “Daisy and I, we conned a lot of people out of a lot of money. With my readings, I mean.”
William eases toward me. “Stella, if you tell people the things you actually hear, you aren’t conning them. You have a gift.”
“People keep calling this a gift, but I’m not so sure. Reverend Jenkins and those folks think I’m evil. And sometimes the voices I hear scare me so much that I think I might be. And so…”
Help me, Stella!
I need you!
I have so many regrets!
“I talked Daisy into that job. I was so tired of doing readings. Of those terrible zealots. Of hearing frightening confessions from the Other Side. Of seeing terribly vile images. Of my scared and mourning clients. Of moving from boardinghouse to boardinghouse… all of it. But mostly…”
Can I tell them? “The darkness around me kept growing stronger. More powerful. More tempting. So I did it. I begged Daisy to let me quit. She agreed, and two days later, she took a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. She only worked there six weeks.”
As I confess this, the shadows tighten, harden, transform into—what is that? Ravens. Hundreds of ravens, screaming and swooping at our heads. I gasp, crouch.
Pax grabs my hand. It is soft and warm and firm. But maybe a bit too firm, like there’s an undercurrent of anger.
No. He’s not allowed to share my anger here. Not on this. These truths are all mine.
Can I tell them the rest?
William nods as if he can hear my question. I swallow hard. The ravens dive at us with sharp beaks and sharp talons and sharp yellow eyes, screeching. Nirav crouches, covers his head. But William and Pax see nothing.
“Daisy didn’t get a proper burial,” I sob. “I was fifteen when she died, and she was my only living relative. I wasn’t sure what would become of me if I went to identify her body—”
Ravens shriek. I wince, curl into myself. These birds see me as prey.
My voice grows colder, harder. “I was a coward. I never went to identify my sister’s body. I don’t even know where she’s buried, because I was too damned afraid.”
I draw a deep, shaky breath. “They would’ve put me in a home. So I didn’t go.”
The ravens screech. They rake their claws over my scalp. They will disembowel me, devour my innards.
My fingers knot in the grass below me. “I think that’s why I don’t hear her. If her soul is in… in a place where she can’t reach me.” I rip at the grass, toss it at the menacing birds. “I’m terrible.”
“No,” Pax says loudly. He scans the sky, trying to see the evil that I see. “I don’t believe that. If Daisy was anything like you, Stella, there is no need to worry about her soul. You’re good, Stella. You’re a good person.”
Thump! Thud!
The ravens begin to fall from the sky, landing on the ground in gnarled twists of claw and wing. Hundreds of them, pelting the earth in feathery, bloody bursts. Nirav and I duck and wince, but the birds each disappear, moments after they die.
They weren’t real.
I choke out my relief. And I see, I see: “You’re a good person” coinciding with the birds’ disappearance.
William feels the blanket of anxiety lifting from me, and he clears his throat. “If we’re confessing, then perhaps you have something you’d like to add, Pax?”
Pax looks stunned. He starts to gnaw on his thumbnail but stops himself, straightens.
“It was me. I brought the gun. I fired the gun. I’m the one who tried to murder Max Blanck.”
My heart plummets.
“You.” My voice is ice. I send a burst of ire at Spirit. You didn’t tell me.
Stella, we explained.
We cannot participate in vengeance.
My jaw tightens. My heart tightens. “We agreed, Pax. No violence.”
Pax chews on his thumbnail and leans against a tall obelisk monument. His casualness incenses me. “No violence. That was your idea, Stella. Not mine.” His face fills with storm clouds, his aura spikes like lightning. William shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
“I’d still kill that sonofabitch.” Pax blinks at William. “How did you know about that? I didn’t tell anyone. And you weren’t there.”
William swallows. “You reek of viciousness.”
“That’s why Kiyoko has the stash, then,” I say, piecing this evening’s events together. I am sick with disgust. “You asked her to meet the connection because you thought you might be on the run. Or arrested. For the murder of Max Blanck.”
I continue, my voice strained through immense hurt. “It’s why you’ve been so cold. So distant. You lied to me, Pax.
“You agreed to no violence. I know what happens to the souls that commit those kinds of acts. I wake up in the middle of the night, screaming in terror, hearing the agony of people who hurt others here on earth.”
The tears come now, hot and fast, dripping off my cheeks. I’ve never confessed that to anyone, the night terrors. Not even Daisy. I am one of the people who has hurt someone. I’m terrified that my soul will forever dwell among the aching, the tormented.
Nirav takes my hand. He flinches as he does.
“They confess horrible things to me,” I whisper. “Those violent souls.”
Our poor girl.
I wish we could stop those spirits, Stella.
They truly are tortured.
“I couldn’t let that happen to you, Pax. The anguish of those trapped souls is indescribable.” A sob escapes me. “You’re the one who said no secrets, Pax. You said we’d tell each other the truth. I made a terrible mistake, trusting you.” I am heartsick. I knew not to leap, and I leapt anyway.
“Stella,” Pax says, voice strained. “I haven’t told you everything. You don’t know—”
Nirav alerts like a young deer, his head tilting toward the main pathway. He snaps his fingers twice, Hush! Listen!
It appears to be the three bodyguards from the party. They shuffle our way:
“Julia Princip. That’s one of the names that fortune teller girl said to the boss.”
“Welp, my guy at city hall says she’s buried over here.”
“Called in the midnight favor for that one.”
“Yeah. The name Max Blanck still carries weight in this town.”
“What are we going to find at a gravesite?”
“Dunno. But it’s the only mention of a Julia Princip I could find. Can’t hurt to look.”
I don’t have time to be saddened by that—the only mention of Julia Princip is her headstone.
Pax grabs Nirav’s hand, lays a finger over his lips, and jerks his head toward the gravel path.
I grab the handles of William’s chair and struggle to maneuver over the coarse walkway.
We duck under shadows, against the stone wall, and toward the front gate.
When at last we’ve outmaneuvered them, we pant in the shadows.
Pax looks up from his crouch, hands on knees. “You said my sister’s name to Max Blanck?”
I feel sick. “And Daisy’s.”
Pax looks crestfallen. “Oh, Stella. This changes everything.”
“No,” I snap. I am so angered, I could spit fire. “No guilt from you, Pax. You and your gun changed everything.”
How could I have ever let myself fall so deeply? I knew I was just filling a lonely void. A crushing mistake. One I won’t ever make again.