Chapter 31
When everything goes wrong, the best thing to do is make wrong your right. It’s like Jagger always said: “They may know my plans, but that doesn’t mean they can stop me.”
Actually, that might not be the best example.
Once, when I was grabbing a sandwich in Union Square, the shop’s TV was playing a Ragnor Bard interview.
Usually, I’d ignore anything to do with the Bard siblings.
Luvic was my friend, but I’d never met Ragnor.
Luvic had warned me to stay away from his brother, as Ragnor wasn’t as forgiving or as understanding as him, and he’d probably kill me on sight just for being Jagger’s creature.
But the volume was loud, the checkout line was long, and he said something that struck me as important.
The interviewer asked, “How do you write so many hits?”
Ragnor had looked up at the ceiling and then said in his slow, melodic Bard voice, “Most people are afraid of failure, but the edge of failure is where genius is found. My best work is when I think it’s a catastrophe and I keep going, pushing further. If you back away from failure, you lose.”
I don’t remember what he said after that. I paid, ate my sandwich, and then went off to finish a job. The next week, I died another death, and I forgot Ragnor’s words.
Until now.
We’d failed to retrieve the Silencer. I’d failed to save Justice. Finn had failed to save me from Jagger. I’d failed to save myself.
How much further did I have to go before I reached the edge of failure? Or had I already passed it, fallen off the cliff, and hit the bottom?
Do you remember when I said a spiritual truth was that evil might win the battle but good always won the war? Do you remember when I said I was afraid because I didn’t know if we would survive the battle, much less see the end of the war?
I’m even less certain now.
I was a mine. Luvic was a jackaltooth. Justice was lost in depravity. Finn was . . . killing my family, my friend. Jagger was aligned with the Clarks and the Bards, and I was bargaining for weapons that would kill Finn, Darin, and every Smith in the city.
And then what?
Finn would die. Primus would wear the crown (if it didn’t kill him).
The conjurers would tear each other and the world apart.
Justice would die. Luvic would die. Jacob would die.
I would lose every bit of good inside myself and become exactly what Jagger had predicted, and then I would die. The world would burn.
It wasn’t looking good.
But don’t tell that to Luvic. He, unlike Last and I, was having a wonderful time. After another two hours of negotiating with the Merchant, we’d purchased a cache of weapons even an army of Smiths would blink at. Then we’d headed to Chinatown to buy Furtig. Luvic had smiled the entire time.
The distillery was located on the top floor of an old redbrick building overlooking Chatham Square.
The Square was where eight streets met, and back in the nineteenth century, it was the center of the Five Points Neighborhood.
Centuries ago, there were gangs, tattoo parlors, doss-houses, and saloons.
Jagger claims Five Points was as similar to a Den of Depravity as you can get without being inside one.
It was all cleaned up during the Great Depression, and now, the only thing that remained from that time was the Furtig distillery.
When we stepped inside the distillery, it was arctic-cold, the fog of our breath crystallized, and there was the constant tea-whistle scream of spirits being distilled into liquor.
It had a seedy, moonshine, bootlegger feel.
The family who ran it had done so for generations.
They knew me, because I picked up Jagger’s orders whenever he was running low or needed extra for crafting weapons.
All the same, I’d never seen any of their faces.
I didn’t know if they were human, creature, or spirit.
They wore masks, never spoke, and moved across the distillery like rag men shuffling through the city.
Walking into the distillery coated me in a cold, cruel Furtig feel. Whenever I left, I wanted to step under a scalding-hot shower and scrub my skin until it was raw.
Last didn’t seem to notice the disturbing aura.
In fact, I think she may have liked it. Luvic merely watched the masked beings with one eyebrow cocked and an amused smile.
He’d stopped bleeding after the Merchant gave him an ointment to rub over his stab wounds.
He claimed he was sick of Luvic bleeding on his merchandise, but I think he never liked to see someone physically suffer (mentally and emotionally was another story).
Compared to the Merchant, retrieving the Furtig was a walk in the park. In fifteen minutes, we were done, hurrying down the steps and into the late-afternoon bustle of Chinatown.
I gripped the bottle of Furtig and wondered if it would put Jagger in a good mood. Maybe a good enough mood to talk to the Merchant about sending someone in after Justice.
“Still thinking about the creature?” Last asked.
“What?”
She waved at my face as we waited at a crosswalk. “Your mouth is pinched. Your eyes are watery—”
Luvic swung toward me and frowned.
“I’ll make you another memory crown. I’ll make you hate him. Then you’ll be glad you left him to die.”
“No.”
She shrugged. “I probably will anyway. I’ll just wait until you’re asleep.”
“Try it,” I said, and Last laughed, her voice meshing with the sound of police and fire sirens.
Luvic looked toward the noise and then back to me, his eyes narrowing. Then he slipped his arm over my shoulder, just like Justice used to, and pulled me close.
It was a risky move, since he didn’t know if I remembered our past or only the games.
He didn’t know if I was his enemy or his friend.
But he leaned down, his lips tilted up, and right when I thought he was going to offer a kind word, he whispered, “Tell anyone what happened in the Den, and we’ll have problems.”
I narrowed my eyes as we started across the intersection. Canal Street was the next block up, and fire trucks and police cars were racing past.
I leaned close and whispered back, “The part where you became a jackaltooth, or the part where you did what I said?”
He shook his head. “With friends like you . . .”
He waited for me to object. When I didn’t, he tugged me closer and said loud enough for Last to hear, “I’m craving dim sum. Let’s stop—”
“Well,” Last interrupted, “I’m craving turning you into a cat, skinning you, and wearing your fur as a hat. We don’t all get what we want, Bard.”
The disturbing thing was, she wasn’t joking.
We followed her as she stalked down the sidewalk.
“We’ve gotten ourselves into a mess, haven’t we?
” Luvic whispered, and I glanced up, startled.
He smiled down at me, his lips quirked to the side.
“I became a jackaltooth. I now know what a human arm tastes like. My fiancée wants to turn me into a hat.” He laughed.
“You’ve become . . .” He shook his head.
He didn’t have to continue. I knew what I’d become.
We turned onto Canal Street. The afternoon sun bled over us, its rays straining through the buildings.
I stared in surprise at the dozens of fire trucks and police cars.
Sure, I’d heard them, and I’d seen them racing by, but I hadn’t realized there were enough to clog the street and fill it with noise and flashing lights.
The street was a mess. There were gawkers, emergency workers, people who belonged, people who didn’t, and people who were just trying to get past.
The temperature was still sweltering-hot, even in the late afternoon, and the collection of trucks and cars and the press of bodies only made it worse. The heat was suffocatingly thick and tinged with a strange smokiness that smelled like charred concrete and burned metal.
A few blocks down, police were placing barricades and pushing pedestrians back. Beyond them, firemen were funneling into a subway entrance. The boom of sirens crashed past, and blocks away, drivers stuck in standstill traffic honked angrily.
I shielded my eyes and peered at the subway entrance. “What do you think’s happening?”
Then Last gasped. “Is that . . . the Ward?”
I turned to where she pointed, but I only saw a blond man ducking around a building and disappearing.
She grinned over at us. “I think someone’s been having fun.”
Then Luvic stilled, and his arm around my shoulder tightened. “Mari?”
“Yeah?” I asked, my heart pounding at the sudden seriousness in his voice.
“Have you seen Finn since the games?”
I glanced up at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was peering through the crowd.
“Twice.”
“How’d it go?”
Hmm.
“First I tried to blow him up. Then I stabbed him.”
Luvic let out a laughing breath. “That might explain why he looks like he wants to kill us.”
Last perked up. “The Smith’s here too?”
Luvic jerked his head toward the subway tunnel.
My breath caught when I saw him. He was a block away, entangled in the mess of pedestrians and rushing emergency workers.
He strode toward us, his face hard, his mouth twisted.
He eyed Luvic’s arm around my shoulder. His eyes narrowed, and the edges of his mouth turned up, forming a smile I’d never seen on him before.
It made my heart stutter and lurch, like a deer taken down by a wolf.
A chill rushed over my skin, replacing the afternoon’s heat with ice.
There was something wrong. I’d never seen Finn look like this.
I used to say Wolfgang moved like a shark through water, but Finn was more terrifying than that.
He wasn’t a shark in the shadows below; he was the unknown monster lurking in the dark.
The thing that grabbed people and devoured them without a sound.
I shuddered, and when Finn’s predatory gaze focused on me, Luvic swore.
Next to us, Last giggled, kissed her fingers, and waved at Finn.