Chapter 35 #2
“Mari?” He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, smoothing the flyaways the wind had tousled. “All right?”
His fingers glided over my skin, kissing my jaw and the sensitive arch of my ear. I shivered at the sensation. It raced through me—a violent, consuming fire.
“Don’t touch me.” My voice was as cold as my blood was hot.
His touch hurt. His illusion hurt.
He pulled his hand away and then moved to the side so an inch of air was keeping us apart. The pain in my blood vanished. I won’t say I was entirely glad.
The train was slowing. We’d dipped underground into the tunnels, and ahead was a bustling ghost station overlying the modern-day abandoned and graffitied one. We were deep under the city, and the cool tunnel air flowed through the car.
As the train jerked to a stop, I took in the resplendent ghost mosaics on the walls and the overlay of grime and graffiti.
There were figments on the platform: people waiting for the train, a police officer, a shoeshine station, a concession stand.
On top of the ghost station was the reality of rubble, dirt, and grime.
The doors creaked open, blasting the car with a wave of tunnel air.
“This is us,” Finn said. Standing, he reached out to hold my hand, then he pulled back and instead gestured for me to walk ahead of him.
Right.
I narrowed my eyes, not trusting anything about him. Wasn’t he the one who always told me to trust no one? To trust nothing?
The ghost train’s lights flickered off, and the ceiling fans stopped whirring.
I jumped onto the platform and stepped past figments and over rubble.
The station had an odd feel. It smelled musty and closed-up, like wet concrete and mildew.
The figments were loud, chatting, laughing; broken records repeating the same phrases.
Finn caught up to me, falling into step beside me. He had a long stride and was one of those rare men who were large and muscular but still moved with surprising grace.
I started down the tunnel. This station had been closed up decades ago, but I knew there was an actual station and an exit not far ahead.
We’d reach it in ten minutes, perhaps fifteen.
We only needed to avoid growlings, slipshots, any of Jagger’s people, human criminals, predators, or conjurers on the hunt.
After that, I’d say thanks for the fun train ride annnnnd goodbye.
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to kill me again,” Finn said, hopping down onto the tracks. He held out his hand to help me down. I ignored it, jumped, then brushed past him.
“Give it a few minutes.”
He laughed, and I tugged at a few more of the knots surrounding him. I hadn’t pulled anything free—I was only loosening them so that with one hard yank, the entire thing would collapse.
“Is that Jagger’s will? That you kill me?”
“No.”
Not this time. And not yet.
I reached down, picked up a pebble, and then threw it down the tracks. A rat squeaked and dashed under the tracks. The tunnel was eerily dark. But what was even eerier was that most of the lighting came from Finn. He glowed a light gold, just like he had when he was soaked in solange.
“I promised to come for you, Mari—”
“Yeah. I heard. You want to slaughter everyone I love and slit my throat while I watch the world burn. I got the message.”
Five steps later, I realized Finn had stopped walking.
I turned and stared at him. “What?”
“Who said that?”
I narrowed my eyes. He was the brightest thing in the tunnel. The diffuse light spilled around him until it was gobbled up by the darkness. At five steps away, I was outside the circle of his light. “You did. When you killed Griff.”
He tilted his head and frowned, the gesture so Finn-like it hurt to watch. His forehead was wrinkled when he said, “I didn’t kill Griff.”
I stared at him, trying to dig through the illusion covering him. “And you didn’t attack me in Chinatown?”
There was genuine surprise in his eyes. “What? No.”
I sighed. “So it wasn’t you?”
I was sure he heard the disbelief in my voice.
He stepped forward. “Mari. Why would I kill Griff? Why would I attack you? Why—?”
“Don’t touch me.”
He moved back, frowned, then his expression cleared. “It’s illusion. Someone is pretending to be me. Didn’t we always tell each other—?”
“Don’t trust anyone?”
He smiled, and we started walking along the tracks again.
His theory was nice, except for the fact the Finn in Chinatown hadn’t been covered in illusion, and this Finn was swamped in it.
I loosened more of the knots surrounding him, preparing to end this the moment he showed his true self.
Perhaps this was an illusion sent by the real Finn to lull me into complacency then kill me. Or maybe it was another conjurer wrapped in illusion, sent to assassinate me. I didn’t know—I only knew I wasn’t safe.
Far ahead, there was the underground grumble and shake of a train passing through a distant tunnel. The concrete below my feet vibrated, and the steady drip, drip of seeping water from the ceiling dripped faster. A wash of cold air blew over us.
After the rumbling had faded, Finn looked over at me. “It’s hard to trust, I know. I’m a conjurer”—his mouth twisted in a smile that always meant he found something ironic—“and wear the crown. You’re a mine and a lockpick.”
I tugged at more knots surrounding him. They were all almost completely loosened, like a cat’s cradle about to collapse.
“I failed you. You killed me. We both came back.” He studied my expression. “I’m going to believe what the wind told me . . .”
He waited for me to confirm or deny what the wind had said. I kept silent.
He nodded. “But even if the wind hadn’t told me, I already knew. You’re fighting to come back to me, and I’m fighting to get back to you.”
Ahead, a dim glow bled through the tunnel. We were almost to a connecting track that would lead us up and out.
If he was going to make a move, it would be soon. Before we left the underground.
He tilted his head again, a lock of hair falling over his forehead. I wanted to reach up and brush it away. He smiled as if he knew.
“I won’t fault you for doing what you have to do. Just don’t fault me for the same.” He nodded toward a light glowing in the distance. “I think we’re on the right track.”
I frowned at his retreating back. There was something very strange about all this.
First, a human couldn’t ride the ghost train.
A corporal being couldn’t ride an incorporeal object.
Second, Finn was more himself than he’d been since before the games, except for the fact he was a massive, tangled knot of illusion.
Third, the pull of Jagger’s will was weaker than I’d ever felt it, like an echo instead of a shout.
I watched as Finn hopped onto a chunk of fallen concrete and then jumped over another.
My throat tightened. It was exactly how he’d climbed the rocks in Central Park when we were kids.
He’d hop on the boulders and jump from one rock to another, grinning over his shoulder at me, gesturing for me to hurry after him.
Right then, he turned and flashed me the same smile.
“Coming?” he asked, holding out his hand in the same exact gesture he’d done for years. “Mari?”
A broken noise escaped my throat.
It was him.
It had to be him.
Illusion or not, it was Finn.
I ran down the abandoned track, jumped the rubble, and then leaped toward him. He caught me with a surprised grunt.
“I—” Love you, I’d meant to say. But the words were cut off and ripped from my throat.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I—”
It hurt. It felt as if a molten-hot knife were sliding down my throat. It closed, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The longer I fought to say the words, the tighter my throat clamped.
Finn nodded and slowly set me down. “It’s all right. It’ll be all right.”
I drew in a gasping breath. The musty tunnel air cooled my burning throat and my scalding lungs. I shuddered and closed my eyes, turning my face away from Finn’s probing gaze.
Then, quietly, he asked, “Can I hold you?”
My lungs burned again; my throat spasmed. I couldn’t say yes, but I didn’t want to say no.
I held still and hoped he’d take that as assent. This was Finn, wasn’t it? Was this him?
After a long moment, he said quietly, “I’ll take that as a yes. If it’s a no, feel free to stab me again.”
Then, very carefully and very gently, he wrapped his arms around me.
He didn’t hold me close. He didn’t press his body against mine.
He held me loosely in the circle of his arms. All the same, it was almost impossible to stand in the bath of his golden light.
I held still and quiet, my eyes closed, my chin down, my face pointing toward the ground.
The only sound was the combination of our breathing, another distant train, and the rhythmic ocean whoosh of my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?”
He went to pull his arms away, but I quickly shook my head. It hurt—it was agony—but it would hurt more for him to leave me.
I never thought I’d be able to stand in his arms again.
I wondered, if it hurt this much, how much more would it hurt when Jagger’s blood was at full volume?
I stood still, keeping my muscles locked, concentrating on the feel of Finn and ignoring the pain. The hug lasted minutes, but I hoped to capture its memory so it could last an eternity.
Finally, I stepped back, and Finn dropped his arms.
“Tell me,” I said, with only the smallest tremble of emotion. “Tell me why you took me tonight.”
Finn stared at me, perhaps weighing up whether or not he could tell me the truth.
He couldn’t.
I should’ve told him not to. You couldn’t trust a mine. Not ever.
He came to a decision. “To free you.”
My heart leaped high and then crashed within a millisecond. “You can’t free a mine. The only freedom is in death.”
“We’ll see.”
He studied my expression, his eyes warming. His left eye was the color of a grassy meadow; his right eye was streaked with the blue of a forget-me-not.