Chapter 38
My legs were almost too heavy to climb the narrow stairs to Hell Gate’s rooftop. The door to the roof was propped open, and Griff was perched on the ledge, his feet dangling over empty space. He didn’t turn as I walked past Rou’s garden, but he knew I was there.
The air was weighted with the scent of wet potting soil, ripe bell peppers, and eggplant that was as midnight-purple as the sky.
Roumelade’s radishes had gone to seed, and the white and blush-pink flowers were drooping in the moonlight.
After my second death, when I was too afraid to sleep, I’d wander to the rooftop and sit with the ripening tomatoes, the buds of yellow summer squash, and the sweet sugar snap peas. They were quiet, still, and comforting.
I’d never been young—no one in Hell Gate was allowed a childhood—but I’d been little. So when Rou had told me I could find God in a single flower and the quiet of a silent hour, I hid on the roof and searched for him there.
As a kid, I’d lie under the trellis, radish leaves fanning over me, and trace the petals’ soft blend of pink and white.
Roumelade’s rooftop wasn’t Eden, but even in Hell Gate, there were hints of the eternal.
I found them, I think, in the wind curling softly over my cheek and dragging gently through the garden’s summer leaves.
Rou was right: a flower and a bit of breeze had comforted me and made it so I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore.
Then I’d met Finn, and my life was never the same.
But thinking about those nights made me wonder, could I still find God in the petals of a drooping flower? Or was I so lost that, like Jagger, I was cut off from the small comfort of a rooftop Eden?
I lowered myself to the edge of the roof and set two pints of ice cream on the ledge. They were dripping-wet, the freezer ice trailing down their sides.
I held out a spoon to Griff. “You get first pick.”
My favorite ice cream was mint chocolate chip, but Griff was allergic to chocolate, so I’d bought his favorites: butter pecan and lemon sherbet.
At first, I thought he was going to ignore me. He stared over the East River at a boat passing under the bridge, cutting through the blue and white lights reflecting in the water. They rippled and danced like fairy lights, disturbing the figments trapped below.
My hand wavered, the spoon bobbing. My arms felt as if iron chains were wound around them. Griff finally glanced at the spoon and then frowned at my shaking arm.
“What happened to you?”
I shrugged. “Nine hours of lockpicking.”
He didn’t take the spoon right away. We both knew what it was. An unspoken apology when a real one couldn’t be given.
He sighed, and his shoulders drooped. To his right, the stone grotesque I’d flown on snarled at us in frozen menace. Maybe if I listened hard enough, I’d be able to hear its growl right before it returned to stone.
My arm shook again, the muscles protesting. Griff shook his head, his shaggy hair fanning in the wind, and then he grabbed the spoon.
The weight on my chest fell away, and I leaned back, breathing in the night air.
Griff peeled open the butter pecan and stuck his spoon in. The ice cream was already melting in the heat. The sun baked the rooftop all day long, and the black tar paper soaked it in. At night, the roof was still subtropical in its warmth.
He made a happy noise and then shoveled the ice cream in his mouth. He was always starving when he landed in a new body. I was sure Rou had fed him a huge meal, but on Griff’s first day back, his stomach was a barrel without a bottom.
I opened the lemon sherbet and scooped out a melting spoonful. It was tart and bright and tasted like lemon squeezed over sugar and ice. My mouth puckered, and I smiled. It was night, and I was eating sunshine.
Griff reached over, knocked my spoon aside, and stole a bite.
I bumped my shoulder against his, and he smiled.
“I heard you this morning. In the kitchen.”
“Well . . .” I took another bite, letting the tart taste coat my tongue. “It felt like my fault.”
“Don’t say that.” His voice was pleading and earnest. It was the phrase he always used. Don’t say that. Rou always told him not saying something didn’t make it less true.
“I . . .” He sighed and set the butter pecan on the ledge. It was already nearly gone—there was just a pile of creamy soup in the bottom. “It’s not your fault. Did you know, I was always jealous of Justice?”
I looked at him quickly. He was?
He nodded. “Yeah. Funny, right? From the start, he was always sent off on jobs. Jagger’s secret missions.
If you needed something done, all you had to do was ask Justice.
The slipshots were afraid of him. The growlings avoided him.
Even Jagger treated him with respect. I always envied him.
No one respected me. No one feared me. Even one-day-old slipshots attacked me until they learned Justice or Jagger would come after them if they tried anything.
I know . . .” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes.
His small smile was tinged with irony. It was so far from his usual expression that it startled me.
He nodded. “I know you’ll tell me you like me as I am.
Or . . . you would’ve, before you became a mine. Back when you cared.”
“Griff—”
He shook his head and held up his hand to stop me.
“No. Don’t lie. I saw it in Justice. I saw it in you.
You always forget half of me is my father.
I can smell the stone in your blood. The hate.
You don’t smell like . . . You used to smell like a field of violets tilting toward the sun.
Now you smell like a cold, empty stone room.
Justice changed from a cedar forest to blood on the edge of a knife.
But even then, I still envied him. I wanted to be useful.
I wanted to be seen as more than . . .” He shrugged.
“Me. The lure who isn’t good for anything but bait. I resented him.”
He took the lemon sherbet from me and dug out a spoonful. His mouth puckered at the tartness.
My hands were numb from holding the cartoon. I flexed them, bringing back blood.
“You left him in the Den, Mari.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Why? Because Luvic had yanked me out before I could go after him. Because the Merchant wouldn’t open the wall to let me back in. Because Jagger had ordered me to leave him.
When I spoke, the words Jagger had commanded left me. “Because he isn’t worth saving.”
Startled, I stared at the river, the black water cutting through the land, the lights beating a pulse on the waves.
I wanted to say I didn’t mean it, but I couldn’t make the words leave my throat.
Griff gave me an odd look. “Yes, he is. I’m going after him.”
“Griff. No—” It would kill him. The Den would devour him. He was so innocent that the depravity would feast on him like a starving man dropped in a bathtub of ice cream.
“I’m not a mine yet. I’ll do it if I want.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to lose you. If you go in, you won’t ever come out.”
He leaned against me. “You came out.”
“How did you die this time? Was it the Clarks?”
His shoulders stiffened, then he set down the lemon sherbet and leaned against the grotesque’s bulky stone legs.
“No. You’d be proud. I took my father’s form. I . . .” His face paled, turning gray in the moonlight. “I killed the Clarks. I don’t envy Justice anymore. I don’t think I’ll envy anyone ever again.”
“If the Clark’s didn’t kill you, then . . .?”
“Then who?” He gave me his old smile. “I didn’t want to come back home right away.
I needed some time . . .” He shrugged. “I decided to walk along this old road in the woods. I was still in my father’s form, just thinking.
Some drunk in a big truck came speeding around a blind curve.
His headlights struck me. I froze like an animal.
His truck hit me dead-on. He got out, swearing, drinking from a bottle.
He stumbled onto the road, screamed when he saw me lying there, and unloaded his rifle on me.
Then I died.” Griff smiled. “The only funny part is, no one’s going to believe a drunk killed the Jersey Devil on some backroad in the woods. ”
“None of it’s funny,” I said.
“You only think that because you lost your sense of humor.”
“You think?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Definitely.” He was so earnest I almost smiled. “What were you lockpicking?”
“A monster trapped underground. It’s hungry.”
Griff let out a long whistle. “A monster like me?”
I shook my head.
“Like you?”
“No.”
“What does it do?”
“It devours.”
Griff put his chin on his fist, considering. He was a perfect replica of Rodin’s The Thinker. “Are you scared?”
“Terrified.”
He nodded. “Do you think Justice is scared?”
I thought about it for a moment, looking at the grotesque snarling over us. “I think . . . yes. If he still loves, then he’s scared. But if he doesn’t love anymore, if he’s stone, then no, I don’t think he’s scared.”
Griff tapped the grotesque’s clawed foot. “Then I don’t know what I hope. That he’s stone or that he’s scared.”
I closed my eyes. I hoped he was still scared. But for all I knew, months had already passed.
Griff reached over and took my hand.
“What?” I asked.
He smiled, his big brown eyes shining, glinting gold in the dark. “I’m glad you’re terrified. That you’re not completely stone.”
“Griff . . .”
“Yeah?”
I don’t want you to become a mine. I’m scared you won’t survive. I’m scared if you do, then all our innocence will die.
“Will you sleep in my room tonight?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Why?”
“You can have my bed. I’ll take the floor.”
He studied my face. I knew what he saw. A woman who looked like everyone and no one. A thousand faces wrapped in one. A stream that moved your eyes along, a leaf flickering quickly in the wind. A face that was forgotten as soon as it was seen.
“All right,” he finally said. “If you’re scared.”
I nodded. There was a lump in my throat too big to swallow.
I fell asleep on the floor, my back pressed against my bedroom door. Griff’s snores were soft and soothing. If anyone tried to hurt me while I slept—Finn, Last, or even the monster under the bed–Griff would be there. Unlike me or Justice, if I was in trouble, he’d be there for me.
I drifted off to the taste of lemon sunshine and the memory of skinned knees and radishes.