Chapter 69
“Don’t move. There’s a jackaltooth behind you.”
The gravelly words jarred me, yanking me through a cobweb-dark tunnel into the twilit glow of the ghost train. The train heaved over the high track, jostling me against Finn’s tense form. I swayed as it clackity-clacked over Hell Gate Bridge, but Finn was as motionless as a blade thrust into stone.
I knew what the tension building in his stillness meant.
I’d seen it before. He compressed all his focus, all his intent, into a tight ball of energy at his core.
It was taking a universe of atomic energy and containing it in a ball the size of a water drop.
Then, when he was ready, he thrust the power outward and—
Before, he’d used this focus to protect or to love.
It was what he’d done during the games. It was how he’d faced a room of hundreds of conjurers at the closing ceremony.
It was how it had felt on our wedding night.
He was a man whose world was a single point of focus, with a universe of love that had been unleashed.
Finn’s stillness meant a nuclear explosion was building inside him. Any second, he’d spin around and lay waste to the jackaltooth behind us.
A lick of hot air fluttered across my neck, lifting my hair. The air was moist—the humid breath of a panting animal crouched so close it could open its jaws and close them on my throat in a millisecond. I could smell his fur, a wet-dog scent, mixed with salt and that acrid jackaltooth sting.
We were on a diesel train, hollow-bellied and grumbly-loud. The side hung open, and its steel walls quivered as we rumbled across the night-black East River. Diesel fumes and engine grease knocked against us, pinching my nose.
There was a figment in the train with us.
An old, bearded man dressed in rags, sprawled on the dirty floor, his back against the metal wall.
He was focused entirely on his pipe, blowing great clouds of smoke to gather in a swirling gray mass above his head.
He couldn’t see Finn, me, or the jackaltooth.
He was a figment, settled back in the 1960s, enjoying his tobacco.
Maybe this diesel was the same ghost train I’d seen when I was a little girl. It would have graffiti painted on its sides and a stuttering gait that carried it in flickering strides across the river.
Finn and I perched together on a wooden shipping crate. The car was filled with them.
Behind me, the jackaltooth made a small, panting whine.
How had Luvic ended up on the ghost train with me?
And why was he a jackaltooth here?
At that moment, Finn exploded, whirling around, his fist extended.
“No!” I launched at him, dropping my shoulder and slamming into his middle. We rolled, skidded across the metal floor, and slammed into the side of a shipping crate.
Luvic snarled and leaped across the car. He cleared three shipping crates and then spun around, his tail lashing through the figment. He crouched, his orange eyes flaring, teeth barred. The hair on his back bristled as a low jackaltooth growl ripped from his throat.
Finn shoved off the ground and sprang at Luvic. They crashed into each other, rolling over the floor, splintering wooden crates. Finn grappled for Luvic’s throat. Luvic snapped his teeth an inch from Finn’s jugular.
“It’s Luvic!” I screamed. “Finn! Stop! It’s Luvic!”
Luvic rolled at him, slamming his paw into Finn’s chest and pinning him to the ground.
Finn threw me a look like, “Really? Do you see this?” Luvic’s teeth grazed Finn’s throat, drawing blood.
Finn rammed his fist into Luvic’s chest and then bent his legs and thrust so Luvic catapulted over him and crashed into the metal wall.
The train car shuddered, wobbling on the tracks.
I jumped over a shipping crate and landed at Luvic’s side. “I don’t know why you’re in my dream,” I said, grabbing the scruff of his neck and putting my nose to his, “but you’re going to stop! This is Finn. He’s himself here, not a murdering maniac. And you—”
I broke off when Luvic licked my nose. Blinking at his warm, wet tongue, I let go of his fur and wiped the glob of saliva off my face. “Gross. Yuck.”
He nudged me aside and barred his teeth, his upper lip curling over daggerlike canines.
Finn flipped to his feet in one smooth movement. He landed tense, ready to charge.
Luvic made a low, throat-rattling growl and stepped in front of me, nudging me back.
Finn’s expression cleared of everything except surprise. “Luvic?”
Luvic’s orange eyes narrowed, and it looked like he was considering whether it was worth eating human arm again. He hadn’t liked it the last time, but maybe he thought it’d grow on him. Then he shook himself off and sat down, eyeing Finn warily.
“What . . .?” Finn paused, frowned. “Why are you a jackaltooth?”
Luvic huffed out an irritated breath, as if he were asking, “Why are you a pain in my neck?”
I smiled. “He’s been changing into one since the closing ceremony. I don’t know why.”
Finn looked quickly at me and then back to Luvic, his forehead wrinkling.
In real life, Finn knew a lot of conjurer history.
He’d been tutored by the same man who taught Darin.
It seemed Wolfgang had wanted to prepare him for the day he’d become the Smith.
Finn didn’t know that at the time, but in hindsight, it was clear what Wolfgang had been doing.
“The jackaltooth are Bard creations . . .” Finn said, wearing the same expression he did when he was mulling something over that he found puzzling or out of place. “But are they also Bards? Are you . . .?” He swallowed, staring at Luvic’s curled upper lip. “Is this something you can undo?”
Luvic looked away from him, staring resolutely out of the train car’s open door. We’d made it to the Bronx and were rolling steadily north, veering past old buildings cobbled like cigarette boxes against the dark sky.
“How are you here?” Finn asked him, then turning to me, his gaze steady. “Where were you when you fell asleep?”
I shook my head and pressed my lips tight.
I still wasn’t certain what these dreams meant.
Were they my subconscious, or were they the real Finn luring me into false ease?
He was still covered in a swirling macramé of knots.
Thousands of them floated around him. He was pure illusion here.
There was nothing real about him. Except .
. . except he was exactly the same as he used to be. That was real.
“I went to see you in real life,” I said. “You didn’t say ‘ghost train.’”
The lines on Finn’s forehead deepened, and for a moment, he looked regretful. “That was some kick in the head you gave me.”
“You mean when I stabbed you? How many times are you going to promise to kill me?”
He shook his head. “What? No. I didn’t . . . You didn’t . . . What . . .?”
Luvic growled, and I pressed my hand into the brindled fur on his back.
“No,” he said. “I meant the powder. The seizures. The hallucinations. I was out for eight hours, Darin for ten. It was a kick in the head.” He smiled, his green eye warming to a mossy forest shade.
“I was surprised to see you. But I thought about it. I realized, if I confirm this is real, then Jagger will know it’s real.
You’ll tell him. Then it’s all over. It’s better if you wait until the right moment. ”
“Uh-huh. Sure. It’s a nice story, but I think it’s more likely that I miss you and I wish you weren’t what you came back as.”
“Were you with Luvic when you fell asleep? Were you touching?” Finn asked.
I turned aside. “What does it matter? I was with Griff before, and he never ended up in my dreams.” Except Griff and I hadn’t been holding hands.
Finn turned to Luvic. “Luvic? Were you?”
I felt Luvic’s head moving up and down, then Finn let out a long sigh.
“Can I talk to you?”
“Me?” I asked.
Finn shook his head. “No. Luvic.”
Luvic huffed and then padded across the train car, as far from the figment and his smoke cloud as possible. Finn followed, and when Luvic sat, Finn perched on the edge of a shipping crate bending toward him.
I walked to the edge of the car, standing a foot from the open side.
The wind tugged at me, buffeting me with warm, concrete-baked air as we chugged further into the Bronx, speeding north.
The soft, mellow sounds of Finn’s voice blurred with the wind, creating a comforting sound that wrapped itself around me.
I couldn’t hear his words, only his intimate, urging tone—the one he always used when he was passionate about something and wanted to convince Luvic to follow his lead.
Luvic was used to it. Finn had used the same tone when they’d argued about whether or not Finn should approach his father.
Or whether Luvic should find the woman he’d glimpsed sitting on the edge of the Bethesda fountain.
Or whether we should go to a street fair or to the movies. Or . . . any host of things.
Luvic didn’t always agree with Finn, and Finn never expected him to. But he always listened, and Finn returned the favor by always listening to him. They’d always been as different as two people could possibly be, but they’d always liked each other the better because of it.
Not liked. Loved.
All of us had always been willing to do anything for one another. It wasn’t ever a question.
Finn had crouched down, his right hand over Luvic’s bulging, muscled jackaltooth chest. He was speaking earnestly.
Luvic’s ears were flattened, his orange eyes thoughtful.
When Finn stopped speaking, Luvic didn’t move.
Finn remained tense. Then, after a long moment, Luvic tilted his head in a single short nod.
Finn’s shoulders relaxed, and he let out a long, relieved breath.
The train shuddered, a slight rain-tinged night scent spilling into the car as it slowed. The wheels whined, shivering on the tracks, and then they whispered to a halt. The night was a dark, inky shadow of shifting leaves and foresty breeze.
“We’re here,” I said, turning as Luvic and Finn joined me.
Luvic growled low in his throat, his snarl ripping the paper-thin quiet.
The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I nodded. “Exactly.”