Chapter Eighteen
He can see it in her eyes—a last, wordless appeal to leave her behind and save himself. To run. As if he could ever find peace on a path she didn’t share.
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
She’s being held.
It’s the first thing she registers when she comes to—the feeling of movement, the press of hands cradling her to a firm chest and her legs draped over a lap.
The next is the sound of traffic: car horns, the throaty purr of engines, and a kaleidoscope of voices.
The smell of trash and sewage is heavy, the air humid.
Stuffy. Anna’s stomach revolts, clenching painfully, but she doesn’t have time to be sick.
The world won’t stop spinning, but it doesn’t matter, because she has to run. She has to—
“Shh,” Khiran soothes, his gentle voice tangling in her hair. It settles around her like the comforting weight of a familiar blanket. “It’s alright. Breathe. Nice and slow.”
A voice, one she doesn’t recognize, to her left. “How’s she doing there, boss?”
That accent. She recognizes that accent—has heard a version of it fifty years ago in the Bronx.
New York. They’re in New York. She swallows down her nausea, closes her eyes and concentrates on the press of her ear against Khiran’s chest and the heart beating beneath it.
Alive. They’re both alive. Her tongue feels like cotton. “What—”
“Later, dearest,” he soothes, his voice soft but still loud enough to carry. Words that aren’t meant for her ears alone. “We’re in a taxi. Pete here was kind enough to offer us a ride. You’ve had a nasty fall during our walk in Central Park.”
Her face is tucked into his neck and shoulder.
Opening her eyes, she’s relieved when her vision remains steady.
She pulls away to look at his face, but the movement makes her head throb.
Her limbs feel heavy, but she can feel the buttons of his shirt digging into her palms. Even unconscious, she’d managed to keep her promise. She held on.
Acid is rising in her throat. “I’m going to—”
“Got some puke bags on the car door there, boss.” That voice again. The one she doesn’t know. “Good stuff, too. Wife’s a nurse over in Manhattan. She brings ‘em home for me. Night shifts can get a little crazy, if ya know what I mean.”
Khiran hands her a bag, plastic crinkling.
His fingers brush the clammy skin at the nape of her neck as he pulls her hair back, and Anna’s stomach surrenders.
She heaves, gagging on the rancid taste coating her tongue.
Her chest aches with the force of it, her throat burning.
Traveling alongside him has never crippled her like this before.
She supposes that must be the difference between crossing continents and going to the other side of the world entirely.
He takes the bag from her, carefully tying the top closed.
Anna wipes her lips with the back of her sleeve, cringing, before the sight of it makes her falter.
The ash stained dress she’d been wearing is gone.
In its place is a belted green skirt that kisses her ankles and a white blouse with long airy sleeves that cuff at her wrists.
She reaches for her neck, fingers gliding over a silk patterned scarf.
She glances at Khiran, noting that his t-shirt has been traded in for a collared button up and a vest.
He catches her eyes, gaze flitting towards their taxi driver pointedly. Anna bites back the question she wants to ask, chews on it until it resembles something safe. “How long was I out?”
“Only twenty minutes, give or take,” he murmurs, studying her. “How are you feeling?”
She swallows, wincing at the taste still coating her tongue. “Better.”
“Ya know, the wife says vomiting after head injuries can be a big deal,” the voice—Pete, she reminds herself—chimes. Anna meets his reflection in the rearview mirror, his blue eyes flicking between her and the road. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to the hospital?”
Khiran pipes up before she can, the lie slipping off his tongue like dark chocolate—smooth with a bitter edge. “Thank you, but I’m afraid my wife has had this sort of episode before. It’s chronic, you see.” His eyes meet hers. “A bit of fresh sea air and she’ll be right as rain.”
The sea.
Of course. If they can reach the sea, they can find safety beneath the waves with Kaia.
Pete’s pale brow furrows under his cap as he stops at a light, but it’s followed by a shrug of his hefty shoulders.
“You’re the boss. Though, you know, I wouldn’t say Coney Island’s ideal for R and R.
You sure you won’t want to go somewhere quieter?
” Outside, a breeze snakes between the buildings, stirring up a bunch of pale pamphlets littering the sidewalk.
Anna watches as they float on the wind like stiff-winged butterflies.
One of them catches on Pete’s windshield, causing the middle-aged man to curse.
“These damn flyers. Gonna drive off all the tourists and then where am I gonna be, huh?”
He continues to grumble complaints as he cranks down the window, but Anna’s too focused on the image staring back at her to register them. Above a black and white illustration of a skeletal grim reaper, his mouth grinning and his eye sockets dark and empty, read the words: Welcome to Fear City.
Anna almost asks, but there’s a sudden shift in the air. A pause.
In the rearview mirror, Pete’s expression is frozen, his lips pursed around a sentence he can’t finish.
Outside, suspended and motionless, the pamphlets float as if pinned in place by an invisible force.
Anna’s eyes slide to the traffic light. The red has turned green, but the line of cars doesn’t move.
Everything is still. Everything is silent.
Every thing, every one, is suspended.
Her lips part around a quick intake of breath, fear swelling in her chest.
Khiran curses, grabbing her arm and pulling her from the taxi. “She brought Dante. Time to go.”
Time.
Dante must be The Timekeeper.
Khiran swats at a pamphlet, the littered paper still suspended as if on strings as he helps her out of the bright yellow cab.
He steers her down alleyways, twisting and turning in ways that make her dizzy.
She doesn’t know this New York. It’s been too long since she’s walked these streets, and the decades have changed the city into something she struggles to recognize.
Another turn, and suddenly they’re back on a main street.
There are dozens of cars on the road, hundreds of people lining the streets.
They’re all motionless. Soundless. Anna’s not sure she’s ever seen anything so disconcerting, so unnatural, in her entire life.
“Why aren’t we suspended, too?” she asks, struggling to keep his pace while her eyes drink in their surroundings.
Recognition nags at her, but it isn’t until she sees the pale columns of Federal Hall looming across the street that she understands why.
The last time she was here, shattered glass littered the ground like confetti while her ears rang with the echoed blast of a bomb.
Her hands were soaked red with the blood of a paperboy while she begged Khiran for help he could not give.
“If he gets close enough, we will be,” he says, weaving them through the crowd of stilled lives. “The more he has to stop, the harder it is to chain us down. He won’t be able to hold it for long, not in a city like this, but he won’t be alone.”
Marcia.
Suddenly, Anna realizes how empty her hands are. “The blade—”
“I have it,” he assures her. “When time restarts, we need to be ready.” The words are little more than a breath, but it sounds so loud in the silence.
Anna catches him snatching a charcoal fedora off a young man’s head.
There’s construction scaffolding up ahead, draped in canvas to keep the dust off the sidewalks.
Khiran makes a beeline towards it, stopping only once they’re safely hidden behind the cloth.
A group of workers sit along the benches, their laughter paused, dinged metal lunch boxes at their feet, and their half-eaten sandwiches still in their hands.
Khiran shrugs out of his vest, letting it fall and crumple to the ground.
In the shadowed corner, Anna thinks it almost looks like the carcass of an animal.
He puts the fedora on his head before his hands reach for the silk scarf at her throat.
She can feel him tugging at the knot, the cool fabric sliding along the back of her neck as it slips away.
Folding it in half, he covers her hair with it.
“We want to make it as hard as possible to pick us from a crowd,” he murmurs, his nimble fingers retying the scarf under her chin.
All at once, the city outside the canvas turns loud—cars honking, people shouting on the streets.
Behind them, the construction workers laugh.
Khiran grabs her hand and leads her back onto the streets just as one of the crew notices them.
His pace slows once they’re back on the sidewalk, matching a group of friends ahead of them.
He stares straight ahead, expression blank.
The grip on her hand, white-knuckled and trembling, is the only outward sign of fear.
Anna can feel her heartbeat in her throat, the flush of it making her feel hot. She wants, desperately, to look behind her. To see if she can find the face of the stranger looking for them. She resists the temptation and follows Khiran’s example.
For an excruciating ten minutes, they blend in with the crowd. She can see the bay. Anna leans in close, their shoulders brushing, and keeps her voice low. “Does it have to be Coney Island?”
“No, but jumping into the bay would cause too much of a scene. We would be caught before Kaia’s path could open.”