Chapter 88
Tyler
My knees were shaking. My hands were sweating. The traffic on the Long Island Expressway had come to a dead stop—a sea of
brake lights beneath a towering New York sky. Engines idled. Horns honked.
Maurice fiddled with the radio. The traffic report blared on.
“Tunnel’s closed,” he said.
“Fuck, okay, wow. What about—what about the Queensboro?”
“Closed,” he said.
“Can we go through Brooklyn? Just go through Brooklyn, please. I have to get to Katie.”
“No can do,” he said. “There’s no way into Manhattan tonight. I’m sorry. It’s all jammed.”
“What?” I stared at my watch. Three minutes after ten. Fuck. “Is everything okay? Did something happen? Did Meredith make
this happen? Does she want an even grander gesture? Is she testing me?”
Maurice turned to me then. His mouth, for the first time this summer, quirked just the slightest. “Think it’s just the city,
sir. Just your regular Saturday night, that’s all.”
I glanced at him for a second, entirely ready to hound him about his role in this preposterous magic system. And then I remembered
Katie was still a river away and yanked the door handle one, two, three times. “Can you—can you just unlock the car? Can you
just let me out right here? Now! Please!”