Tell the Wind and Fire(63)

Penelope and Marie were safe, though. They, my father, and Carwyn were the only ones in this bright city that I knew were safe.

I had to know who else was.

I was sure the schools were all shut, but that meant my school friends should be at home and able to answer me. I climbed off the bed and started sending messages, letting friends from school know that I was alive, and asking if they were safe. Those who did not respond I called.

Nadiya did not respond to the messages I sent, and she did not pick up her phone.

“Who are you trying to reach?” Carwyn asked.

I jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to face him. Propped up slightly by one arm behind his head, he was lying comfortably alongside the sword, as if it was his ideal bed partner.

“Nadiya,” I said. “You remember my friend from the club?”

Suddenly I remembered him asking me how well Ethan knew Nadiya. Asking me if I was sure that they did not know each other well.

From the look on his face, I saw Carwyn remembered it too.

“Vividly,” Carwyn drawled. “She was so very friendly. Remember when she pretended she wanted to buy dust, when really she wanted to drag me—sorry, Ethan—off, away from you? Do you know that she whispered in my ear that she wanted to speak to me alone? Do you want to know what I think?”

“I’m glad you asked,” I said. “Because I really don’t.”

“Too bad. I’m going to tell you anyway. I think your friend knew Ethan a lot better than you realized. I think that your perfect boyfriend was cheating on you.”

“I know that he wasn’t,” I snapped.

That didn’t mean that I thought Carwyn was lying. He didn’t have any reason to lie. I didn’t think he wanted to hurt me anymore, and if Nadiya had spoken to someone she thought was Ethan that way, his interpretation was fair based on what he knew. He just didn’t know Ethan like I did.

If Ethan knew Nadiya better than he had let on, if they had a secret between them, the secret was not what Carwyn thought.

“I’m going to see her,” I said abruptly. “You can wait here. Or you can leave, for all I care, but you’re not coming with me.”

Carwyn stretched indolently, as if he was perfectly comfortable and might settle back down to sleep. I hated him for the stupid pretense, as if anyone could rest while the city burned. I hated him for being able to pretend so well when I found that I suddenly could not pretend for a moment longer.



The subway was not working. I stopped and stared at the entrance, baffled. The subway had been the one constant in the two very different worlds I had lived in, running through both the Dark city and the Light, though not connecting the two. It was a chain that had been broken but still remained, thrumming with the same energy in both cities.

Now the reassuring rattle and rumble, the heartbeat of the city, was quiet.

I had to walk a long way to get to Nadiya’s place, exhaustion and the hungry magic sickness burning through me. I stumbled as I walked, and as I walked I saw things I would rather not have seen.

The city was not much changed. There were only small details, here and there. They were like the subtle signs, the pallor and trembling, of someone who was dying from internal injuries—the smell of smoke in the air, the far-off sound of a child screaming, store windows that were broken but not shattered. The cracks in the glass caught the sun, so the windows looked as if they were wrapped in vast spider webs made of light.

They had set up cages in Times Square. That was the one thing that stopped me. The cages hung on thick black chains, in front of the blaring bright colors of advertisements proclaiming new fashion brands and new movie stars, the unforgiving dazzle of Light power and commerce. I did not have to wonder what they were for. I remembered how the cages in Green-Wood Cemetery had looked, the black edge of magic to the metal, the sound as the spikes went into flesh and drank both blood and Light. I remembered my father’s screams.

They had not torn down the cages to spare lives. They had torn them down so they could build them somewhere new, somewhere there would be a flood of fresh victims for those black jaws. And these cages looked different somehow, looked even worse than the cages at Green-Wood had. I remembered the sword one of the rebels had cut down Gabrielle Mirren with, how its dark edges had distorted the world. The outlines of these cages were writhing black strokes cut into the sky.

They were empty, I told myself. They were empty, they were empty.

For now.

Nadiya lived in a big apartment block, red-brick with the windows full of white blinds, sternly anonymous. The only thing that differentiated her building from the line of identical buildings was a stoop that somebody had painted mint green in what must have been a fit of optimism. That had been a long time ago. The mint-green paint was peeling to reveal scraps of ghost-gray wood beneath.

Nadiya did not buzz me in, but she came downstairs when I pressed the bell. Long before she reached the door, I saw her bright hijab through the wire-mesh window. Her step was slow as she opened the door, and her eyes were huge as they met mine. She looked afraid.

I wondered how I looked.

“You knew Ethan better than I thought you did,” I said slowly. “Didn’t you?”

Nadiya bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

Nadiya was no fool. She looked at me, her gaze level and tranquil, and she waited to hear what I thought.