The Dire King (Jackaby #4)(18)

Jackaby had gotten me so flustered, I found myself wondering, for the first few blocks, if Charlie was going to kneel down at any moment, take a ring from his pocket, and ask me the question I was not fully prepared to answer. What would I say if he did? Would I throw my arms around his neck and cry Yes as the gray-haired couple ahead of us turned and made saccharine faces, or would I panic completely and throw myself sidelong from the moving cart in a fit of anxiety? Either option promised a long and awkward return to Augur Lane. Nervous as the notion made me, it was a strangely giddy nervousness.

We passed a building on Prospect Lane with the windows all boarded up. Charlie sighed. The words US OR THEM had been painted across the door in crude strokes. In the absence of tenants, the whole side of the building had been papered with notices. Spade’s edict about “unnatural neighbors” was visible two or three times, along with the faces of a dozen persons of interest. The familiar etching of Charlie’s face was visible in the mix. I winced.

The exciting bubble of a potential future popped as the reality of the past thudded back into my mind. Charlie had very publicly transformed into a frightening beast in the center of town last winter. New Fiddleham did not know that he had spent the rest of that evening saving their lives and mine by risking his own against the real monster. They didn’t know that he continued to risk his life every day to keep their streets safe. They did not know that he continued to act the hero for them long after they had painted him the villain. The wanted posters continued to surface, in spite of Marlowe’s order for them to cease.

If New Fiddleham was ever going to forget the ridiculous rumors about a werewolf in the West End, it wasn’t going to be in the middle of this furor over all things paranormal.

“What are you thinking about?” Charlie said, breaking the silence.

I emerged from my thoughts and looked away from the sad building. “The way things change,” I said, honestly. “It can be a bit overwhelming, that’s all.”

He looked over his shoulder at the wall as we clopped along and nodded solemnly. Suddenly, the little old couple in front of me looked less sweet and adoring and more like potential witnesses, just waiting for their chance to hop off the trolley and tell the nearest constable that the dangerous fugitive had been spotted. Would they recognize him from the posters? Oh—why were we out in public at all?

“You know,” I said, “you don’t owe New Fiddleham anything. You don’t need to help them.”

“Look,” Charlie said as we clipped past Market Street. He was pointing at a man delicately painting enormous letters onto a broad window as we passed. NONNA SANTORO’S, it read, although the RO’S was still just an outline.

“That Italian restaurant?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “They will be opening their doors for the first time very soon. Sweet family. I bought my first meal in New Fiddleham from that man. A couple of meatballs from a street cart were about all I could afford at the time. He’s an immigrant, too. He’s going to do well. His red sauce is amazing.”

“That’s grand for him, then,” I said.

“I like it when doors open,” said Charlie. “Doors are opening in New Fiddleham every day. It is a remarkable time to be alive anywhere, really. Do you think our parents could ever have imagined having machines that could wash dishes, machines that could sew, machines that do laundry? Pretty soon we’ll be taking this trolley ride without any horses. I’ve heard that Glanville has electric streetcars already. Who knows what will be possible fifty years from now, or a hundred. Change isn’t always so bad.”

“Your optimism is both baffling and inspiring,” I said.

“The sun is rising,” he replied with a little chuckle.

I glanced at the sky. It was well past noon.

“It’s just something my sister and I used to say,” he clarified. “I think you would like Alina. You often remind me of her. She has a way of refusing to let the world keep her down.” He smiled and his gaze drifted away, following the memory.

“Alina found a rolled-up canvas once,” he said, “a year or so after our mother passed away. It was an oil painting—a picture of the sun hanging low over a rippling ocean. She was a beautiful painter, our mother. I could tell that it was one of hers, but I had never seen it before. It felt like a message, like she had sent it, just for us to find.

“I said that it was a beautiful sunset, and Alina said no, it was a sunrise. We argued about it, actually. I told her that the sun in the picture was setting because it was obviously a view from our camp near Gelendzhik, overlooking the Black Sea. That would mean the painting was looking to the west.

“Alina said that it didn’t matter. Even if the sun is setting on Gelendzhik, that only means that it is rising in Bucharest. Or Vienna. Or Paris. The sun is always rising somewhere. From then on, whenever I felt low, whenever I lost hope and the world felt darkest, Alina would remind me: the sun is rising.”

“I think I like Alina already. It’s a heartening philosophy. I only worry that it’s wasted on this city.”

“A city is just people,” Charlie said. “A hundred years from now, even if the roads and buildings are still here, this will still be a whole new city. New Fiddleham is dying, every day, but it is also being constantly reborn. Every day, there is new hope. Every day, the sun rises. Every day, there are doors opening.”