Lock Every Door(81)

“I can try.”

“Don’t let her leave,” I say. “Not until I get there. Do anything you can to keep her there. Hold her down if necessary. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Then I’m off, rushing down the library steps and turning onto Forty-Second Street. The shelter is ten blocks north and several long cross blocks west. Through a combination of jogging, speed walking, and willfully ignoring traffic lights, I make it there in twenty minutes.

Bobbie is waiting for me outside. Still dressed in her work khakis and cardigan, she stands at a noticeable remove from the circle of smokers I saw two days ago.

“Don’t worry, she’s still inside,” she tells me.

“Has she talked more?”

Bobbie shakes her head. “Nope. Still keeps to herself. She looks scared, though.”

We enter the building, Bobbie’s familiar presence allowing me to bypass the woman at the desk behind the scuffed glass. Tonight, the converted gymnasium is far more crowded than the afternoon of my first visit. Nearly every cot has been taken. Those that aren’t occupied have been marked with suitcases, trash bags, grungy pillows.

“There she is,” Bobbie says, pointing to a cot on the far side of the gym. Sitting on top of it, knees pulled to her chest, is Ingrid.

It’s not just her hair that’s changed in the past three days. Everything about her is darker, dirtier. She’s become a shadow version of her former self.

Her hair, now the color of tar save for that patch of telltale blue, hangs in greasy strings. Her shirt and jeans are the same ones she had on the last time I saw her, although they’re now stained from days of wear. Her face is cleaner but raw and weathered, as if she’s spent too much time outdoors.

Ingrid looks my way, recognition dawning in her bloodshot eyes.

“Juju?”

She leaps off the cot and runs toward me, pulling me into a strong, scared embrace.

“What are you doing here?” she says, showing no sign of letting me go.

“Looking for you.”

“You left the Bartholomew, right?”

“No.”

Ingrid breaks the embrace and backs away, eyeing me with palpable suspicion. “Tell me they didn’t get to you. Swear to me that you’re not one of them.”

“I’m not,” I say. “I’m here to help.”

“You can’t. Not anymore.” Ingrid collapses onto the nearest cot, her hands covering her face. Her left one trembles, out of control. Even when she grasps it with her right, it still shakes, her dirt-streaked fingers twitching. “Juju, you need to get out of there.”

“I plan to,” I tell her.

“No, now,” Ingrid says. “Run away as fast as you can. You don’t know what they are.”

Only, I do.

I think I’ve known for a while but wasn’t able to completely comprehend it.

But now all the information I’ve gathered in the past few days is starting to make sense. It’s like a photograph just pulled from a chemical bath. The image taking shape, emerging from the blankness, revealing the whole ghastly picture.

I know exactly what they are.

The Golden Chalice reborn.





41


At Ingrid’s insistence, we go someplace secluded to talk.

“I don’t want anyone to hear us,” she explains.

At the shelter, that means commandeering the men’s locker room of this former YMCA. Outside, Bobbie stands guard at the door, blocking anyone who might try to enter. Inside, Ingrid and I stroll past rows of empty lockers and shower stalls that have been bone dry for years.

“I haven’t showered in three days,” Ingrid says, staring with longing at one of the stalls. “The closest thing has been a whore’s bath at Port Authority, and that was yesterday morning.”

“Is that where you’ve been all this time?”

Ingrid drops onto a bench across from the showers. “I’ve been everywhere. Port Authority. Grand Central. Penn Station. Anywhere there are crowds. Because they’re looking for me, Juju. I know they are.”

“But they’re not,” I say.

“You don’t know that for certain.”

“I do, because—”

I stop myself before the rest of the sentence emerges.

Because I’m the only one who’s been looking for you.

That’s what I was about to say. But I now know that’s a lie. They’ve been looking for her, too.

Through me.

Rather than search themselves, they had me do it. It’s why Greta Manville suggested places for me to look. Why Nick lowered me down in the dumbwaiter to search 11A, hoping I’d find something of use. It’s probably even why he slept with me. To endear himself, keep me close, learn everything I had discovered.

I assume he didn’t pretend to be Ingrid via text until after they realized I knew something was amiss. By that point, they were prepared to cut their losses as far as Ingrid was concerned.

“If you were so scared of being found, why didn’t you take a bus or train out of the city?”

“That’s kind of difficult when you don’t have any money,” Ingrid says. “And I’ve got next to nothing. My meals have been fished out of trash cans. I had to shoplift this stupid hair dye. What little money I do have came from panhandling and stealing coins from fountains. So far I have, like, twelve dollars. At this rate, maybe I’ll have enough to leave the country after a decade. Because that’s what we have to do, Juju. Go someplace where they’ll never be able to find us. It’s the only way to escape them.”