Anomaly (Causal Enchantment #4)(64)

“After I win the game,” Incendia eyed the small world sitting atop the pedestal, “we no longer have use for that world or anything in it.”

And so it was agreed.

Chapter Twenty-Six – Evangeline

I didn’t need to look at Julian’s face to feel the despair radiating from him. Even with healing, even with compulsion, I knew that what had truly been driving him all this time was a shred of hope.

That hope was gone.

“We should have stolen one of those trucks,” Mage murmured. “We could have detected the movement underground. I can’t even tell where the station was.”

Listening to Mage’s words, I closed my eyes to block out the unsightly mess before me, trying to picture what Manhattan used to look like. But the innocent memories of months ago had been replaced with images of carnage I’d run through nights ago as I was whisked away into this fantasy, one that quickly morphed into a nightmare.

I wanted to experience that innocent awe again, just one more time.

If I inhaled deeply enough, I could still catch the more unpleasant odors—the exhaust fumes mixed with cold air and whiffs of sewage—coupled with the more pleasant scents—street car vendors, wafts of perfume flowing from hair salons as patrons pushed through the door.

If I squeezed my eyes tight enough, I could see the busy streets stretched out ahead of me, the bustle of people and cars at all hours of the day and night.

If I listened hard enough, I could hear the angry horns and splashes of slush against moving tires, and the pleasant chatter of friends moving along the sidewalk.

All the tiny details that were so easily dismissed and ignored in everyday life.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. I wanted to absorb this feeling—a part of the past now, a time when Amelie was still alive and hope still existed. But I needed to focus on the future, as dismal as it may seem. And so I dared open my eyes.

I gasped.

“Do you see it?” I whispered as I took in the long stretch of street. To my right, a sign hung overhead, the streetlight illuminating it. “Fifty-Seventh Street,” I read it aloud. Taking steps forward, I pointed to my left. “And Central Park is just over there.” I couldn’t see it past the stretch of tall buildings blocking my view.

All perfectly intact.

The city was no longer in ruins.

“What is she talking about?” Bishop said. “Sofie?”

“Is she hallucinating?” Fiona asked.

Maybe I was.

Their footsteps echoed as they trailed me. The streets were deserted of people and cars but they were clean, free of debris and victims. I moved as I would over smooth terrain, though I knew that it was not.

“Evangeline, what did you just do?” Sofie called out behind me.

I didn’t stop to explain. I couldn’t explain. “I just wished that I could see the city again. And now I can.” Come to think of it, everything I’d discovered about what I could do was based on what I wanted to do.

Sofie muttered in French—if I had to guess, it was a curse—before she said to the others, “Follow her and see where this goes. And keep your senses peeled for him.”

They followed me as I ran along the street, asking Sofie for directions as I came to intersections. The rest of the time, I pondered this strange magic that Sofie swore was not her kind of magic. When I’d wanted Julian—my friend and not the crazed maniac about to attack me—I compelled him and he came back. When I met Dixon, I felt the overwhelming urge to heal his leg and I’m pretty sure I did that. I knew that I’d helped that little boy in the car crash because I saw it with my own eyes. I demanded that Julian never look at a human with intent to harm again. And he hadn’t.

When I took my friends’ pain away after Amelie’s loss, it wasn’t because I was following a set of rules or weaving some elaborate spell, or begging the Fates to grant my prayers. I wanted to do it.

And it was done.

Could it be that simple?

And here, I wanted to see the city for what it was. Now I could.

Was that all it would take? A thought, a desire, a wish? If that was the case, what kind of magic was it? It seemed to have no bounds.

And if it had no bounds …

I could have anything I wanted.

Would it be an endless parade of wishes, though?

When we passed the hauntingly beautiful Fifth Avenue building that had held so many secrets, I slowed. It was wonderful to see it standing again, the wrought iron grates along the lower windows and intricate plaster detail stirring nostalgia. For the horrors that had transpired within these walls, I’d also discovered a new life within it.

If I pushed through the doors, would I find the dreamlike atrium inside?

I moved again, picking up speed until running, everyone tailing me. I didn’t slow again.

Not until the address that Viggo had taunted us with—firmly emblazoned in my head—appeared before my eyes. A sleek, all-glass building of no more than twenty floors stretched into the night sky. “This is it.” Based on what Sofie had mapped out on the kitchen table, we were just one block over from the subway construction site.

“Are you sure? What if you’re wrong?” The hollowness in Julian’s voice told me that the real site—not the one through my eyes—held no promise.

With great reluctance, I willed myself to see reality. My eyes opened to a heap of rubble. My stomach clenched. The eerie silence only seemed to grow as I watched Julian step forward, climbing over brick and concrete and steel.