Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(13)

I told him I would rather be alone.

“Mr. Kipling is very worried about you, Anya,” Simon Green continued.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll get in trouble if I don’t come with you.”

The bus arrived. On the side was a screen advertising: CHARLES DELACROIX (D) FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY. His aging-superhero face dissolved into his campaign slogan: Great cities require great leaders. The whole thing made me sick. I would have waited for another bus but the schedules were erratic. The Charles Delacroix Express was what it would have to be.

Simon Green sat next to me on a seat toward the back of the bus. “Do you think Delacroix will win?” he asked.

“Haven’t honestly put much thought into it,” I said.

“But I thought you and he were such great friends,” Simon Green joked.

I could not bring myself to laugh.

“I think it’s been a harder campaign than he thought it would be. But I tell you, I don’t think he’s awful,” Simon Green said after a pause. “I mean, I think his heart is in the right place.”

“Heart?” I scoffed. “That man has no heart.”

“The truth is, Anya, I think he could be very good for us. He’s talking a lot about how a safe city needs to have laws that make sense.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should, though,” he remonstrated me. “I’m sorry you lost your boyfriend in all this, but there are greater matters at hand here. Charlie Delacroix is more than just Win Delacroix’s father, and assuming he prevails here, no one thinks district attorney is the last stop for him. He could be mayor, governor, president even.”

“How wonderful.”

“Someday, I might like to get into politics myself,” Simon Green said.

I rolled my eyes. “You really think the best way to go about that is acting as legal counsel to the first daughter of organized crime?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me sometime.”

Simon Green’s laughter was drowned out by a sickening scream followed by an ominous thud. My head was thrust forward into the seat in front of me. There were more screams, and then the bus came to a stop. Simon Green grabbed my arm. “Anya, are you all right?”

My neck hurt a little but other than that, I felt fine. “What just happened?”

“We must have hit something,” Simon Green said in a dazed voice. I turned to look at him. There was a gash on his right temple where his glasses had pierced his skin. “Mr. Green, you’re bleeding!”

“Oh dear,” Simon Green said weakly.

I ordered him to hold his head back. Then I took off my jacket so that I could use it to sop up the blood.

“Everyone stay on the bus!” the driver barked. “There’s been an accident.”

Obviously. I looked out the window. In the middle of Madison Avenue, a girl of about my age was lying unconscious. Her limbs were contorted into catastrophic angles. The worst part was her head, which had nearly twisted off her neck. Only a small band of skin was keeping her from being decapitated.

“Simon,” I said. “I don’t think she’s going to live.”

Simon leaned over me to examine the scene. “Oh dear,” he whispered just before he passed out.

*   *   *

At the hospital, I waited while they examined Simon Green. The doctors determined that, aside from blood loss, there was nothing seriously wrong with him. They stitched up the gash on his temple. Because he had passed out, they were making him stay the night for observation.

I had called Mr. Kipling, who assured me he was on his way. Simon Green and I watched the news on his slate while we waited for Mr. Kipling to arrive. The lead story was about the bus accident. “In Midtown today, several were injured when a city bus bearing a Charles Delacroix campaign advertisement struck a pedestrian.”

“Ooh,” Simon Green said, “bad publicity. The Delacroix people must be furious.”

The news cut to a man-on-the-street interview. “The girl—she must have been sixteen, seventeen—she was crossing in the middle of the street when boom. And next I know, she’s lying there on the ground with her head nearly cut off. Poor thing. You can’t help but feel for the parents in cases like this.”

The reporter broke in. “The teenager was pronounced dead at the scene. The other injured passengers were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. In an unusual coincidence, Anya Balanchine, the daughter of notorious crime boss Leonyd Balanchine, was also a passenger on the bus and is believed to be seriously injured.”

“That is so annoying!” I yelled at the screen. “I’m not injured. I’m fine!”

Simon Green shrugged.

“They have no right releasing my name,” I grumbled.

“Last spring, Anya Balanchine was arrested for the shooting of her own cousin, who had been trying to shoot Anya Balanchine’s boyfriend at the time, William Delacroix, the son of acting District Attorney Charles Delacroix.”

“His name is Win!” I objected.

“Although Charles Delacroix initially led in the polls, in the last month his major challenger, the Independent Party candidate, Bertha Sinclair, has narrowed the gap to five points. It’s too early to see how this latest incident will impact voters.”