I could remember what Rose had said. The sooner you realize that there’s no such thing as a true ally…
My friends were still my friends, but they were the furthest thing from true allies right now.
“You’ve got us,” Evan said.
I opened my eyes.
“I’ve got you,” I said. Not agreeing with him. You in the singular. Evan had been pressured into keeping silent. He’d tried to help me escape the binding circle, and he’d backed me up on nothing but instinct and hearsay.
I stood straight. “We’ll have to do something about your arm later, Kathryn.”
“Great.”
“Green Eyes, you’re obviously okay with the cold.” She was in snow right now, and she’d managed well in the frozen-over lake.
“Yes.”
“Evan?”
“Um, sorta?”
“You two are with me,” I said. “We’re going to start that fire.”
“With you?” Evan asked. “We’re not staying here, are we?”
“No,” I replied.
“Then how? We don’t have a mirror.”
“I’m hoping,” I said, “That I don’t need a mirror.”
“But-”
“Ty,” I said, “Or anyone that’s feeling particularly spry… can you borrow some sweaters and sweatshirts? Layer?”
“Going out into the cold?” Ty asked. “Alone?”
“With Green Eyes. Evan too.”
“I guess I could, if Alexis thinks she could open another portal if this one breaks down?”
“I can.”
“Good,” I said.
“What am I going out into the cold for?” Ty asked. “Winter clothes?”
I shook my head, “But clothes might be a good start. The real trick, I think, will be the body.”
“The body?” Ty asked.
“Dead branches,” I said, “Ideally. I wouldn’t mind bones, too.”
“I think I’m starting to get a mental picture of what you’re wanting to do.”
“Hurry and do it, then,” Kathryn said. “I hear scratching in the walls and it’s getting louder.”
And, from the tension in her neck and face, her shoulder probably hurt like murder.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Peter asked. “Then we’ve got even less clothes, and we’re in the same situation.”
“I can bring the clothes back,” Green Eyes said.
“That’s, uh,” Ty said. “Let’s try assuming I won’t die?”
“Okay,” Green Eyes said. “I’ll protect you.”
“Thank you.”
“But if I protect you and you do die, can I eat you, before I bring the clothes back here?”
Ty stared down at her.
“Please may I eat you?” Green Eyes corrected herself.
“Sure? I guess I won’t care that much?”
“I’m game,” Green Eyes said.
It took a minute for Ty to collect the offered sweatshirt and sweater. He declared himself warm enough, and stepped through the gate, joining Green Eyes. He trudged on through, while Green Eyes moved like a mole through the earth, surprisingly fast, with a hump of broken snow left in her trail.
“Now we play the waiting game,” Peter commented, fiercely kicking one rat that had managed to climb out of the hole in the floor.
I walked to the end of the hallway, opposite the portal.
Standing guard.
I could see the life in the Tenements. The Others patrolling along their individual territories, the occasional lost soul, like the old man who apparently lived between two floors, crawling with wood and concrete scraping at his back and belly simultaneously.
I smelled smoke, and I turned my head. Alexis was taking a puff.
“How do I get to be what you are?” Christoff asked Tiff.
Tiff, probably the most approachable one in the group.
“You do a ritual. You make an offering to major kinds of Other, to central elements, and there’s a lot more involved. You’re agreeing to a deal, to be a little less human and a bit more Other. Making a compact to obey certain laws in exchange for being recognized and for being allowed to see.”
“That’s where you agree not to lie?” Peter asked.
Roxanne had stressed that question. When I looked, Roxanne was sitting against the wall, drifting asleep, her head nodding, then jerking as it moved too fast.
Tiff nodded. “That’s right.”
“And it’s tied to this karma bullshit.”
“Yeah. It’s tied to the karma bullshit,” Tiff said, her voice soft.
“Ugh,” Peter said.
“I want to,” Christoff said.
“For Callan?” Tiff asked.
“No. I just… want to. Being a little less human sounds good.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” Alexis commented.
He shrugged.
“Christoff is a coward,” Peter said. “Callan’s old enough he got his chance at thinking he had a shot at the inheritance. Molly actually got the inheritance-”
“Don’t talk about Molly,” Christoff said.
“Fine. I won’t. You’re a chickenshit, Chris.”
“Shut up.”
“Fine, fine. But I wouldn’t jump on the first out you’re given, just because real life hasn’t been kind. I thought being an adult, or almost an adult, would be my way out. Away from the pettiness, away from the idiocy, constantly feeling like I was clawing my way out of some quicksand made of stupidity. But no. That’s reality. Think seriously before you make a call one way or the other, because I don’t think you’re going to get what you want.”
Was that almost a pep talk? Advice?
“Chris,” I said.
Christoff looked at me.
“Molly told me, once, that you were picked on at school?”
“Yeah.”
“Here, in Jacob’s Bell.”
“Yeah.”
“Were any of them Behaims or Duchamps?”
“Um. A Behaim.”
“The clockwork man who tried to pry the doors open back at the library? Pretty sure that was a gift from the Behaims.”
I saw his eyes widen.
“It’s more of the same, Chris,” I said, turning my eyes back out the window. “More of the same family against family shit, on the schoolyard and here. Think about it.”
“Let’s not talk about the magic,” Tiff said. “Something nicer. What do you do, when you’re not in school, Chris?”
I tuned out the ensuing discussion.
A handful of minutes passed.
Then the lights started going out.
I thought it was an isolated incident at first, looking up as the lightbulb almost popped in its hurry to go black. Not a flickering death, like it was struggling to stay lit, but sudden blackness.
But the pop was actually thousands of other lightbulbs doing much the same thing, throughout the building, and the building opposite this one.
Everything went dark. The hallway was only lit by the moonlight that streamed in through the open gate. Here and there, there were open fires in other apartments, a section of building that perpetually burned, and a scattered handful of apartments where residents had put together makeshift campfires.
Like an almost starless night out there.
The empty void of space.