My father was only looking out for me. I knew this. To him, Solomon wasn’t the sweet, shy little boy he had been. He was a big, strong, scary man. In my head, in the abstract, I understood my father.
But in my heart, in that moment, I hated him.
Because it had never occurred to me to be afraid of Solomon before. Not even when he shoved me down a few hours before.
I had never been afraid.
And now, a little part of me was.
Sixteen
Solomon
Now that I was looking for it, I saw the danger everywhere. Men on corners handing off notes, women watching from high windows. The scared, angry this-siders. The voice on the radio: We will win in the end.
I saw them, the blue armbands and the suspicious eyes, and I shot them.
For me, photography had always been about money. A means to secure my next meal. Its contents were irrelevant. Zeppelin fire, othersider fight, the latest victim of spontaneous human petrification. I was like a messenger who didn’t care whether she was carrying narcotic spiderwebbing, illegal sky whale oil, or last quarter’s financial reports—long as she got paid when she got where she was going.
But now, I had a purpose. I was a spy. I went looking for what no one knew was there. I took pictures not because I wanted to sell them to Cass, but because I wanted to stop the Shield and his Destroyers.
I wanted to save myself, and Ash, and my whole city full of magnificent monsters and magic that they wanted to destroy.
I turned on the battered, old battery-powered radio that hung from Maraud’s neck. Ms. Jackson; Ash and my favorite DJ. The Graveyard Shift: Weird Songs for Weird Wonderful People. Her cigarette-scratchy voice sounded ancient, impossibly wise.
“Temperature’s dropping tonight, beloveds,” she said, and I felt safer already. “Better find a good book or a warm body to curl up with by the fire.”
This was my city. As far back as I could remember I’d been walking its streets at night. Never looking for anything, or anyone. Wanting nothing, and fearing no one.
Now, for the first time, I had something to look for. And for the first time, I was afraid.
“Is this what I think it is?” Cass said, finding me in the Clarion archives later that day. “Is Solomon doing research? Are you transforming into an actual journalist?”
“Something like that,” I said.
She lit a cigarette, sat down on the table in front of me. Picked up a couple of papers. “The Night of Red Diamonds.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I realized I don’t know much about what really happened.”
“You and most of the city,” she said, and picked up a glossy photo. A crowd, soaking wet in the pouring-down rain. Storm clouds piled up like black cliffs, moving in. The storm had been stalking us, and now it pounced.
Turns out, there were two very different narratives of what happened that night. The official version, the one that was reported in the Darkside Post and most other mainstream papers goes like this: a bunch of peaceful demonstrators were leading a march, calling on the queen to curb othersider magic, which they claimed was being used to gain an unfair advantage over people without magic. The demonstration went through a neighborhood heavily populated with othersiders. And those poor, helpless, peaceful demonstrators were attacked, and massacred, and two dozen people died in the streets, all law-abiding this-siders, the pavement covered in their blood and broken glass.
The other version, the one the Clarion reported, goes like this: a big gang of goons came looking for trouble. Happens all the time, but this one was bigger than most. And instead of turning the other cheek, letting them flip a few fruit carts and break a few windows of othersider-owned businesses, people fought back. And it got ugly. And two dozen people died in the streets, othersiders and this-siders alike, the pavement covered in blood and broken glass.
The photographs are stark, vivid, terrifying. Flames, corpses, a wounded velociraptor. But those pictures could support either story.
“Why the interest?” Cass asked.
“No reason,” I said, the gears of my brain straining. Suddenly, the subconscious suspicion I hadn’t even let myself suspect had become very, very conscious.
Ash’s explosion—the thing that got her put into a magical coma—it happened the same day as the Night of Red Diamonds. What if they weren’t separate?
“There must be a reason,” she said.
Because I think my best friend, the Refugee Princess, might somehow have been responsible for this. Also, she’s hiding at my house.
“Seems important,” I said. “With so much hate on the rise, and people pointing to this night as the spark that lit the fire.”
“Don’t you believe that lie they tell. This fire has been burning for decades.”
“Were you there?” I asked. “Do you remember anything that isn’t in the papers?”
“They were a mob, no question about it,” she said. “Came to hurt and intimidate people, got more than they bargained for. They were led by a woman, dressed all in blue— She died that night.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Dressed in blue . . . as in, ultramarine?”
Cass chuckled. “Maybe, kid. It was pretty dark that night.”
She stood, tall and thin and all in black, and then she put her hand to her stomach—and I saw something strange in her face. Pain. She was old, and she was human. It was easy to forget those things with someone as strong as Cass. I reached out to take her hand and she blinked, startled back to the present moment.
“Are you okay, Cass?”
“Of course,” she said, looking away from me too fast. “Just working too hard, lately.”
Cass had dedicated her whole life to the Truth; to exposing secrets and bringing darkness to light. So of course she was a terrible liar. But I let her have the lie, because if she was sick or something, I didn’t want the truth.
I left on foot; I’d kept Maraud in the paddock at the Underbridge all day. I didn’t like all the nasty stares she got, lately. The Shield’s “Destroy All Monsters” tags were having the desired effect—people were more and more hostile toward othersiders and the beasts they shared the city with. Maraud would snap the head off of anybody who started real trouble with me, but that was exactly the point. Decapitation, even if it were justified, would be a whole big mess I just didn’t need.
Angry faces were everywhere. Ultramarine armbands. Every one of them made my heart sink a little, and chilled the blood in my veins a couple degrees. A teenaged girl held a baseball bat with nails driven through it; two little boys clutched broken beer bottles by the necks and stared at me with cold, fearless hostility.
I took pictures of it all, because I didn’t know what else to do with the fear I felt.
I stumbled onto the rally by purblind dumb chance. In a park in Riversea Terrace: a rough, crime-ridden neighborhood where hardly any othersiders lived. I saw a crowd, and I headed for it.
Signs said “Destroy All Monsters” and “Abolish All Magic” and “Down with the Queen” and “We Will Not Live in Fear.”
It was not a huge rally. A couple hundred people. No podium, no microphone. Just a man, up front, barely fifty feet away from me, standing on the steps to a fountain that had run dry a decade ago, featuring a dragon that had long since been decapitated. Spray-painted blue, now.
“I am your Shield,” he said. “I will protect you from them.”
No mask. No uniform. I’d been imagining something from a nightmare, from a myth. A perfectly sculpted image. Perhaps wearing an anarchist’s mask. This guy’s hair was a mess, and his button nose and rosy cheeks and arrogant smile could have belonged to anyone. He could have been anyone. And here he stood, in a public park, out in the open, unafraid of the Palace or the police or the wrath of any othersider.
“We’re one hundred thousand strong!” he said, the voice bigger and louder than I’d imagined would come from such a cherubic-looking face. “The time for waiting is over.”
I took a pict
ure. He was framed with the blue dragon directly behind him, its jagged wings looking like they could be his. Had he done that on purpose? An angel with ugly wings.
“We’ve been afraid for too long. Of the othersiders, and their powers, and their monsters. But I am here to tell you today that those days are over. Their powers don’t matter. Not anymore.”
Through the lens, magnified, he looked possessed. Inspired. The hairs along my spine stood up, and shivered. I took pictures blindly. Helplessly.
Then I was noticed. They came at me from behind, one on either side. So fast I didn’t have time to struggle. Rough strong hands, picking me up off the ground.
“He’s got a camera!”
“A spy!” someone called, as they carried me to the front.
No, I wanted to shout, but I had no voice.
They had me by the arms but my legs were free. I could have kicked, fought, struggled to free myself. Maybe I wouldn’t get away, but at least I’d hurt them. So why couldn’t I move? Fear had frozen me solid.
Their powers don’t matter. Not anymore.
“He’s a photographer!” someone said.
“Perfect,” said the Shield, and they put me down. “Let him see. Let the whole city see.”
He clapped. From behind the old dragon statue, men and women in ultramarine led out a long line of people whose hands were chained, with sacks over their heads. They shoved them into two rows on the steps behind the Shield, like a choir of hostages.
“Our days of being afraid are over.”
The filthy burlap sacks were removed. Gasps went through the crowd—some of the captives were famous—crime bosses, entertainers, athletes.
The ones I recognized had unimaginable power. So why were they just standing there?
And then I saw Quang, standing in the back row, and at first I felt relief. He could blink and whisk all these Destroyers into a cornfield or the middle of the riversea or a Palace dungeon.
But Quang did not do any of that. He stood there, pale and shivering, his whole face wet with tears.
And I knew, somehow. What the Shield was going to say, before he said it. Because there was only one possible explanation for this.
“It is the othersiders who must be afraid, now. They can’t hide behind their unfair advantages any longer. Because I have been given a great gift. I have the ability to strip othersiders of their magical powers.”
He turned, looked straight at me, into my camera. My finger flinched. The shutter clicked.
“I can destroy them all.”
Seventeen
Ash
Now that I was looking for it, I saw the evidence everywhere.
Something important was up. Boys at school stood in little groups, looking around nervously like the amateur criminals that they were. I watched them in the hallway, under the giant mural of the blue hawk, our high school mascot, a crude and ugly painting that had been freaking kids out since probably the 1970s.
“It’s got to be him, right?”
Jewel looked up from her book. “Hmm?”
“Sheffield,” I said.
We leaned against our lockers, waiting for the homeroom bell to ring. Listening to worried laughter, uneasy conjecture about who would be next.
“He does look guilty,” she said. “Then again, that’s his default mode.”
Sheffield looked up, saw me pointing, and smiled.
“Look at the way they all look to him,” I said. “He’s probably got them out there doing his bidding.”
“Who? The whole football team?”
I started to say, Absolutely, but I really didn’t have any evidence.
And then, on random unthinking impulse, I raised my camera. Looked through the lens.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Because I could see it, in the air around them. Their guilt. Their damage. Sick wet clouds of it overhead. Slimy black spiders of it perched on their shoulders.
Tingles shivered up and down my spine.
Sheffield grinned, when I panned across to him, and then he started walking toward us. I felt a little like I’d aroused the attention of a lion on the grasslands. I wasn’t afraid of him, but Jewel got social anxiety from harmless sitcoms, so I could only imagine how an interaction like this might mess her up.
“Ladies,” he said.
Through the lens, he was framed with the blue hawk directly behind him, its jagged wings looking like they could be his. An angel with ugly wings. And a button nose, and an arrogant smile, and eerily rosy cheeks. I took the picture, more to flatter him than because I actually wanted it.
“Hey, Sheff,” I said, when he sidled up to us. “Bummer about the parking lot.”
“Such a tragedy,” he said, although his smile said the exact opposite.
The other boys were watching us now.
“Who could have done such a thing?” I asked.
“Some very twisted, very angry soul,” he said. “I hope he gets the help he needs.”
“So you think it was a guy?”
“Forgive me,” he said, “for my unconscious gender bias. It’s wrong to have male be the default when dealing with someone of unknown identity. Blame my upbringing. That very twisted, very angry soul could very well belong to a girl.” And he grinned.
“You coming to practice?” some random lunkhead called to him from across the hall.
“When I’m finished with my conversation, asshole.” To Jewel, who had been pointedly ignoring him, he said, “God bless you, sister.” She flinched.
“Hey, the lot,” I asked. “Any connection to what happened with Marcy Brockelmeyer’s house, do you think? Or Judy Saperstein’s?”
He shrugged, his nonchalance exaggerated. “Hey—how’s Solomon doing? Haven’t seen him in school today.”
His face gave nothing away, but still, my blood chilled at the sound of my best friend’s name in Sheffield’s mouth. No good could come of this. “How is he? He’s fucking fantastic,” I said, anger getting the better of me. If this pink-faced little asshole was behind these random acts of cruelty, he needed to know to stay the hell away from Solomon. “I mean, you know how it is. Right? Such a gentle giant. When he gets angry, though? Guy could break your forearm like snapping a twig.”
“Really,” Sheffield said, nodding vigorously. “What a useful thing to know. See you around, Ash?”
“Not if I see you first,” I said.
To Jewel, he doffed his blue baseball cap and bowed. She kept ignoring him. The tiniest of frowns flickered on Sheffield’s face, and then he walked off.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I was a total idiot.
Everyone already thought Solomon was a lunatic. The last thing they needed was to think he was violent, too. And that was exactly the seed I’d just planted in Criminal-Supervillain-in-Training Sheffield’s head.
All day long, I couldn’t stop thinking about Solomon.
So, after school, I went to Cass’s house. The door was unlocked, like it always was. She was on the couch, in her chaotic living room.
“Ash,” she said, sitting up, and I could see at once that she’d been crying.
That’s when I realized: I knew nothing about her life. Did she have kids? Were her parents alive? Did she have an intense long-distance letters-only love affair with someone? Had her heart just been broken? Was someone she loved very sick? More importantly, why hadn’t I ever asked?
“Hey, Cass,” I said, and stooped to hug her. She held on very tight.
“Excuse me,” she said, making an elegant gesture in the direction of her face. “Moment of weakness. Never happens.”
“Of course not,” I said, and went to make us tea. By the time it was ready, and I brought it in on an ancient mirrored platter, she’d managed to pull herself together somewhat.
“So. What brings you here? To consult the Oracle?”
So many things I could have said. I think that some guys in my school might be involved in hate crimes, and I’m worried som
eone will get hurt.
Or, I think I need to call Child Protective Services and tell them my best friend’s location. Because if I don’t, I’m afraid something worse will happen to him.
“M-my project,” I said instead. “There’s things I want to talk about—stories I want to capture—but I don’t know how to do it.”
“You’re so focused on this project,” Cass said. “Forget the project. Focus on getting the truth. That’s the photographer’s job—and it’s the hardest thing for her to do.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked. “Everything a photograph captures is the truth.”
“I’m not talking about truth as in, simple reality.” She kicked the coffee table. “I don’t mean this table was here, this person smiled. I’m talking about truth with a capital T. Something honest and real.”
“Cass, are you okay?” I asked. “When I came in—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, though she smiled when she said it. “That never happened.”
“Right,” I said. And I was glad. Because I didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want Cass to become any more human. Didn’t want to know what might be making her miserable. Me, Solomon, Cass . . . Was everybody in the world this alone?
I could already feel it opening up: the hole inside me, the faulty plumbing that let the cold, dark water in. I had to do something about it.
I knew exactly what I needed. “Shit, Cass,” I said. “I’m so sorry. But I really have to go.”
“Of course,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “The Oracle dismisses you.”
In her big black robe, with her oversize eyeglasses, she had never looked so small. And then she tried to smile, and it just made it worse.
“I could—”
“Go,” she said, picking up a remote control on the table. “My dogs adore Citizen Kane. And they’re way more fun to talk about cinema with anyway.”
In the car, I called Connor. And twenty minutes later, I was at his house.
“Hi,” he said, looking as pure and sad as a Roman sculpture of Apollo. Broad shoulders, inscrutable expression, classical nose. Though he could be melancholy, Connor never got upset about the things that bothered almost everyone else. He was a god, far above the petty hardships of mere mortals.
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