City of Villains

by Estelle Laure

  Copyright © 2021 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney · Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney · Hyperion, 77 W 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by Phil Buchanan

  Cover design by Phil Buchanan

  Cover art by Joshua Hixson

  ISBN 978-1-368-06553-5

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Two Years After the Fall

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Emily van Beek, a total queen.

  THE WORLD ENDED BECAUSE OF ME.

  Or at least that’s what I thought at first.

  When I close my eyes and let myself remember the night of the Fall, it’s like the ground rushes at me; it still feels like cresting the highest part of a roller coaster, then dropping down from an impossible height. Except I never got off. I can still feel myself whizzing up and down at dizzying speeds, never quite getting my feet right.

  Actually, maybe I strapped into that roller coaster the day my parents and sister were murdered. Sometimes it’s hard to say.

  What I do know is the night the Wand—that gleaming new building, the supposed crown jewel of the Scar, the symbol of its rebirth—came tumbling down eleven years after magic died, everything changed.

  Again.

  Let me explain: I was fifteen.

  James and I were hiding from Aunt Gia on the fire escape because she constantly thought we were kissing when we weren’t. We had barely gotten used to being more than friends, were just trying it on for size. But even though Aunt Gia could be easy about some things, James and me being out of her sight wasn’t one of them.

  No closed doors in this apartment, Mary Elizabeth. Leave the door open where I can see you. It’s James Bartholomew and he is who he is.

  That only made me more defiant. She should have known, even then, I wouldn’t allow anyone to judge James for being a Bartholomew. James and I belonged to each other. To her, James and me loving each other so fiercely seemed dangerous. To us, after all we’d lost, it was an invitation to live, and we were answering it with a yes every second we spent together.

  That night, James leaned toward me for the first time, and just as our lips met, a blue light shone so bright it blinded us and canceled out everything else. For just a second I thought we caused it.

  First there was a loud grinding noise as if the Wand were a tree being ripped from the ground by its roots, then a flash of blue so bright I saw dots for hours, and then the Wand was gone. Gone. James and I had a front-row seat for the Apocalypse, and it turned out to take all of thirty seconds.

  The one-hundred-sixty-story building disappeared on the night of its grand opening, with more than three thousand people inside. The elite of Monarch City just vanished, leaving not one trace of rubble or any kind of destruction behind. That happened.

  Everything stopped working. Everything in the whole world paused.

  James tightened his arms around me and pulled me back against the wall to protect me, but there wasn’t any need for that. Once the building disappeared, it was just quiet, the kind you don’t ever forget. Nothing moved. Not pigeons or cars or moths. Not even the air.

  Aunt Gia flung open the window and made sure we were there and alive and didn’t even bother with scolding us for sneaking onto the fire escape, because she was so relieved not to have yet another family member perish unexpectedly. But once she had assessed us and found us with pulses, her face was like a pancake sliding off a plate. So then we all looked.

  All that was left where the building had been was a crater as neat and precise as a surgical incision.

  All around us, the citizens of the Scar totally freaked out. From the fire escape, James and I watched as people who had been hanging in the neighborhood—eating pizza, out for an evening stroll—ran down the street, screaming, waiting to be hit with pieces of building, because that’s what you would expect to happen when something that size falls. But not on this night.

  This was just poof.

  It took a while before they realized nothing was going to explode or burn and that all of Monarch wasn’t getting sucked into a sinkhole. Squad cars came and fire trucks came and ambulances came. And then they just sat there, lights flashing silently. Nothing to be done.

  The news said it was a tragic anomaly. The chief and Mayor Triton made speeches, told everyone to keep calm. I guess we were lucky to be where we were, but it was right next door. We escaped it by a breath.

  When the water filled the crater a few days later like blood pooling in a wound, Mayor Triton named it Miracle Lake because she had been running late to the grand opening and missed the Fall by just ten minutes. For her it was a miracle. For plenty of others, a disaster.

  Funerals were held. Prayers were said. Vigils featuring votive candles abounded.

  Then, when that phase of mourning was complete, things got tricky.

  The Magicalists were sure the Fall was a sign we should aggressively pursue bringing back magic at all costs. The Naturalists thought it was a sign that magic itself was somehow rejecting progress, if you could call it that, sending a message it didn’t want the Narrows invading the Scar and putting up all these fancy new buildings like the Wand on sacred magical ground. They believed the energies that ran beneath us were sending the Narrows a message and that if we could just do the right thing, magic would come back. The Amagicalists were sure this was a scientific phenomenon they were simply not yet able to explain, and that magic was dead and everyone needed to face the cold, hard facts.

  Monarch divided into factions, each more convinced of their rightness than the next. And they fought until their passion dwindled into a dull dislike, a kind of cold war. They were always fighting anyway, but now it was all over the news and on every street corner. People searched for deeper meaning and came up empty, waiting for magic to make its triumphant return.

  It didn’t.

  The fairies did not return, wishes remained ungranted, and dreams died by the dozen with nothing and no one to usher them along.

  What’s so hard to think about is what happened to all those people in the building that night. I sort of hope the people inside the Wand evaporated painlessly when it happened.

  I mean, I hope that’s how it works.

  In case it happens again.

  SMEE WILL NOT DROP THE ISSUE OF ME SITTING shotgun on the way to school.

  “No, I mean really, Cap,” he’s whining to James, smoothing out his leather jacket. “We should
be taking turns. We live in the same house, we drive the Sea Devil together to the same place, and then I have to get out of the front seat and get in the back just so Mary can jump in front. It’s—”

  “Demeaning?” I suggest.

  “Emasculating?” Ursula says, doing something on her phone.

  “Respectful,” James says. “Right.”

  Smee gives me a look like he’s barely tolerating me and swaggers away from me so James is between us. “Just because she’s your girl-friend shouldn’t mean she gets to sit in the front all the time. We should take turns.”

  James just fixed up a classic 1968 Mustang, painted it a vintage blue, and named it the Sea Devil, and it’s so gorgeous it’s causing all sorts of problems. Every time he does this—finds an old clunker with good bones, tinkers with it until it drives smooth, and polishes it to a high shine—Smee’s inner gangster comes out. It’s always kind of out anyway. He wants to be powerful, or sidekick to someone powerful at the very least. We live in a city, so I don’t even know why we would be driving a car to school in traffic in the first place. We should be taking the subway, but now that’s not going to happen until James abandons the Sea Devil for a new project.

  Now, Ursula wedges herself next to Smee as we push our way past the crenellated white columns and through the enormous wooden doors that lead into Monarch High.

  “Doofus, she is the girlfriend. You’re not the girlfriend, you’re just one of six annoying roommates.”

  “Do not speak ill of Neverland or its residents,” Smee says, “or I’ll make you walk the plank.”

  The plank is the diving board in the old pool in the old house where James and six of his friends all live. Ursula edges past a couple of Narrows dressed in their usual white button-downs, Dockers, loafers, and jackets. We stop in front of our lockers and she gives Smee a rap on the head with her knuckle.

  “Hey!” Smee says.

  “Come on, you guys. It’s Monday morning. We have all week to annoy each other,” I say.

  Monday morning at Monarch High is different from other high schools, at least from what I’ve heard. The Scar used to be almost all Legacy—people born with a black heart on the wrist, directly descended from magic. When I was a little kid, that was all I knew. There were maybe a few bureaucrats from Midcity, businessmen from the Narrows, but it’s not like that anymore. After the Death of Magic, Legacies like my family became sitting ducks, and the Narrows—uptowners with no magic and chips on their shoulders—are like vultures, plucking up our real estate, forcing Legacy onto the streets, and worst of all making us interact with their horrid offspring until they finish building them a suitable private school on land they bought cheaply from us. So now we have an espresso stand, a caterer who comes in to deliver lunches no Legacy can afford, and they just finished adding on a pool and world-class gym.

  Legacies avoid all of it. We don’t like to be bought. So now we try to stand apart. We aren’t separated by jocks and geeks and metalheads and emo like I’ve seen on TV shows. We have separated Legacy from Narrows. Legacies wear black leather bands on our arms. We dye our hair. We dress like it’s a party all the time. We wear clothes with #LegacyLoyalty emblazoned across the front.

  But it’s true, even though the school is first divided in two, it continues to divide. James and his Neverland crew—Ursula, Smee, and I—act as one unit, and then there’s everyone else.

  James and I pause to kiss while Ursula stops to answer a call on her cell and Smee stands there waiting, hands in his pockets, watching the hall in his black-and-white-striped shirt like he’s our bouncer.

  Ursula slips her phone back in her pocket and says, “What glorious class have we this morning? Magical History, you say? My favorite.”

  “Dreena, six o’clock,” Smee mutters. “Get ready for some school spirit.”

  As though she’s heard someone speak her name, Dreena swoops over, flanked by Lola and Casey, draped in sequined scarves, hair in two blue braids. She’s holding an armful of pamphlets.

  “What do you want?” Ursula says as Dreena approaches. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t need any. Although,” she says, reconsidering, “if there’s anything interesting you need, maybe I could get it for you? My prices are very reasonable.”

  “I wanted to give you guys one of these.” Dreena hands each of us a pamphlet. Smee immediately drops his to the floor and looks off into space, bored. “I know you aren’t political or whatever, but Lucas Attenborough’s dad wants to build a mall right in the middle of town. A mall. They would be tearing down a whole block. We have to meet! We have to rally! This is unacceptable. We can’t allow the Scar’s historical district to be destroyed.” Dreena would be a lot easier to take if she weren’t so annoying all the time, so utterly sure of her position, sure enough to approach us even though we’ve worked hard to be unapproachable so we don’t have to deal with people like her.

  “Dree Dree,” Ursula drawls, slapping her locker shut. “I like a mall as much as the next girl, but I’m on your side here. Loyalty all the way. The thing is, rallying isn’t going to do any good. What you need is someone who knows what’s going on in the back end. You need to find out who is paying whom and whether there might be a good reason for them to give up on their pet project.” Ursula weaves in a circle around Dreena, who is paling rapidly. “Who’s been sleeping with whom? Who did a naughty business deal and could be convinced to back off? That’s what makes this city tick.” She finishes with her mouth against Dreena’s ear. Dreena shrinks like a mouse.

  “But,” Dreena says with less enthusiasm, watching Ursula carefully, “it’s not right! That should be enough. It’s not right for them to come in here and tear down those old buildings to put in some kind of fast fashion storefront.”

  “Maybe not.” Urs pulls out her phone and starts scrolling through. “But Monarch is what it is, and you’re not going to change it noodling around with sad little handmade posters. I know a few people down there. Let me know if you want me to start poking around. I could pencil you in.” She smiles, her thick red lips parting hungrily. “I have next Thursday free.”

  Dreena lifts her nose in the air, tries to rise to a height that doesn’t make her look absolutely tiny next to Urs. It doesn’t work. “What would that cost? Don’t people have to pay you in secrets?” she asks uncertainly.

  Ursula shrugs. “Depends. I like money, too.” She grins. “And favors.”

  “I think I’m just going to stick to the old-fashioned way,” Dreena says. “Sit-ins and what have you.”

  “Suit yourself. Try it your way, see how far you get.” Now that Dreena’s made her decision clear, Ursula seems to have lost interest and searches for something in her black leather backpack.

  Dreena shuffles from one foot to the other, persisting. “Our meeting is going to be at the Tea Party tomorrow if you want to come.” She rustles the pile of pamphlets in her hand. “All are welcome.”

  “Let me know if you change your mind,” Ursula says, looking up distractedly. “I’m all about making dreams and wishes come true.”

  Dreena, who looks like she’s very much regretting her decision to come and talk to us, turns to head down the hallway. But before she can take a step, Stone Wallace goes flying across her path, into Smee, who shoves him away reflexively as we all search for the source of the fight. James steps in front of me and I get on tiptoes so I can see. Monarch High used to be a pretty mellow school. Not anymore. Not since the Narrows changed districts.

  Stone is in a white T-shirt and black leather pants with hearts pressed into the material to match the birthmark on his wrist. It looks like scales on a dangerous snake. He’s usually one of the untouchable kids. He mostly hides behind the bass he plays at Wonderland, the local underage club, on weekends, and other than that keeps to himself. Apparently not today. Stone slams into Lucas Attenborough, who pushes him back easily, so Stone falls onto his back, loses his breath, and looks up at us in panic. Lucas gives him a kick that’s more symbolic than
painful.

  “Hey,” James says, getting between them, Smee at his side. “That’s enough.” His commanding tone stops Lucas, who trains his eyes on James, striking a perfect balance between tense and utterly confident. It doesn’t matter how rich or how entitled Lucas Attenborough is. He would have to be a complete moron to mess with Captain Crook, a name James half hates because the Bartholomews are a crime family he tries to distance himself from, but also uses when he has the need. And he has the need often.

  Legacy kids have to take care of ourselves. Ninety-eight percent of Legacy would rather party than fight, but with the advent of jerks like Lucas in our midst, we have to be on our game, ready for anything, all the time.

  “Gawd,” Justin, an outspoken Amagicalist in a plaid suit, drawls from the corner. “If everyone would just accept that magic is dead, none of this would be happening. We could just move on.”

  His friends all nod in agreement.

  “Belief in magic is the root of all of society’s problems,” a dour girl in pin-straight pigtails says.

  Lucas sniffs, looks around the hall to see that he’s totally outnumbered by Legacies, who are gathering rapidly. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are even there, each in matching pink, blue, and green gauzy dresses, and everyone knows they have weapons on them at all times because of their falling-out with Mally Saint.

  “Stone deserved it,” Lucas says, staring around the hall with black eyes in challenge. “Not that any of you would ever listen to anything I say.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Smee agrees, giving Lucas a small shove. “Get your Narrow behind out of my hallway.”

  Lucas straightens his shirt with a little adjustment of his neck. “How dare you put your grimy Legacy hands on me. Do you know who I am?”

  “Do I know who you are?” Smee starts doing a little boxer dance, raising his fists to eye level. “Do I know who you are? Punk. The question is do you know who I am?”

  Smee looks like he’s about to punch Lucas in the face, which will then lead to Lucas punching Smee in the face, which will probably mean James and the rest of his boys will jump in, so I step between them before the next terrible thing can happen. Everyone knows where this is going. If they fight, Smee will get blamed and suspended, and the rest of the Legacy kids will be impossible to control. If Lucas survives, he gets no punishment whatsoever, except maybe having to give an apology.