“Your family?” she says.
“Yes. They were.”
She doesn’t say anything but nods. Almost everyone in the Scar has lost someone close to them. Best not to remark on it every single time. We’ve all learned to live with it.
As I get my jacket and scarf from the closet, Bella’s eyes skate all over my room, taking in its details, recording everything. A Legacy flag with a black heart is tacked to the wall above my bed, which is covered in black sheets and a black duvet. Other than that and a couple of pictures of my family, there is only a map of the Scar and the larger, framed picture of me with the chief and Mayor Triton at the press conference when I was seven. My clothes, of which I don’t have many, are hung neatly in a small closet, and my jewelry is stacked in a bowl on my dresser. A distressed mirror that my mother acquired during the magic-mirror days returns a slightly distorted reflection, and a black shag rug covers the floor. Next to the door, five pairs of black boots are lined up, each a different size and in a different state of wear.
“I’ll give you a minute,” Bella says as I gather my things.
Even though the Scar is full of skaters and the roads are littered with shirtless loiterers in flip-flops, I stick to the same uniform, one that allows me to adjust to the weather no matter where I am in Monarch and to leave my apartment quickly no matter the situation: a T-shirt, black jeans, boots, and the layered choker I always wear at my neck, with five dangling silver hearts that fall at my throat. I slip on my leather bracelets, then grab my backpack and stuff my jacket and umbrella inside, and then text James to tell him not to come get me this morning. I’m not ready to explain Bella to him just yet, and I don’t even know what would happen if Bella had to ride to school with Smee and Ursula.
“I met your partner,” Gia says when I emerge from the bedroom. She’s in her orange-and-red pajamas, getting ready for bed, hair in two loose braids.
“How nice,” I drawl, presenting my cup to be filled. As soon as it is, I take a sip of the bitter liquid.
“Coffee, sweetie?” she says, pouring some into a cup for Bella, who finds cream and sugar and a small spoon. Gia lets out a loud yawn. “Sorry. It was quite a night on the other side of the planet. And you,” she says to me. “We might have to reinstate a curfew if you’re going to come in so late.”
I don’t remember anything about coming home, but I’m afraid to ask her any questions. If she knows I don’t remember anything, that’ll set off so many alarm bells I’ll never be allowed to leave the house again. “James and I lost track of time. We were at the Ever Garden.”
Gia nods and takes a seat at the small wooden kitchen table. “At least you were somewhere safe.”
She’s relaxed about James over time, since she’s figured out he’s not a bad person like his dad, and that his primary objective is to see that I’m safe at all times. But as soon as she finds out about Mally’s disappearance, her paranoia is going to be in full effect. Losing a twin sister to murder will do that to a person.
Bella takes a sip of coffee, then smells it appreciatively. “This is delicious. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear.” She turns to me. “And you. Remember you have math homework and we have an agreement. School first!”
Bella winks from behind Gia and I have to stifle a groan.
“And there’s a meeting tonight,” she tells Bella proudly. “Naturalists.”
“Ah,” Bella says.
“Anyway, we’ll be up to our incantations and whatnot, so you just go on into your room if you don’t want to join the circle.”
I cast a glance at Bella, who looks amused.
“Yes, ma’am. What would I do without you, G?” I know what I would do. Probably perish on a corner like those other people. Gia is my family and I love her even though she makes her money selling Scar makeup over the phone to people across the globe, which seems sketchy at best. It’s why she’s up all night and heads off to bed right as I’m leaving for school each morning.
I pick up a pancake from a plate on the table, fold it in half, and shove it in my mouth, while in the other hand I get my portable coffee mug and fill it with another generous helping of sloshing hot black coffee as she has already had one cup of coffee. “Okay, then. Let’s get out of here. And you can come to school with me, but once we’re through the doors you’re on your own. I’ll meet you at Mally’s this afternoon. Got it?”
Bella puts her hands up. “Sure! I won’t even acknowledge your existence.”
“Perfect. Please don’t.”
“It was nice to see you, honey!” Gia calls as Bella makes mute apologetic gestures and the door slams behind us. “And nice to meet you, Bella!”
THE REASON I KNOW THE UNIVERSE PRETTY MUCH hates me is that out of the fifteen hundred or so students that go to Monarch High School, it not only put me in a history class called the History of Magic in Monarch with Lucas and Katy, it went on to put me in a discussion group with them.
It’s bad enough the Narrows are multiplying in the Scar, more of them enrolling down here than ever as their parents move into chic, newly constructed lakeside apartments. You’d think being infiltrated by a bunch of rich, elitist blowhards would be the worst of it, but then they speak and all this garbage spills out all over everyone. Plus, they’re bullies. It’s really kind of impressive how lame they are. There are a few of them that are okay, I suppose, but the ones that are tolerable want to be Legacy so badly they try to dress like us, sometimes even get fake Legacy tattoos they hide from their parents. But they aren’t Legacy. They’re uptown Narrows and they will be Narrows forever.
At least I have Ursula in this class with me and she’s positioned her chair against mine in her own group so she can be ready if I need backup in any way. She’s in the midst of a business deal, handing some poor unfortunate soul a finished history paper on the sly. She can get anything for anyone, and even though the Narrows drive her as crazy as they do me, she’s not above cozying up to them if they’ll pay the right price, and they have the most money so it follows she interacts with them more than I do. It also follows that because of this, she commands a certain level of respect from them.
We spend class texting each other under our desks and sending each other memes. Ursula occasionally gifts me footage of something juicy she witnessed. Mr. Iago is so in love with the class he teaches that he doesn’t notice any of it.
“Class, class, class,” he says, clapping his palms together. “Today we’re going to be covering the Midcity Riots.”
There’s a rumble as Legacy kids start side conversations with one another.
“Why does literally everything have to be about magic and your precious powers that no longer exist so who cares?” Katy says, her blond ponytail swinging like twitchy horsehair.
Lucas Attenborough crosses his arms and leans back. “Hear, hear.”
“This class is actually called the History of Magic in Monarch. Legacies are the descendants of people with powers. So what do you want it to be about?” Ursula is probably the vainest person I’ve ever met. She’s tall, she’s big, and she stands when she’s feeling serious about something, which is what’s happening right now.
“Ursula, may we have your attention?” Mr. Iago says.
“Sure you can.” She bats her eyelashes at him and sits down.
“Excellent!” He claps again. “As you know, the thirteen-year anniversary of the March on Midcity is coming right up, and people are going to have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. But I’m not interested in their opinions. I’m interested in what you have to say. Was it a good choice having that march? Was it effective in changing minds uptown?” Everyone stares at him. No one says anything. I almost feel sorry for the guy. He probably goes home and waters his ficus every night and cries in his pillow because he has to deal with us all day. “Miss Heart?”
Drat. He must have seen me thinking nice things.
“Um…” I look at him, then to Ursula, who shrugs. “It was fine?”
I know some things about the march. I know Aunt Gia went with my mom and dad and Mirana, and I stayed home with Mimi and Grandpa. That was before they got upset enough to move to California. I know Gia thinks it was important and that she’s always talking about all the great musicians who were there and that they were trying to get magic back or something. But come to think of it, I don’t really know what it was about, partly because I was out with James last night and did not even slightly do my homework, and partly because at this point it’s hard to imagine people fighting for anything on the streets. Now everything is quietly hostile underground, and our efforts seem useless.
“I can answer that. It was not fine.” Lucas sits up. Getting on his anti-Legacy soapbox is his favorite thing to do. “Legacy demonstrators cost Monarch hundreds of thousands of dollars. Exactly like Legacies would do, they looted and stole and messed everything up. And what did they accomplish? Nothing. Magic is still dead and their stupid conspiracy theories about the government are irrelevant.”
“Well…” I can see Iago choosing his words. “I see your point, Lucas, though I would perhaps argue that they did have good intentions and were rightly upset by the treatment of Scar citizens in general after the Great Death. The fact that there was no magic made this whole area somewhat irrelevant, and the government simply let everything fall into disrepair. We were missing some infrastructure. For instance, one couldn’t simply vanish one’s trash anymore. One needed a garbage person to come and take it away.” He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and they immediately slide down again. He’s sweating. This is probably a hard topic for him to cover at school as he is Legacy himself. It’s so controversial and the school is supposed to be neutral. “They needed to do something to shine a light on what was happening to them, don’t you think?
“Legacy acted like trash after the Great Death. They stole and lied. And my mother always says, ‘Act like trash, get treated like trash.’” Katy folds her arms across her chest.
“Oh, does she, now?” Ursula looks like she might stand again. “I’m curious, what does your mom do for a living, again?” She taps her chin. “Oh, right. Nothing. She gets her nails done and goes for spa weekends while this neighborhood perishes because of all the new businesses you guys are bringing in. You’re nothing but annoying little ticks.”
“Loser,” Lucas whispers. “Magic is dead. Get. Over. It.”
Ursula smiles. “There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, Lucas.” She plucks a hair from his head and deposits it in her cleavage. Lucas blanches. “Careful, or I’ll put you on my naughty list.”
“Crazy witch,” Lucas mutters under his breath, just loud enough for us to hear.
“You make me feel such primal violent urges, Lucas,” I say.
He looks at me as though noticing my presence for the first time since class started, even though he’s been sitting across from me for the better part of twenty minutes.
“Aren’t you a cop?” he says.
“Yeah,” Katy echoes. “Like, aren’t you supposed to protect civilians?”
“I’m an intern, which means I can do whatever I want.” I say that, but it’s not true. If I actually did get into a physical altercation, my internship would come to an abrupt end.
“Okay, all right,” Iago says. “Mary Elizabeth, Lucas, and friends, I would like to remind you that this is a safe space and we will consider all points of view. That is ultimately what we’re looking for as we review our rich and complex history. What mistakes have been made, and how can they be avoided in the future, uh, the future of course being now?” He clears his throat. “We can all agree that the March for Magic didn’t go as planned; however, the point of it, the original intent, was relevant.”
“How?” Lucas says. “How does a bunch of morons stealing TVs help anything?”
“That was after,” Ursula says. “After the city started using tear gas. And it was from one of their big stores. It was a political statement. No one wanted that to happen at first. My mom was there. She said it was chaos and people just started freaking out.”
Lucas isn’t intimidated by Ursula. He doesn’t need anything from her and he has more money than anyone anywhere.
“The idea,” Mr. Iago says, raising his voice over the murmur echoing through the classroom, “and the reason for the march were simple enough. Even after the Great Death, children were being born with the Legacy markings. For the citizens of the Scar, this was monumental. For them, it meant there was some legacy of magic present in their children, and perhaps there was a chance magic could return. The citizens of the Scar had been abandoned, you see, and what was once a thriving community was now reduced to rubble—closed storefronts. You know the rest. The Legacies were presumed to be there for a reason. For the previous generation, it was the intersection of magic and the Legacy that gave them purpose. And now the Legacies remained; however, their purpose without magic is something of a mystery.”
“They just need something to fertilize them,” I say, repeating what I’ve heard so many times from Aunt Gia and the Naturalists. I rest my hand over the black heart Legacy mark on my wrist. The room goes very quiet and I realize I should have kept this thought to myself because now everyone is staring at me like I’m supposed to say something else. “If the Legacy marks are still here, the potential for magic is here, too. They just need like…a spark or something.” I think of the blue light.
“That’s desperation,” Katy says. “If it was true, we would have seen it by now.”
“Anyway, the whole thing was probably a hoax,” Lucas adds.
“Lucas,” I say, “it’s your personal choice to be an idiot, but you’re insulting people in this room whose families sacrificed a lot in the struggle after magic died.”
“Okay, okay,” Iago says. “Safe space, safe space. I’m loving the Socratic dialogue, but let’s not go overboard.”
“I think what Mr. Iago is getting at is that your need to engage in confrontations with me boils down to attraction and sexual tension.” Lucas stretches his legs a little wider and yawns.
“Uh, no, no. That’s not what I was saying,” Mr. Iago says.
Lucas leans toward me. “And if you didn’t have that ugly birthmark and weren’t totally concave in the chest area, I might consider relieving all that tension for you.”
“That’s it!” Ursula gets to her feet. “You and me, jerk. Let’s find out how much of a jellyfish you actually are.”
“That won’t be necessary.” The voice that comes from the open doorway is butter and growl, and we all freeze at the impossible figure hovering there. “I’m afraid Lucas is needed elsewhere.”
Lucas blanches, face wiped clean of expression.
Ursula backs off and slides her hands on her hips, looking with utter fascination at Kyle Attenborough, Lucas’s father and the business mogul behind every new building in Monarch, especially all the glossy new high-rises sprouting up in the Scar. We’re all accustomed to being assaulted by his image on billboards and the backs of buses and in train stations, telling all of us about new construction and a multitude of jobs for Scar folk, but to see him in person is something different. He’s regal, sure, but he looks…dangerous or something. Also a little shorter than in pictures. Lucas always gets dumped out of a limo on the school front lawn, so Kyle’s not much more than a shadow. I’ve never seen him in person and I’m sorry to say he cuts an impressive figure.
“Oh good,” Ursula says, never taking her eyes from his. “Lucas, Daddy’s here. Maybe he can teach you some manners.”
Kyle wears an unwavering expression of total certainty and takes a moment too long running his eyes over Ursula’s Legacy marking before saying, “Lucas, are you going to introduce me to your friend? You seemed to be in the middle of something.”
“Her?” Lucas points to Urs. “Nope. Not worth the introduction.”
“Are you sure?”
“Completely sure.”
Mr. Iago is a mess trying to get to the door,
his clothes catching on desks, his feet bumping into their legs. He extends his hand, which Kyle Attenborough considers a beat too long before taking. He’s so thin it could almost make a person overlook the physical power he exudes, but I can make out lean muscles under his pant legs, and his torso is wiry and overdeveloped in the chest and arms.
“Something’s come up.” Kyle waves a hand in the air. “A family situation. Lucas is needed at home at once.”
Mr. Iago tilts back on his heels. “Of course you’ll need to sign out with the front office.”
Kyle Attenborough smiles indulgently. “Certainly,” he says. He pulls a card from his inside coat pocket. “And I’m delighted to meet one of Lucas’s teachers. Here’s the number to my private cell. Please don’t hesitate to call me if something comes up with my boy. He can be a little unruly, so I do my best to keep him in line.”
“Dad,” Lucas says.
Ursula snorts, and Lucas flips her off just out of sight of the adults.
Kyle Attenborough offers a quick half smile to the staring kids and says, “I do apologize for the interruption.”
He turns to leave but then pauses on Ursula again. His gaze is unsettling, but she meets it.
“I trust you’ll resume smoothly,” he says, “and there will be no need for whatever retaliation you were about to deliver to my son, who surely deserved it.”
Ursula lifts one side of her mouth into some semblance of a smile.
And then Kyle Attenborough is gone, taking Lucas with him.
“I can’t believe Mr. Attenborough came to our school,” Katy says as soon as the door is closed behind them. “He’s so amazing. He’s going to bring Monarch back! And I’ve been to his house lots of times. He even has me over for the holidays.”
“That’s the prick who forced my nanna out of her house,” Stone says. “We should kick his ass, not kiss it.”
“I think he’s kind of fascinating,” Ursula says. “I mean, who else would have come into the Scar and taken over like that?”
City of Villains Page 7
