“This morning,” Mr. Iago says when everyone is settled, “I’d like everyone to get laptops and fill out the survey about inclusivity you’ll find in the virtual classroom. Because Monarch High is located in a predominantly Legacy neighborhood, city officials, including Mayor Triton, want to make sure the school is unbiased in its approach to education.” He clears his throat. “If you would be so kind as to give your feedback for this class, I would be grateful. It’s a requirement. Following, if you would please read chapter eight and then do the assignment at the end, that will be the day’s work. You can stay at your tables, but there will be, uh, no discussion. Not today.” He goes to sit at his desk but then stands again. “I should also mention that if anyone is having trouble with recent events, or has been having thoughts of um, self-harm, I have some pamphlets here, kindly provided by Dreena, and I encourage all of you to seek help if you need it.”
“Oh man,” James says from across the room. “Are you trying to say…Do you think Ursula and Mally are suicides?”
“Well, why not, Crook?” Lucas says dully. “Not like they had much to look forward to.”
Smee leans forward. “Say the word, Cap. You want me to end this loser?”
“No,” James says, “but someday when you aren’t expecting it, I’ll get you for that one.”
Katy raises her hand as she says, “Teacher, did you hear that? Smee and James threatened Lucas.”
“Well, uh…”
“I wanted to make sure you caught that.” She looks at James pointedly. “Maybe whoever is taking Scar kids is one of them. Maybe someone hiding in plain sight.”
“Students, please!” Iago says over the rumble in the room, but the truth is, the fighting is a relief. I’ll take it over the aching silence.
James looks as though he’s paying attention to what’s in front of him but I can feel him focusing on me, all the questions circling his mind. Ursula wouldn’t jump into Miracle Lake, would she? Would Mally? Ursula’s been stressed-out about her mom and Morgana, sure, but she also loves life more than almost anyone I can think of. She just sees it differently than most people, like a game that’s meant to be won. Jumping into Miracle would not be winning.
“It’s so much quieter at school these days, don’t you think?” Katy leans forward to talk to Josey, one of the other Narrows. But Josey likes us. She even tries to pass with stick-on Legacy markings. She shrugs her shoulders and tries to focus on the screen in front of her. “It’s just so much more pleasant without a certain someone here. So much less trashy.” Katy sucks on whatever drink is in the white to-go cup she’s carrying. I would bet money it’s something way too sweet that sits on your tongue long after it should be gone.
I’d like to rip her tongue out of her head, but I have the chief’s and Tink’s warnings ringing through my mind. No physical violence.
“Katy, don’t,” Josey says without much force.
“I’m not trying to be aggressive, I’m just telling the truth. It just smells so much better without Ursula around. Because she’s trashy. Get it?” She giggles.
“That’s enough,” Lucas says quietly.
“But she is!”
I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take one more second of Katy moving her mouth and sound coming out. “Listen to me, you little idiot,” I say. “You don’t talk about Ursula again. Ever.”
Murmurs erupt all around us.
“We have two choices here,” Mr. Iago says, raising his voice from behind his desk. “We can set aside our differences and do the assignments silently so our very tired and emotionally exhausted teacher can recover, or we can go outside and you can do laps for the next sixty minutes. Which do you choose?”
Katy sniffs at me and I sniff back, but we both go back to the survey.
Do you feel all factions are represented in the classroom?
Do you feel you can speak freely in the classroom and your perspective will be heard?
Do you feel you know your teacher’s political opinions?
I don’t know how to answer these questions, so I read them over and over. What are they asking? Why are they asking it?
My hand flops onto the chair. The minutes tick by, one after another. It gets harder and harder to maintain focus and I stop trying to follow the questions, and then from across the room I can hear James’s alligator watch. Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I want to tell James to quiet his watch down, that it’s making so much noise I can’t think, but I find I can’t use my voice. When I try to move my hands, to speak, I can’t. I turn my head toward James. It takes one million years. Every millimeter stretches out into an easy but relentless effort, like my head is an unwieldy balloon and is difficult to control because it could float off my shoulders anytime.
James is trying to talk to me, but his voice is coming out in a long whisper. His words aren’t right. I don’t even know which language he’s speaking. Something is happening. My arms tingle, but I can’t move them at all.
A humming starts up, so I strain toward it, making huge efforts to straighten my head again.
Mally Saint is in the seat where Katy was a few minutes ago. She’s as regal as ever, thin shoulders thrown back proudly, hair slicing across one cheek. She looks as though she may have lost a little weight and is even more gaunt. She freezes for a second when she makes direct eye contact with me. She is terrifying and casts a shadow across the classroom. She begins to hum again and this time it shakes the whole room, so everything vibrates. I can only look at her and I can only hear the tune she’s humming.
She stops, suddenly. No one is looking at us. It’s like we’re not here at all.
Mally nods her head toward James. “You’d better watch him,” she says.
I try to speak and no words come out. I don’t want her to look at him. Her nails are longer than I remember, painted a deep bloodred, and they tap the top of the desk, one at a time.
“This isn’t as bad as I thought.” She leans back in the desk. “It still hurts to get here, but life is pain anyway, isn’t it?”
I need to talk to her, but I’m mute. I could cry from frustration if I could even move.
She leans close over the desk, gets close enough to whisper in my ear. “When I made my choice between my head and my heart, it was easy. Who wants to feel? And then they took it. They took it. Just. Like. This.”
She presses her fingers into my chest like she did the last time I dreamed about her, rips through the skin. But then she looks over my head and pulls her finger back.
“No,” she says. I’ve never seen Mally look afraid before. I want to see what she’s afraid of.
I wish I could turn my head.
“Leave me alone!” Her eyes dart toward me and she starts talking superfast. “Ursula escaped. She’s gone to the only place they can’t get her. You have to tell her to come back. She has to come back or they’re going to—” And then, as though someone invisible and strong is pulling her by the feet, she is yanked out of the chair. She slaps against the plastic seat and whacks heavily against the floor, and then she slides along, head lolling to the side, eyes unblinking and open. She is dragged out of the classroom door, leaving a trail of sticky blue blood in her wake.
That’s when I manage to scream.
I’m on the floor and can still hear the last of the echo of my own voice.
“Are you okay?” James looms over me, one hand under my neck, a look of pure panic on his face. “Mary, are you okay? Say some-thing.”
“Mally,” I manage, breathing hard.
“Miss Heart,” Mr. Iago says. “Lucas, go get the nurse.”
“Hardly,” Lucas says.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” James says, shooting Lucas a dirty look I can see even through my haze.
“Two fingers,” I tell James. “What happened?”
“I think you fell asleep. I don’t know. You looked like you were nodding out, so I
was trying to tell you to wake up and you started screaming.”
“Mally Saint,” I say. “She was here.”
“No, Mary Elizabeth,” Mr. Iago says. “I can assure you we would have noticed. Regrettably, Mally has not been here.”
“I think she was dreaming,” James says.
“Yes,” I say, “I was dreaming and I saw Mally.”
James knows my Traces come in dreams. He nods to tell me he understands but doesn’t say anything else.
I bolt up to stand but thump back down into my seat, dizzy. “I have to go.”
“Hey, hold on,” James says. “You need to get checked out. You hit your head when you fell.”
“I have to go do something. I can’t be in here filling out surveys. She said”—I try to keep my voice low—“that Ursula escaped. What does that mean?”
“Twisted,” Katy says.
James looks around the room. Everyone is listening to us. “I’m going to take her home,” he says. “Let her get some sleep. She needs to rest.”
“No, impossible,” Iago says, holding up a hand. “An adult will have to sign her out.”
“I have to go and you have to let me. Every minute—” I choke on my own words and force myself to my feet. “Every minute I’m not doing something is another minute someone could be hurting your students. I have my internship in Midcity. You can call my aunt. She’ll say it’s okay, but I need to go now.”
I try to calm myself and slowly get to my feet.
People like calm people. Calm people get their way.
“Every minute counts,” I say, and look as deeply and earnestly at Mr. Iago as I can.
Iago sighs loudly and flourishes with his hand.
I bolt, James right behind me.
“James, you are not to leave this classroom,” Iago says.
“I’m her ride,” James says, inches behind me.
“James,” Iago yells. “James!”
When we get to the parking lot, the car rumbles and he squeals out.
“You’re going to get in trouble,” I say.
“I’m always in trouble,” he says. “What’s new?”
I think of the way Detective Colman made reference to James, like his name was a smear on mine, and the way ever since he was little James never had the chance to be who he is based on his own actions. The son of a drug-lord/murderer and the daughter of murder victims make an odd pair, but somehow a perfect one, too. We help each other feel less broken.
Once we’re a few streets over, I text Bella. She texts me back like she’s been waiting, fingers at the ready, and we agree to meet in Ursula’s neighborhood.
“Will you take me to Ursula’s block?”
“Sure thing.” He glances at my phone. “You finally going to let me meet your partner?”
“I guess now’s as good a time as any. I’m just going to warn you…she’s a little intense.”
“I like intense. You’re intense.”
“Yeah, she’s more Dreena intense than me intense.”
“Can’t wait,” he says, turning a sharp corner toward the warehouse blocks.
I stare out the window at the faded pastel-colored buildings, a couple of hard-core Legacies walking a Rottweiler along the street, one with the word LOYALTY tattooed across his bare back. An old man in a bucket hat picks up newspapers from the stand just outside the car, then chooses fall red apples and some glitter roses and dumps them in a shopping bag; the boys skating, musicians on street corners, a mime painted in gold so he looks like a statue. I love this place, even without magic. I love it, and I’m not going to stand by while it gets hurt.
As we get slowed down by the traffic of taxis, I watch the people gathered waiting for the next bus to come. On the light post there are meeting flyers advertising for Magic Anonymous. “Community seeking courage to accept the Death. It will never be the same,” it says, “but we can work the steps and face reality, one day at a time.”
Bella’s walking in this direction in high-waisted plaid pants, loafers, and a button-down white shirt, and her hair is in that perfect messy bun again.
“Pull over here,” I say. “That’s her.”
James pulls up right next to her and her hand goes to her holster. Taken objectively, James can be intimidating to look at. He’s covered in tattoos and his muscles are tight, not big, but wiry and inarguably strong. I never give it much thought, but he does sort of look like the typical idea of a criminal.
Bella drops her hand to her side when she sees me. I get out of the car as soon as James has pulled over, and he follows suit. I realize as they look each other over, assessing each other, that these are my two worlds colliding.
“Good to meet you,” he says. “I’m James.”
“Bella. My name…it’s Bella.”
There’s a decently uncomfortable silence.
“Okay, fun’s over.” I look between the two of them. “Come on, Bella. Time for coffee.”
BELLA DOESN’T SAY A WORD ABOUT JAMES, BUT I know what she’s thinking. I may dress in the same black T-shirt and jeans every day, and I may wear my hair in buns and big Scar-like jewelry on my fingers, but I can fit on the fringes of Midcity as easily as I can blend in here. But James…there’s no question where he’s from or where he lands in the great Monarch equation. To break through the awkwardness, I start talking about Mally, what we know and what we don’t.
Bella spares me a relieved glance for the change of topic. It’s not much. We’re waiting for the camera footage from the night Mally went missing. It should be as easy as typing the times into the camera system, but we’re at the bottom of a very long wait. Mally is still officially listed as a voluntary missing person, and we’re forbidden from investigating Ursula, so there’s no way to get bumped up in the queue. We’re running out of things to do, so we decide to go to the library and see if we can learn anything from Mally’s borrowing history. In the meantime, on our way, we can canvass the neighborhood one more time to find out if Mally has anything going on we don’t know about.
Stone is on the corner of Wonder and Vine, sipping on a drink. “What’s up?” he says, when he sees me. He doesn’t have his bass with him, but he still looks the part: broody with circles under his eyes. He leans forward to shake Bella’s hand. “You a cop?”
“Detective,” she says.
“You under arrest?” he asks me.
“No. I work for the cops.”
Stone nods. “Right, right, I forgot. Well, Miss Officer ma’am, I’m doing my part over here. I have my eyes on things.”
“The Scar is lucky to have you, Stone.”
“I figure if the Ursula kidnapper comes over here and tries any shenanigans, I can take him down with my board. Whap. Right to the skull.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say.
“Yeah, Ursula gave me a place to stay one time when I wasn’t doing great with my parents, you know? She’s always been cool.”
My eyes sting. I wish those Midcity detectives were here now, that they could hear something good about Ursula instead of all the rumors. Of course they probably wouldn’t believe any of it coming from Stone. “Thanks for looking out.”
“Legacy Loyalty,” he says.
“Legacy Loyalty,” I say back.
We go into a diner and get some coffee, and Bella smiles when I ask for her hers light and sweet.
“You remembered,” she says.
“Ursula’s apartment is a block from here. Is it okay if we stop by on the way to the library?” I say after we take a minute to enjoy the coffee.
“Uh, no,” Bella says, free hand on her hip. “Absolutely not. I can’t even believe you’re asking me to do something like that after the chief said directly not to.” She looks at me, says “Ugh” and then paces back and forth in the candy aisle. “Bella, she’s a child,” she mutters to herself. “You can’t expect her to understand the importance of rules. It’s not her badge on the line. She doesn’t even have a real badge to put on the line, so how can you expect
her to fathom the gravitas of the situation?”
I want to yell. I want to kick and scream. I’m not asking her to ruin her own life, I just want to stop in and see Ursula’s mom and maybe take a look around Ursula’s room. I’m about to tell her she has no business calling me a child, when I remember what Tink said about softness and being vulnerable.
“The truth is,” I say, “I haven’t been able to make myself go to Ursula’s yet. I haven’t seen her mom or her sister. I’ve been a coward. The idea of going in her room and her not being there…it’s awful. But I think if you’re there it’ll make it less—”
“Less awkward,” Bella finishes.
“Yeah, maybe, or less emotional or something. If I have to hold Ursula’s mom up by myself, I’m not going to be able to do it.” I’ve surprised myself by saying something real and feeling it to be true. That’s why I haven’t wanted to go over there with James. He’s as emotional as I am.
“Oh, fine. Fine!” she says. “Just in and out, got it?”
“Got it! Yes, absolutely.”
When we push open the lobby doors, I’m hit with a dissonant jangle of thoughts. This is where I’ve spent the most time other than my own apartment. Ursula and I are all over this place. Us dressed up for a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Memories of Ursula in fishnet stockings and big black boots making phone calls in the foyer. Me, crying the first time James and I ever got in a fight and Ursula crouched down next to me telling me to suck it up and walk like a queen. Put your chin up, she said. Never let anyone see you with your head down.
“You okay?” Bella asks. “You just turned stark white.”
Ursula’s apartment building used to be fine, but in the last ten years it’s fallen into disrepair. The elevator doesn’t work and the mural with the flamingo and the ocean is faded to muted pinks and blues. We trail down the short hallway until we’re in front of Ursula’s door. I hesitate.
“You ready?” Bella’s eyebrows knit together.
“Another minute?”
City of Villains Page 12
