“I’m off, then. I have to see about a mistress. Maybe the dinobot did it!” He laughs and then lopes out.
“I’m going to have to take ten showers to get that off me.” Bella wipes at her shoulders. “My soul is crying.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t thank me, babe. Back to the drawing board. Time’s a-wastin’.” Bella taps her watch. “What were you going to tell me when Dillweed came in?”
Bella is back to making lines on the map.
“I’ve been thinking. The Magicalists and the Naturalists both believe that even though magic is dead, there is potential for it to exist again, if we ingest the right thing or come into contact with it somehow.”
“Go on,” she says.
“Well, what if someone has found a way to…I don’t know, harness magic or something? What if that’s why Ursula and Mally disappeared? She said someone was experimenting on her, right? So what if that was an attempt.” I shake my head. “It’s stupid and a long shot, but I think there’s a reason the mirror thing happened to me after the blue orb. Like, because I’m Legacy—”
“—the blue light ignited something in you. It was…magic? I mean, Mary Elizabeth—”
“I know, I know it sounds totally nuts. It was totally nuts. It was the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me, and I have had a lot of terrifying things happen.” I see the mirror image again, her sickening, knowing grin, her animal rage.
I rest my finger on the box with the question mark inside. “I think if we find the person who is trying to reignite magic, we’ll find Mally, Ursula, James, and maybe we’ll be able to stop whatever disaster is about to descend on Monarch.”
“If this person exists,” Bella says gently. “If you’re right about what’s happening.” She leans back in her chair. “That’s a lot of ifs, Mary.”
“No,” I say. “I’m right. Who is taking Legacy kids and messing with them? Who is making the blue light?” I tap on the question mark for emphasis. “We can figure this out. I feel like it’s right in front of us and I can’t see it.”
The door flies open again.
“Tony,” Bella says. “Don’t you have a fire hydrant to pee on somewhere?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Bella and I stand so fast we almost knock each other over. It’s the chief, donned in a stylish gray suit, her black hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck.
“Chief, I’m so sorry,” Bella says.
She smiles. “I suppose I should have knocked.”
“Of course not, ma’am—”
“Ah, I see you’re working hard,” she says with an indulgent glance at our mind map, which has gone from presentable to looking like a giant scribble.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
Everything Tony said about the chief and magic and how much she does not want it discussed or put forward as a possibility clangs through my head.
“Well, I’m very sorry to have to put an end to this, but I have some terrible news.”
My chest begins to thump uncomfortably.
“We’ve arrested the Mad Hatter.”
“But that’s great news!” Bella says. “That’s fantastic!”
“Yes, a small-time crook named Caleb Rothco.”
At this Bella and I both freeze.
The chief goes on, oblivious to the sudden chill in the room. “Apparently, he’s very, you know, anti-Midcity, anti-me. Not the first time and it won’t be the last. He thought it would be good fun to hack up one of our informants, as it turns out.” Here she sits on the table and regards us gravely. “We are so pleased to have caught him; however, sadly, we have been able to make a connection between Caleb and both Mally and Ursula. It turns out you were right, Mary Elizabeth. Your instincts are sharp.”
“Ma’am,” I manage.
“Unfortunately, based on evidence found at the Mad Hatter lair, we believe both Mally and Ursula are deceased.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Mary Elizabeth. I know how much Ursula meant to you, and I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, although as it turns out, by the time you had come in here, she was already beyond help.”
Bella skitters to me and back. “Pardon me, ma’am, but…did you find bodies?”
For one blazing minute I think I have truly lost my mind, that I’ve imagined everything, and that nothing I think is real is real. If there are bodies it means I have completely split from reality and that everything I experienced on the other side of the mirror was a hallucination.
“Well…” The chief seems to weigh her words carefully before speaking. “No. We have not found bodies.”
I’m relieved, but I’m also something else now, something new and different. Suspicious.
“But you’re sure it was him?” Bella asks.
“We have enough evidence to connect him. He knew both girls. He’s known to be violent. And he had a kill kit in his vehicle: ropes, hacksaw, trash bags. His whereabouts on Monday and Thursday nights are unknown. He does not have an alibi.”
“But that’s—”
“And, we found trace elements of Ursula’s blood in his shop and on his clothes.”
Ursula’s blood. What is the chief playing at?
“We believe he got the girls as they were leaving Wonderland and killed them both instantly, disposing of their bodies, perhaps in the lake, which would explain why they haven’t turned up.” She stands, hands against her thighs. “I’m so sorry again, Mary Elizabeth. Please take all the time you need to process. Meanwhile, we’ll be scheduling a press conference for this afternoon. I’m going to get some cameras out at Miracle and on a whole lot of streetlamps so this kind of thing doesn’t continue.” She shakes her head. “It’s so difficult, such a shame, but with all the rumors of magic and sea monsters, we’ve got to get the city under control. People need to be reassured. You understand that, don’t you?”
“But that’s not enough proof,” Bella protests. It seems she’s forgotten herself and all her warnings about staying in appropriate lanes completely. “Caleb Rothco may be the Mad Hatter, but that makes sense. He hates Midcity.”
The chief folds her arms. “And how do you know Caleb Rothco?”
“Everyone knows him from his tattoo shop.” The lie slips easily from her tongue. She doesn’t miss a beat. “He has signs all over that he’ll only tattoo Legacy. He hates the Narrows, but he hates Midcity most of all. He has Loyalty flags. It seems highly unlikely that he would hurt another Legacy on purpose, unless he thought someone was a traitor.”
“That’s enough!” the chief yells, then regains her composure. “We have all the evidence we need to put this whole thing to bed. You can’t argue with DNA, Officer Loyola; blood evidence doesn’t lie. Please accept my condolences again, Mary Elizabeth. Don’t feel you have to finish out your internship. I know it’s been an inordinate amount of stress for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
I nod mutely, put my head in my hands.
I’m sure the chief thinks it’s to hide my tears, but it’s not.
She is a liar.
So I hold my head in my hands to keep myself from taking them from my temples and pummeling her with them.
I hold my head in my hands so she will not see my fury.
“LIAR!” I YELL AGAIN. “SHE’S A LIAR!”
It’s like I’m trying to make myself believe it. All this time I’ve put my faith and my love and my admiration into a politically driven liar. I thought because she was from the Scar she was like me, that she cared about its citizens and was just playing the Midcity game so she could help from inside the system. That’s what I wanted to do.
I should have gone with James, left my internship behind and joined him. I’ve wasted all my time trying to get close to this woman and she’s nothing like I thought she was.
While I rant, Bella seems to be in a daze as we walk through the Midcity park. It’s freezing cold and the local children are dressed like clowns, witches, fairies. Here it’s Halloween. We
don’t celebrate Halloween in the Scar. It would feel disrespectful to our ancestors. As I watch the kids run around, I think it’s true that people outside the Scar aren’t like us and they probably don’t have our best interests at heart. They want our sun, our fun-loving clouds, our magical flowers, and our real estate. They pretend to be like us with their tattoos, because pretending to have magic is better than having no magic at all. But most of all, they want our blood, to cut the Legacy marks from our wrists and take whatever is in them that makes magic grow. But these kids haven’t done anything yet. They’re just trying to have a good time, get some candy, pretend life is more magical than it is.
“I never believed we needed magic,” Bella says. “I didn’t understand why people were so hung up on it one way or another. I always thought the desire for it was a dark path.” She slumps onto a park bench like she can’t hold herself up anymore. “My father died in the Fall. He was a Magicalist who wanted to restore our family to its former glory. He was at that party the night of the Fall to make a deal and sign on with some investment company. We only found out about it later. He took everything we had in savings in cash and gave it to someone we can’t identify because there are no records. And then he died.” She glances up. “He was hopeful and greedy and stupid. And he loved my mother and me more than anyone. I miss him every day and I wish I could wring his neck. The fact that he may have been right that magic could come back and that when it does it will be all about money just adds tragedy to tragedy. What’s the point of having magic if you’re going to treat it like any other commodity? No wonder it’s hidden itself away.”
“I’m so sorry, Bella. That must have been so difficult, losing your father like that.”
“It was. It is. But whatever. That’s life, right? It’s hard, it’s wonderful, it’s mysterious.” She shrugs. “Becoming a detective means I can figure out some pieces of the mystery, at least.”
I take a sip of the coffee we picked up, which is cold now.
“Look, it’s the chief,” Bella says suddenly, lifting her chin.
I follow her gaze across the park. The chief looks different in a navy-blue pea coat, sunglasses on, sensible flats, less flashy than usual.
“What is she doing?” Bella murmurs.
We watch as the chief follows the path out of sight. Bella gets up and starts walking with purpose.
“Bella what are you doing?”
“I’m detecting,” she says. “Come on!”
We have to be careful not to let the chief see us. She checks behind her periodically, but Bella and I are so far back she doesn’t see us. We don’t speak to each other and try to look like we’re strolling, but we’re watching everything she does. But all we see, as she enters the bustle of people on the other side of the park, is her edging her way into a crowd and then continuing down the busy street.
“Wait,” Bella says. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
“Shhh,” she says. “Hold on!” Then, “Look behind us.”
I turn around and a man with a dagger tattoo wrapping around his wrist is walking away from us at an unusual clip, even for Midcity. Then it hits me. “That’s the guy Caleb Rothco was tattooing.”
“Yes.” Bella grips my elbow. “He gave the chief an envelope. They didn’t even stop walking. He slipped it to her and they kept going. She’s dirty, Mary! The chief is a dirty cop!”
My phone buzzes in my pocket as we head back into the park. It’s a text from James.
Meet me at Wonderland. I’ll tell you everything.
I let that text sit in the middle of my screen like a black hole, trying to decide if I’m going to let it absorb me, while Bella rambles on about the chief and what she was doing talking to the knife-tattoo guy and whether he handed her money or what.
Follow the money, Jack Saint had said.
“I have to go, Bella.” I’ve interrupted her, but I haven’t been listening to her since I got the text anyway, so it seems like a mercy to stop her from trying to have a conversation with me. I don’t care about the chief. I don’t care if she’s corrupt or amazing or any of it. I care about James and Ursula and getting to them. That’s it.
She pulls her jacket around her. “Go? Go where?”
I think about telling her. I’ve already told her so much. But this feels private, like something between James and me. I don’t know what he’s doing or what he wants to tell me, but he would definitely not be happy if I dragged my police officer partner to Wonderland with me to meet him.
Wonderland is packed and is head-to-toe Scar kids. It may not be Halloween here, but it is the anniversary of the Great Death and the Fall, so there are signs everywhere and a bunch of kids are in their #LegacyLoyalty shirts. The whole place is lit up with flashing lights and glitter and feathers, and huge balloons hang overhead while strobe lights flash across the floor. The Narrows are up top as usual, like they don’t even know how especially unwanted they are here tonight. Or maybe they do and they’re sending Legacy a message that we can’t get rid of them. They’re still going to hover over us, the boys in over-the-top preppy clothes, the girls in button-down shirts and pleated skirts, looking so totally not Scar.
James is nowhere to be found. I look everywhere for him, blaze past Dally and down the stairs to the bathrooms. It feels like the pounding music and the people all around dancing like it’s a carnival have my insides in a blender. I can’t breathe.
Ten-nine-eight—
It isn’t working and I don’t want to pass out in here.
Seven-six-five—
I stumble out the back door in the alley by the dumpsters. The streets are mad. Music is going out here, too, and people pass by the end of the alley, skipping and stomping to drumbeats and the jangle of tambourines. The whole of the Scar is in a frenzy.
I send a text to James, fingers trembling over the keys.
Where are you?
I want to say more. Where are you? Why have you abandoned me? We’re supposed to protect each other and you’re nowhere. Did you leave me? Did you trick me into making me come here? Why would you tattoo my name across your arm and then vanish?
Do you still love me?
And then as I’m staring at the phone waiting for something, anything to come through, I feel a sharp pain and the world fades out to the sound of a party for the end of the world.
REALITY COMES BACK INTO FOCUS IN A HAZE accompanied by a terrible thumping. There are bright lights everywhere and my nostrils are filled with a thick antiseptic smell. I hear a beeping noise and look around. Nothing but white walls and a mirror in front of me. And then I know. This is the place on the other side of the mirror and I am in one of the cages.
I try to stand up, but I’m so dizzy I can’t and I flop back down onto the corner cot. All this white is making everything worse. There’s a beep and the door slides open. I try to run toward it but fall to my knees, nauseated.
Lucas Attenborough walks through the doors and takes a seat next to me on the bed. He has something in his hand, gray and rectangular. “Behave yourself, Mary. If you don’t, I’ll use this on you and it will hurt.”
I examine it. Looks like some sort of Taser, but unlike any I’ve ever seen.
“My dad made it special for your kind. If you try anything it will take you down, so just save us both some energy and don’t.” He leans back against the wall. His features are sharp and his eyes have circles under them. He closes them briefly, and I almost go for the thing in his hand, but then I realize I’m too weak and he’s clutching it too tightly for me to get it from him in the time I could close the distance between us. “Whatever thoughts you’re having, don’t. You need to hear what I have to say and I need you to listen.”
The bump on the back of my head thumps painfully. “I don’t know if you know this, Lucas,” I say, my voice raspy and thick, “but kidnapping is not the way to initiate a dialogue.”
He smiles, exhaustion all over him. “I always liked that you have a sense of humor, Mary
Elizabeth. You probably don’t know that about me. That I like things about Legacy sometimes.”
“I never gave it much thought. What you like and don’t like doesn’t matter to me.”
“Fair enough,” he says, that Narrows superiority dripping from every vowel.
“What do you want, Lucas? If you’re going to torture me or whatever, let’s just get it started. It can’t be any more awful than talking to you.”
He looks at himself in the mirror, then back at me, and lays his hands on his lap, that Taser thing still held tightly in one palm pointing directly at me. “My father made me do it,” he says. “First Mally, then Ursula. I kidnapped both of them and brought them here to be experimented on. I thought they’d be drugged, poked with needles, dosed with forgetful serum, and then returned home, maybe a little worse for the wear, but nothing more than that. I thought you all deserved to have magic taken from you, superior pricks that you are. I had no idea it would turn out this way, that people would actually be monstrously altered.” He swallows. “And now they’re all going to die, be put down like rabid dogs, and no one will ever know what really happened to them.”
I think two thoughts simultaneously: One, James didn’t do it. The relief floods my entire body. Lucas was behind it the whole time. He and his business-mogul, money-hungry daddy. It was just what Mally’s dad said all along. Greed around every corner, money at the root of it all. And my second thought is that if I’m not mistaken, he just said everyone in this place is going to be killed. Ursula. Mally. And whoever is in the rest of those cages, which presently includes me.
“I’m an asshole, but I’m not this much of an asshole. It’s all gotten overblown and out of control. I don’t like things to be out of control. I don’t mind people getting hurt, but dying? My father isn’t going to listen to anyone. He’s convinced all this will make him so rich, people will forgive him the collateral damage if they find out. So I’m left with you. You’ll listen, won’t you, Mary?”
My heart, which was already beating hard, begins to clang dangerously against my chest, but I keep myself still, watching that thing Lucas has in his hands. One thing I’ve learned: People want to talk. They want to tell you what they’re holding inside; they want to get rid of it. All you have to do when that happens is be quiet. Because when you’re quiet, the other person will talk and talk and talk. Even though I want to shake the truth from him, we sit there watching each other.
City of Villains Page 19
