by Adam Silvera
“She won’t tell you this herself, but she’s strong enough to create six clones at a time,” Wesley says while keeping his eyes on the road. “For Valentine’s Day, I wrote something in her card that was really bad. Cheesy-bad. It was something like ‘Your love is so huge that I’m sure you have seven hearts in your chest,’ and in response she cloned herself so that all the clones could roll their eyes at the same time.”
I get a quick laugh out of it, which feels nice, like the fresh air. “Wow. You tried.”
“Always do,” Wesley says. “Even if I look like a clown, then we have another funny memory.”
We start pulling into the city and I close the window, throwing on a beanie that will flatten my curls in case anyone recognizes me from their cars.
“You’re lucky you have each other,” I say.
“I’m lucky to have her. It feels like yesterday when I was using my powers to steal and survive, but Ruth has changed me. She turned her back on her rich, respected family and all the spoils strangers would give her if she did a single Instagram post, and all she does now is give and give and give. Her time, her energy, the shoes off her feet.”
“Any chance we can send her on some Kindness Tour? We need more Ruths in the world.”
“Ooh, ‘more Ruths in the world.’ Going to use that in my next card,” Wesley says with a chuckle. “There’s something I’ve been hiding from everyone. Months ago, Atlas came with me when I bought this cottage for my family. We had a lot of fun that day. . . .” He trails off. He didn’t know Atlas that long, but they were still tight like brothers. “I bought the place off this celestial we saved, and it’s this safe space where Ruth and I can raise Esther in peace. It’s where Ruth and I have been staying, and she wants to invite you all over when we leave the center.”
I shake my head. “No way. We’re not bringing danger to your home.”
I’m already struggling with living with myself. How many more people have to get hurt before I fly away and live alone on some mountain on the other side of the world?
“Believe me, I’m not excited either, but you’re all family. We’ll take care of you.”
“We suck at taking care of each other. Look at how many lives we’ve lost this week alone,” I say.
Atlas, Gravesend, Dr. Bowes. Maybe Brighton, Ma, and Eva.
“It’s the Heroic Crime,” Wesley says as he pulls into a garage and parks the car.
“The what?”
“Something I coined. It’s what happens when innocent people get caught in the cross fire of war. No matter how careful we’re trying to be when saving the world, there will be casualties. The losses are brutal and real, and a lot of us would time-travel back and undo whatever acts cost us loved ones like Atlas and innocents like Dr. Bowes.”
Maybe Luna was onto something all along with the Reaper’s Blood. There wouldn’t be so much grief in the world if we could all live forever. Dr. Bowes could be home making costumes with her son.
“Darren is going to hate me, right?”
Wesley squeezes my shoulder, which doesn’t hold a candle to Ruth’s hug, but I get it. “I know the feeling. I’ve been able to sit down with some kids and apologize for not being able to save their guardians. Some of them need a minute, but then they share stories and it doesn’t bring them back, obviously, but we all feel better in that moment. Darren looks up to you, and he was clearly proud of his mother. Just go in there, remind him that it’s not his fault, and that his mother was a hero who was creating a better world for him.”
Unlike Dr. Bowes, I can’t confirm if my own mother went down fighting or not. Or if it was quick and painless, or if they made her suffer for so long that she begged for death.
I keep my teary eyes to the ground, which works since we’re trying not to be recognized as we walk down the street.
Wesley throws on his hood, telling me how earlier today when getting Darren and his father to this safe house that he wished he could’ve been wearing sunglasses, but people have been especially suspicious of sunglasses since the Blackout, swearing that they’re for celestials hiding their glowing eyes so they can use their powers undetected. Not our problem this evening, but I think about how easy Ness could blend into a crowd. He didn’t have to tense up like me as I’m passing people on the street, acting like I’m suddenly interested in the awning of a flower shop and the bagel shop on the corner.
We stop outside the tattoo shop, Orb Ink, and the sign on the door has been flipped to Closed and the blinds have been drawn. I realize that we’re standing on a message in graffiti and I step back to get a closer look: YOUR LIGHTS ARE OUT NEXT. I’ve seen this hate speech targeted at celestials ever since the Blackout, and Senator Iron never condemns those behind it.
“Is this shop celestial-owned?” I ask.
“Yup.” Wesley knocks on the door in a rhythm that must be code.
A woman approaches and she has dozens of small silver tattoos, like clocks and bricks and flowers, that seem to sparkle on her brown skin. Her dark eyes take me in before she unlocks the door.
“Hey again, Xyla. This is—”
“Pleasure,” Xyla interrupts as she shifts her gaze back on Wesley. She definitely won’t be dressing up as me for Halloween. “You have ten minutes before Flex arrives to escort the boy and his father. I’ll be in the back finishing some paperwork. In and out, you got it?”
“Copy that,” Wesley says as she lets us in and walks away. “Don’t mind her, E. She might not be on the front lines but her job is risky too. I’m going to go grab Darren and Daniel.”
I look around while Wesley heads into a room that I’m guessing gets used for private tattoo sessions. The shop’s name is illustrated on the ceiling like a constellation. There are pictures of past clients with their tattoos: a star on a woman’s forehead, a stallion galloping along someone’s waistband, two hands shaping the universe on a man’s forearm, a polygonal hydra with seven heads on someone’s back that glows in the dark, and, my favorite, a crowned elder—the beautiful phoenix that is born old—with its storm-gray feathers and amber eyes perfectly drawn onto a woman’s shoulder.
If I ever get a tattoo, I think I’d go for one of Gravesend. Then I could remember her when she was a beautiful newborn phoenix instead of bloodied and dead.
Wesley comes out the back with Darren and Mr. Bowes. Mr. Bowes is bald with a thick beard and Darren has shaggy black hair with his first specks of a mustache coming in. Darren is wearing a plain white T-shirt like me with camo pants and big headphones around his neck. He walks straight to a stool and flips through a binder with template tattoos. Mr. Bowes comes out to me and shakes my hand.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say. I shake my head because I hate how that sounds. That condolence barely did it for me after my dad died. “No, that’s not enough. My brother and I are alive because of your wife. She deserved better.”
“Billie really cared for her patients,” Mr. Bowes says.
It doesn’t feel right for me to say that she cared more about her family. They know that already. “She shouldn’t have died because of us. I’m sorry that we brought danger her way.”
Mr. Bowes nods. He’s not contesting.
I cautiously walk over to Darren and sit opposite him. “Hey, Darren.” He keeps flipping through the binder. Wesley told me that it can be harder to crack the shells of children who have lost their parents, but I’m only four years older than Darren. I don’t get to act like some know-it-all. I connect with him the only way I know how. “I lost my dad a few months ago. I don’t go sharing this secret online, but I have no problem telling you that I’m actually adopted. I just found out a few weeks ago. It was a total surprise because my dad always treated me like a Rey, and I know how lucky I am for that. A day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t missed him asking me about my day or telling me some story that sometimes ran long.”
Darren closes the binder. He almost turns toward me, but stops.
“I cried a lot with my mother after
my dad died. My brother, Brighton—you might know him from his Celestials of New York series—he kept a lot of his grief to himself. I’m not trying to tell you how to grieve, just that there’s no one right way.”
Darren looks me in the eye. “Why aren’t you dead too?”
My breath is caught in my throat.
“Darren,” Mr. Bowes says with a warning tone.
“No, he’s fine,” I say.
“I’m not fine!” Darren shouts, flinging the binder onto the floor. “I don’t care about your dad, he didn’t die because of me!” The commotion causes Xyla to come out from the back room and she looks as surprised as Wesley. “Why aren’t you dead too? Are you better than my mom?”
“No, of course not—”
“Why didn’t your neck get snapped?”
I didn’t think he knew the details of how his mother was killed. His father is telling Darren that enough is enough, but he’s not letting up.
“I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys!”
“I tried, I’m trying—”
“Tell that to my mother!”
I turn back to Wesley, ready to ask him if we should go, but no, I deserve this. When I turn back around, Darren is gone and Dr. Bowes is sitting across from me with a broken neck.
“My son has to grow up without a mother because of you,” Dr. Bowes says in a raspy, otherworldly voice, blood spitting out of her mouth. “You should be dead!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
I know this can’t be real, I know the dead can’t come back to life, I know we can’t understand ghosts, but I know Dr. Bowes is right. I’m the one who should be dead.
“Remember this face!” Dr. Bowes screams as her eyes close and her flesh begins unraveling. She keeps repeating herself, burning this horror into my mind alongside the very real memory of Stanton snapping her neck, and through another repeat her voice becomes Darren’s and the illusion ends. “Remember this face, remember this face,” Darren cries with his eyes still closed like the short-lived illusion he cast over himself like a costume.
Mr. Bowes drags Darren by his arm, apologizes for his son’s behavior, which is nonsense because I deserve to be trapped in a horror house, haunted by illusions of everyone who has died because of me.
I watch them as they leave the shop, and Darren turns one last time before getting in the car, a threat in his eyes.
It’s safe to say that I’ll remember his face. It’s the face of someone who sees me as a villain in his story, and when he’s older and stronger, and if I’m somehow still alive, he will hunt me down, take everything I love, and kill me.
Fourteen
The Odds
BRIGHTON
These past few days have been a fevered nightmare that have taken so much from me—my blood; my steady consciousness; my time, which was already running out. The two practitioners, Dr. Swensen and Dr. Salinas, tell me all about how I’ve lost four days. Somehow even with the most sleep I’ve ever had, I’m groggy, like I might pass out again any minute, but they keep talking at me about how difficult it is to cleanse my blood.
My arm feels even stiffer than before. They must’ve failed to save me. I inspect myself, discovering that my arm is tightly wrapped in a soothing silk bandage. Dr. Salinas tells me that it’s made from basilisk cocoons. She goes over the list of antivenom serums she’s given me, as if I’m going to be familiar with any of these things. What I do know is that this medical bill is going to be unimaginably expensive. Though the chances of anyone in my family living long enough to have to worry about paying a single dollar is slim, hopefully the bill doesn’t follow Emil into his next life.
“Am I dying anytime soon?” I ask because I’m tired of them beating around the bush.
“The venom is still spreading, but we’ve managed to slow it down,” Dr. Salinas says.
“But the blood poisoning from before is another matter,” Dr. Swensen says.
Two hospitals, one verdict. I’m as good as dead.
“Where’s Emil?”
“You can see him soon,” Dr. Salinas says. “I want to give you a fresh wrap on your arm to avoid infection.”
“I want to see my brother now!”
They back off and leave to get Emil.
This brings me back to Dad’s funeral. Emil and Ma really went for it with their eulogies, but it felt impossible to remember the good after watching Dad die. Then one minute I was in the front row while Dad’s boss at the Lucille Barker Theater shared a few words and the next I was standing at the podium with Emil at my side. I couldn’t stop talking about what I miss already: Dad singing along to songs in Spanish that only Ma understood; asking him to quiz me on prep work so I could see him smile as I answered everything correctly; inviting me and Emil on grocery runs; how he never settled for one-word responses when asking about our day.
I was keeping it together while others delivered their eulogies, but I lost my mind when Dad’s doctor was behind the podium and expressing his regrets. During all that time in the hospital, Dr. Queen was always so appreciative of Emil’s kind nature and patience, but I was a nightmare to anyone, especially Dr. Queen, who stood in my way when I wanted to see Dad. At the funeral, I let him have it one last time, even though Emil and Prudencia begged me to calm down for Ma’s sake if no one else. But I didn’t stop until I chased Dr. Queen out of the funeral home, blaming him for putting Dad through that clinical trial that killed him sooner.
I decide what I do with my remaining time. No one else.
It’s not long before there’s a knock on the door and Emil comes in. He doesn’t say anything; he just hugs me, which is a surprise given how I treated him. But when he starts crying I spit out the question I’ve been terrified to ask since being awake.
“Ma’s dead, isn’t she?”
Emil backs away, wiping his tears as he sits beside me on the bed. “No. I mean I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? What has everyone been doing while I’ve been asleep?”
Apparently a lot has been going on, including a visit from Congresswoman Sunstar and Senator Lu, but what I don’t hear is action. “So what, the Blood Casters haven’t put out any message like when they wanted the urn back?”
“They traded last time because I took the urn, and Luna needed to kill the ghosts for her Crowned Dreamer deadline. But this time . . .”
“This time what? I took what Luna wanted? Fine, I’ll post a video and offer myself up.”
“No!” Emil is staring, but he can’t stop me. “We don’t even know if Ma is alive!”
“But if she is, this may be the only way to get her back. I’m dead anyway, Emil.”
He shakes his head. “You already drank the Reaper’s Blood, Bright. It’s a done deal, like when Luna was trying to trade me off to Kirk for Gravesend because I didn’t have any more value to her. You don’t serve any purpose to her alive. She made that clear when she sent Stanton to assassinate you.”
“Then maybe she’ll get a kick out of seeing me die before her.”
Emil looks so beat, like he’s been awake enough for the both of us. His curls are growing, dirt is building up under his fingernails, and he smells like unwashed armpits. I’m about to ask him how he hasn’t managed to take a shower during all this sitting around he’s been doing when he looks at my wrapped-up arm. “How are you feeling?”
“Fantastic.”
“Bright, you don’t have to lie to me. I really wish we could see some therapists because I’ve been struggling too and—”
“We all are,” I interrupt. “We’re losing the war.”
“Right, I know. I wasn’t trying to make it about myself. I think we all could benefit from some professional help. More than Eva’s services, which really wasn’t fair to her.”
“I got a list of things that’s unfair too.”
He looks at me like he’s expecting me to go on.
Emil gets up. “I’m going to grab Dr. Salinas so she can replace your bandage. Do m
e a solid and treat her a little better than you have me and Ma.”
I let him go. I’m not trying to fight everyone, but everything is getting worse and worse and I don’t know how to bury my frustration and my fury. There are a lot of powers I wish I had, but reading thoughts could be really helpful so I can know for sure whether or not Emil has dark, ugly thoughts like I do. I can’t be the only one.
He returns with Dr. Salinas, who asks me to relax as she unwraps the bandage. It stings, like a Band-Aid ripping off multiple scabs. I’m speechless when I see how different and monstrous my arm looks. Dark yellow scales are scattered everywhere from my fingers to my forearm and all the exposed skin is a deep green. It’s like I’m turning into a basilisk.
“Will it heal?” Emil asks.
“There’s a salve that can assist with the shedding,” Dr. Salinas says. “But it takes a few months to return to its former state.”
“But—” Emil stops himself. We all know I don’t have a few months.
“Maybe it’s time we start placing bets on how I’m going to die,” I say. “We’ve got some solid options. Venom reaching my heart. Blood poisoning. I’m personally putting my money on the Blood Casters coming back to finish the job.”
“Not funny,” Emil says. “We’re going to get you through this.”
Thinking about my future distorts reality. This is all too much for one person, it’s like one shot fired after the other. The poisonings, the death sentences. I feel like I’m blowing through the stages of grief. I’ve been living in denial and anger since the last night of the Crowned Dreamer. Depression is definitely creeping in because I don’t have powers, especially now, when I would love to use them most to track down Ma—and punish everyone who even looked at her wrong. But there’s no bargaining because there’s nothing else I can do to become a specter, and any other trial will only kill me sooner. Sitting around this hospital room and thinking about how I don’t want what little time is left to be spent here, I’ve reached acceptance.
