Formaldehyde.
It was the stuff used to embalm dead people.
I lifted my hand from the table, realizing it was where corpses were drained of bodily fluids and refilled with the preservative ooze.
I shuddered because it was so gross, and because it made perfect sense according to Outfit logic. An embalming room is the creepiest place in a funeral home (perhaps in the world) and the last place anyone chooses to go (except an embalmer), which made it the ideal place to hide a Capone Door. Disgusting junk is always left behind in old, abandoned buildings—worn-out couches, stained mattresses—but this was unusual, and unusually nauseating, and it was when I bent to puke that I saw the zephyr. It appeared in a tiny, swirling tornado made of dust from a hairline crack in the wall that was leaking air. I knew Teardrop was down here somewhere, and on cue, it groaned and thrashed violently, kicking over something heavy trying to get to its feet. I hobbled to the wall and scanned it desperately, seeing empty shelves, a corroded sink, and a crusty, peeling anatomical wall chart. Looking closer, I saw the outline of a human body crisscrossed by bloody red lines, showing how formaldehyde flowed through the circulatory system.
Each part was titled—heart, aorta, superior vena cava—and it was when I saw the raised, metallic C in cava that my own heart leapt.
My finger was moving for it when a glass jar exploded above my head. I was covered in slime, and another just missed me when I ducked out of the way of Teardrop’s missile. It was on the move, trying to brain me. The only thing slowing it were overturned tables and boxes of who knows what, and I jammed my finger against the C. The wall coughed and lifted, and I leaped into darkness, expecting to touch a platform or the top step of a staircase, but there was nothing. My fall through the floor had been painful but short, while this was a genuine plummet, a head-over-heels free fall, and I screamed, smelling the sewage below. I managed to shut my mouth and land on my back, hearing the sticky splock! as warm sludge washed over me. I got to my feet, hacking and spitting, and spotted the bones of an old, collapsed stairway. It had once connected to a walkway along the edge of the sewer, safely above the crud.
I looked up, seeing Teardrop looking down, trying to decide what to do.
I had no trouble deciding and clambered up to the walkway.
When I heard the splock! behind me, I knew the creature had made up its mind.
The walkway twisted, I felt my way around a corner, and a narrow, shadowy doorway appeared out of nowhere. It was just an indentation in the wall, easy to miss, and I stepped into it, hugging the wall. It was then that I noticed faded red letters stenciled in curlicues higher up on the brick:
The Catacomb Club
Buzz twice
Gents, kindly check your gats
There was no door below it, or at least I thought there wasn’t until I touched the wall and felt a wooden frame painted over to blend in with the brick. Seconds later, Teardrop charged past without seeing me. I glanced around the corner, scanning the smooth, wet walls, seeing narrow catwalks leading to large, screened air vents but no other way out. The disguised door was my only chance. Carefully, trying to mute any noise, I pushed a shoulder against it. There was a complaint of warped wood, so I did it again and something splintered. I leaned with all of my strength, sure it wouldn’t open, but then by stubborn, scraping inches it did. A sour exhalation blew over me as I slipped inside. I remembered Tyler hinting at a story about the Catacomb Club and Grandpa Enzo, which I’d pretended to be aware of. At the moment, though, all I cared about was that a speakeasy always had a secret exit, and I was determined to find it. Squinting into grayness, I saw a bar on one side of the vast room and moved toward it, groping air. My fingers grazed a table and when I leaned on it for guidance, it rotated beneath my touch.
Tic-tic-tic . . .
The noise was calibrated and cold, like the spinning chamber of a loaded pistol.
. . . tic-tic-tic-ic-ic-ic.
Until it stopped slowly, and the room was silent again. I bent toward the table, seeing a roulette wheel, the small white ball taking its final leap from black to red.
And then I saw a hand pushing money toward it.
I gasped and drew back, because its flesh was leather.
When I moved, my heels caught at a pile of something on the floor behind me, and I fell onto half of a human torso.
I babbled with terror, a whispered stream of “Oh God! Oh no! Oh please!” as I scuttled away like a crab, crushing something as brittle as kindling, seeing a desiccated leg beneath a sequined skirt. I was on my feet in a flash, stumbling past gambling tables and slot machines, and pressed against a wall, my heart tripping like a jackhammer. I moved my hand across cold plaster until I located a light switch, and with trembling fingers, I flipped it. First one, then another and another light fixture blew its old bulb to bits. Shielding my face with a forearm, I lowered it to see a lone fixture oozing light, turning the room a ghastly yellow, changing the mass of slumped shadows into corpses. I sucked back a scream, covering my mouth with the back of a hand at the sight of the brutal carnage. There were bodies everywhere, shot down where they’d stood or sat. Some, like the one I’d fallen on, had been ripped in two by bullets. Dried black blood pooled on green felt tables and tiled floors, spattering the walls like abstract art. I had no idea how long they’d been here, but with revulsion and sick curiosity, I noted that decomposition was at a point between mummy and skeleton. Generations of spiders had infested the scene, draping it in a stringy cloak of webbing. It was a mix of men and women dressed in the style of the fifties or sixties, and then I noticed something else.
Besides blood, cash was everywhere, in thick piles or scattered like blown leaves.
This was not a robbery gone wrong.
I was looking at the remains of a massacre.
My mind choked on so much murder, with one thought shouldering aside the rest: Whoever did it left these people down here to rot. It was a notion I’d pull apart later, but now my ear twitched at the scratch of footsteps. I ducked behind the bar, stifling a scream at coming nose-to-nose with a bartender missing half his skull, and carefully peeked over the top. At the front of the expansive room, near the main entrance, Teardrop’s face glowed in murkiness like a beacon of death. He moved warily, looking for me but obviously taken aback by the butchery. From this viewpoint, I discerned the layout of the place—main entrance leading to gaming tables, which led to the bar (where I cowered) and a small stage at the rear of the room. Half the bodies were clustered at the front, but the rest had been cut down toward the back. Some had been trying so desperately to reach the rear of the room that they’d run right out of their shoes.
They were attempting, unsuccessfully, to escape.
There had to be an exit back there.
Nearly hugging the floor so Teardrop couldn’t see me, I went down on all fours and crawled madly and silently toward the small stage. I passed by a hallway with no doors or windows, only an ancient cigarette machine; long ago, coins were fed into it and levers yanked as packs of smokes tumbled out. I rose, crouching in shadows, peering at one brand in particular, Carlyle Red, with a tiny raised C. I pulled the lever, cringing at the echoing thunk! as the machine swung aside, revealing a flight of stairs. Clawing cobwebs from my face, I ran up the steps, hearing Teardrop kicking over chairs and cadavers as he came after me. A door popped open at the top and I found myself on a narrow catwalk leading to a large, whooshing air vent. I lunged for the screen and grunted, ripping it free and lifting myself inside, when a steely hand closed around my ankle.
Teardrop hissed, “Got you, you smug little bi—” but didn’t finish since I hammered its festering mouth with my other foot until it gurgled and let go. And then I was crawling rapidly through inches of smelly water. When I reached another round screen, I realized I wasn’t inside an air vent but a drainpipe.
Those weren’t screens—they were, like, poo filters.
I squinted through the filter in front of me and saw that the
pipe on the other side flowed directly toward me, dribbling water. Behind me, I heard a slap and a splash, and I knew Teardrop was on the move. I yanked at the filter but it held tight, and that’s when I saw two buttons on the other side of the screen—a red one marked “lock” and a green one marked “unlock.” Of course they were on that side, since that’s where the utility guys came from, and of course the filters were locked, to keep trespassers out and rats in. I tried to push the unlock button, but it was just out of reach, my fingers straining through the filter as Teardrop called out, “Es el estremo de la linea, puta . . . it’s the end of the line. Time to meet Mister Kreamy Kone in person.”
I thought, Of course! Mister Kreamy Kone!
I patted my pockets desperately and fished out the ice cream stick.
Squeezing it between my fingertips, I slid it through the filter and pushed the button. There was a click and a pop, and Teardrop crawled faster, panting with rage. I slammed my shoulder against the filter, dove through, and kicked it shut just as the red-eyed demon lunged. A quick punch to the lock button and it latched into place.
“No . . . no!” Teardrop howled, grappling at the filter, scraping it with sharp knuckles. It swallowed its rage, hissing, “Just wait. You’re mine.”
“I’m no one’s,” I said quietly, backing away.
The wall behind me was fit with metal rungs to climb in and out of the sewer. I went for the rungs as a rumble sounded from the pipe. It was followed by a noxious odor that made my stomach heave, and raw sewage rushed toward us. Teardrop heard it too, face pressed against the filter, gaping. “I’d close that ugly mouth if I were you,” I said, climbing quickly away. A stream of stinking goop rolled beneath my feet and I paused to watch it bubble up as high as Teardrop’s shoulders before subsiding. Trapped in muck, its eyes blazed up at me, but I was gone, rising toward a manhole cover. I pushed it aside and pulled myself into an alley, seeing the Biograph Theater across the street, which meant I was on Lincoln Avenue. It was showing a vintage Humphrey Bogart film, its marquee glowing with the title The Stick-Up. It reminded me of my savior, the ice cream stick. I looked at it now, seeing words stamped on it that had once been covered by a frozen treat.
It read, Find Mister Kreamy Kone on Friendbook!
7
UNTIL YESTERDAY, I COULD ADJUST THE intensity of ghiaccio furioso but was unable to summon it. There had to be a perfect storm of emotion—intense hatred, love, or fear—in order for cold fury to kindle and flicker.
Not anymore.
Now I am its master.
Now I think of what was done to my mom’s hand, the horrific pain and shock she must have suffered, and blink my eyes just once. The blue flame leaps at my command as I burn with fury, all the while remaining as cool and calm as a blackjack dealer. I’m possessed by a sense of power that I haven’t known before, since cold fury was transitory, rolling in unbidden and blowing away like a hurricane. I lay in bed tingling with the new knowledge, then got up and looked at myself in the mirror. Slowly closing and opening my eyes, there was an internal, audible hum as my pupils went to pinpoints and the blueness deepened to cobalt. I’d never seen what they looked like while deploying cold fury since it normally ended almost as soon as it began, but now I saw what other people saw.
It was all of the loneliness that had ever existed since time began staring back at me.
It was abandonment and torture, humiliation and disease, rejection and death searching for a warm, pulsating place to infiltrate and infect.
My eyes were the nightmare mirrors of other men’s souls.
I blinked and was myself again, except that the other Sara Jane—the one who disappeared before my eyes—was also me. Being able to control cold fury added a new dimension to my double life, and I wondered if I’d be able to control the electricity as well. All I knew for sure was that my current evolution had been induced by a trauma so disturbing that it had broken down whatever mental or emotional boundaries had existed and drawn cold fury to my fingertips—and there I was again, thinking about my poor mother’s fingers.
And then my phone rang.
The clock on the table next to me glowed 5:03 a.m. I lifted the phone and Max whispered, “Hey, it’s me . . .”
“Is everything okay? It’s so early.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about us. And I need to show you something important.”
“You mean now?”
“Yeah. If you’re not too tired, I mean.”
“No!” I said enthusiastically, a little too happy that he’d called me. I really wasn’t tired since I’d gone to bed five hours earlier than usual. I’d returned to the Bird Cage Club the day before, stinking like the underbelly of Chicago after my sewer hide-and-seek, and left the Mister Kreamy Kone stick on Doug’s laptop where he’d find it. I showered, still stunk, showered again, crawled into bed, and slid into a deep sleep before seven p.m. I was awake and alert as Max told me to meet him at the corner of Hermitage and Cortland in Bucktown. When I asked why, he said he’d answer my questions later and that time was of the essence. It’s one of those terms—“time is of the essence”—that spurs people to action. I dressed quickly and tiptoed past Doug and Harry sleeping on the couch. Passing the control center, I saw a note Doug had left for me, scrawled in red pen on the back of a fast-food bag, with an arrow pointing at the ice cream stick:
Wait until you see what I found online!
Mister Kreamy Kone fans are freaks!
A hug from—
Doug
I bristled with curiosity and was tempted to wake him, but Max’s admonition to hurry kept me moving; butterflies did backflips in my stomach as I rode down the elevator. Twenty minutes later, I pulled the Lincoln to a curb in Bucktown. Max was on the corner leaning on his motorcycle, his brown hair early-morning messy in a good way. He wore classic biker gear—jeans, boots, and a snug leather jacket; it would be warm by noon, but was chilly in the predawn darkness. I approached cautiously, wondering if he was going to break up with me here, on a deserted street. Instead, his frozen breath preceded his lips when he kissed me lightly.
“How do you feel about going to Italy this morning?” he asked.
“Uh, well . . . we have to be in school, remember?”
“It’ll be a quick trip. Short but sweet. As long as you’re not scared of angels.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Great, that makes it even better.” He grinned. His eyebrows rose in happy anticipation, and he nodded his head across the street, saying, “Follow me.” We crossed over to an enormous old redbrick church so huge and imposing that it consumed an entire city block. A tower of scaffolding clung to the wall and rose into the sky. Max looked around and then gave the scaffold a hard shake, making sure it was secure. He grinned again and said, “They’re repairing the brick. All the way to the roof.”
“How high is the roof?”
Max shrugged. “Fifteen, sixteen stories, maybe. Are you okay with heights?”
I looked up, considering my safe haven on the twenty-seventh floor of the Currency Exchange Building on the one hand, and dangling from a hundred-and-fifty-foot-high Ferris wheel on the other. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
“It’s completely safe,” he said, drawing my gaze back to him. “Trust me.”
I looked into his warm, open face, thinking not for the first time that he sometimes seemed too good to be true, but then I shook it off; it was my paranoid gut, trying to jinx me. I smiled back and said, “I do. Always.”
And then we were climbing silently from pole to platform until Max said, “Be careful of his feet . . . her feet. Whatever, there’s a pair up here.” I looked past as he pulled himself onto the roof, and he was right—two large, snow-white feet were at the base of a tall body clad in drapes of alabaster robe, and behind them were a huge pair of folded wings. Max helped me onto the roof and I saw that the angel’s arm extended toward me, offering another hand up. “There
are twenty-six of them along the wall of the roof.”
“Parapet,” I mumbled, staring into the face of the giant winged creature.
“Each statue is nine feet tall, made of solid marble,” Max said, “and they’re all committed to protecting beautiful, dirty old Chicago.”
The angel’s delicate features transfixed me. It was definitely feminine, with the set of her jaw reflecting a fierce determination. Although my family had been casual when it came to attending mass, I knew the role of certain angels was that of guardian, existing solely to save humans from dangerous situations. Another concept I’d picked up during my (rare) trips to Sunday school was that the sins of a father were sometimes passed on to his children. It was impossible to deny that Great-Grandpa Nunzio’s role as counselor-at-large for the bloody Chicago Outfit, passed on to Grandpa Enzo, my dad, and now me, was ultimately why my family was missing. I noticed then how familiar the look carved into the angel’s eyes was, seeing it as a beatific reflection of my own in the mirror while deploying cold fury—part serenity, part end-of-days wrath. It seemed appropriate, considering that the angel was specifically created to protect and rescue all those fathers from their sins, and I thought, Lady, I know how you feel.
“Sara Jane,” Max said, taking my hand, “follow me. It’s almost time.”
“For what?”
He smiled and took my hand. “Rome,” he said, and led me around the massive tile and terra-cotta dome where two lawn chairs sat side by side.
I looked at them, at the thermos and cups between them, and a jelly jar holding a rose. “Max . . . for me?”
“We don’t want to miss it,” he said. “Sit.” We eased into chairs and he poured two espressos. I sipped, watching him blow steam from a cup. He stared straight ahead and said, “Now . . . we wait.” It seems like waiting is an element woven into our relationship—waiting to get together because of a divorce and a secret Chloe, because of a missing family and Outfit secrets. We’re young and haven’t been together long enough, and we both feel (thankfully) that the time isn’t yet right to take the next big, scary romantic step, which means more waiting. And here we sat, side by side on a roof in the chilled semi-darkness, and I realized that there was no one in the world I’d rather wait with.
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