The City of Crows

by Bethany Anne Lovejoy

  There he sat; clad in a white shirt and black wool pants, his suspenders creating wrinkles at his shoulders; the owner’s dirty blond hair ruffling in the breeze. His eyes trained on the city, he made no move to greet me, forcing me to fight back the temptation to push him off. Still, he knew I was there, he’d expected me.

  “Lyra,” he croaked, hands tucked into his trouser pockets, face avoiding mine. It was all the confirmation I needed. He was there, he was always there. This was him admitting it, admitting that the crows on the line, on my windowsill, watching me at every turn were him. “You finally realized.”

  “Where’s Leo,” I spat, all feelings of tiredness forgotten. This was it; this was my last hope. My ex-boyfriend standing on a rooftop, brooding.

  “Leo, Leo, Leo,” he said with a sigh, finally turning his head to look at me. “That’s all you talk about these days,” mock exasperation colored his tone. A hint of a smirk played upon his lips as he kicked back from the edge, turning on his heel to look at me. “Really, Lyra, did you ever care about me this much?”

  “I don’t give a shit about you,” I told him, storming forward so that I could stand in front of him. “You’re a big, dumb bird.” I wasn’t afraid anymore, not now, not ever again. All this time, I’d been scared. But here he was, a coward hiding in plain sight, now looking for pity. To hell with him, to hell with his lies; to hell with this city of crows. My hands shoved him backward with a grunt, my face ferocious. “Where. Is. Leo?”

  “Lyra, you know it’s not meant to be him. It’s supposed to be you and I, we’re—”

  “I don’t care,” I yelled, body vibrating with rage. “I don’t care what you, the woman at the crossroads, or anyone else says. I don’t care about true love, and I don’t care about the man or however many faces he has. I want Leo, I need Leo.” My hands once again flew to his shoulder, shoving him closer to the edge, “Give him back!”

  Rowan caught my forearms before I could push again, his voice calm in the face of my storm, “Lyra, I don’t have him.” He threw my arms down, eyes cold, “If I had him, don’t you think he would be with me? Besides, it’s not me who he would be dealing with. It’s a shame you didn’t go instead, perhaps he would have made you more agreeable,” his tone suggested something else, something I didn’t care to know.

  “Rowan,” I warned him, my voice heavy. A million things could be inferred from my tone, but I hoped that what came across the loudest was the fact that I genuinely needed his help, and was capable of forcing him if it came down to it. Rowan was the type of person to underestimate others, however, in his mind, he was king. That was what made him such easy prey for the seedy underworld.

  “Your phone,” he said, his voice far too prideful, as if he felt he had the upper hand. He withdrew my phone from his back pocket, offering it to me but then quickly tearing it away before I could grab it. “That’s the most I can give you. Leo was so insistent that you got it back after all of this, and I promised him that I’d try my best. Really intriguing stuff on there though. It’s no wonder he unlocked it so easily, your passcode’s pathetic, far too easy for a man to remember.”

  I held out my hand, waiting for him to hand me my phone with an unamused expression.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, as the weight rested in my hands, “I took the liberty of deleting a few of your more…sumptuous texts. Wouldn’t want you to be sad, reading through Leo’s final message, would I?” He said with far too much humor in his voice.

  Taunting would do him no good.

  “Don’t be sad, Lyra,” Rowan continued, backing away from me with a grin. His heels approached the edge of the roof once more, yet his body still faced me; watching and waiting for any reaction I would give him. “If he’s feeling any bit as cruel as he was with me, soon you’ll forget these feelings. Actually, if you’re lucky, you’ll forget all of it. There will be no more Leo in your head. And then I’ll be here, ready to take care of you, just the way things should be.” A chuckle resounded as he spread out his arms, a simple shake unfurling feathers from seemingly nowhere. “You and me, Lyra.” I knew then that he was going to leave.

  Gone, Rowan would be gone, and with him, all that he knew. Any chance of finding Leo, leaving with him.

  His chest rose and fell, ribcage seeming to move with every breath as he allowed himself to fall backwards, his body plummeting towards the earth. I had five seconds to make a decision, but I made it in one. The small bits of gravel left on the cement crunched as I moved forward, feet flying faster than my mind could process.

  One moment, I was on the roof. The next moment? Plummeting through the sky. And yet, I wouldn’t have been Lydia Wynne’s daughter if I fell to my death.

  My chin collided with bone, stomach slamming into long legs. My arms, far too desperately, clutched onto his torso. A scream cut short ravaged my lungs, my eyes clenched shut and my jaw tightened in determination. For a moment, the fear of falling, of being pushed away and plummeting to my death ravaged me. But then a groan, a low and annoyed groan, came from beneath me. Well defined arms pulled me in up against his chest. With his fingers tightened around my shoulders, the wind slowed.

  “Are you insane?” An aggravated voice demanded to know, paying no heed to the deliriously happy look on my face. If anything, he should have been glad, it would likely be the last time I would make such an expression at him.

  Far below, the lights and bustle of the city were visible once more, yet we did not move. A breeze passed, drifting underneath us as it blew past. There were no gravel or other surfaces beneath us, we were floating in the air. Rowan with his wand out and me balanced on top of his lap, gazing down at the city below us.

  “Well?” Rowan asked, “are you?”

  “We’re alive,” I gasped.

  “Yes well,” Rowan said, shifting his body so that he tilted a bit more upward, “no surprise there. Unlimited power typically means that you’re a little bit harder to kill,” he sighed. “But you really did try to end us both, Lyra."

  Overwhelmed by joy, I threw my arms around his neck, cheerfully yelling, “Rowan, we’re alive!” The man reddened at my contact, a heavy blush coating him from cheek to cheek. It didn’t matter, none of it really mattered. “You’re going to take me to Leo,” I said, though it was more of a demand than anything else. “We’re going to save him.”

  “Lyra, I already told you—” He pushed me away, blinking at the expression on my face. Despair coated my features at what I perceived to be yet another denial. He groaned, still a man ruled by his emotions and the emotions of those around him, “you would have to make a deal with the man.”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned, leaning closer to me to inspect me properly. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. His hand reached up to cup my face, inspecting me from side to side. There was still a hint of tenderness underneath his features, though I knew that he tried hard to hide it. Rowan was still, though he tried not to be, a sympathetic man. Perhaps signing your soul away didn’t strip your humanity, perhaps it only sent you to hell once it was all over. But still, Rowan’s shifting ribcage and the unfurling black feathers from his arms, was not something that I wanted for Leo. Was living really living if you were damned as well?

  “Lyra,” Rowan said, his tongue running over his chapped lips. “You can’t go back. Lydia might have been able to, but you won’t. Your terms and conditions will be much different from hers, much more permanent. You need—”

  “But you could help me, you could fix it. There’s an alternative, your pact is fresh. You could cure Leo—” I began but trailed off as I took in his expression. Of course, he wouldn’t do it, of course he wouldn’t want to. To ask him, to put faith in the fact that he would, was cruelty plain and simple. All Rowan could hope for was that the moment I sold my soul away, this would all fade, and I would be back sitting in his arms. To him, the world would be as it should.

  “I’m sorry, Lyra,” he spoke, shame poking at the edges of his voice. Thi
s was it then, this was the way things were meant to be.

  Selfish, both Rowan and I would always be selfish; that was why, though fate and its various mouth pieces spoke otherwise, we would never be able to come together. It was a cruel joke, declaring us to be destined lovers. An even crueler joke to have us meet. I loved Rowan once, for all of the danger and excitement, and he loved me; I was home to him. But there was an ending, there always had to be an ending. That ending for me was six months prior, and for Rowan, it was right now. It was sitting thousands of feet upwards, knowing that whatever it took, I’d choose someone else over him.

  My soul for Leo, a man I’d just met, but not him. Never him.

  “I’ll take you,” he whispered reluctantly, loathing that he was being compelled to do so. “I’ll take you to him, but I’ll do nothing further. Your deals with the devil are no business of mine.” He leaned forward, his mouth barely brushing my ear, “I’m sorry if you expected more from me, my dear.”

  I wish I had, but I knew better. Arms around his shoulders, a single knee popped up underneath me; suspension stopped. I held on as he turned, arms wide and moving, a monstrosity in the sky. This was Rowan, this was reality. This was the end, though not an ending that any of us wanted.

  24

  Autumn

  Opulent white marble steps and wide stone columns greeted me as Rowan shook out his feathers beside me, the lights were on in every window as if to greet me. Tall, wooden doors that seemed to reach impossibly high formed the entrance, I’d only crossed the threshold once before, filling out my registration paperwork when I first entered the city. To the sides, intricately carved statues stood, Atlas holding the world and Lawrence Lobdel placing his hand upon a map to indicate to his settlers where New Haven would soon sit. They were aspirational, hopes that the first city to welcome witches would grow into something more; but they were nothing but empty hopes and broken promises. I couldn’t help but wonder what Lawrence Lobel would say if he knew what the city had grown into, what lurked far down his family line; he was originally a witch hunter, never intending for the integration that would come soon after his death. But was he a witch as well?

  I stared at the front doors, large, brass lion heads peered back at me, encouraging me to push forward and enter the beast. Their snarling faces seemed to say it all, turn back, go home. You aren’t meant to be here. They were right.

  “Lavish, isn’t it?” Rowan chuckled beside me, finally absorbing all of the feathers back into his skin. “I suppose that’s why they went after Pat first, demons have a taste for the finer things in life. They didn’t want to be camped out in a trailer or some tawdry apartment; doesn’t seem fitting. But the townhall that holds the passageways a famous witch hunter once roamed? How frightening. Lucky for them, Pat’s political aspirations far outweighed her morality. Another year in this office, and then it’s on to the senate. Pat was tired of her family’s long tenureship in the mayor’s office and only the mayor’s office.” He hummed, his hand reaching for the knocker as he stated to me, “I suppose to her it’s a curse just like Leo’s. Though you and I would argue otherwise, I think people just don’t like her.”

  He had no struggles pulling open the door, exposing the interior of the large hall to me. To him, this was easy, he’d come here fully dedicated to signing his life away, every step closer just made it easier. He didn’t have anyone holding him back, and those who would have tried mattered very little to him. To be here, to be approaching something foul, it didn’t even process in Rowan’s mind now, nor did it then.

  The entryway to the city hall was a rotunda, a circular entryway with no clear path in sight, the middle of the room recessed into the ground and was formed from a white marble that echoed the columns outside and contrasted with the dark wood of the floor on which we stood. Supposedly, that was symbolic, the lowered area being where court was once held, where they sentenced hundreds of witches to die every year. Now they put it a little closer to hell, inscribed a fancy Latin saying into the tile, and declared that they had repented. Meanwhile, just outside these doors, one bus stop away, people lived in poverty in buildings that were crumbling, if they had any problems, they could just fix them themselves with magic, never mind the fact that the city knew it wouldn’t last. Law makers were supposed to circle the pavilion, respect the lowered platform and never walk onto it, lest they risk damaging the thousands of names of those who had passed on from the laws of their successors.

  Pat Lobdel used it as her personal photography set.

  “She’s not a witch,” Rowan clarified, knowing exactly what I was thinking of before I did. “Not in our sense of the word. I suppose he wanted easy prey for the first one, and there she was. She didn’t ask for power, not the kind that witches have.” He sighed, “Politicians.”

  “Politicians,” I agreed, still unable to tear my eyes from the floor. She viewed herself to be so high and mighty, this shouldn’t have surprised me. I was sure that there was at least the name of one Wynne on that floor, innocently slaughtered all those years ago, dead at the hand of Lawrence Lobdel. “Does it hurt?” I asked, wary of what the future may hold. “Did it hurt you when it happened?”

  A chuckle, that wasn’t reassuring.

  “Did it?” I pressed, struggling to keep up with Rowan. “I mean, could you feel it? Is he going to be okay, or is he in pain?”

  “I’d rate it as one of the worst pains in my life,” Rowan said, as if that was an obvious thing. “Unmatched by anything else. Your soul is ripped from your body, and you can feel every single stitch torn out of you as the seams fall apart, then you’re left with a hollowness that will never fill.” Dryly, Rowan added, “I’m sure he’s worth it, though.”

  “You’re joking,” I said, far more hopeful that he was than anything else.

  “You wish that I was, don’t you?” Rowan turned back to me, finally looking alive. “But wouldn’t it be more frightening if I told you that you won’t feel anything at all? That it happens and you see nothing, feel nothing, and for a moment you wonder if you dreamed it? Wouldn’t that really break your heart, to know that the soul is something that you don’t really notice when it’s gone?” He turned away from me, shaking his head to himself, “Don’t answer me Lyra, I already know. I was the same once.”

  I grimaced, creeping closer to Rowan, my eyes still scanning the room. It wasn’t empty, per say, but the few people who were there didn’t give us so much as a second look, they were absorbed in their own world. “Are you sure he’ll be here?” I asked, voice cracking. It was far too quiet considering the amount of people wandering around us, it was eerie.

  “No, I heavily suspected that my ex-girlfriend would jump off a roof to follow me, lay a hefty guilt trip, and then force me to bring her here,” Rowan sarcastically drawled. “In fact, when setting my trap, I thought to myself, what better option is there than the building in the exact center of the city, filled with lawmakers who would want nothing more than to take a misbehaving warlock and shove him into jail. Astounding logic, Lyra, they’ll be calling you for the noble prize any day now.”

  It sounded a little ridiculous, but still. “What if you’re not you?” I asked, eyebrows raising. “What if you’re him, what if you’re the man—”

  “Why bother coming to get you when he knows you’ll be on your way anyway?” Rowan’s eyes rolled as he cast a mocking face back in my direction. “Honestly, it’s not worth the trouble of putting on a disguise and collecting you, particularly if he’s aware of your feelings towards me. Which, by the way, he most certainly is. Believe it or not, I am not the one who went to your apartment in Magictown.” Exasperated with his situation, he snorted, “Try as I might, I am still capable of acknowledging a lost cause when I see one. Heading to your apartment that day would have gained me nothing and done me no favors. But I suppose, it’s all my fault to begin with,” he mused, pulling open another large set of doors, allowing us into the west chamber of the building, “he wouldn’t have even known that
you were here if it weren’t for me. I suppose, in a way, I almost feel bad for that. If I had kept my mouth shut, things might have gone differently. But of course, I defied nature, and therefore, this is my punishment.”

  “So, you told him?” I accused.

  “Well, I didn’t know, did I?” Rowan spat, ushering me through the door his hands on the small of my back. “Lydia doesn’t exactly publish her wrong doings, and I doubt many people have so much as heard your name. No, it was a clear mistake, one that, for your information, I do regret. Had I known what it would lead to, the trouble it would cause me, and the things that I would inevitably lose; I might have declared it far better to remain a smalltime crook and nothing more.” He sighed, hands dipped into his pocket as he lamented, “and it’s not like I didn’t try to warn you several times, but that god damn cat—”

  “Yvie,” I breathed.

  “Her,” Rowan’s tone dripped with malice. “She’s been hunting down crows, killing them for sport. You might have seen one or two of them, people with scars and broken limbs. She’s ruthless, and I think she even knows it.” He narrowed his eyes, admitting, “of course I don’t much like her very much when she’s human to begin with, much too loud and way too independent. Seeing her at that party was a god damn nightmare.”