Toxic Heart

by Theo Lawrence

  Someone grabs my elbow. I cry out in pain and stare up at a familiar, slimy face.

  It’s Klartino, one of my father’s men.

  He snarls. “And what is your business here?”

  I’m speechless.

  It’s only when he asks me a second time that I realize he doesn’t recognize me. Thank God for the blond wig.

  “Uh, well …” I fumble for words, trying to think of an excuse. My father must have learned of the heart. Has he already found it?

  “Sister!” I hear someone shout behind me. “That’s my sister!”

  I turn around, half expecting to see Kyle.

  It’s Jarek. His dark hair is loose, parted in the center and falling over his face. He’s thrown a lightweight button-down shirt over his wifebeater and is wearing a pair of tan shorts.

  “Susie. There you are.” Jarek grabs my other elbow as Klartino furrows his brow, looking at us with a confused expression. “I’m so sorry,” Jarek continues. “My little sister is …” He taps his head with his hand. “Slow.”

  Klartino grunts. “Pay attention to your brother,” the thug says, letting go of my arm. It hurts where his fingers dug into my skin. “Get outta here.”

  “Don’t say a word,” Jarek whispers in my ear. “Thank you!” he says to Klartino, then hurries me away, back into the crowd and through to the other side of the street. We turn a corner onto an alley behind a group of empty stores, and there’s Turk, standing next to his motorcycle, arms crossed over his chest.

  He looks furious.

  “Are you insane?” Jarek says to me. “Talking to one of your father’s bodyguards? He could have recognized you!”

  “But he didn’t,” I say. “Besides, I didn’t have a choice; he—”

  “But he could have,” Turk repeats. “Dammit, Aria. I can’t believe you.” He lets out a low growl. “You have to come back with us. Now. Hunter knows you’re out here, and he’s pissed.”

  I stomp away down the alley. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving until I find what I came for.” I turn back to Jarek and Turk. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

  Turk clenches his fists. “I made Jarek tell me—and before you get mad at him, you’re lucky he told me and not the others. We’ve been looking for you for the past half hour, and thank freaking God we found you. If something happened to you …”

  “You would have been upset?” I ask.

  “Hunter would kill me,” he answers through gritted teeth. “What could possibly be so important that you’d risk getting killed for?”

  I glance back and forth between the boys. I’m not sure I can trust either of them, but what choice do I have? Jarek did help me escape the hideout, and Turk’s been pretty decent to me. More than decent, actually.

  “Davida’s heart,” I say.

  Turk and Jarek immediately stop moving.

  “What did you say?” Jarek whispers. His expression is one of pure shock.

  “I’ve found her heart,” I say. “Well—I’ve found where it should have drifted to.”

  Turk looks stupefied. “But the currents … Who—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Someone helped me, and Davida’s heart should be right out there.” I point back toward the empty canal. “Only my father’s beaten us to it.”

  Jarek seems upset. “This is awful. A mystic heart is so rare, so valuable.…” His eyes light up. “Do you know how much power is in a mystic heart? And Davida’s heart?” He blinks rapidly, seeming almost entranced. “That would be incredibly valuable.”

  “Wait,” Turk says. “What makes you think that your father, or Kyle, would know about the heart?”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence for them to be here,” I say. “Kyle was the one who gave me the reliquary—maybe he knew what it was for and didn’t let on.”

  “Why would he do that?” Turk asks.

  “I’m not sure. But we already suspect that someone in the hideout has been feeding information to my family—”

  “You what?” Jarek says, shocked. This obviously is news to him.

  “It’s a long story,” I say, not wanting to get into the mystic tag, especially since I’m still not clear on who, exactly, is tracking me. “But we were talking about Davida’s heart the other night,” I say to Turk. “Maybe someone overheard us?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. But whoever is excavating for the heart—your father, or Kyle, maybe—they haven’t found it yet. If they had, they’d have already packed up and gone home. Right? So either they’re about to find it, in which case there’s nothing we can do to stop them, or someone else has already found it and removed it. And if that’s the case … the trick is to figure out where it might be now that it’s gone.”

  I hold up the slip of paper with the latitude and longitude coordinates for Turk to read, but he pushes it away.

  “Let’s be optimistic and assume that someone else got to it first—before your family had the canal dredged,” Turk says. “Though I’m not sure who would even know it existed. If it were another mystic, he would have returned it to Davida’s family already.”

  “Unless it’s a mystic who just wanted the money,” Jarek suggests. “Or more power.”

  Turk bites his lower lip. “True. It’s possible that the heart has already been … used. But let’s say it hasn’t. Then some mystic, or some Depthshod, must be trying to sell it for a high price.” He turns to Jarek. “And where would you go to sell something illegal for a lotta dough?”

  “The black market,” Jarek replies.

  “What black market?” I ask.

  Jarek shakes his head. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Aria Rose.”

  “Come on.” Turk unties the sweatshirt that’s around his waist and hands it to me. “It’s yours—Jarek brought it for you. You’ll need it if you’re going to the market.”

  I take the sweatshirt and slip it on. I’m already too warm, but Turk is right—I don’t want to be recognized. The wig has worked so far, but I don’t want to take any chances, especially if we’re going somewhere dangerous. “Pull up the hood.”

  As soon as Turk hands over the sweatshirt, I gulp. It’s the one I hid the locket in back in my room. The locket that now carries the mystic trace.

  Which means that I can be tracked.

  I fish inside the pocket, but the locket isn’t there. I scan the ground, thinking it must have fallen out, but I don’t see it anywhere.

  “Come on,” Turk repeats, taking my hand. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything sinister here,” I say. “It looks like a regular open-air market.” Not that I’ve ever been to one before. Turk parks his bike and hides it behind a pile of rubble, covering it with a ratty sheet he finds on the ground.

  We’re in Greenwich Village now, and Turk and Jarek lead me through a maze of stands and booths. There are women selling bruised fruits and vegetables and greens for ten cents a pound—celery and peppers and watercress and cabbages. It seems incredibly cheap to me, but then, I’ve never purchased my own groceries.

  In the Aeries, I never saw any food being delivered to our apartment. Deliveries were made through the service elevator in the kitchen, and the servants dealt with them.

  But I suppose this is how people in the Depths do their shopping. The market reminds me of the mystic carnival Hunter took me to in the Magnificent Block, minus the sense of wonder and excitement. Before the block was destroyed and his mother was killed. Before the rebellion.

  “The black market is part of the regular market,” Turk says.

  We pass a booth full of copper-colored earrings and costume jewelry. “Pretty, yes?” the woman behind the stand calls out to me.

  “You just have to know what to say and who to ask,” Jarek adds, lumbering forward. The streets are full of people bargaining for food, swarming to stands like bees to honey.

  At one point, as we’re walking, a man with garlic breath sneaks up behind me and tries to steal my TouchMe out
of my pocket. “Get away!” I shout. “Thief!”

  Turk pulls me closer to him. “Stay by me,” he says. To our right, children are surrounding a man selling strips of dried beef. Directly next to him, a woman is peddling multicolored scarves. “Anyone?” she’s asking as people pass her by in droves. “Anyone?”

  Turk approaches the man selling the beef, parting the sea of children and holding out a sack of coins. “How much?” the man asks, motioning to the pounds of meat that hang above the smokers.

  “None,” Turk says. He lowers his voice to a whisper. “I’m looking for a heart.”

  The man shakes his head rapidly. “No, no. Not here.”

  We back away and continue walking. Jarek and I watch in awe as Turk slips from stand to stand, slippery as a fish, trying to lure out whoever is selling the heart—that is, assuming someone is actually selling it and my father’s men haven’t found it already.

  “Shouldn’t we be going to the stands with meat?” I ask. “Wouldn’t that be the logical place for it?”

  Jarek shrugs, wiping sweat from his face. “Because a heart is meat?” He grimaces. “Anyone dealing in illegal goods will want a place to sell that isn’t too crowded. So they’ll likely have a stand that doesn’t seem all that appealing at first glance.”

  This makes sense.

  “Aria. Look.”

  I turn my head at the sound of Jarek’s voice, but I can’t tell where he’s gone. “Jarek?” I call out.

  “Here,” he says.

  But where is here?

  I walk past a stall with dozens of wooden matryoshka dolls lining the shelves, each wearing a different outfit, stern expressions painted onto white-and-black faces. “Jarek?” I repeat.

  “You like?” a woman at the front of the stand says to me. “I give you a good deal.”

  “No thanks.” I turn back to the wall of dolls. “I’m just looking for my friend.”

  I stare at the dozens of dolls and one of them blinks at me.

  Or rather, two eyes blink at me.

  A figure steps forward from the wall. It’s Jarek, only his clothing and skin have taken on the coloring of the dolls he’s standing in front of, so he’s blended in with them.

  “Wow,” I say. “You really are good at camouflage.”

  Jarek steps into the aisle and his regular coloring returns. “If you don’t know I’m there, then yeah, I blend in pretty well.” He laughs. “A lot of good it does me.”

  “You never know,” I say. “Maybe one day you’ll put your talent to good use.”

  He sighs. “Maybe. But I wish I had a power like Ryah’s. Or Landon’s. I’ve trained as hard as I can … days and nights spent practicing mystic combat … but nothing I do seems to work. My energy is too weak.”

  Jarek’s face is filled with sadness, his lips turned down at the corners. It must be terrible to be a mystic—a member of a group known for wild displays of power—and never be able to live up to that potential. Especially for someone like Jarek, who looks so powerful. But I know all too well that looks can be deceiving.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “But there’s more to life than power, you know.”

  “If I’d had power,” he says, “real power, I would have been able to save my parents the day their hideout was raided. Instead, they were killed.” He rubs his forehead. “And I’m still here.”

  I had no idea this was how Jarek’s parents had died. That he witnessed it happening. “That’s wasn’t your fault,” I say, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. But power or no power, you’re a good guy, Jarek. Your parents would be proud of how you’ve turned out.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I’m not a good guy. Not really.” Then, all of a sudden, his frown stretches into a wide smile. “Anyway,” he says, brushing his hair back behind his ears. “Let’s keep walking.”

  Turk is being turned away from stand after stand selling everything from socks and shoes to cheap electronics to sandwiches and soft drinks. As Jarek pointed out, Turk tends to stray from the more populated stands, focusing on the nearly empty ones. But we’ve been looking for nearly an hour and nothing has turned up.

  “Maybe it’s not here,” I suggest.

  “Oh, it’s here,” Turk says. “We need to find someone who’s selling Stic. Then we’ll find the heart.”

  Jarek and I buy a sandwich to split and a bottle of water from a cooler. Eventually, we find a butcher who is smoking meat. The woman in the stall next to him is selling clothing. Behind her is a makeshift wall display of dresses made of different fabrics and colors, all handmade, with intricate stitching and glittering beads and patterns. They’re a little old-fashioned for my taste, but they are beautiful.

  As I’m studying them, a round man with a long, scraggly salt-and-pepper beard emerges from an opening in the wall. He approaches the woman, waddling as he walks, and whispers in her ear.

  “Turk,” I say, waving him over.

  “Yes?”

  “This sandwich is good,” Jarek says between bites. “Like, really good.”

  Turk raises an eyebrow. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

  “No.” I point to the booth and to the man. “Maybe you should ask him.”

  Turk nods. “Okay.” He steps forward. “Excuse me,” he says.

  The man stops speaking to the woman and stares at us. He has a blunt nose and fat lips. “You’re excused,” he says.

  Turk clears his throat. “I’m looking for something very specific.”

  The man shifts his gaze to us, then back to Turk. “And what would that be?”

  “A heart.”

  There’s a spark in the man’s eyes. “Something like that would cost a lot.”

  “Yes.” Turk nods to Jarek and me. “We’ve got it.”

  “Watch the stand,” the man says to the woman. He motions for us to follow him, parting the row of scarves and leading us into the back part of the stall.

  The space is dark, and the man clicks on a lamp. There’s an uncomfortable-looking cot with a deflated pillow, and stacks of dresses in plastic wrapping. So much for their being handmade. There aren’t any walls, really, only sheets of stained fabric hanging down to the ground, blocking us off from the stands on either side. The same fabric—navy blue—covers the top of the stand, creating a tiny room.

  The man scratches his beard, then bends over and reaches underneath the cot. His shirt rides up, exposing the spotted skin on his back. Two rolls of fat seep over his pants, and it doesn’t seem like he’s wearing any underwear.

  Gross.

  He fishes out a small metal cooler, then approaches the three of us. “We’ve already harvested it,” he tells Turk. “And that cost us two lives, so it’s not cheap.” He squints. “But it’s also not safe unless you know what you’re doing. And I don’t want this traced back to me.”

  “I understand,” Turk says. He straightens his spine. “And I have ample experience with these. It will be in good hands.”

  The man nods, pressing a finger to the side of the cooler. The lid slides back and a burst of silver light pierces the space, illuminating everything.

  “It’s perfect,” the man says. “In ideal condition.”

  Turk reaches into the cooler and removes a glass box no bigger than his hands. I can’t see what is inside—only that the glass is lined with quicksilver, like the glass tubes in the mystic draining room in my father’s office.

  The bearded man lifts the box from Turk’s hands, placing it back in the cooler and snapping it shut. The silvery light disappears.

  “So where’s the money?” he asks.

  Turk glances at me.

  “I … need to transfer it to you,” I say, making something up on the fly. “I don’t have that much on me.” I take out my TouchMe, stalling for time. Before I can ask the man how much he wants for it, there’s a whoosh of air and a blast of sunlight from above as the roof of the stand falls in.

  “Aria!” Turk calls.


  “What’s happening?” the man cries out. “You lied to me! You tricked me! Help!”

  Two men burst into the hidden room from the street. The Rose family crest is sewn onto their black uniforms in blood red, just above their hearts.

  They point their guns at me.

  “Attack us and we’ll kill her,” one of them says to Turk, who has put up his fists, about to fight.

  “Careful,” Turk says to Jarek. “Get in front of Aria.”

  Jarek goes to step in front of me and one of the soldiers points a gun at his head. “Don’t move a muscle. Give us the girl and no one gets hurt.”

  “Over my dead body,” Turk says, spitting on the ground.

  A loud whirring fills the air above us. I glance up and see a gray helicopter, just as its door slides open and two more men drop into the stall. The old man is crouching down, whimpering. There’s no sign of the woman, his partner. I wonder if she escaped.

  Turk raises his hand and a jet of green light bursts from his palm, striking one of the men directly in the chest. He topples to the ground and writhes in pain, injured but not dead.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” the soldier standing next to him says. Then he shoots off a round at Turk and Jarek, who deftly dodge the bullets.

  I whip around as yet another soldier breaks into the room and smacks me with the butt of his gun. The sounds of the helicopter grow louder. Circles of light dance in front of my eyes, and as I pass out, all I can think is The heart, the heart, the heart.

  I wake up in a small, sterile room.

  My arms are in front of me, cuffed at the wrists. A thin cord stretches across my chest. From what I can tell, it seems to be tied behind the chair I’m sitting on.

  Against the other wall, Turk is strapped to a metal chair, his face beaten to a pulp and purpled underneath the eyes. A huge gash marks his forehead, and a scary cut runs straight down his lips. Both are bleeding.

  Everything from the cool, sterile air to the seamless way the touchpads are integrated into the walls tells me I am in the Aeries.

  Plus the fact that my brother, Kyle, is standing in front of me.

  “Well,” he says to me. “We meet again, little sister.”