Authors: Lee Kelly
45 PHEE
I wake up to Trev slobbering on the pillow next to me. And for a second, I get tricked into thinking we’re back at the Park. That Trev’s managed to fall asleep in our room, with Mom in our other bed, and Sky stuck with the floor. It’s so comforting, this fake memory, that I nearly fall back asleep.
But it’s not totally right.
The sun’s too bright, for one thing. And the sheets are too white. Plus, my head’s killing me. Then it comes back to me in a roar. We’re not in the Carlyle.
We’re in hell.
I sit up and nearly vomit from the head rush. My thoughts are tripping over one another, all mixed up and out of order. Things don’t make any sense. Feelings have color, words have faces, memories are cut up and reordered, and some weird army of voices is barking them at me. When I try to box my ears to shut out the voices, they only become louder and more annoyed.
“Stop!” I finally scream at the voices, and Trev flies awake in shock.
Wait, Trevor’s here. Trev’s in my room at the Standard.
“What are you doing here?” I eye him. I rack my brain for the answer—for what happened last night—but everything’s still running together and out of focus.
“Nothing,” Trev says. But he looks guiltier than he did after stealing a second helping at the Christmas Reenactment last year.
I thrust off the covers and try to hop to my feet, but I nearly fall over.
“Are you okay?”
“Do I freaking look okay?”
“You look terrible,” he says softly. Something about the way he says it rubs me a really weird way. Almost like he feels bad for me, like I’m someone to be pitied. I’ve never heard it in his voice before, and I want to shake it right out of him.
“I haven’t seen you, or anyone besides Wren and Robert, in weeks. Tell me how you got here. I don’t remember,” I demand. I don’t tell him how nervous I am that he’s not real.
“You might not remember ’cause of the potion,” he whispers. “Phee, keep your voice down, okay? They said they’d come back in the morning, to give you another—”
“’Cause of the
potion
? What are you talking about?”
Trev looks at me, flustered. “They give a lot of people potions, so they can fit in . . . so they can make a home here,” he says. “Most adults get the heavenly blue, so they can see heaven. Most kids don’t need any potions, ’cause our minds are already open. But I guess some do, like you. Master Wren said—”
“
Master
Wren?” I hate that he’s said this.
“Wren said you’re too angry with the world, too far gone to join the Standard without—” He stops talking and his face goes beet, I mean
beet
, red.
“Without what?” I start pacing, but my legs buckle and I sit down. I stare at him angrily. “Trev, without
what
?”
“Without a love potion.”
“A
love
potion? You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “Trev, my mind’s all fucked up. I don’t even remember last night. That wasn’t a love potion, moron, that was poison.”
He shakes his head. “No. Master—Wren would never do that. He said he’d never lie to me . . . that I always deserved the truth . . . that I was like a son.” His blush turns almost purple. A
son
. Well, I’ll give him one thing, that bastard Wren knows just how to work people. “He just wanted to calm you down, that’s all,” Trev adds. “He promised me he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Wait.” I’m still one step behind him, struggling to put the pieces together. “You mean you
knew
they were going to drug me up, before it happened? You were in on this?”
“No, I—”
“I could have freaking died last night, Trev. Do you understand that?” I ask. “So now you’re just swallowing whatever crap Wren’s shoveling? I mean, seriously, what’s wrong with you?”
“Phee, come on, it’s not like that.” Trevor flies out of bed, rushing towards me in explanation. But I wave him off and crawl into the corner to think. I close my eyes and try to concentrate, try to piece together something,
anything
, real from last night.
And then, slowly, memories start to tiptoe out of the corners of my mind.
I remember eating dinner, all upset that Robert wasn’t taking me to see Mom in the heavenly blue. I remember getting crazy paranoid.
I sort of remember running out of the room—then seeing Sky and Ryder on the stairs. A rush of anxiety floods me—they were
together
together—but I can’t think about that now. Then I was brought back here. To Trev. That memory I can see as clear as crystal: his face hovering above mine.
But then it cuts to black.
“What happened after you came in here last night?” I say softly.
“What?” He starts laughing, this high, panicked little laugh. “Nothing. I tried to take care of you.”
I study his face. I’m not sure I know him. Right now, I’m not sure I know myself. “I bet you did.”
“Phee, seriously, you’ve got to keep it down. Elder Francis said when you wake up, he’s coming by with another potion. If he hears you, he’s going to do whatever he did to you—”
“What
you
did to me.”
“Phee, seriously, stop. I’d never hurt you. I didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t want to. Not like that.” His voice catches, and now he’s crying. “Come on, you’ve got to believe me.”
I stay in the corner of my room and look out across our dead city. I can’t remember anything past Trevor’s face above mine. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth. But even if he is, for a minute I hate him, for being here. For seeing me like I was last night. I hate him for everything.
“Phee,” he says through soft sobs. “I swear. I just thought—”
“What?”
“I just thought—”
“Seriously, Trevor,” I snap at him. “You just thought
what
?”
“I just thought, if you could get love from a potion, then maybe you could love . . . me,” he whispers.
Goddamn it, Trevor.
“I just wanted so badly to believe it.” His breath catches and stutter-steps. “I wanted to believe all of it.”
I pull my knees up to my chest and feel my own tears coming. Not just because of my throbbing head, or the panic that still burns through me from the poison. And not just because of lonely, needy Trevor and his desperation to be loved.
But because of me, and the rest of this island, who just put their heads down, swallow lies, and wish them true: the fieldworkers who believe Rolladin’s stories without questioning, Robert and the sad people of this hotel who cling to Wren’s bullshit as a reason to go on. And me, who fell for Robert’s act hook, line, and sinker, just so I’d never have to leave this city.
“I swear, Phee. I would never, ever hurt you,” Trev’s mumbling on the bed.
I walk over to him slowly. He’s sobbing:
I’m sorry, I would never. Oh God, I’m sorry
.
I stand over him till he quiets down.
Then I slap him across the face. Once.
Again, on the other cheek with the back of my hand.
He lets me.
I slowly push him over, climb in next to him, spoon him like when we were kids and the world was less angry and complicated. I press my face into his back, bury my head under the covers, and let myself break down and cry.
46 SKY
I’m on the back of Rolladin’s horse. I’m an afterthought, a sliver of a girl between the queen and the back of her saddle, as we ride from the stables through the changing leaves, across the cement labyrinth of Times Square, and over to the Hudson. We lead a team of a dozen warlords on horseback, a herd of armed guards galloping into dawn.
“You’ll wait outside,” Rolladin finally breaks our windy silence on the West Side Highway. “Me and my troops get your mother, Phee, and Trevor alone.”
“Rolladin,” I hesitate. I didn’t bring this up last night, or this morning when I gave her every detail I could about the Standard and its security. But we’re getting so close, I know this might be my last chance to beg her for another favor. “The men from Britain, the ones you found in the woods. They’re good men.”
“Skyler.”
“They’ve saved our lives countless times,” I plead. “They’ve become . . . like family.”
Rolladin doesn’t answer, not until I see the raised platform of the High Line, the Standard’s twin towers of glass erupting out of the surrounding rooftops like crystal beacons. And as soon as I see them, my stomach wrenches. Dread, remorse, and anger, it all mixes and bubbles within me like a scalding stew.
“I can’t have them in my Park.” Rolladin shakes her head, and her broad back shifts me along with it. “It’s too late. No, we’re getting Sarah and the kids and going home.”
The thought of leaving Ryder and Sam in that hotel, of never seeing my woodsman again, turns my insides out.
“But Rolladin—”
“Enough,” she barks back at me.
I force myself to think beyond my own wants, to what’s really most important. Getting Ryder and his brother out of that hotel. Regardless of whether I get to have Ryder forever, or if I ever even see him again.
“They don’t have to come back with us. You could let them go to the boat they have, in Brooklyn. You could let them sail away. I told you what the Standard does. You can’t leave them—”
“Stop blubbering,” Rolladin mutters.
She snaps the reins of the horse and we break into a gallop. The cement gives way to cobblestones, the streets dividing and narrowing as we dance towards doom.
Clip-clop,
clip-clop
.
“You’re just a kid,” she says. “There’ll be other boys. Other lovers.”
And the way she says this, so cold and removed, angers me more than her words themselves. “Right,” I say bitterly.
I think of the Rolladin, or
Mary
, in Mom’s journal. The one who’d do anything for my mother. The one who worked over the enemy from the inside out to give us a home in this city. The one who built a world of lies to keep us here. “So there were others for you?”
But Rolladin doesn’t answer me, just grunts and kicks the horse in response.
“Stop here,” she calls to the guards, once we’ve reached 13th Street. She pulls the reins taut, and we trot over to the black rusted stairs leading to the High Line, the shadows of the raised platform shielding us from the Standard’s view. “Tie the horses. We’ll scale the hotel from the fire escape, and each take a floor. We take no prisoners but the ones we came for.”
The guards grunt in assertion.
Rolladin flips open the flap of her saddlebag and pulls out a folded red rifle, fills it with bullets, then snaps it back into one piece. Some lords dislodge red handguns from their boots and pockets, while others dust off old painted axes and knives and death tools I’ve never even read about before.
The spoils of war.
The last of Manhattan’s weapons.
“Wait on the stairs.” Rolladin pulls me into the shadows of the High Line. “You are not to move, you hear me?”
“I could come,” I say carefully. “If you gave me a weapon, maybe I could help.”
Rolladin looks at me, as if she’s sizing me up. “All right, give me the extra handgun,” she finally says, to no one in particular.
Lory steps forward and pulls a long, thin gun from the folds of her warlord cloak. She hands it to Rolladin, who, palms extended, hands it to me. “It took guts coming back to the Park,” she says. It’s the first, and likely last, compliment I’ll ever get from Rolladin. “Stand guard outside the lobby. A ways down the High Line—be smart about it. You see one Standard freak try to escape, you shoot them in the arm, or the leg. Or the head, for all I care. Far as I see it, this is war.”
Then Rolladin nods and motions for her guards and me to follow her onto the High Line. We quickly and quietly file up the stairs.
As the warlords stealthily pour onto the hotel’s fire escape, I fidget on the edges of the High Line’s overgrown grass. Every worry and terror I can think of slithers out of the cement and coils around my legs, then up my stomach, to my throat.
I clutch the gun to my chest and pledge that Rolladin will do what needs to be done. That if it comes to it, I’ll do what needs to be done.
God, if you exist, if you watch and guard this mess of a city, let my family all walk out of here.
47 PHEE
I wake up to gunshots. Quick, hungry pops outside the door—
one! two! three!
—and then yelling and banging on the doors, up and down the hall. Trev’s body jumps at the sound. We’ve been lying here awhile. All traces of dawn outside the glass walls are gone, and the pillows and covers are damp with sweat.
The gunshots make me think of my own little handgun. I haven’t seen it since I got here, and after the shots in the hall, I feel naked without a weapon.
Who has it? Sam? Ryder? Wren?
We hear grunts and groans as something heavy, like a piece of furniture, slides across the carpeted hall on the other side of our door. An army of fists pummels my door and shakes it from its hinges.
“Everyone out,” I hear through the banging. It’s a voice that sounds weirdly familiar. “Everyone up and out!”
“What’s going on?” Trevor turns around and faces me.
“Put your shoes on,” I tell him. ”We’re gonna find out.”
We both walk down the short entryway and open the door.
The hallway’s littered with people. I’ve never realized how many Standard drones were on my hall. Didn’t any of them hear me screaming last night?
I look at the tired faces—a long row of empty eyes. Bodies that feel nothing. Eyes that witness nothing.
I don’t know whether I hate them or pity them.
“Everyone should know better than to play games,” the voice hollers again from around the corner of the hall. “We’ll check each room to make sure you’re not hiding them.”
And then, pulling a turn around the corner, is Lory.
Lory, the guard from our Park.
Lory the freaking whorelord.
I’m positive I’m hallucinating again, that I’m picturing walking, talking memories. But before I can close my eyes and focus, Trev grabs my hand.
“Phee, they must have come for us,” he whispers.
But I’m not afraid. Anything would be better than this hellhole—even the primate tower. So I step into the middle of the hall with one arm above my head, and I tug Trevor into the hallway alongside me. We’re square in front of Lory, like we’re about to begin a 65th Street fight. Only this time, there won’t be any contest. We’ve already surrendered.
Lory drops her weapon when she sees us, and she starts running towards us.
I want to ask her so many questions. How’d she know we were here? Did she find Sky? Is my mom safe? How are we going to be punished when we get back to the Park?
But she’s the one who starts barking questions as soon as she reaches us. “Where’s your mother?”
I still can’t believe she’s here. It’s only her rough grip around my forearm that tells me it’s true, promises me she’s real. “I don’t know.”
“We need to find her.” Lory grabs my hand and Trevor’s and pulls us down the hall.
She pushes open the door and ushers both of us into the dark stairwell. At each door we pass, Lory stops and yells into the hallway, “I have the kids. It’s only Sarah left,” and then again, “I have the kids!”
Some of the whorelords must be following her, ’cause I hear a growing stampede behind us as we round and round our way down. When I look back, I see some of the Standard drones are following us too. Are the whorelords bringing them back to the Park? To the lobby, for questioning? I can’t figure out what’s happening. There’s too much commotion. Between all the stop-starts and Lory’s hollers on each floor, I can’t even sneak a word in.
“Lory, wait,” I finally say, after we’ve rounded five or six corners. “My sister. We need to find my sister.” Until I see her, I’m not going to feel whole.
“We have Skyler,” she says. “She’s outside. She brought us here. Now we need to find your mom and bring you home.”
Wait—Skyler brought the lords here? How?
“Is Sky okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Can I see her?”
“Not yet.”
“Is Rolladin here too?” I ask as Lory pulls us down to the main floor.
“Yeah, we’re here on her orders,” she answers as we burst into the slick lobby.
I haven’t seen the main floor since we walked in here all those cursed mornings ago. The stark light outside calls to me through the double doors, and I get the sudden itch to break through the glass and run into the fresh air. But Lory pulls me forward. The rest of the team of whorelords trails us into the lobby.
Then I see her.
She’s got her stupid tiger cloak on, the pelt she wears for special occasions, all tied up around her neck. Some monstrous old gun’s strapped across her shoulder. She looks crazy out of place against the sleek backdrop of the Standard. But I’ve never been so happy to see her, to see anyone maybe. My mom’s sister, or lover, or my aunt, my warden. I don’t know how to think of her anymore.
And I don’t care.
I run to Rolladin and throw my arms around her. I do it before I can think better of it, before she sees me and can even react. And I hear the chorus of guns and knives and crossbows go up around me, a team of reflexes from the whorelords. But no one shoots. I can feel Rolladin stiffen in surprise at my touch, but then she relaxes into me. She puts her arm around me quickly, a flash of a hug in the middle of a circle of firearms, and then she pulls away.
“We need to find your mother,” she says.
“Please get us out of here.”
“I will. We’re all going to go home. Together.” She waves Trev outside. “Find Sky and stay with her.”
Trev nods and hightails it out of the lobby.
“You should go too,” Rolladin tells me. “You might not want to see this.”
Unlike before, where I would have jumped at the chance to be on the front lines, in the center of the action, I feel no excitement. But still I say, “I’ll stay with you,” knowing I won’t feel right until we have Mom. “Let’s get her and go home.”
Rolladin nods, then motions the whorelords to bring their Standard prisoners to her. Some of the prisoners resist, but most are deadweight. Rolladin pushes five or six of them to their knees, then paces back and forth in front of the Standard drones slowly, her massive gun now resting on her shoulder.
Finally she pauses in front of a young guy. I haven’t seen him in weeks, but I remember his face from a dinner with Sky. Quentin, I think his name is. Rolladin shoves the nose of her gun right into Quentin’s forehead, and his neck snaps back.
“Who runs this place?” Rolladin asks him.
But Quentin just keeps his eyes cast downward.
“Last time. Who runs this place?”
Quentin says nothing.
The boom from Rolladin’s gun echoes through the hotel and rattles my eardrums, and Quentin’s body collapses onto the floor. The rest of the prisoners start whimpering and trying to hold hands, but Rolladin’s already moved down the line to an older woman, frail and shaking, long silver hair pulled back into a bun.
“Who runs this place?” Rolladin tries again, her gun now resting on the old woman’s shoulder.
“The Master,” the woman whispers. Her eyes dart back and forth to the other prisoners. She’s so terrified, she’s practically convulsing, and I almost can’t watch. “Master Wren,” she adds. “The senior Elders. The headmistresses.”
“Where is Wren now?” Rolladin says, shifting her gun to the woman’s other shoulder, like she’s knighting her.
“I don’t know.”
“Last time. Where is Wren now?”
“I-I—,” the woman stutters. “They shift us. We change rooms, constantly. I don’t know . . .”
The next boom comes without warning, and the woman falls into a heap on the ground, blood pooling around her like a red halo. I look away, and as I do, I catch some of the guards bringing a struggling Robert down for questioning.
“Rolladin,” I say, pointing to Robert. “That guy knows where Mom is. I’m sure of it.”
The guards holding Robert stop moving, and he looks up at Rolladin guiltily. And I realize they’ve got to know each other from a different life.
I follow Rolladin as she stalks over to him. “It’s been a long time, Robert,” she calls. “Glad you’ve been using your time wisely.”
I expect Robert to kowtow, but instead he spits in her face. “Don’t mock what you don’t understand, Jezebel.”
Rolladin brings the gun down, hard, against Robert’s cheek, and he yelps. “Tell me where Sarah is and I’ll spare your life.” Then she shoves the butt of her gun into his features. “After all these years, you must know how to survive.”
Robert hesitates. For a second. “She’s in the Empire Suite,” he whispers. “With Master Wren.”
Rolladin pulls the gun out of his face. “Take us.”
She nods to a few of the whorelords over the crowd. “Keep an eye on the rest of them. No one’s freed until we get Sarah.”
I follow Rolladin, slinking across the lobby and back to the internal stairs. I’m so focused on her that I almost walk right by Ryder. He’s propping Sam up in the corner of the slate-tiled hall, the two of them huddled in the shadows, watching us, watching the whole thing. Keeping out of sight.
My stomach flips. It feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen them, though technically I guess I saw Ryder last night, nice and cozy with my sister in the stairwell. The memory bites at me, makes me want to ignore him, just pretend he isn’t there. After all this mess is done, we’ll go back to the Park, anyway—Rolladin will never let them come with us. It’ll be like Ryder never was.
But I know, deep down, I can’t be this selfish. I can’t hate Ryder just ’cause he wants my sister, not me. If I care about her, I should at least care a little about him.
And I can’t screw Sam. The crowd I’m swimming in keeps blocking my view, but I can still see he’s totally strung out: all big breaths and bagged eyes and sharp angles. I think about what he’s been through, weeks of the heavenly blue, and I know I’ve got to get him out of here.
But now I’m running out of time.
The sea of whorelords keeps bobbing me along, past the door and up the stairs. Right before I disappear from their view completely, I wave my hand above my head and catch Ryder’s eye. I point, quickly and breathlessly, towards the door.
“Outside,” I yell. “Go get her!”