The Fire Artist (14 page)

I laugh. “You just said granters don’t live in lamps.”

He laughs too. “I know. It’s sort of an inside joke. And now you’re on the inside.” He hands me the small lamp and then disappears again.

I don’t waste any time. I rub the lamp once. He reappears. “See. You’re my master.”

I hate the sound of being his master. “Is there any other way to find you? Like, maybe we could just pick a time and a place?”

“That would work too,” he says with a small laugh.

“Tomorrow night then?” I suggest, and we settle on the details. “Taj, I don’t wish to release you for now.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“You don’t have to call me Master.”

“What if I wish to?”

He raises an eyebrow. Now he’s teasing.

“Then I wouldn’t wish,” I say, crossing my arms. I can play at his game.

His lips quirk up in satisfaction.

I lean forward, take a bite of the coconut-chocolate concoction, savoring the taste on my tongue. Taj leans toward me and without asking he takes a bite from my cone. He raises his eyebrows appreciatively.

“It’s good ice cream,” he says.

“Yes. It’s very good ice cream.”

“So will you tell me if you are a good wisher or a bad wisher?”

I don’t answer because, really, isn’t it obvious? All wishers are bad. Instead I suggest we walk around the edge of the park. He says yes, but I suspect he is not capable of saying no to his new master.

I run into Gem in the dorm showers. She’s dressed in shorts and a black T-shirt with a red sequined heart on it. She’s brushing her teeth at the sinks. She tips her forehead at me, then takes her toothbrush out of her mouth. “Granter testing started today,” she says with a mouth full of toothpaste.

I feel as if the towel wrapped around me is sheer, as if Gem can see through me to know that I haven’t wished but that I want to. I half want to tell her. I hate being so alone.

“You better grab a coffee after you shower,” she adds, giving me some sort of tip I don’t quite get.

“Coffee? Why?” I hang the towel on a hook, step into the shower, and pull the curtain closed. “Is coffee necessary to making it through testing?”

“Hell, yeah!” Gem says. “They did mine a little while ago. It’s the dullest thing you’ll ever experience.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“What’s it like?”

Gem explains and I laugh. “Who would have thought,” I say. No wonder I’ll need caffeine to make it through testing—I’ll need it to stay awake.

I finish my shower, head to my room, and pull on some clothes. Raina comes knocking a few minutes later, her bored and careless eyes barely giving me a once-over.

“Name?” Raina holds a clipboard and a pencil, checking off boxes as she goes.

“Aria Avina Kilandros.”

“Date of birth?”

I give her the date.

“Place of birth?”

“Wonder, Florida.”

“When did you come into your powers?”

“Around thirteen.”
Like everyone else
.

“Your parents were … ?”

“Water and fire.”

“You’re registered.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I mean you’re registered here.” Raina stabs the paper on her clipboard. “You’re being registered as clean.”

“Excuse me?”

Raina stares at me, her eyes saying
Can you really be this doltish
? Then she speaks ever so slowly. “You. Are. Registered. As. Clean. Of. Granters.”

“I am?”

That was all name, rank, and serial number. If the Leagues were truly trying to root out granter use, you’d figure they’d
stage a more sophisticated show. But maybe they figure a simple show is enough to keep us in line. That if they can’t truly test, the appearance of a quick procedure is all we need to stay straight.

I head to practice, checking my phone on the walk from the dorm to Chelsea Piers. There’s an e-mail from Elise.

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. It’s a pirate’s life for me out here in the South Pacific.

Just kidding! I’m not in the South Pacific. I’m somewhere in the great God-knows-where of the Atlantic Ocean. This sucker is massive! You ever seen it? ;) Well, don’t go google it because it’ll make your stomach spin it’s so freaking BIG. Like, I-can’t-even-see-both-ends-of-the-ocean-at-the-same-time big. Anyway, I’m actually in the Ca-rib-be-an, and the ship’s Internet connection is so slow it’s taken me 14 hours and 22 minutes to write this e-mail. I kid you not.

But I’m learning a lot and working hard, and the Lookouts are amazing. The top ones have already held back what would have been Hurricane Danya, had it gotten bigger. Yup, thanks to my new coworkers, Danya was just a mere pup of a tropical storm down here, just a little piddling of rainwater.

Well, enough from me. Are you okay? Are you managing? What are you going to do? I’d call you, but all we have are satellite phones, and they’re crazy expensive to use.

I keep thinking of ways to come see you. I’m doing
everything I can to angle for some sort of leave for a day or two. I promise. I’ll keep working it. I don’t know if I can get to New York, but I might be able to pull off Florida sometime in August.

Xoxox.

Elise

I write back as I walk into Chelsea Piers.

I think I’ve got it all figured out. Love you much. Your favorite Frankenstein’s monster.

I am giddy as I board the subway at Times Square. I am positively bouncing as the train scoots south a few stops. I am ecstatic as I disembark at Twenty-Third Street and head to the nearby Flatiron Building, where Taj and I decided to meet. I have the miniature lamp in my pocket just in case.

The angular building comes to a point on a triangular block at Fifth Avenue and Broadway, an anchor for the neighborhood, this oddly molded bit of architecture. The Flatiron Building also happens to be surrounded by sidewalk grates, by vaults and pits under them, labyrinthine tunnels that lie beneath the city and once housed coal, Taj said.

I have never felt so free before. Well, not since the first time Elise stabbed me in the chest with lightning. And even then I’m not sure it was freedom I felt so much as relief. As I wait for the light to change, I wonder if the two feelings are that different—freedom and relief. Maybe they’re one and the same. I don’t
have my freedom yet. But when I get it, I’ll no longer have to set my heart to flames.

That’s the real freedom.

I won’t be living on borrowed time. I’ll be whole again.

Maybe that’s why I’m beaming when I cross the street. Like clockwork, Taj appears, pushing up the top of the grate and poking out his head. He holds up the grate with one hand. The iron grate must be insanely heavy. I can’t see all of him, but he looks sharp again, sleek again, this time in a navy-blue-checked button-down, the cuffs rolled up twice. He motions with his free hand for me to come down.

He must be joking.

I reach the grate and kneel.

“Are you going to come out? People are going to start to notice the guy under the grate.”

“I thought maybe you could come to my place tonight,” he says playfully.

“I’m not that kind of a girl.”

“Come on. Come on down. What are you afraid of?”

“Um, crawling underground beneath New York City. I think that’s sort of a normal fear.”

“Aria, Aria, Aria. Do you want to wish to not be afraid?”

I hold back a sigh. He’s a bit vexing. “No.”

“Then just come down for a minute. I have candy,” he says, as if he’s luring a child. “Or did your mom tell you not to take candy from strangers?”

“I don’t eat candy. I have to watch what I eat in the Leagues.”

“You ate ice cream.”

“I know, but that was an exception.”

“So make another exception. Come on. How many times are you going to see where a granter lives in New York City? I promise you won’t get hurt. And I’ll hold your hand so you won’t be afraid.”

I have no choice but to say yes. I need him more than he needs me. Ironic, given that he’s a mastered granter, and I’m the one who feels toyed with like a puppet. But maybe this sort of cat-and-mouse play is the only way he can experience free will.

Free will. Don’t we all want that?

“Fine, but then we’re coming back up.”

“I promise,” he says, and pushes the grate even higher. He offers me his hand. I take it, and his skin is warm and soft. I hold on tight as I lower myself into his world, dark and dingy, under the streets of New York.

My heart rate spikes because there’s very little natural light in here, only slivers through the grate. All my instincts start building inside me, like heat rising to the surface, and I want to set this place on fire, to illuminate it so I can see. I’m about to open my palms and ignite when Taj grips my hand tighter. The impulse is snuffed out by the pressure of his skin against mine as he leads me through a twisty and pitch-black maze. Dust fills my lungs, and I faintly smell coal. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I should be freaked out to be skulking underground with a virtual stranger. But another part of me likes how warm his hand is. It’s such a simple pleasure to hold someone’s hand. A pleasure I so rarely enjoy—to have someone take my hand and not cringe at my scars. He didn’t the first time he met me; he’s not freaking out now.

A train roars by on the other side of this tunnel’s wall, so
close I could touch it if there were no wall. My teeth rattle, my bones shake. Then the train passes.

We curve around another claustrophobic corner, and I vaguely remember learning in history class about the catacombs of Paris and Rome, and I’m picturing crumbling skulls and ossified bones greeting me around the next bend.

Soon we near the end of the cramped, cave-like path. Taj reaches forward in the darkness, as if he is opening a door. Light spills in and the door takes shape, high and arched and heavy as it opens into a gorgeous and quiet and beautiful space.

A library under the sidewalks of New York.

The wood floors are dark. Maybe oak, but I don’t know types of wood, or types of furniture, or which century this or that armoire or crystal goblet or chandelier is from. All I know is this looks like the New York Public Library, the famous one. Shelves upon shelves of books from floor to ceiling fill one long wall, so long I can barely see where it extends. There’s even a rolling ladder to reach the books on the highest shelves. A massive desk squats nearby on an intricately woven rug that looks like it probably costs more than my entire dilapidated home in Wonder. On the desk is a lamp with a pull-down chain to turn on the bulb. A book is open on the desk. A dark-blue couch is pressed against the wall opposite the bookshelves, and a coffee table rests in front of the couch, but there’s nothing on the coffee table. No newspapers, no mugs, no evidence of living.

The only thing on the coffee table is a genie’s lamp. Burnished copper, with etched markings in a foreign alphabet. I
step closer and point to it. “I thought you didn’t live in a lamp.”

“I don’t live in a lamp.”

“Why do you have this then? Is this like your phone that you were talking about?”

He shakes his head. “Not this one.”

“Then what is this one?”

“You know the queen of England?”

“Not personally.”

“Right. Well, neither do I. Know her personally, that is. Though I know many other heads of state, but that’s a conversation for another time. Point being, she’s a figurehead.” He gestures carelessly to the lamp. “And that’s a figurehead.”

“Like an anachronism,” I say, and he taps his index finger to his nose. “Can I look around?”

“Of course. That’s why I wanted you to come here,” he says, and smiles at me. It’s not the faux full-face grin he gave me last night. It’s a sweet one, a cute one, like a boy gives a girl when he wants to play her the song he wrote or give her the comic he drew. It’s almost enough to make me feel as if I’m special, and I’m being shown something few see. But then I remind myself that this is his job. Good-looking or not, he probably wants all wishers to feel welcome. I run my hands along the spines of the books; some are clothbound, some leather, some just standard hardbacks.

“Did Mariska come here?”

He laughs.

“Did she?” I ask again.

“I never invited her.”

“Why did you invite me?”

He pauses as if considering his words. “You’re more interesting.”

I laugh. Raise an eyebrow. “Well, thanks. I do what I can.” I circle around to his desk. “What were you reading?”

“
The Great Gatsby
. Started it last night after I met you. Haven’t read a thing in a few weeks.”

“Since
The Hitchhiker’s Guide
?”

He nods and flashes a smile that’s erased as quickly as it arrived. “You remembered. Yes.”

“Did I inspire you to read?”

“Something like that,” Taj says in a quiet voice that catches my attention. I look up from the desk, and his brown eyes are sad. The barbs of last night are fading, the pointed comments becoming less sharp.

“That’s why you asked me not to wish, right? To hold off for a few days?”