The officer leveled his deep glare on Elise, and a sharp fear shot through her at the intensity in her his gaze. Even without the gun pointed at her, Elise did not like being in this man’s presence. Hemade her feel small in more ways than one, and just moments into being on the other end of his interrogative stare, Elise had her fingers digging into Sterling’s arm to ground herself.
“Do you really expect me to believe you?” the officer demanded.
Before Elise could even open her mouth, Jamie was stepping forward with the small invitation. “Yes, sir.”
The officer took one look at Jamie, then lowered his gun. He barely glanced at the invitation. Just stepped to the side and gestured for his police colleagues to stand down and let them pass.
“What pigs,” Layla muttered once they were all inside. “I hate that you have to change your voice for them. This is all such bullshit.”
Elise tried to reach for her, but she continued walking at a faster pace. As Layla departed on her own, Elise turned to Jamie and Sterling. “Maybe we should split up for a bit. Sterling, you go with Layla. Jamie and I will go to the party and try to warn everyone.”
Jamie sighed. “What if you’re wrong about this? Maybe nothing bad will happen at this event. Maybe the mayor really wants to help people.”
All Elise could do was shrug. “Maybe he does. But Karine certainly doesn’t. The moment she shows up, we have to be ready.”
***
Elise barely had to show the invitation to the guests who opened the door to the party before she and Jamie were whisked inside. Live music made up the majority of the commotion inside this tinyplace of living. All the furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and people leaned on the edges of tables and chairs while they watched a jazz musician wield his saxophone in the middle of the room. Neighbors tapped along with this soulful song, some passing around a hat to place money inside. Despite the room’s small size, it was still packed with people who wore smiles and had eyes that shone brighter than most crystals. Some danced together, taking up the little space available, bumping into others, who only laughed and joined in. Elise had never seen such genuine self-made joy. All the parties she had attended growing up had been ways to flaunt money and status; people walked in with their nicest jewelry and did not even bother to dance half the time. Or they attended to intoxicate themselves with the people’s poison and drank until the room spun and they collapsed. Here there was only benevolence and camaraderie. It was a refreshing scene to experience, no matter how close to tragedy they all might have been.
The man who had opened the door for them spoke over the music. “You can make yourself at home here. We have refreshments and some food, but it’s going pretty fast.”
Elise nodded and gestured to the performer. “What’s his name?”
“Wilson,” the man replied. His eyes wrinkled as he gazed at the attendees around the room. “Rent is supposed to be ten dollars a month, but this place charges us folks more than the few white families they host.” The man eyed Jamie with suspicion. “You are not a plainclothes police officer, are you?”
Jamie only smiled and shook his head. “I’ve got your refreshmentscovered.”
The man gave him a delicate smile before turning away and reintegrating into the moving crowd nearby. Elise carefully stepped around a couple of kids coloring on one of the tables and dragged Jamie over to the window. Outside, the mayor’s rally was beginning in the courtyard below. Layla was down among the hopeful audience, weaving in and out of the crowd to get closer to the stage. Sterling stood farther back, keeping an eye on the entire crowd from a distance. From up here, Elise could not hear what the mayor was saying, but she knew enough to believe it was all a rhetorical distraction.
“We need to get these people out of here,” Elise murmured.
Jamie looked down at the growing crowd outside. “And what about them? Are you not also worried about Layla and Sterling being down there?”
She shook her head and turned back to the dancing room. “Let’s worry about them first.”
They couldn’t wait for the saxophonist to finish his song. Jamie lifted his hands and shouted, “I am with the police!” He did not have to threaten to arrest people for having illegal liquor. The room exploded with chaos at the mention of police.
Elise began herding the people closest to her toward the door, calling out for everyone around them to evacuate. The party deflated like a dying balloon, all energy evaporating in an instant. Murmurs of needing the money to continue through the week followed Elise all the way out of the building. The things people would do for money…it made Elise wonder about all the ways people hadturned into corpses just to hold their life’s earnings with them in their graves. What was the use if one wasted their life to be able to afford it? If she let them stay and make more money, they could die in an attack planned for this building. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? That people died to live at all.
Once outside, people gathered around the sidewalk, still grumbling and upset. A few tried to maintain the mood from inside, tapping their feet to whispered lyrics and swaying under the effects of the alcohol.
Elise pulled Jamie back into the building and toward the courtyard in the middle. The sun was already sinking below the horizon, and Mayor Arendale looked eager to introduce a new guest to the rally stage. Surprisingly, Elise caught no sign of her father. An event like this had his name written all over it, though he was nowhere to be found. She wanted to breathe easier because of it; it should have meant less to deal with on a personal level. But knowing Tobias, there was probably something sinister at the root of his absence.
Mayor Arendale grinned at the various crowd members waving posters of his face and political cartoons that depicted him in defiant exaggerated styles, lifting the state of New York on his back. He waved his hand to silence them as he began to speak. “We have lived for ages in New York because of the freedoms it offers us. But not all of us are truly free here. While the country has made mighty strides to keep its citizens safe and happy, there are many things still keeping us down. To name one thing, reapers are a significant blight on us here. We have tried for years to keep them in check. The Saintempire created methods to eliminate them, but after the tragedies that have occurred the past few months, we decided a new approach is needed.”
Curious murmurs moved through the crowd as he continued. “I am introducing a new initiative that will hopefully settle the strife between humans and reapers. I specifically visited this complex because of several families here who have been impacted by reapers. When a human being turns into a reaper, they do not simply forget their human past. These families have lost sons, daughters, mothers, fathers; stigma has prevented them from seeing one another. In an ideal world, reapers and humans will be separate but equal. No more prejudices keeping families apart. To help me, I have partnered with a wise woman who sees a better world once all of us can get along. Please join me in welcoming Karine Dupont to our community.”
Karine walked onto the stage, her smile wide enough to reveal her fangs. A few people in the crowd cried out, while others ran away, and even more still stayed to feed their morbid curiosity.
“Karine was turned in the early 1700s and was taken to France during the early 1800s to serve masters there. She knows how cruel humans can be to reapers and how that has only increased violence between the communities. She believes that together, we can make Harlem safe again. Reapers can have a leader in her as you all have a leader in me. This is the dawn of a new America.”
Elise tried to listen, but she found Karine’s eyes boring into her. The reaper held hundreds of lifetimes in her gaze, and Elise felt all of them ripping into her, passing more judgment than a divine beingcould ever muster. Elise wanted to scream at her, establish the truth that she was still alive despite this ancient reaper trying to end her life. But the ground trembled beneath her feet. Jamie stiffened beside her, and she reached for the gangster, tugging on his arm to get his attention. “Run—”
An explosion rocked the courtyard.
***
Layla tasted nothing but ash and blood. Even before the dust settled, she saw carnage moving through the yard, its gray body pulling itself from the ruins of the complex gardens to prey on vulnerable humans scrambling to process what had just occurred. Through the chaos, she found Elise hauling herself to her feet and lifting her gun to the beast. She fired once, only succeeding in blowing a chunk of flesh out of the thing’s neck. It turned for the heiress this time, shrieking as it ran. Layla charged for the thing and rammed it into the ground. The beast skidded across the ground, smearing through the blood and countless bodies the blast had downed. She allowed the heat of her wrath to urge her forward until she was crouching over the beast with her hand outstretched and ready to strike. But as the dust cleared and Layla got a closer look at the beast, she saw something else instead. The thing had been replaced by a young boy with brown skin and fearful dark eyes who lay crumpled and whimpering, human again. Blood leaked from his throat where Elise’s bullet had torn through. Layla hesitated overhim and bit back a gasp.
