And a note.
From Jack.
What if the Red Line isn’t the end for us? What if it’s only the beginning?
I sink into Jack’s empty chair, struggling to make sense of it all. Slowly, the messages and the poem and the maps and the batteries allbegin to overlap. Suddenly, I see his plan—the path he’s laid out so clearly.
And if I’m right, I know exactly where to find him.
I sit alone in the subway car, my pockets empty of weapons and my earpiece blaringly silent, staring out into the blackness under the DC streets as the train hurtles down the tracks. There’s no signal this deep underground. Poppy’s probably livid. Or terrified. And I wonder if maybe I should be, too. How well do I really know Jack beyond the few weeks of cloak and dagger we play every year? Beyond our arguments over tragic love stories, my intentional misses, and his casual flirtations while he’s still strong enough to laugh at me?
This is crazy.
Jack kills Amber. I kill Jack. Julio kills me. Amber kills Julio. That’s how the game works. That’s how the world works. Jack’s crazy to run from Gaia or Chronos or any of this. Crazy to think the rules don’t apply to all of us.
Isn’t he?
I step onto the platform at Wheaton Station. The Red Line stop is the deepest station in DC, seventy meters below ground, the same station Jack fled through, desperate to lose me, the first time we met.
The air in the subway tunnel is close—musty and warm—but he’s been here. I’m certain of it. The herd of people ascending the escalators to the ground level is stubborn and slow, the sky already dark when I finally push my way to the top.
I lift my nose to the wind. The street sign above my head reads Georgia Avenue, but none of these buildings or shops or restaurants look the same as they do in my memories. Across the street, the twinklinglights of a construction site catch my eye. It was a shopping center then. Soon, by the looks of it, another will spring up in its place. And it seems both tragically wrong and completely right that he’s brought me here.
What if it’s only the beginning?
Static crackles in my ear as Poppy’s signal returns. But there’s a reason Jack’s been leaving messages in codes, deep underground where Poppy can’t see them. As if he’s trying to share a secret. Or he wants to be alone. Maybe it’s not only Chronos’s Guards he’s hiding from.
I shut my eyes against a ripple of fear. A memory of Noelle’s icy hands and Doug’s sneer.
I sniff the air. Catch Jack’s scent. And I turn my transmitter off.
16
Our Waking Souls
FLEUR
Jack’s scent bleeds out of the underground parking garage beneath the spines and crossbeams of what will soon be a new mall. I catch a glimpse of his shirtsleeve through the chain-link fence at the edge of the construction site. The rest of him lies hidden behind a concrete barrier and instinct makes me reach for the knife I dumped earlier, before I remember it’s gone. I stoop to grab a broken bottle instead.
My shoe splashes in a shallow puddle. Jack starts. Doesn’t rise from where he’s sitting on the cold, damp ground. His hand shakes, barely strong enough to hold him upright.
Approaching the barrier with cautious footsteps, I slide down the concrete so we’re sitting back to back, and I set my broken bottle down, just out of reach. We both know six inches of concrete and a wire fence between us is nothing more than an excuse not to kill him. And we both know how the night is supposed to end.
I tip my head back against the barrier, breathing his scent through my mouth, tamping down the bone-deep urge I feel to take up the broken bottle again. The wind shifts, cedar and pine washing over me, fight-or-flight adrenaline raging in my blood. I close my eyes and listen to his labored breathing. To the cough he tries to stifle. To the steady drip of water from a crossbeam overhead.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” His voice is gravelly, as if he’s fighting sleep. “It was right here. On this spot. You had no idea what you were doing.” I can almost hear the slow curl of his smile.
“Me?” I squeeze my eyes shut tight, forcing all the ghosts from my mind—Denver and Lixue, Noelle and Doug. I smile a little, too, as the memory of that night with Jack comes back to me. “You were the one who was confused.”
“I wasn’t expecting you. I was expecting Welby. He got reassigned right before you started. He was six foot three with bad breath and chronic gas, and he had a disturbing fondness for long swords.”
A choked laugh slips out of me. “Were you disappointed?”
“No.”
I open my eyes, blinking up at the night sky through the shadows of the support beams overhead. There was a roof back then. “Even after I pushed you?”
“I fell long before you pushed me,” he says quietly.
