I glanced outside. “Yes, it’s—”
Remo thrust my hand toward my shoulder, and something popped. I screeched, snatching my arm out of his grasp. Breathing hard, I cradled my elbow against me. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You should be able to move it now.” He dusted his hands together as though he’d just accomplished some filthy task and stepped off the train.
I sat there, stunned, and then I licked the sweat off my lips and eased my sore arm away from my chest. My range of movement had indeed returned, but Skies damn it, the pain was excruciating.
“You’re going to have to lay off it for a while. We don’t seem to heal as fast here.”
I finally got up and, on legs that felt devoid of bones, walked off the train that was bulbous, with a silver body and red stripes, sleek but not quite as modern as the last one we’d been on. “You healed awfully quickly for a dead person.”
Remo bobbed his head. “I suppose you could try to die and come back.”
“Wouldn’t you just love that? Especially if I didn’t come back.”
A sigh broadened his torso.
Before he could tell me again how he’d prefer bad company to no company, I read the word on the white sign out loud: “Rowan.”
My eyes snapped so wide so fast my lashes knocked into my eyebrows. I sidestepped Remo and then trundled down a few metal stairs, boots clanking. I speed-walked down the sidewalk lining the station and came to an abrupt halt at the apex of a street lined with squat trees budding with new leaves, white-picket fences, and wooden boxes on poles. Metal numbers adorned their sides as well as an articulated red arm. Were those mailboxes? Clearly we’d gone back a century, since, nowadays, mail was beamed.
“Is this supposed to be Morgan Street?” I hadn’t realized Remo was standing next to me until he spoke.
Morgan Street was Rowan’s main street. Although I’d visited my maternal family’s birthplace over the years, had fished in the Great Lakes with Pappy, and had wandered through my family’s graveyard with Nima, I’d never known it to look this way—alternating two-storied, pastel-painted houses and squat brick buildings—but perhaps, when Gregor and Linus established their prison, this was how Rowan had looked.
Shop awnings poked from the quaint buildings. One in particular caught my eye—BEE’S PLACE. Nima and Neenee Cass had talked so often about it that even though it no longer existed in today’s Rowan, it felt familiar.
Relief flooded me. Dread would’ve been more appropriate, because this town could be nothing like the real one I held dear to my heart and would tarnish its memory. Goose bumps sprouted over my skin even though it wasn’t cold here. At least there was that.
Hugging myself, I asked, “You think everything will be fake here again?”
“Only one way to find out.” He started walking.
The first building was made of red brick and read COUNTY JAIL. Remo pulled the door open, and we went in. There were desks, and behind them, a bulky metal door. Neat stacks of papers laid on the desks next to huge square gray things. I tried poking one but nothing happened. “What are these supposed to be?”
“Computers.”
I blinked back toward the enormous box made of plastic and black glass. “You mean, like Holo-Screens?”
Remo twisted the knob on the metal door, and it opened with a beep. “Yeah.” He stared into a dim corridor lined with metal grates.
“Jail cells?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Anyone in there?”
“Not that I can see.”
He let the door go, and it clanged shut, and then he walked to the desk and slid open a drawer. It rolled right out, and objects rattled inside. Even though this world looked kinder than the last two, I sensed it was a front to lull us into a false sense of security. Evil undoubtedly lurked here, lying in wait like atigri.
I leaned over a stack of papers and thumbed through them until I found a folder labeled Cruz Vega. My eyes widened. Was this the same Cruz Vega who’d helped Iba and Nima liberate Neverra and who’d died to save Neenee’s life? The one who’d brought Pappy back to life after Stella had slit his throat? The fallen hero we paid our respects to each year on the anniversary of his death?
I flipped open the file and flicked through it until I came upon a mugshot of a handsome man with black hair and green eyes, the very same man Iba had a picture of in his office. Although I was grateful he’d sacrificed himself to allow my aunt back into Neverra, a piece of me had always wished he could’ve found a way to survive.
“What did you find?” Remo asked, spinning a pen he must’ve picked up in the drawer.
“Unless this is part of the decor, Cruz Vega seems to have been arrested for”—I skimmed the file until I found a sloppily handwritten note—“murdering and impersonating a medical examiner.” I scanned the rest of the page, my gaze widening when I caught the bailee’s name and signature. My father’s. “Think this is real?”
