“Sometimes,” I answered, and when he raised his eyebrows, I continued. “Mostly, I think everyone is shortsighted. It’s just easier to see how people were shortsighted in the past, because for us, it’s farther off.”
He laughed, but his eyes weren’t amused. “When you speak to me, you will address me as Heir Clark. Do you understand?”
What I understood was that he wasn’t planning on killing me for being a truth seer. “Yes, Heir Clark.”
He nodded. “Good. What shall I call you?” He wasn’t asking my opinion. He ran his hand over his chin. “Not One. Not Two. Mari, I suppose. If you are a conjurer, you deserve a name. Take note, I like that you are a truth seer. I like your need to destroy. I like how you lied during the games and fooled the Smiths. I like how you killed the Smith. I like how you tore apart the Bard heir and left him bloodied. I find, Mari, that I like the potential of what you and I can do.”
I didn’t answer. There was no need.
Primus stood and walked me deeper into the catacombs. There, I found a wall of illusion. There were millions of knots. It was a medieval dungeon of bars and chains. It was a locked pit. It was impenetrable.
“How long will it take you to remove this?” Primus asked.
I shook my head, “I don’t know . . . Heir Clark.”
“Guess.”
“Twenty-four hours of working nonstop?”
His eyes crinkled, and he conjured green-tinged candles to line the walls. They cast us in their eerie light and threw monstrous shadows over the catacomb.
“Do you want to know what’s beyond the wall?”
I didn’t need to know—I could feel it. It was the hungry, horrific nightmare thing that had devoured me when I’d been buried alive. The thing that had hunted me, though, was a tentacle compared to the mass of power pulsing behind the locks.
Primus tapped the stone, and something tapped back.
“Three hundred years ago, my shortsighted ancestors locked a creature away. They claimed it was too dangerous to keep loose, so they chained it with an illusion that couldn’t be broken. Since then, many Clarks have tried to free the creature. All of them failed. But none of them had a truth seer.”
Primus leaned forward and pressed his hands against the stone, smiling at the scraping noise. “It’s a shame it was locked away. It’s starving. It’s mad with hunger. Can you feel it?”
I nodded. I could feel the hate burning through the stone. I knew its hunger. I knew its madness.
“When you free it . . .” His eyes cast into the future, and he smiled. “Who needs a Silencer when you have a truth seer and a monster? We’ll destroy the Smiths and the city.” His eyes refocused on me. “Work quickly. No breaks. Tear free this illusion. I want it broken.” He glanced at his watch. “You’re ours until sunset. Nine hours. Go.”
I spent the next nine hours unraveling knots and untying illusion. After the first few hours, the candles sputtered and burned out. The passage plunged into darkness. I concentrated on the glow of the illusion and carefully picked through the knots. I ignored the hungry, hateful presence pressing at the walls, tapping a strange Morse code with every chain I loosened.
When night arrived, I was dizzy, my arms were so heavy I couldn’t lift them, and I felt if I lay down, I’d never get up again. Last looked me over, sighed, and then conjured a red-hot needle to poke into my arm.
A jolt of adrenaline woke me up. She pushed me up the passage, out of the catacombs, and into a cab. She conjured payment for the driver and told him to take me home.
I looked down at the box she’d shoved into my hands. I’d spent the day working to break free a creature the Clarks of three hundred years ago had thought was too evil to let roam free, and in thanks, Last had conjured me a box of chocolates.
38
My legs were almost too heavy to climb the narrow stairs to Hell Gate’s rooftop. The door to the roof was propped open, and Griff was perched on the ledge, his feet dangling over empty space. He didn’t turn as I walked past Rou’s garden, but he knew I was there.
The air was weighted with the scent of wet potting soil, ripe bell peppers, and eggplant that was as midnight-purple as the sky. Roumelade’s radishes had gone to seed, and the white and blush-pink flowers were drooping in the moonlight. After my second death, when I was too afraid to sleep, I’d wander to the rooftop and sit with the ripening tomatoes, the buds of yellow summer squash, and the sweet sugar snap peas. They were quiet, still, and comforting.
I’d never been young—no one in Hell Gate was allowed a childhood—but I’d been little. So when Rou had told me I could find God in a single flower and the quiet of a silent hour, I hid on the roof and searched for him there.
As a kid, I’d lie under the trellis, radish leaves fanning over me, and trace the petals’ soft blend of pink and white. Roumelade’s rooftop wasn’t Eden, but even in Hell Gate, there were hints of the eternal. I found them, I think, in the wind curling softly over my cheek and dragging gently through the garden’s summer leaves. Rou was right: a flower and a bit of breeze had comforted me and made it so I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore. Then I’d met Finn, and my life was never the same.
But thinking about those nights made me wonder, could I still find God in the petals of a drooping flower? Or was I so lost that, like Jagger, I was cut off from the small comfort of a rooftop Eden?
I lowered myself to the edge of the roof and set two pints of ice cream on the ledge. They were dripping-wet, the freezer ice trailing down their sides.
I held out a spoon to Griff. “You get first pick.”
