I snorted and then shoved him. He gasped, slipped on the coins, and then dunked underwater. I was laughing when he came up.
“Really, Mari?”
“Yes!”
He lunged at me, grabbed my ankle, and pulled me under. When we surfaced, I threw my arms around his neck and gave him a tight, soaking-wet hug.
Not by action, deed, or word.
Pain lanced through me, eating away the lightness. I flinched and yanked back.
“Hey! You kids, get outta the fountain!”
I glanced across the park. A spirit—an officer from a century ago—was speeding toward us.
Finn grabbed my hand, and we jumped out of the fountain. We laughed as we raced from the park, leaving sopping-wet footprints on the stone pavers. Blocks later, my heart was pounding, and I was filled with a happy, fizzy feel that Jagger’s teeth barely nipped at. His will was a distant shouting echo.
Finn collapsed onto a grassy lawn, and I dropped down next to him. My chest rose and fell as I dragged in the hot night air. My skin was wet, and although the water had been cool, it was now warm as it ran off me in rivulets.
I smiled up at the gray night sky.
“Look,” Finn said, a warm, happy note in his voice. “It’s a forget-me-not. I haven’t seen one of those since?—”
“Don’t!”
I bolted upright, but it was too late. Neither of us realized what we should have the moment we’d landed at City Hall. We were only blocks from the Clarks. We’d run through the park, down past the old church, and found a stretch of lawn.
There weren’t many places with grass in this part of the city. There weren’t any forget-me-nots.
Except for at the Clarks’.
The second Finn touched the pale blue flower, the grass became chains, and the air became water. His eyes widened, and he mouthed, “Mari!”
He fought to get free of the chains. They wrapped themselves around us in vine-like coils. Air was just above us. All I had to do was untie the knots of illusion and I’d free him. Then, unlike last time, I could also free myself. I was stronger. I was better. I . . .
I shook my head. The knots covering him and the knots that made up the Clarks’ illusion had intertwined. Every time I tugged at one, he flinched, and then his skin grew more translucent. I shook my head, air bubbles rising over us. I couldn’t unknot the chains without unknotting him.
I was running out of air. Finn had never been able to hold his breath for as long as me. His eyelashes fluttered. He’d been trying to conjure, but when he twisted his hand, nothing happened. When he jerked at the chains, they only grew tighter.
It was all right. I’d untie him. I’d untie the whole thing.
But then, outside the water trap, past the lawn, I saw another Finn. Not my Finn, the boy trapped with me, but the cruel, awful one who haunted me and had promised to destroy me.
He smiled, his lips turning up at my struggles. He lifted his hand, joining his fingers in the conjurer’s pose. The boy with me didn’t notice him. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and his body was limp. I had to free him. I had to save him from . . .
The cruel Finn threw a wall of flame at us. I sliced through the chains holding eleven-year-old Finn underwater. I don’t know if it freed him or killed him—I only know, as the fire hit the water, I jerked awake in my bedroom, desperately gasping for breath, the sulfuric firelight from the electroliers spraying down over me.
Finn was dead. Finn was alive.
Finn was illusion.
40
The night lingered like a lover, its dark tendrils caressing the wind as it flowed in the wake of the woman’s perfume. Citrus and pearl dust were her earthy scents, but sometimes, she smelled like the sea. She was the salt and the froth. The gentle wave feathering over the rough sand. She was moonlight bedding down on the water, waiting for her daybreak lover to come.
The wind liked the citrus and pearl dust scented woman very much. There was no one else who had a voice as sensuous as the ocean whispering in a seashell. There was no one else who was as soothing as a mercury lake and as tempestuous as a violent swell.
The boy was cloaked in his dark eclipse. He stood in the shadow of the Smith fortress and watched the woman sneak past. She didn’t notice him, even though he only needed to lift his hand to touch her. He held still, and when she stubbed her toe on the sidewalk curb, the boy’s mouth curved. The wind traced his smile and whispered a question.
