So I’ll hold my truth. Keep it bright and hidden inside. I’ll tell myself, Don’t become a monster. I’ll put on the mask but make certain that someday, I’ll be able to take it off.
I’ll be as cunning as a serpent and as gentle as a dove.
I’ll find a way out of this. I’ll save Justice. I’ll save Griff. I’ll save myself, and then I’ll come back to you.
I’ll find you in the Night Den.
6
The fog twisted, writhing and hissing, as the motorcycle’s headlight cut through its seeking limbs. I sped along the glistening, rain-soaked highway, hunched over the handlebars. The road’s black tar was the scaled, wet back of a giant snake, and the rain hitting the asphalt and ricocheting back at me was its venom.
Ghostly monoliths were thrust from the fog and yanked back in as I sped past neighborhoods. Gingkoes wrapped in the skeletal folds of mist warningly rattled their branches. Fellow travelers rode inside hunch-backed beasts with eerily shining eyes—cars swallowed in the mist. The fog made New York a haunted landscape. It made the serpentine highway snaking into Hell’s Kitchen a figment’s playground.
Since the new moon, the wind had suffocated the city with nights of fog, rain, and lamentations. Its groans drowned out the roar of my motorcycle’s engine shouting, Where? Where?
I didn’t have the heart to tell the wind that my brother was probably dead.
I’ve been asked to kill many things, but the worst thing I’ve been asked to kill is hope.
There’s something especially terrible about a person who delights in murdering hope. I find I can’t do it.
Hell, I know, is endless suffering. The terrible thing about it is, when you’re suffering and you believe you’ve reached the deepest, darkest depths . . . no, you haven’t. There is always a deeper, darker place. The descent is endless. There is always a darker misery.
My whole life, I knew I’d someday be a mine.
I could’ve been bitter, angry, or I could’ve picked up that misery, shouldered it, and done what little good I could.
The wind was mourning. It smothered the city in a depression of fog. It choked the storm drains with heaven’s own tears. It howled and wailed and searched. The wind was a funny thing. I’d always thought it was fickle. But this wasn’t the rain of an inconstant heart.
The wind loved my brother. I think the wind loved as I loved.
So I took comfort in the fog slashing itself over me and the rain driving itself against me. I took comfort in the weeping mists and the howling gusts.
I couldn’t mourn, but the wind could mourn for me.
I cut the motorcycle engine at the water’s edge. The fog shrouded the view, but I knew piers stretched into the Hudson like long claws pointing toward New Jersey’s shore. I pulled free my helmet and swung myself off the bike.
If it were a clear, blue-sky day, I would see car lots, dirty brick buildings, and concrete sidewalks sprouting grass and weeds. But if it were day, then the Night Den wouldn’t be open for business.
A three-story-tall redbrick warehouse was wrapped in mist. It stretched an entire city block, but the rain and the fog obscured all but what was directly across the street from me.
I’d been here with Jagger only a month ago.
I’d secretly married Finn here. I’d spent countless nights here. I’d . . .
I’d loved the Night Den.
It was where Finn, Luvic, and I had become best friends. It was where Finn and I had fallen in love. It was where Luvic had brought Cora when they first met.
The redbrick had a row of glass block windows lining its lower level. Almost all the windows on the upper floors were bricked up or covered with plywood. Years of graffiti layered the brick. I smiled at the spray-painted letters “F + M.” Finn had graffitied that when he was twelve. He’d only meant that he’d stick with me no matter what. Later, it meant more.
I tilted my chin and looked at the light shining through a second-story window. The curtains were drawn, but I could see movement inside.
It was Finn’s bedroom.
Was he there?
Jagger had been very clear in his instructions. “Take the omnibus. Hit the Night Den. Burn it to the ground. If Alterra is there, go ahead and try to kill him—but Mari, I don’t want you speaking to old friends. Not tonight.”
