Luvic looked around the small room. “Because the Bard asked me to fetch you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And bring me here?”
Luvic’s lips lifted, and for a moment, he looked amused. “Slight detour. We should go. We’ll want to clean up before seeing him.”
“No offense, but I really don’t want to see your dear dad today.”
“Trust me, neither do I. However, it’s the Bards’ day to play, and my dad wants to use you for . . .” He waved his hands and said in a deep, mocking voice, “Dastardly deeds on dark days.”
I bit my lower lip. It would be so nice if I could throw my arms around Luvic and tell him I remembered everything, that I trusted him, loved him, and that I was his friend.
But I couldn’t. Even the hint of laughter brewing inside me was surrounded by Jagger’s choking hold.
We never planned for this.
It was like humans and death. All humans know they’re going to die, but so few of them plan for it or talk about what will happen once it comes.
Maybe that was why Luvic, Finn, and I were so unprepared. We knew it was coming, but we didn’t know how or when, or what it’d be like after.
Instead of laughing, I smiled at Luvic.
He stopped, half-turned toward the door, his hand extended toward the knob. He stared intently at me. “Sometimes, Mari, you remind me of someone I used to know.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “She was . . . practical. I’d say . . . that was her best quality.”
“Practical?”
“That’s right. She knew all the terrible things in the world, but she was so practical about it all you never felt like things were hopeless. I bet if an army of tanks rolled down Central Park West, she’d just shrug and say, ‘We’d better stock up on toilet paper. You know there’s going to be a raid on it—all of New York is crapping themselves right now.’” He laughed and shook his head. His eyes were glowing with his memories. “She was something else. But she trusted too easily. She was too selfless. It got her killed.”
He shrugged, and when he did, a slow itch worked its way up my spine. He was talking about me.
“And then what happened?” I asked, my voice deceptively calm.
Luvic stared at me, weighing my expression. “I don’t know.”
I nodded, my throat tight. My words were constricted at the base of my throat, and there was nothing I was able to say.
“I’d like to say everything ended with a happily ever after, but I’m not sure what happily ever after actually means.” He turned back to the door and pulled it open. Looking over his shoulder, he threw back, “When you meet the Bard, do whatever he asks. He’s in a bad mood. When he gets this way, he’s not picky about who he hurts. Or kills. You may be the leggerock’s, but that doesn’t matter to the Bard. You may be my friend, but he doesn’t know or care. In fact, he might hurt you if he knew.”
That was all true, and nothing Luvic hadn’t told me before.
We stepped into the dark tunnel.
“And Mari . . .”
“Yeah?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Thanks.”
We left the sewers to find the Bard.
44
Luvic was weak. It was obvious in the simple overhand knots and bowline of his illusion. They were loosely tied and barely staying together. They looked a bit like Griff’s bunny-ear shoelace knots after he first learned to tie his shoes. They always came undone on their own. Usually, when they came untied, Griff would trip on them and fall. I hoped Luvic wasn’t about to fall. He’d conjured an illusion for me: a pair of clean jeans, a shirt, and shoes. He wasn’t able to do anything to cover the sewer stench—it clung to me like a freshly sprayed cloud of noxious perfume.
At the crosswalk on Broadway and Broome, well-dressed people on their way to work wrinkled their noses and then inched away. One woman, a tourist, kept glancing at Luvic while the crosswalk sign counted down.
