Usually, Jagger was like Hell Gate: direct and obvious. He was a whirlpool that sucked you down to hell in a quick headlong dive. That was murder, violence, hate. But sometimes, to get you to where he wanted you to go, he used a gentler touch. A bit like Little Hell Gate. It depended on the being he was trying to catch. All some needed was a good shove into the whirlpool, but for others, the descent to hell was a gentle tide, a barely noticeable slope, the soft flow of a salt marsh that slowly pulled you in. It was a descent so gentle, so quiet, you didn’t breathe a protest or even notice you’d arrived until it was too late to turn around.
I’d once asked Jagger why he didn’t convince everyone to come to Hell Gate with murder or violence. After all, that was how he’d caught me. But he’d only smiled, patted my arm, and said, “Why use murder when, for some, a lie works just as well? You’ll see.”
And I did see. With Griff, Jagger hadn’t used murder; he’d lured him with a lie.
I didn’t know what the Wards thought of Little Hell Gate, or even if they’d noticed their asylum squatted on its tidal edge. I was certain they saw the figments.
Randalls and Wards Islands had been many things. Grazing land, orchards, farms. A base for the British army during the Revolutionary War. A smallpox quarantine area for General Washington’s Continental soldiers. A potter’s field, where the city buried thousands of the unknown, the poor, the unclaimed dead. A reformatory for wayward girls and boys called “The House of Refuge.” No conjurer could walk across the grassy fields of Wards Island and not catch a glimpse of its history.
But compared to the island’s smattering of figments, the asylum’s basement was absolutely crawling with them. Figments were often born from a violent burst of emotion. The feeling had to be incredibly strong to be caught in a loop that would replay for centuries. Some faded over time. Some remained strong. Maybe, like a record, the grooves wore down with each replaying. I don’t know. I only know the dark warren of the asylum was filled with figments.
Most were shadowed figures. They were chained to the walls. Shackled to the floors. There were some buried with only their weeping heads aboveground. Others wandered the halls, pacing, sobbing, scratching at unseeing eyes.
You can walk straight through a figment. They won’t notice you. Most people don’t notice them. I try not to, because I always feel a trace of their emotion. It sticks to you like smoke clinging to clothing. But the basement was so crowded with them I couldn’t avoid brushing through them as I tracked along the maze.
Rou had said Griff was down here somewhere. He was locked in one of the metal-doored rooms lining the hallways. The spirits who lived in Hell Gate had made their way here too. The fire hadn’t bothered them. Some of the shills, growlings, and slipshots who weren’t at Hell Gate when the Smiths had destroyed it were here. They’d all claimed rooms and were making themselves at home. Rou told me to find a place to make my own.
I looked over my shoulder. The back of my neck tingled, and goose bumps prickled. No one was there. The figments gave off a misty glow. The Wards had left illusion—constrictor knots—centuries-old. They were as tightly knotted as the day they were tied. Constrictor knots didn’t come undone on their own. It was illusion made real, and they’d used it to hollow out the mazelike tunnels and rooms beneath their asylum. To me—and probably only me—the knots glowed with a muted golden light. It was enough, barely, to see by.
The basement’s walls were schist, and the flecks of muscovite and mica sparkled when illusion’s glow hit their golden surface. I reached out and touched a line of mica, flaking the mineral from the stone. Mica was funny. It reminded me of the old photo negative rolls. It was translucent but colored with silver, copper, and bronze. It was as thin as paper, stacked in thick sheets, and it fell apart easily. When you tilted it in the sun, it was as iridescent as a fish’s scales. It was beautiful. Fragile. It made the dirt of Manhattan glitter. If you crushed it in your hands, your skin looked like it was covered in fairy dust. When Finn was a kid, before we were friends, he’d left strips of glittering mica on park benches for me to find. I tapped the asylum’s walls, and the mica flaked away, the memory disintegrating.
Ahead, there was a rusted metal door. It was far from the entry stairs, but not too far. It was far from where the slipshots and the others had bedded down, but not too far. It was . . . an all right place to make a room.
There was an illusion locking the door. A simple overhand knot. I untied it and pushed the door open. Rust flaked from the metal, raining over me. The hinges squeaked and groaned, and the asylum’s walls moaned back.
The air was cool and thick with the smell of damp stone, underground creatures, and the closed, mournful air of a room shut for centuries.
I stepped inside.
It was the same as the others I’d seen. A small square room. Stone floor. Stone walls. Low ceiling. A rusted metal bed frame attached to the floor. A mostly decomposed wool mattress that had been chewed and repurposed by mice.
Some of the rooms had figments. This one did not. Instead, there was a painting on the wall and a small rectangular mirror.
When I moved toward the painting, a pair of candle sconces flickered to life. They let off a dim white glow. I smiled and let out a surprised huff of air. So, conjurers of a hundred years ago had motion-sensor lights too.
This room must’ve been for a special “guest.”
I stopped in front of the painting. I would’ve thought it would be covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, but the sealed room and the cold underground environment had preserved the painting. The colors were still rich and vibrant, with deep burgundies, navies, and gold.
The picture was of a family. Parents and two children. It was hard to say when it was from. If I had to guess, I’d say mid- to late-1700s. The father was serious and wearing a curled white wig. The mother had a laughing gleam in her eyes and wore a towering wig, complete with a yellow birdhouse and a sparrow perched in her curls. Their clothing was elaborate silk, with ribbons, gold, and ivory. The two children—a boy and girl, both in wigs and luxurious clothes too—were playing with a cocker spaniel.
The painting gave me a hollow, uncomfortable feeling.
The artist hadn’t signed the work, and there wasn’t a date. There wasn’t anything to hint at who the people were, except . . . the father held his hand in the conjurer’s pose, his first two fingers pressed into his thumb.
Conjurers.
But looking at their coloring and their features, I couldn’t decide what family they were from. Not Smith. Probably not Clark. Bard then. Or Ward.
Had the Wards imprisoned their own family here?
Mostly, the asylum had been for humans. But conjurers had stayed here too. The humans sometimes left. The conjurers did not.
I glanced at the dull silver mirror. It was buffed metal welded to the stone wall. My reflection was wavy and indistinct. I shivered at my shifting features. My irises were flowing from sky-gray to the dark gray schist of the bedrock. They were cold and opaque. My mouth was a mournful flat line, and I didn’t have a single laugh line or freckle to mark my skin or tag meaning to. It was impossible to know what I was thinking, and staring at my features—they were a river cut into stone—a person would be tempted to believe I didn’t have a heart.
I smiled, wondering what Luvic saw when I smiled at him.
My smile faltered. I looked like Jagger when I smiled. Like I enjoyed causing pain and was looking forward to suffering.
