I frowned, taking in the silent apartment. There were no chairs overturned, no dishes broken, no sign of struggle. “I don’t think she is.”
Luvic looked at me, his attention focusing on me with the hungry intent of a predator.
I shook my head. “If it were Last . . . if Last came here . . . she likes to play with people. She likes to hurt them. She’s cruel, but she doesn’t . . .” I frowned. “I don’t think she’d kill her. Not right away. She’s probably keeping her somewhere. Tormenting her . . .”
I trailed off at the expression on Luvic’s face.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
He swayed and then let out a strange, grieving growl. “I don’t know whether to hope you’re right or pray your wrong. Have to find . . . where—” He swayed again but caught himself on the table. He shook his head. “I’m . . . can’t . . . don’t . . .” His voice slurred, and his pupils dilated and contracted, seizing as he blinked quickly. “Gonna pass out. Don’t kill me while I’m unconscious. Okay?”
I grabbed him, leveraging him, and struggled toward the couch in the living room. He crumpled, and I shoved him backward so he landed at an angle on the cushions. The air rushed from his lungs as his head lolled to the side.
“Luvic?” I nudged him, and his limbs flopped, boneless.
His face was gray, unhealthily colorless. His eyelids fluttered, and his mouth turned down at the corners. He was sprawled half-on and half-off the couch. I tried to move him, but his legs were like lead.
I was tired too. It was only a few hours until dawn. I didn’t want to leave Luvic. Not like this.
I went to the door and bolted all the locks. Then I turned off the kitchen faucet and clicked off the lights. I curled on the floor, my back pressed against the couch. For a while, I listened to the sound of Luvic’s breathing. His hand hung over the cushion, his fingers twitching restlessly. Finally, I gripped his hand in mine and fell asleep.
69
“Don’t move. There’s a jackaltooth behind you.”
The gravelly words jarred me, yanking me through a cobweb-dark tunnel into the twilit glow of the ghost train. The train heaved over the high track, jostling me against Finn’s tense form. I swayed as it clackity-clacked over Hell Gate Bridge, but Finn was as motionless as a blade thrust into stone.
I knew what the tension building in his stillness meant. I’d seen it before. He compressed all his focus, all his intent, into a tight ball of energy at his core. It was taking a universe of atomic energy and containing it in a ball the size of a water drop. Then, when he was ready, he thrust the power outward and?—
Before, he’d used this focus to protect or to love. It was what he’d done during the games. It was how he’d faced a room of hundreds of conjurers at the closing ceremony. It was how it had felt on our wedding night. He was a man whose world was a single point of focus, with a universe of love that had been unleashed.
Finn’s stillness meant a nuclear explosion was building inside him. Any second, he’d spin around and lay waste to the jackaltooth behind us.
A lick of hot air fluttered across my neck, lifting my hair. The air was moist—the humid breath of a panting animal crouched so close it could open its jaws and close them on my throat in a millisecond. I could smell his fur, a wet-dog scent, mixed with salt and that acrid jackaltooth sting.
We were on a diesel train, hollow-bellied and grumbly-loud. The side hung open, and its steel walls quivered as we rumbled across the night-black East River. Diesel fumes and engine grease knocked against us, pinching my nose.
There was a figment in the train with us. An old, bearded man dressed in rags, sprawled on the dirty floor, his back against the metal wall. He was focused entirely on his pipe, blowing great clouds of smoke to gather in a swirling gray mass above his head. He couldn’t see Finn, me, or the jackaltooth. He was a figment, settled back in the 1960s, enjoying his tobacco.
Maybe this diesel was the same ghost train I’d seen when I was a little girl. It would have graffiti painted on its sides and a stuttering gait that carried it in flickering strides across the river.
Finn and I perched together on a wooden shipping crate. The car was filled with them.
Behind me, the jackaltooth made a small, panting whine.
How had Luvic ended up on the ghost train with me?
And why was he a jackaltooth here?
At that moment, Finn exploded, whirling around, his fist extended.
“No!” I launched at him, dropping my shoulder and slamming into his middle. We rolled, skidded across the metal floor, and slammed into the side of a shipping crate.
Luvic snarled and leaped across the car. He cleared three shipping crates and then spun around, his tail lashing through the figment. He crouched, his orange eyes flaring, teeth barred. The hair on his back bristled as a low jackaltooth growl ripped from his throat.
Finn shoved off the ground and sprang at Luvic. They crashed into each other, rolling over the floor, splintering wooden crates. Finn grappled for Luvic’s throat. Luvic snapped his teeth an inch from Finn’s jugular.
“It’s Luvic!” I screamed. “Finn! Stop! It’s Luvic!”
