Ah, but Stellar.
You said this felt like family.
Ain’t that how you love family?
Through the successes and the failures?
Through the good choices and the bad?
Nirav approaches us. Spirit highlights him with sparkles and light beams. He appears as if in a spotlight, just as I saw him last. He slips his hand into mine. A silent tear rolls down his cheek, but he’s smiling. He experienced quite a lot in that apartment filled with greed and avarice.
William tilts his head,Let’s go. Pax takes the handle grips of William’s chair and we walk north.
“We pulled off themuda labudova,” William says. “That’s Croatian for something impossible.” He begins to chuckle. “It literally translates to ‘balls of a swan.’?” He’s laughing hardernow, tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. “Swans don’t have external testicles, you see. Impossible.”
Despite my anger and frustration at being cut out of Pax’s revised plan—or maybebecauseof how anxious I feel at the thought of being left out, behind, alone yet again—my pent-up emotions get the better of me, and I explode with laugher. Tears and sore cheeks and belly cramps—the whole bit. And once I start, Nirav starts, and at long last, Pax joins in. There’s that coffee laugh, strong and intense.
“Revenge is never going to be enough,” I say, gasping for breath.
“You’re right,” Pax says. “But it’s damn close.”
More laughter. Perhaps we laugh so we don’t cry. Pax’s strong, warm hand wraps around mine and we walk.
At last, I manage to say, “Your brother was there?”
He nods but says nothing.
“He tried to murder Blanck.”
He nods but says nothing.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Fifty-Two East Second Street, number 104. The four of us wind our way through the dark New York City streets toward this address. The police bells grow quieter, and the soft sounds of a city asleep surround us: a horse braying. A radio playing low music. Our own footsteps on the pavement.
Stella, you’re in pain.
You should stop.
I limp, and Pax’s eyes fill with concern. William asks if we should stop. “It’s nothing,” I insist. “Small cut.”
Glass. Always glass, ripping me apart.
Fifty-Two East Second Street, number 104. This was the address we memorized as our meeting spot after the heist. Where we’d all finally converge, divvy up our spoils, and figure out our next steps. In the back of my mind, I dreaded this stage, because who knew what the next step might be. Each of us going our separate ways? My heart aches thinking of it.
Pax had drilled the information into us:“Say it with me: 52 EAST SECOND STREET, NUMBER 104. Good. Do NOT go there before the party; we cannot be seen anywhere near there beforehand.”
It was supposed to be me, Nirav, William, Kiyoko, and Clarice meeting Pax here. That plan changed, obviously. We’re all silently hoping, of course, that the other two show.
Pax selected this location precisely because none of us had ever been here before. I didn’t know what to expect, but I assumed it would be a building of some sort. An abandoned storefront or a bodega with a secret room or the home of an ally. We thought we shouldn’t return to Julia’s Bureau; Blanck had been there in person, after all. Clarice insisted that her hypnosis trickery would make him forget the Bureau, but Pax was convinced: If Blanck connected the dots, going back there would be akin to walking into a bear trap.
Sharp pain shoots through my foot and up my leg. I wince. Pax halts. “Stella, take off your belt.”
My face tilts into a half grin. “Excuse me?”
Pax matches my grin—oh, that dimple!—and waves his hand in acome onmotion. I slowly untie the paisley-patterned belt from around my waist, part of my elaborate fortune-teller getup.
“Sit, please,” Pax requests. I perch on the edge of a concrete planter.
