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Perry and Nelle reappear in the doorway to the kitchen. “Did we miss the dancing?” Perry jokes.

Nervous titters ripple through the crowd. The Governor gives the rifle to one of his men and straightens his jacket. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet my son’s newly betrothed, Miss Nelle Harris.”

I choke on a sip of beer. No one hears because the whole room starts talking again, moving toward the doorway to congratulate Perry. Nelle smiles and points toward the bathroom, then propels herself through the crowd. On her way past, she jerks her chin for me to follow.

I count to ten, then excuse myself. Troy tries to stop me, but a surge of people carries him closer to his brother, still beaming and shaking hands in the entryway of the kitchen.

I lock the bathroom door behind me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her. “I thought you were a prisoner or something?”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” she says, amused. “I said I’d fix the power if they let me out of that goddamned room. I didn’t think they meant right this minute, but hey, why look a gift horse in the mouth. We were on our way to the power station when we heard the music. That Bishop turned seven shades of red. So we took a detour.”

“But Troy said they were going to keep you as a negotiator or a diplomat or some such nonsense. You’re married, but now you’re engaged to Perry?” I know my nose is wrinkling, but I can’t do anything to stop it.

She shrugs, smirking. “Things are never going to get that far. Perry and I have history, and I know exactly how to handle him. I agreed to the engagement so as to garner a bit of trust. To have an alibi when things like random power outages occur.”

I squirm, but I don’t owe any confessions to Nelle.

“What
are
you trying to prove here, anyway?” She picks up a candle and waves it in my face.

“This clean-living nonsense the Bishop insists on,” I say. “I just wanted to show them how we do things when we have to make do. How we live in the dark every day.”

I’ve said too much. Her eyebrows rise in realization. “Oh no. You didn’t. Please tell me you’re not responsible for this.”

I let out a breath. “It was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“I sort of set the servers on fire in the control room.”

“You
accidentally
set the servers on fire?”

I didn’t know it was possible to fit so much disgust into a single question. “I set them on fire on purpose, it’s just that the sprinklers were an accident.”

In the low light her gaze is chilling. “So now I have to rebuild the computers in order to bring the power back online? Thanks a lot. At least I’ll be right next to the reservoir.”

“Nelle, you can’t open the floodgate without blowing us all to smithereens. There’s this Ward and it’s—”

“So I’ve heard.” She looks down at her hands. “But my team is safe outside.”

I lose the words in my mouth. I want to call her a suicidal maniac, but considering my foibles this afternoon, it’s almost hypocrisy. “There has to be another way.”

“Look, we had a plan, Syd. The camp finally had the manpower, the weapons, and the horses to fight our way inside and open the reservoir. We’d planned to make it our final mission. So when you came riding past with the Willis twins, I took my opportunity to contact Perry and convince him to bring me inside. I minimize the damage to the people I care about this way. Either way, New Charity was in the crosshairs.”

“So you engineered your own kidnapping to save your team?”

“Perry and I were in love once. I’ll do my best to get him out, too, as long as I don’t risk tipping off Governor Gutshot and his pal Sorcerer Solomon.”

“Let me help you, Nelle. Maybe if we work together we can—”

“Do you know what needs to be done here?” Nelle asks. “Do you know how to turn the power back on?”

I shift my gaze to the mirror and shake my head.

“Do you know some secret way to avoid that big bad Ward?”

I shake my head again.

“Then what good are you to me?”

“That’s not fair. We can tell the New Charitans the truth about the City. It’s diplomacy, right—” The air in the bathroom is heavy and too close and I want out.

“They don’t want to hear it, Syd. Don’t you understand?”

“Let me help.”

“Here’s how you can help me: get your shit together, and get ready to move whoever you need to out of New Charity when I give you the signal.”

“They’re my friends, my family, and they aren’t going to just pick up and go with me without question. I won’t see them hurt.”

Nelle stamps the floor. “These people don’t deserve your pity. Where were they when everyone around you was dying? Where was their compassion? Their assistance? That’s right: there wasn’t any. So why give them yours? They reap what they sow.”

Someone knocks at the door, louder this time. “Hurry up in there!”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” I yell, banging on the door in return. I catch my breath, trying to reel in my fear. Is this what Cas feels when she has a vision? Something unstoppable? It makes more sense when I see my own blundering self in the woman standing in front of me, calmly explaining how she’ll spend her last breath opening the reservoir. “Look, we can learn more about the Ward. Maybe there’s a way to disarm it somehow.”

“I don’t care, Syd. I’m tired of maybe after maybe. It has been years of maybe.”

It’s only been three short days, and I’m not sure how I no longer belong to anyone’s side. “I don’t want to be your enemy, but I’m not sitting this one out.”

“Come on. This is what your old man would want. You safe and sound. I promise I’ll make sure his dream didn’t die with him.”

Someone is knocking again, twice as loud this time. Nelle yanks the door open and a man falls into the bathroom at my feet. I step over him, trying to follow her, but the crowd closes in too quickly. My mind is spinning. What does Nelle know about my dad? What did she mean
his dream didn’t die with him
?

I look for Pi in the crowd and find him beneath the Bishop’s hateful scowl. Pi is almost cowering, the fiddle tucked protectively under his arm. He won’t be of any use until I can talk to him in private.

I can’t find Troy either. In fact, the room is a sea of faces I barely recognize. A few butterflies of panic break out before I hear the twins. Cas and Len each grab one of my hands and lead me out a back door. It’s cooler outside, and darker while my eyes adjust. “What did Nelle want?” Cas asks.

Len glances at the door. “We should talk about it later, somewhere else. It’s getting chippy in there, and Syd should get home before someone tells the Bishop this was her idea.”

The three of us have spilled out under the dim, generator-fueled light of the diner’s front windows. Only Tess is inside, wiping down tables, oblivious to the chaos next door.

“Nelle said something about my dad. She said something about his dream dying with him. What do you think she meant?” I shake my hands out at my sides, wondering how the two of them can stand so still.

When we were younger, Cas and Len would at times retreat into a language only they shared. It was a twin thing or a sibling thing—either way it wasn’t something I understood literally or figuratively. It was noisy gibberish back then, and I got used to ignoring it. But it has morphed into a sort of body language, a look, a tilt of the head. They are talking about me, and I can’t understand them.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

They exchange another glance.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Cas makes a placating gesture with her hands. “I don’t know. Honestly. I’m sorry.”

Len waves a hand at her and turns away.

“Fine. Screw you both. And screw this place.” I duck into the shadows and break into a trot. I don’t know if it’s tears or sweat running down my face and I really don’t care.

The people of New Charity can’t even follow their own hearts for one whole night. Maybe Nelle is right. Maybe New Charity deserves everything it’s got coming.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Cas

Len lit a cigarette, and gestured after Syd. “Well, go get her.”

It was easy to catch up, Syd stumbling like a newborn foal in her cowboy boots. She stopped halfway down the block to take them off.

“Syd, please just tell me what Nelle said to you.”

“Fine. Start by explaining to me how Nelle knew my dad.”

I shrugged in what I hoped was an innocent way. But I watched her gauge my reaction and knew I’d failed at my years of training to be unreadable.

“I thought you wanted to have a conversation,” Syd said, waving her hand between us. “That’s where both people talk.”

“If your father knew the Survivors in the camp, it’s news to me.” Unwelcome images came seeping in
, the Bishop, creeping through the dark corridors of my mind, Cal’s voice turning into Syd’s
. I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my fists over them to try and darken the vision.

“Are you having some kind of mental break?” Syd crossed her arms in front of her. A light wind had picked up the edges of her skirt, but she made no move to smooth it down.

I didn’t tell her I was busy avoiding a vision. “I’m starting to think that Nelle being here is more dangerous than we know. Be careful around her, Syd. It’s your life I’m talking about.”

“You act like that matters somehow.” Syd’s face is reckless with loss. “My life is already over. It was over the day they declared a national emergency. It was over the day the Company went on hiatus. It was over the day my mother died. Pick a time—any time—before now.”

I shook her shoulders. “Stop it.”

“Tell me what you know, or I’m done with you. For good.”

“Syd, don’t. Just give me some time.”

“Thanks to Nelle Harris Mangold, time is a luxury we no longer have.” She turned her back on me and receded into the black night.

Would the Bishop have killed Cal for his involvement—whatever it was—with the Survivor camp? Or was there more to the story? What did the gust of wind in my original vision have to do with anything? Worse, what if I wasn’t really seeing the past; what if I was wrong?

Regardless, I needed to figure out a way to protect Syd once she found out. How would I protect Len and Troy and myself from the revelation? What would the Bishop do to me, to us? I had to talk it out with Len one more time, and then I vowed to tell Syd, no matter what.

I trotted back to where I’d left Len, but he wasn’t there. Looking around, I spotted his white shirt in the dim stretch of light from the diner. He was moving fast toward the gate at the other end of the block. There was some sort of commotion there and loud voices were changing to screams. The guards at the gate—the ones who’d replaced the elemental magic once it was added to the reservoir’s Ward—were pacing, anxious, as metal met metal from the outside.

“Syd, the gate!” I yelled, hoping she’d stop. Hoping she’d follow me. Hoping she wouldn’t go anywhere alone.

She stopped. And when Pi’s voice rose along with the others, she began to run.

Len stood behind the Governor’s body man, the Governor himself, the Bishop, Pi, and Troy. Bootless, Syd had caught up, coming to a halt a few paces behind me.

There were maybe ten men on the other side of the gate. Survivors from the camp, by the rough look of them—bedraggled and thin. One stood in front, speaking directly with the Bishop as the Governor tried to interject.

“Dr. Mangold,” the Bishop said, “I assure you Nelle is here and safe.”

“You drag her in here, your power goes out, and you just expect me to believe she’s fine?” Dr. Mangold poked through the bars at the Bishop’s chest. “I know all about your trickery, about your big Ward. Give me back my wife, and I’ll ask my men to stand down.”

“The power problem is quite another matter, unrelated to your wife’s presence here. And as far as we’re concerned, your wife is simply visiting a friend.” The Bishop opened his hands expansively. “Let’s talk on this at a more civilized hour, shall we?”

Mangold fired his pistol into the air. “Now.”

The Governor, by the looks of things, was getting nervous, his shotgun hanging open on his arm. Mangold had, at best, five shots left in his little revolver, but my father wasn’t one to take unnecessary risks, and he wasn’t the fastest loader, even if he had more than blanks in his coat pocket. He snapped his fingers at his body man. “Cedar, find her.” The strongman nodded and sprinted back to the darkened social hall, where candles still flickered in the windows. Pi was walking along the gate, blessing each Survivor with the warmth of the Spirit. If Len and I had been able to do anything but beat back the nausea of mounting visions, we might have tried to help him.

“There we are,” the Governor said, still looking over his shoulder. Mangold gasped. Len and I wheeled around to see Cedar escorting Nelle and Perry to the gate. Nelle held one of the candles Syd brought from the City.

“We’ve even provided illumination,” said the Governor. “I trust you’ll find she’s in good working order.”

“Open this gate,” Mangold yelled.

“That will not be possible, Doctor,” the Bishop said. “We’ve shown you that your wife is safe and well.”