Spirits in the Park (13 page)

“And Verrazano thought my father was one of them,” Rory had said quietly.

“Who knows what that old god thinks?” Fritz had replied. “He's always been a little batty.”

Rory had simply stared back at him for a moment before suggesting that the roach take a walk with him to the barn, to see an old friend.

“How did you know he was here?” Fritz asked Rory as they approached the barn.

“Who else would you be guarding like that? Why is he here, anyway? Shouldn't he be in the Tombs?”

“Too dangerous,” Fritz replied. “Kieft would have him killed in a heartbeat. It's taken the combined skills of all our friends on the council to protect him as it is. None of us want another Albert situation. Kieft will find him eventually, of course, but maybe we'll learn something useful before that happens. I hope so. Here we are.”

They reached the barn and Fritz nodded at the guards. They moved aside, opening one of the barn doors to admit the boy and roach, with Tucket following close behind. Once they passed through, the door was shut behind them with a clang that made Rory jump.

It took a moment for Rory's eyes to adjust to the inside of the barn. Finally, he was able to make out the high arcing ceiling, which let in thin slivers of golden light that sliced through the black interior of the barn. Most of the barn was empty; the horses no longer resided in the stables. But the barn was not completely barren. A disheveled man sat on a bale of hay, a long chain running from the irons wrapped around his ankles to a thick post rising up from the floor to the ceiling of the barn. He smirked as he recognized his visitor.

“Hello, Rory,” the man said. “You're looking well. Kieft hasn't killed you yet, I gather. Ah well, he still has plenty of time.”

“Hello, Hex,” Rory replied, forcing himself not to react to the prisoner's gibes. “You're lucky Kieft hasn't killed you, either.”

Hex shrugged, patting his chains.

“I'm the luckiest guy in the world.”

Rory could understand his bitterness. After all, Hex had once been Aaron Burr, a great and influential man and god. But then he'd fallen, resorting to petty thievery in an effort to win back power and exact revenge on his old ally, and eventual betrayer, Willem Kieft. Bridget had been caught in the cross fire—literally—for which Rory would never forgive the traitorious ex-god.

“You should ask your question so we can get out of here,” Frtiz whispered.

“Yes, yes, please, ask away,” Hex said sardonically, overhearing. “I'm very busy.” He picked up a piece of hay. “I'm teaching myself how to weave a basket. It's very fulfilling.”

“You did this to yourself,” Rory reminded him. Hex shrugged.

“Not at all. You did this to me. If I had my way, the Munsees would be free, no one would be chasing you around trying to kill you, and I'd have the secret Kieft hid in the park. So don't blame this on me.”

“That's not true!” Rory was shouting. “You knew what would happen!” Tucket began to bark, picking up on his master's dismay.

“Calm down, Rory,” Fritz soothed him. “Maybe it was a mistake to bring you here.”

Hex laughed softly. “Come to see if you, and only you, can get me to talk, eh, Rory? Let me save you the breath. As I told Peter, I've heard the name Harry Meester, but only as a name. He could be anyone from those days when we sprung the Trap. Anyone at all. And I sure don't know where he is now. Sorry to waste your time.”

Rory hesitated. Something about Hex's nonchalant answer seemed . . . off. Hex knew something, all right, Rory could feel it. But he knew he wasn't the one to get to the bottom of it; he'd leave that to Nicholas's dad. No, Rory had come to ask a different question entirely. He pulled the photo out of his pocket, glancing down at that smiling face. He might never get another chance; he had to know for sure. He gritted his teeth and spit it out. “I wanted to ask you about my father.”

“So that's what this is about,” Hex said, his eyes darkly amused. He leaned back against his bale of hay, putting his hands lazily behind his head. “I told you the last time you asked, I don't know any more than you do. When I worked that invisibility spell on you, I caught a brief whisper inside your head—you believed you'd seen him on that ghost ship as it sailed past. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.”

“What about Tew's Boys?” Rory asked, even as his heart sank. “Do you know anything about them?”

“Not a thing,” Hex replied, leaning forward to rest his chin on his arched fingers. “If you want to know more about your dad, ask your mom, that's my advice. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“I needed to make sure,” Rory mumbled. Why did he keep chasing his dad when he knew he should just leave him be? It only left him feeling foolish, like he did right now.

“Are you sure yet?” Hex said, smirking. “Maybe you should worry about real things, like the earthquake that almost buried me under this cursed barn. Did I not say it from the beginning, Rory? Did I not say the Trap had to be opened or we would all suffer?”

“You haven't been particularly helpful since then,” Fritz said. “You haven't answered a single question about what happened during the making of the Trap.”

“Nor will I,” Hex replied.

“But people will be hurt,” Rory pleaded with him.

“People like your mother?” Hex stared at him intently. “Your sister? Or does she still run around in that paper shell? I hope you warned her of the dangers. I'd hate for her to go mad.”

“Like Toy went mad?” Rory shot back. Hex locked eyes with him for a moment before nodding.

“Yes, like Jason,” he said quietly. “You had your chance, Rory. You let it slip through your fingers. There is nothing more I can, or will, say to help you.”

“But the island . . .” Fritz said.

“All of Manhattan can shake itself to pieces for all I care,” Hex shouted, disturbing some birds in the rafters.

The barn gradually settled back into silence. Sighing, Fritz turned to Rory and shook his head.

“I think we're done here,” the battle roach said. Rory nodded, his heart heavy, and glanced down at the photo. His father looked back at him, as inscrutable as ever. Sighing, he turned to go.

“Can I see it?” Hex called after him. “The photo in your hand?”

Rory ignored him, heading for the door.

“Hey, city killer!” Hex yelled. “Can I see the picture of the famous man who left his family to fend for itself? Just out of curiosity.”

Rory turned back to face him.

“Didn't you see him in my mind?”

“I didn't see an image. I only picked up that you'd thought you'd seen him. I wouldn't mind taking a look at this guy, if I could.”

“One might think you don't want to be left alone again,” Fritz said, giving the prisoner a knowing glance.

“I'm just curious,” Hex answered innocently.

Fritz shrugged, not sure what to say. So Rory walked back and handed the photo to Hex, who took one look and froze. He leaned in, gazing intently at the picture in front of him. And then, softly, he began to laugh.

“What . . . ?” Rory said, confused. “Why are you laughing? Do you recognize him or something?”

Hex laughed louder, until tears came to his eyes, gazing down at the picture of the elder Hennessy.

“STOP LAUGHING!” Rory shouted. Hex wiped his streaming eyes. He looked up at Rory, still grinning, and began to speak.

“I'm afraid I haven't been entirely up front with you, Rory,” he said, his eyes dancing with joy. “Let me make it up to you with a little story. I'm sure you've heard that Mayor Alexander Hamilton used to be the best friend the Munsees ever had. It's true. There was no one the Munsees trusted more. Especially Tackapausha. Those two were like peas in a pod. We all believed our struggles would be worked out with the two of them tackling the problem. And who knows what might have happened. Maybe the Munsees would be as much a part of Mannahatta, and Manhattan, as the rest of us. But then, one night, Mayor Hamilton went into a room with two men. When he emerged, he was livid, and he gave Kieft the authority to immediately commission the Trap. I worked out all the details, though the nuts and bolts of how the thing actually operated came from Caesar Prince—”

“What!” Rory blurted out.

“Oh yes,” Hex said. “Caesar is as much responsible for that Trap as I. My idea, his execution. And the rest is history. Hamilton went from being the Munsees' best friend to their worst enemy, overnight. It's often run through my mind. What happened in that room that night? No one knows but Hamilton and those two men. One was Willem Kieft, of course. And the other was someone I had seen before, but knew little about. He did odd jobs for some of the gods. He also spent a lot of time with the Indians, though I don't think anyone, us or them, really knew much about him. And soon after that meeting, he disappeared. His name was Harry Meester.”

“What!” Fritz cried. “You filthy liar, you said you never knew anything about him.”

“I know what I said,” Hex replied, still smiling. “But I've changed my mind. The truth is just too delicious to lie about anymore. See, after that night, I never saw him again . . . until now. I'm looking at him in this photo here. That man was your father.”

Rory's jaw dropped as Fritz gasped. Hex smiled at the reaction his pronouncement had received.

“It would seem, Rory,” Hex continued, his eyes glinting yellow in the darkness of the barn, “that you really don't know who your daddy is at all, do you?”

GOING UNDERGROUND

T
he news spread throughout Mannahatta; Walt Whitman was ill,
deathly
ill one would say if there were any worry of him dying. He slipped in and out of consciousness, hardly lucid at all. And if that wasn't bad enough, the same affliction had struck Mrs. Parker, Hamilton Fish, Frederick Douglass, James Bennett, Zelda Fitzgerald; the list went on and on. The pillars of the community were being struck down, people whispered. Was this the next stage in the Munsees' plan? they asked. After all, it couldn't be a coincidence so soon after the earthquake . . .

Tweed worked overtime to make sure no one believed it could be coincidence, sending whispers up and down the taverns and halls of the spirit city. The rumors were a rousing success, pushing Mannahatta to the brink of hysteria. Only two blights marred his work. For one, Peter Stuyvesant remained hale and hearty. The paranoid old fool wouldn't eat anything not prepared by his own wife. Such a lack of trust was a crying shame. Tweed would have to try harder to get some of Mary's home cooking to the god's lips.

The other worry on his mind was the whereabouts of Bill the Butcher. The criminal had failed in his duty to kidnap the Light, and now he'd gone missing. Both the killer and the boy had disappeared off the face of the island.

Ow!”

Bridget banged her head on the ceiling of the cramped space she and Rory, along with a heavily panting Tucket and her papier-mâché body, were stashed inside. She felt like one of the dice in a Yahtzee cup right before the toss as she rattled around the inside of the secret compartment. Their ceiling, she knew, was actually the false floor of a wagon Nicholas's dad used around his farm. They'd lain down into the secret space, the floor had been closed on top of them, and then, voilà! The Hennessy kids had disappeared from the face of the earth, like magic.

The wagon itself was ancient; typical of the early eighteenth century, Alexa had explained, and it was drawn by a really smelly horse. Horses were overrated, she decided. She didn't know why all her friends at school gushed over them (probably brainwashing or mercury poisoning or tumors). A Stuyvesant farmhand named Diedrich drove the wagon to wherever they were going; no one had seen fit to tell her where they'd be hiding. It burned Bridget to be kept in the dark, about anything, and the painful way the wagon bounced along only made her more PO'd. When she complained to Rory about the roughness of the ride, he explained absently about how they didn't have rubber tires back in the old days. She scoffed; people in olden times were not the brightest, she decided.

Of course none of these minor annoyances could cover up the real reason she was all out of sorts.

“It must be some kind of mistake,” she repeated for the umpteenth time.

“Shh!” Rory whispered back, putting a finger to his lips. She made a face at him. He seemed to think the bad guys were running right alongside them with their ears pressed against the side of the wagon. Didn't he know how loud New York could be?

“You wanted Dad to be a bad guy,” she continued, undeterred. “You're probably making what he did sound worse 'cause you want him to be a traitor or something. You're still mad at him for leaving, so you're making up all this stuff about Dad being Harry Meester. You know what, I think Hex wasn't even in that barn at all! I think you were talking to a cow the whole time!” She crossed her arms defiantly to show she knew she was right.