The Elementals (21 page)

Clasping a hand to Kate’s face, Julian pressed a little too hard, tangled too roughly with her hair. But he blinked, and the haze faded. Not all at once, but gradually. As warmth spread through him, his flesh softened. Blue lips shifted to rose pink again; a dewy blush sprang up in his cheeks.

“Julian, can you say something? Can you hear me?”

For a long moment, he stared. Then, as his fingers slipped from her hair, he croaked, “Course I can hear you. You’re right in my face.”

Overwhelmed in every sense, Kate snapped. She pushed him back onto the bed, because it wouldn’t do to drag him to his one good foot to shake him.

Throwing a leg over, she sat across his hips and truly leaned down in his face. She clasped his head with both hands and peered down at him furiously.

“You can’t ever do that again. Promise me.”

“Promise you what?” Julian said; his lips still moved a little slowly, but his eyes widened without effort. “Is there a reason you’re sitting on me?”

“Because you were dead all night!” Shifting forward, Kate looped her arms around his head, fingers tangling in his hair. He was warm again; his heart pounded on, and she could feel it in her own veins.

“Why don’t you ever make sense, Kate?”

Letting out a frustrated yelp, Kate collapsed on top of him. Her hair flowed over his face; his breath slipped hot against her skin. Turning to press against his neck, she sighed. Everything was right again. It had to stay that way.

Reordering her thoughts, she tried to explain herself as clearly as she possibly could, even though he’d probably argue with her anyway. “I was afraid. And now I’m happy. I’m inappropriate, and I don’t care. I want you to promise you won’t do it again.”

Julian raised his hands helplessly, then dropped them on her back. Petting her, he said, “I promise.”

“Thank you,” Kate said.

“You’re not inappropriate, by the way.” He blew at her hair, trying to get it off his face. “You’re
indecent.
”

“Thank you.” Kate nestled down, patting him. “Shhh, I’m trying to sleep now.”

Jerking his head up, Julian managed to flounder beneath her weight as he exclaimed, “On me?”

“Shhh,” she repeated, and drifted off with a smile.

***

The nap only lasted until Mr. Riggsby came for the rent.

He pounded on the door, jolting both of them into motion. As Kate scrambled to straighten the mess in the armoire, Mr. Riggsby called through the door, “Noon is not first thing in the morning!”

“Who is it?” she called back, stuffing dirtied papers into the trash bin.

“You know who it is!”

Kate tried to hurry. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but could I borrow a dollar? Maybe he’ll take that as a deposit. The rent’s ten a month, and I ought to have a pay packet waiting for me at The Pike.”

“Ten dollars?” Julian boggled at her. “For this dump?”

“None of the boarding houses would take us,” Kate snapped. “No animals, and no actors! For two people and a bird, it’s a steal!”

Eyes trained on the door, Julian considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “Forget it. Come with me. Maybe I can sweet-talk Mrs. Bartow into letting Handsome stay.”

Brightening, Kate shoved the rest of the filthy paper into the bin. “Really?”

Mr. Riggsby pounded the door again. “I can hear you! I’m coming in there!”

Julian pulled his crutches from under the bed. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Do you have a fire escape?”

“Yes, but you can’t . . .” Kate started, then watched in amazement as Julian pushed the window open and hoisted himself through it. Turning back to look at her, he waved his hand. “Come on.”

The door rattled, then a ring of keys jingled. Grabbing her hat and her shoes, Kate flung herself after Julian. They were only one flight up, and Julian had already lowered the ladder.

“How are you going to get down?” she asked.

Thrusting the crutches at her, he said, “Watch this.”

Julian pulled his sleeves over his hands, then grabbed the ladder’s iron frame. Holding tight, he dropped down, catching one of the rungs with his foot. Once he had his balance, he bounced his way down, the fire escape protesting every jump. Hopping to the ground, he looked up. “Throw me the crutches.”

Dropping them, as well as her hat and shoes, Kate scrambled down the ladder. Soft flecks of rust fluttered around them, mixed with fine concrete dust.

“Trying to kill me?” Julian asked. He hooked her hat with the foot of his crutch and tossed it toward her.

Stuffing her hair under the hat, Kate snorted. “Trying to knock some sense into you. Handsome!”

“Yeah, I am,” Julian said. Then he turned to look for a familiar black beast on the rooftops or the wires. It occurred to him that he didn’t know how he was supposed to tell one crow from another, so he called, “Handsome, come on!”

When the bird swept down to land on Julian’s shoulder, Kate blinked. “I can’t believe he did that.”

Wincing, Julian started down the street. “Me either. Those claws hurt!”

The street sloped downhill, and instead of hopping along, Julian could take long swings between his crutches. Clapping her hat to her head, Kate ran after him.

Mr. Riggsby stuck his head out the window and yelled after them, “Don’t come back. You or your sister! Or your cousin. Your entire family is banned!”

“I feel bad,” Kate said. “My whole family is banned from The Ems, and it’s all my fault.”

Julian burst out laughing, then suddenly cursed. A street vendor rolled her cart onto the sidewalk in front of them, its umbrella swinging gaily in the wind.

It happened sometimes, when he got going too fast, that Julian couldn’t slow himself down without crashing.

It was fine when he was chasing his brothers around the yard. But colliding with a steaming metal cart, sprawling into traffic—that wouldn’t be fine.

Better into a brick wall, he decided, and veered that way. Then something blinked. No, it flickered. Like a hand passing in front of a flame. It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t on his feet anymore. He was on the ground, sprawled on the sidewalk with his crutches neatly by his side.

A hand from nowhere grasped the back of his neck, and another flicker passed through his sight. At once, he understood—she’d stopped time again, kept him from falling. Then she’d rearranged him. Instead of hitting the wall he came to, safely on his backside.

Kneeling beside him, Kate dropped her head onto his shoulder and whispered, “Look what I did.”

He started to reply, but then he lifted his head. The world hung suspended in a moment. Not a little corner of it, the entire street.

Frozen automobiles stood in half-completed turns. Caught midstep, a couple of businessmen seemed to hover in the air. Steam rose from manhole covers but never dissipated. All the way down the angled street, life had stilled.

“Help me up,” Julian murmured.

Climbing to their feet, they moved through the perfect silence. Peeking around the corner, Kate whistled low. She’d caught a boy jumping from the streetcar, a woman snapping a rug from her third-story window.

Julian rubbed his knuckles against Kate’s arm. “Wonder how far it goes?”

“I wonder what happens when it all starts again at the edges.” She looked up at him. “I never had to turn it off before. I don’t know how.”

Like a gradual dawning, scarlet spots started to glow for Julian. Some beneath the streets, no doubt vermin. But the city was full of blood-red lights, full of the departed still close enough to call back. He didn’t know how there could be so many. His breath faltered to see they were surrounded.

“Do it backwards,” he suggested. “Whatever you do to stop the world in the first place.

Kate pulled off her hat and wrung it between her hands. Instead of exhaling a breath, she drew one in, as deep and as long as she could. Her lips moved as she whispered something to herself. Her eyes darted from side to side beneath her eyelids, and then suddenly, she opened them wide.

In the distance, something crashed. A man yelled. Handsome squawked and landed awkwardly on the sidewalk, only to take flight before he got kicked by a passerby. And Julian stared as silver streaked through the rest of Kate’s hair. Her black-and-white braids turned entirely white, and her face changed too. It was longer, her lips were fuller, and her jaw sharper.

“What?” Kate said, surprised at the timbre of her own voice. It was still unmistakably hers, just deeper.

Cool realization rushed over Julian as his mother’s words in the kitchen came back to him. They were clarion, impeccably clear. They reverberated in his bones, echoed in his blood.

Uneasy, Kate shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Julian, what?”

“You don’t stop time,” he said. “You trade it.”

Raising his crutch, he herded her toward a department store window. With the light cast on it, it made a perfect mirror. When Kate caught a glimpse of herself, she swayed against him.

“I look like my mother.”

Julian watched her eyes through the reflection. Smoothing a hand down the back of her neck, he watched as understanding swept through her.

She hadn’t lived through stopped time. The people on the streetcar, the woman with the rug, the businessmen who bounded past them now, completely oblivious. They went on with their lives, no older than they were before—because Kate traded against the time she had left in her life to stop
them
.

Pulling Kate in to comfort her, Julian whispered against the shocking white of her hair. “No more, all right? We can—you can get by without it.”

“It’s not really good for anything anyway,” Kate said.

Forcing a smile, she slipped out of Julian’s arms and gestured for Handsome. Instead of running, they walked, sometimes more slowly than they had to. When they reached Sixth and Spring Street, Julian pointed at the short house set between two towering apartments.

“Let me talk to Mrs. Bartow first,” he said. “You better put your hat back on.”

“She wouldn’t turn you out with a little brother to take care of,” Kate said. But even her fabulating sounded sober for the moment. She held the door open for Julian, then followed him inside.

“Boy, where have you been?” Mrs. Bartow demanded as he approached her desk. “All sorts came looking for you, and I had to send them away!”

A bit baffled, Julian said, “You did? I mean, who was it?”

Opening up drawers, one after the other, Mrs. Bartow produced a thin stack of letters. “A fancy couple, claiming to be friends of your mother’s. A little girl, well, not so little—she came twice. I hope you didn’t get her into trouble. I’ll throw you right out!”

Julian took the letters and swore. “No, ma’am, not ever. I had to fetch my, uh, baby brother.”

Slowly, Mrs. Bartow tipped to one side. She blanched when she saw the massive bird that came with the boy. “I might ignore the brother, but not that thing. Birds are filthy, carry lice and whatnot. I run a clean establishment.”

In general, Julian wasn’t given to fantasy. Kate probably could have come up with a better story, he thought, but they’d have to make do with his. Gesturing at Kate and Handsome, he said, “He’s not wild. My brother rescued him from a circus. Fire. From a circus fire. It was terrible. But he’s trained—the bird. My brother is too, but that goes without saying.”

Suspicious, Mrs. Bartow came around the desk. “What kind of training?”

Julian turned and prayed the bird would go along with the lies. “Handsome, come here.”

Hefting her arm, Kate urged Handsome into the air. Filling the foyer, Handsome swooped through the narrow space and dropped himself onto Julian’s shoulder. Whether out of habit or because he understood English, he nuzzled Julian’s cheek when he settled.

Secretly delighted, Julian reached up to stroke his feathers. “Say something for Mrs. Bartow.”

Ever accommodating, Handsome tipped his head to the side and croaked, “I can talk. Can you fly?”

Mrs. Bartow plastered a hand to her own cheek, looking from the bird to Julian then back again. Finally, she shook her head and retreated behind the desk again. “I won’t clean up after it. And you tell your brother the rules. One key only. What’s his name?”

“Kate,” Julian said automatically. Then, before Mrs. Bartow decided to study Kate any closer, Julian blustered, “My parents wanted a girl.”

Mrs. Bartow shooed him away. Sitting back behind the desk, she looked shocked, rather like a train had just missed hitting her.

As Julian led Kate down the hall to his room, he heard Mrs. Bartow repeating in wonder, “I can talk. Can you fly?”

***

The desk sergeant dumped a tin tray onto the desk and handed Caleb each item without fanfare.

All around them, the police station buzzed. Beat cops moved through like they were on fire; a whole row of chairs overflowed with people waiting to speak to an officer.

Typewriters snapped along at mad speed, each clack like a nail in Caleb’s temple. The welt over his brow had deepened to an impressive shade of purple, and his eye was well and truly black.

He stank of piss and of too many bodies crammed into lockup overnight. He’d spent another night in jail once, for the same damned reason. Amelia van den Broek was determined to ruin his life. All of it, even the miserable end of it.

“One box of matches. Seven inches white twine. Saint Nicholas medal. Tin snips. What in blazes is this thing?”

None too gently, Caleb snatched the silver tube from the sergeant’s hand. Its chain whispered when he unfurled it. Dropping it over his head, he took care to slip the tube into his shirt. It rested cool against his skin, slowly warming by touch. “It’s a locket.”

Dubious, the sergeant looked him over. But it was obvious he didn’t care enough to inquire further. He wouldn’t have been interested in the answer anyway—it really was a locket, with one of Sarah’s dark curls sealed inside.

“Wallet with two dollars,” the sergeant continued, “two dimes, a quarter, and a penny. There you are. Off you go.”

Caleb shoved his wallet into his pocket but frowned. “I had some bits of lead.”

Flipping open the log book, the sergeant ran his finger down the inventory. Then he laughed. “That’s right, three bullets. Sorry, pal, we’ll be keeping those.”