Velveteen (40 page)

Manny headed toward the staircase rather than the arched
entrances to the platforms. Velvet glanced at Nick and shrugged.

“Where are we going?” she yelled ahead.

Manny looked back over her shoulder and held her finger to her lips. “Secret,” she said.

“Because this is a good time for secrets,” Velvet snipped. “You know, this is something my team and I can handle.”

Manny ignored the comment and kept on. The last thing Velvet needed was the station agent’s tagging along to the Paper Aviary. It was too close to the alley. Too close to her lie.

Velvet winced at the smattering of people they passed, each face a study in exhaustion. Heads hung between knees and swayed with the sporadic shimmy of the floor. The rows of refugees could have been on a train, bound for anywhere, covered in the dust and ash from the building’s slow and shuddering collapse.

Eventually it would fall. That was very possible.
But please not now
, she thought.
Let the station stay up a few more hours. An hour. Something
.

They followed Manny up the stairs to her office on hands and knees, scrabbling over mounds that looked more like rock piles than risers. Once inside the office, they watched as Manny pulled back the pale blue curtains draped behind the empty space where the settee normally stood and led them into a dark cavernous space that Velvet hadn’t been aware existed.

She gawped in amazement. Manny, it turned out, was keeping a lot of secrets.

The walls here were made of brick, and small orbs of
gaslight cast a dusty glow onto a raised wooden beam, rounded at the top like a spectacularly elongated horse’s back. Between the lamps, thick swatches of leather hung from hooks, belts and carabiners attached to them. Velvet peered into the distance, where the hall-like room seemed to descend rapidly into darkness. A cliff of some kind.

“What is this?” she asked. “Some kind of slide?”

“Exactly.” Manny snatched one of the leather pieces from the wall and laid it across the wooden rail.

She strode across the room into the shadows and returned pushing a rolling cart. Atop it were metal teardrops, each affixed with a loop at the pointy end. With some effort she attached one to each of the four corners of the leather.

“So that’s like a sled?” Nick asked, and grimaced.

He shuffled out to the edge of the precipice, where the slide began its downturn. When he turned back toward them, he wore a look of terror. “It sure is steep.”

Manny straightened and looked them in the eye, one after the other. “The slides are built into the walls of every station in purgatory, as a means of escape should something happen. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s important to keep the Council of Station Agents safe, particularly in times of disaster and political unrest.”

They nodded.

She ran a hand across the smooth, oiled leather. “This slide will take us to the foot of the mountain, depositing us less than a mile from the Latin Quarter’s main square. We’ll be within a stone’s throw of the dorms and, if I’ve done my homework correctly, very close to the Paper Aviary, the shop
of Velvet’s friend, Mr. Fassbinder.” She winked at Velvet, but the sentiment seemed oddly forced.

Velvet wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Surely Manny wanted to stop the destruction. What would she gain from any of this? If anything, Velvet was the one being fake—going along with the station agent’s presence, when she didn’t want the woman anywhere near the epicenter of her lies. The closer they got to the alley, the closer Velvet would come to having her coil of secrets unravel. It was only a matter of someone mentioning that they’d used the secret crack to get to the station, before the station agent’s questions would start.

“How did you know it was there, Velvet?” Manny would ask.

“How did you know it was viable, Velvet?”

“How many times did you cross into the daylight without permission?”

And worse …

“What were you doing?”

Ugh. The answers would spell disaster for her future, she was sure of it.

Manny continued, “I have a good feeling about this. We’ll learn more from this origamist. We’ll learn enough to point us in the direction of an end.”

Velvet wasn’t so certain. She felt a familiar hopelessness begin to settle in. But she had to be hopeful for her team, or at least appear that way, so she nodded firmly for all of them to see.

It was Luisa who lifted her brow suspiciously, and Velvet
wondered if her carefully constructed lie was beginning to crumble.

Manny continued, “Each of you grab a swath of leather and fit it as I have. The weights will keep the leather snug against the wood slide.” She loosened the belts atop it. “These strap around the rider. Make them tight; it’s going to be a very quick ride.”

Velvet pulled another of the leather sleds from the wall and draped it over the slide.

Manny straddled the piece of leather, belting herself to it, and bucked herself backward toward the edge of the drop-off. She paused just before the slope. “Before you get on, slide the leather close to the drop-off. You don’t want to have to shift it as much as I did. Good luck!”

And with that, Manny thrust her hips and slipped backward into the blackness.

“Ohhhhhh, aaaaaand haaaang ooooooon!” Her voice echoed from the chasm, the last note stretching into a terrified scream.

“Sweet Jesus,” Nick said.

“Oh, what are you, scared?” Velvet teased, rubbing her arms. “Should I go first so you’ll want to get to me? Or do you need me to push you?”

Logan went next, shouting a high-pitched “Yahoo!” as he dropped out of sight.

“It’s gonna be fun, Nick. Don’t be a pussy,” Luisa said, and scooted down the incline without another peep.

Nick straddled the cowhide and looked up at Velvet, his worried expression shifting into something else. “How about I’ll go first, if you flash me a boob.”

Velvet rolled her eyes. “You think this is a good time for a negotiation?”

He shrugged.

She sighed and reached up toward her shirt seductively. Nick’s mouth dropped open, and just as he leaned forward with anticipation, Velvet rushed up to him and gave him a big shove, shifting the leather sled over the tiniest hump.

“Velvet?” he asked, hanging there for a moment, quivering. Then he was splitting the air as he slipped through space.

Velvet fastened the weights as they’d been instructed, jumped onto the flat of leather, and kicked off. The slide was much steeper than she’d expected and she fell forward clawing at the edges of the leather, squeezing her thighs around the wooden rail in a ridiculous attempt to slow her descent.

She clenched her teeth and closed her eyes. Her hair flapped around her face as she plummeted, and her stomach seemed to have detached and was making its way up through her other organs in some mad, self-serving attempt to be free of her body.

She fell through a cascade of pebbles, which caught in her mouth and hair, and a couple of times, the whole leather sled seemed to take flight for a moment.

She arrived with such speed that the echo of her voice, a scream she didn’t recall making, showed up a second after she reached the bottom. That sound gave way to another—welcome voices hooting and hollering and cheering the ride.

“What a rush!” Logan shouted.

She hopped off and threw her arms around Nick. “Wasn’t that fantastic?”

Nick’s jaw tensed. “Um.”

Velvet didn’t let him finish. Instead she quickly withdrew and socked him in the shoulder like a buddy before the others had a chance to question her affectionate embrace. “You can thank me later.”

She sped off after Manny and the twins, leaving Nick to catch his breath and his footing.

Manny had been right about one thing. The slide had ended in very close proximity to Mr. Fassbinder’s shop. As soon as they turned the first corner, Velvet recognized the cobblestone street. The street had been left mostly dark, from the ongoing quake and push of shadows, but a single globe of gaslight three blocks ahead lit up the advisor’s office, the Paper Aviary, and the alley that sat in between them.

The group trudged forward, and a familiar shape stepped from out of the darkness and into the cone of flickering light.

He stood close to the alley’s mouth, which told Velvet that the tentacles had moved on. The boy might have been as tough as stone, but no one who’d been coiled in the shadow’s grasp ever wanted to put themselves in danger of it again.

“Over here,” he called, waving them closer.

“Ah, Kipper, darling,” Manny said, clutching his shoulder dramatically. “Have you found our origamist?”

He shook his head slowly. “Shop’s closed. I’ve hammered on the door for ten minutes, and nothing. I figure he’s probably found shelter somewhere else. Or, you know …”

Velvet did know. Kipper had stopped short of implying that Fassbinder had escaped with the rest of the Departurists.

“Oh, dear.” Manny scowled. “That is disappointing.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Velvet said.

Manny studied Velvet intently. “How do you know?”

She shook her head. She guessed she didn’t want it to be true. “I don’t. He was just so adamant about helping us find Clay. Why would he do that if he wanted to depart himself?”

“Perhaps it was a ruse,” Manny suggested.

“A what?” Logan asked.

“A ruse,” Velvet repeated. “A trick to mislead us from the truth.”

“Oh.”

Velvet didn’t want to even think about what that meant. Mr. Fassbinder was her friend, he’d been like a father figure to her. She’d even fantasized that in a perfect world, they’d all still be alive and Mr. Fassbinder would sweep her mother off her feet, making her fall madly in love with both his quirky style and his knowledge of film.

She refused to believe that he was a traitor.

But just as she was about to rebut Manny’s statement, Nick appeared from the darkness of the alley. She flinched. What was he up to? Nick pulled her aside while Kipper and Manny continued their heated discussion, seemingly oblivious.

“What were you doing in there?” she asked.

“I went to search for this.” He held out the black box.

“Mr. Fassbinder’s gift?”

Nick shrugged. “It fell out of your pocket when you ran from salon tonight. I’d almost forgotten that I brought it with me when I followed you to the crack, but all this talk of origami reminded me.”

Velvet snatched it from his hand and tore it open. In her haste, the paper bird waiting inside fell to the ground and opened slightly. A strip of crimson poked out from a ruptured fold. Velvet squinted and crouched next to it.

She began to slowly unfold it, careful to avoid tearing the heavily creased paper. What she saw there chilled her to the bone.

The paper drifted to the floor, and Manny snatched it up.

Velvet knew exactly what the station agent was seeing.

She didn’t even have to look at her face to know that the woman was putting two and two together. And it wasn’t nearly the mathematics running through Velvet’s head. Mr. Fassbinder had lied about where he obtained his paper. He used the same paper as the one from the effigy, the ones in the memories she’d snatched from the banshee’s head.

With the same red panda logo.

He’d lied about everything, and Velvet’s heart was plummeting.

“What’s this, Velvet?” Manny asked.

Velvet’s voice was beyond shaky. She couldn’t control it. “It’s an origami bird that a friend gave me.”

“The origamist.” The station agent nodded, urging Velvet to continue.

Velvet’s mind was in a blender. Ideas, plots, predicaments, and motives whirred inside. Kipper had said that Clay had never left the Latin Quarter. The banshee had shown her that the Departurists were led by a master origamist. There was no one more masterful. She’d suspected.

She didn’t want to believe.

“Mr. Fassbinder is Aloysius Clay.” The words fell out of her mouth like bricks.

“Why would Clay do that?” Kipper scowled at her, judgment in his gaze. “Why would he send us on a path of discovery that would lead us right back to him? Why would he want to be found out?”

Mr. Fassbinder had seemed to connect with her on so many levels—their mutual love of film, of animals, birds in particular. There had been an easiness to their talks that had made her feel comfortable. Loved. Like when she’d spend time with her mother apart from her rambunctious brothers.

Why would he give himself away? Did he want her to know the truth on some level? He’d talked about the departure with such understanding, too. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Maybe he didn’t care—he was confident we wouldn’t be able to stop him,” Velvet announced finally.

She picked up the unfolded bird, the paper crinkled so completely that the opened folds looked like goose bumps on the sheet.

The realization struck her suddenly. “He loves the intricacy of his ruse. Just like the intricacy of his origami creations. There’s no one better than him at the art of mimicry. He doesn’t even look as Miss Antonia described. He’s completely different. Arty, even. He’s disguised himself in every way.”

“An egotist,” Manny agreed, nodding.

An ego is right
, Velvet thought. The man had tricked her
completely, getting her to believe he was her friend when really he had been using her as part of his plan somehow. She felt violated.

Livid.

And in moments like these, only one thing could help.

Revenge.

The display of
The Birds
scene in the front window of the Paper Aviary was destroyed. The big picture window lay in shards on the cobblestone, along with the black crows and even the miniature Tippi Hedren, crumpled and torn.

Velvet glanced in Nick’s direction, stone-faced and purposeful. She was back in the game, focused. Nick nodded and followed her as she crawled up over the ledge of the broken window and down into the shop. The great spiny globe lay against one wall, rattling and wheezing and chirping along with the slow rumble of the earth beneath them.

She glared at the thing, and the dream came back, only this time with clarity.

The monk parakeets had been Clay’s biggest clue, his great big cinematic metaphor. The one any self-described film aficionado would have figured out to begin with. Mr. Fassbinder was the one who was trapped. Purgatory was the prison.