THIRTY-ONE

The traffic light was nothing but a floating disc of lumis, two feet wide and red as a sunset. Fat gray pigeons fluttered through it while a hunched old woman crossed the street between tempic guardrails. A ghosted billboard stretched the length of the intersection, hawking heart-healthy breakfast cereal to idled drivers.

Zack leaned forward and craned his view at the near and distant streams of flying cars. He’d counted seven different levels of traffic when the light turned green, the billboard vanished, and the tempic rails gave way to open road.

Mia tapped his wrist. “Zack.”

He snapped out of his trance and pressed the gas pedal, marveling at the taxi in the rearview mirror. A true New York cabbie would have honked him into oblivion for dawdling at a green light. This wasn’t Zack’s city on any level. Calling this place New York was like calling a dog a zebra, or swapping the concepts of blue and yellow.

“This should be Soho,” he uttered. “I mean we came out of the Holland Tunnel, so . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what they call it now.”

Mia stroked his wrist with sympathy. Though she’d never set foot in the old New York, a future self had sold this world’s version as a paradise beyond description, beautiful enough to evoke tears. Now she glanced through dry eyes at the windblown scraps of litter, the garish assault of animated ads. Wrong again, she seethed. You just keep giving me bad information.

Amanda writhed uncomfortably in the backseat. She could feel every tempic construct within a half-block radius, a hundred cold fingers pressing her thoughts. Barricaded storefronts stretched along both sides of the street, each one ready to ripple and dance for their visiting queen.

“What time is it?”

David checked his watch. “Half past ten.”

She eyed the stores suspiciously. “Middle of a Tuesday morning. Why is everything closed?”

Hannah stroked her lip in bother. The whole city seemed eerily quiet at the moment. There were only a handful of pedestrians on each block, most of them dressed from head to toe in lily-white garments. A husky street vendor sold a wide assortment of white Venetian masks.

“Something weird is going on here.”

“It’s not just here,” said Zack. “Everything was closed in Jersey too.”

Mia’s eyes bulged at a masked young couple in white bathrobes and sneakers. The man brandished a hand-painted placard that said New York Thrives on 10-5.

“Commemoration,” she said.

“What?”

“Ten-five. Today’s the anniversary of the Cataclysm.”

The Silvers glanced out their windows with fresh unease. They recalled Sterling Quint’s discussion of the great temporic blast that destroyed half of New York City on October 5, 1912. The day had become a major holiday in the United States and a near-religious event here in the rebuilt metropolis.

The Arrow turned north onto 6th Avenue. Mia read the scrolling lumic banner that stretched above all lanes. This is our day, New York. The whole world is watching. Show them why this is the greatest city on Earth, now and forever.

Zack shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know if our timing’s really good or really bad.”

Mia plucked Peter’s day-old message from her shoulder bag and reread it. “We need to find a pay phone.”

“I’m looking.”

“Maybe we should look on foot,” Amanda suggested. “Get out and stretch our legs. If we can.”

One by one, the others checked on Theo in the front passenger seat. He’d spent the whole ride with his head against the window, twitching in restless slumber. Now his eyes were wide open and marked with deep red veins. His headaches had once again become bundled with visions, prophetic flashes too quick and obscure to make any sense. The only clear image he saw was Azral Pelletier. His harsh and handsome face popped up over and over, enough to erase all doubt. The white-haired man was coming back as sure as the moon, and probably sooner.

Theo glanced out at a distant flurry to the east. “I think I see where everyone went.”

—

The Ghostwalk was a ritual that dated back to the first Commemoration in 1913. It began as a silent procession down 3rd Avenue—fifty thousand mourners in white robes and masks, all marching for the souls of the lost. As the years progressed and cracked hearts slowly healed, the Ghostwalk grew a fluffy tail of musicians, dancers, and other sunny revelers who sought to honor the dead by celebrating life. The cavalcade expanded each year until it became known as the March of the Spirits.

Today the twin parades were joined in bipolar harmony, the yin and the yang, the grief and the joy. The event moved to Broadway in 1942, starting at 96th Street and ending at City Hall Park.

The Silvers caught the tail end of the Ghostwalk at 14th Street, at the corner of New Union Square. They hovered at the edge of the crowd, watching the parade through their newly purchased masks. They indulged the vendor when they saw aerocycle cops scanning the crowd from twenty feet above.

Mia felt ridiculous in her butterfly eye-mask, even though half the locals around her wore sillier disguises. She stood on her tiptoes in a vain attempt to peer over the wall of spectators.

David offered her a smirk and a hand. He looked like a superhero in his white domino mask.

“Let me give you a lift.”

Mia’s brow curled in worry. “You’re hurt.”

“My spine’s just fine. Come on.”

She climbed onto his back with wincing dread. To her amazement, he didn’t even grunt. Maybe she’d lost more weight than she realized.

“You sure this isn’t hurting you?”

“You’d know,” David sighed. “As you saw yesterday, I don’t handle pain very well.”

The procession continued past them. The majority of ghostwalkers wore plain white bathrobes. Some women sported snowy gowns. A few men were decked out in formal ivory vestments that had been passed down for three generations. The one item that never varied was the mask, an expressionless white face with black fabric eyeholes. The uniformity created an eerily powerful effect. For a moment Mia imagined she was watching the departed souls of her world, all the teachers and classmates and neighbors and cousins who didn’t get silver bracelets. And to think she’d snapped at the sisters for not realizing how lucky they were. She was alive. She was alive on the back of a beautiful boy with the heart of a lion and an unflinchingly deep regard for her. Mia never stopped replaying the scene on the highway, when David threatened to kill two Deps if they harmed a hair on her head. She wasn’t just lucky, she was blessed.

Mia locked her arms around David and heaved a warm sigh over his shoulder. “Don’t feel bad.”

“About what?”

“The way you acted yesterday. We don’t care about that. You’ve been there for us since day one and we love you. We’ll love you no matter what you do.”

She breathed a soft whisper into his ear. “I’ll love you no matter who you kill.”

Though the mask lay still on his impassive face, David’s voice carried a thin new tremor.

“You’re a rare and precious jewel, Miafarisi. I dread the day our paths diverge.”

Everyone turned to look as booming cheers erupted to the north. Exuberant music blared up the street. The last of the Ghostwalk was exiting the square. Now came the March of the Spirits.

Amanda crunched her brow behind her white burglar mask as confetti guns popped and the locals turned jubilant. The crowd had gone from funeral to Mardi Gras at the turn of a dime.

She sneaked an anxious peek at Zack, a parallel study in conflicting extremes. His rabbit-eared mask radiated levity while the eyes behind it screamed with bewilderment. He stood right next to her, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away.

She took his dangling hand in hers. “It has to be hard for you. Coming back to your hometown and finding it so different.”

Zack threw an antsy glance at the drugstore behind him, where a public phone lay encased inside an opaque metal cylinder. A red light on the door indicated that the tube was currently occupied.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like every big difference in this world can be traced back to the Cataclysm in one way or another. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised New York changed the most.”

The first of the parade platforms approached, ferrying a gorgeous young blonde in a star-spangled minidress. She crooned a bouncy tribute to New York into her microphone while a thirty-foot ghostbox displayed a giant live projection of her buxom upper half. Zack noticed the empty space beneath the platform’s hanging drapes. It seemed aeris had turned all the floats literal.

Amanda stroked his hand with her thumb, then grimaced in affliction when he pulled it away.

“Zack . . .”

“It’s all right. I understand.”

“Understand what? We haven’t had a chance to talk.”

He pursed his lips in a crusty scowl. “If it’s a ‘let’s just be friends after all’ speech, I don’t need to hear it. You’ve been wearing it on your face for the last seven hours.”

Amanda threw a quick nervous glance at David, five feet away.

“It’s not what you think,” she said to Zack. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to explain it.”

“You don’t have to explain anything. It happens. It’s not like we signed a contract.”

Amanda clenched her jaw. She knew Zack well enough to see the mask behind the mask. He was determined to play the breezy teflon shrugger until one of them screamed.

“Would you listen to me? I’m not backing out. There’s just . . . a new complication.”

Exuberant children in brightly colored jumpsuits lined every edge of the second float. They reached into buckets and flung foil-wrapped candies at the crowd. Zack gave Amanda his full attention, even as a chocolate coin sailed between them.

“I’m all ears.”

She shook her head. “Not now. When we’re alone again, and when you’re less angry—”

“I’m not angry.”

“No. Of course not. You’re just convinced I dropped my feelings for you on a fickle whim. Why would that anger you?”

“Well, what did you expect me to think? Yesterday we had a nice plan worked out. Today you can barely look at me. I’ve had seven hours to scratch my head over it. All I have now are a bloody scalp and a few second thoughts of my own. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe it’ll be easier for everyone if we just forget it.”

Tiny spikes of stress tempis hatched from Amanda’s feet, piercing the straps of her borrowed sandals. She banished away the whiteness, then cast a thorny glower at the parade.

“I swear to God, Zack, sometimes I think you’re played by twins. I never know which one of you I’m going to get.”

“Great. Maybe the four of us can go out for burgers sometime.”

“Go to hell.”

Amanda cut through the crowd, her jaw held rigid with forced composure. Zack tossed another glance at the pay phone before trading a desolate look with Hannah. She wished the two of them would get over their issues, whatever they were, and just screw already. She feared she and Theo were partly to blame for their hesitation. They didn’t provide the best sales brochure for the carpe diem hookup.

They sat side by side on an unattended shoeshine stand, their faces both covered in weeping theater masks. Theo’s head dipped and jerked erratically. Hannah couldn’t tell if he was asleep or lost in premonitions. She ran gentle fingertips up and down his forearm. The caress always seemed to soothe him, no matter how far gone he was.

“Where’s the happy face?”

Hannah jumped at the high voice next to her. A cute young brunette leaned against the wall. She wore a sleeveless white gown that hugged every contour of her elfin body. Her long brown tresses matched Mia’s hairstyle to the strand. If it wasn’t for the girl’s honey skin and vaguely Eurasian features, Hannah might have wondered if a Future Mia had sent herself back in time.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“You and your fella are wearing the same theater mask,” the stranger noted. “It’s supposed to be one happy face and one sad face. You know, Thalia and Melpomene. The Muses of comedy and tragedy.”

Hannah felt silly to be conversing through a disguise. She pulled it away. The girl studied her.

“Nope. Still sad, but prettier now. Damn, hon, you’re a scorcher. I bet you drive all the boys wild.”

The actress bloomed a bleak little grin. “Not enough to keep them.”

“You seem to be doing all right with that one.”

Hannah peered at Theo, oblivious in his torpor. “It’s not like that.”

“I wasn’t slapping a label on it. I just see the way you’re comforting him without a second thought or a ‘what’s in it for me?’ Whatever you are to him, he’s lucky to have you.”

It was the sweetest notion Hannah heard in days. But for all the girl’s rosiness, she wielded a sad face herself. She held a glossy mask in her hand, the plain white façade that Hannah had spotted ad nauseam five minutes ago.

“You were in that first parade.”

“The Ghostwalk. Yeah. I do it every year, though I never make it the whole way without losing it. I’m probably the only one who still cries about the Cataclysm. Everyone else is thinking about their aunt Jody or that dog who ran out in the road.”

“Well, you can hardly blame them. It happened a century ago.”

The girl shrugged tensely. “What can I say? I’m a slow griever.”

The next float ferried four lithe young women in black rubber speedsuits, prancing around the platform in slow ballet motions. Suddenly their gear glowed with patchwork strips of color and they swayed around each other in a hazy blur. Hannah watched in gaping astonishment as their streaking hues combined to form ethereal images—an ocean sunset, a city skyline, a crude American flag. The crowd cheered wildly with each new tableau.

Soon the quartet de-shifted and resumed their gentle mincing. The girl smiled at Hannah’s slack-faced awe.

“Guess you’ve never seen lumis dancers before.”

“No. That was incredible. Jesus. I don’t know how they do that without breaking a bone.”

“Years of practice,” said the girl. “Takes months to rehearse one routine. You should see what the Chinese do with it. Their stage shows are mind-blowing.”

“Do they have one here?”

“Here? God, no. You’d have to go to China.”

Hannah snorted cynically. “Yeah. That’ll happen.”

“Hey now. You never know. Someday someone might jaunt you around the world just to put a smile on that sexy face.”

“I don’t have until someday.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “Sweetie, you know you’re in trouble when a chick who just marched in a five-mile death parade is telling you to lighten up.”

Hannah smiled despite her mood. She realized how nice it would be to have a friend outside the group, a fun and witty galpal who could bring some sanity back to her existence. If only it were possible.

“I’m Hannah. What’s your name?”

The girl kept a busy stare on the parade. “Ioni.”

“Wow. That’s very pretty. It really suits you.”

“Oh stop it. I’m already a little gay for you. You’re just poking the fire.”

Hannah laughed. “If you can hide me from my life, Ioni, I’m all yours. You can have me any way you want.”

“Wow. That’s quite an offer. What exactly are you running from, Hannah?”

“Everything,” she sighed. “Everyone.”

“Even the people who need you?”

Hannah looked to her sister, staring down at the pavement in a somber daze. The thought that Amanda might need her was a strange new concept, as alien as anything in the parade.

“I don’t know. Part of me wants to run away on my own. Change everything about myself until no one can find me. The other part of me’s sick of travel. Sick of change.”

Ioni fixed a sudden nervous eye on Theo. She took a step from the wall.

“We’ve been running for so long,” Hannah continued. “It’s taking its toll on all of us. I don’t think we can last like this another—”

“Hannah, listen. I need you to stay calm, all right? Don’t make a scene.”

“What?”

Theo suddenly fell into violent seizures, shaking hard enough to knock his mask off. His eyes rolled back. His skin glowed with a faint and sickly sheen, as if he’d become his own ghost.

Ioni rushed to his side and pressed her fingers to his temples, bowing her head in concentration. Soon Theo’s luminescence faded and the convulsions stopped. He fell into restful sleep.

Hannah jumped out of her seat, bouncing her saucer gaze between Theo and Ioni. “What . . . what did you . . . ?”

“He peaked a little too early. I’m buying him some time.” Ioni threw a tense glare at the busy pay phone. “You guys really need to get to Peter.”

Hannah noticed the dual watches on Ioni’s right wrist, and suddenly scrambled to recall her secondhand knowledge of the mysterious stranger who’d approached Theo and Mia in the Marietta library. Odd that Mia had described her as a short-haired blonde. Odder still that Hannah didn’t notice her watches sooner. She must have deliberately hidden them behind the ghostmask in her hand. Ioni had been wearing her disguise all along.

Hannah scanned the backs of her other four companions, still occupied with the parade.

“Don’t call them,” Ioni urged. “I only came here to talk to you.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Calm down. I’m not your enemy.”

“Why should I believe you? You lied to me. Pretended you were a stranger.”

“I am a stranger, Hannah. If I had an ounce of sense, I’d stay that way. This isn’t my struggle.”

“Then why are you following us?”

“There’s no ‘us.’ Just Theo.”

“Why him?”

Ioni looked to Theo and sighed. “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that I have a special empathy for augurs, this one in particular. It gives me a modicum of comfort to help him through this rough patch.”

“Help him? You already hurt him!”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the one who told Mia to bring him to the health fair. We took your advice. If you knew what would happen—”

“I knew he’d get treated.”

“He got arrested!”

“And then he got treated,” Ioni replied. “In the augur game, it’s never a direct line from A to B. If you want things done, you have to make bank shots. Theo will learn that soon enough.”

Hannah shot her a baleful glare. “People got hurt.”

“People always get hurt. There’s no such thing as a perfect future. Someone always gets the pointy end.”

“Who are you?”

Ioni rubbed her weary face. “You can’t handle the answer. Not today. Just take comfort that I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. Once I’m done here, none of you will see me again for at least two years.”

Hannah looked to Theo. “At least tell me what you’re doing to him. Are you healing him?”

“There’s nothing to heal. These are just birth pains and they’re almost done. In thirty-eight minutes, he’ll be stronger than he’s ever been in his life.”

Hannah’s brow arched. “I want to believe that.”

“You’ll see soon enough. But listen, hon, it’s not all roses. By the end of the day, he’ll have a whole new burden. He’ll need you more than ever.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s been doing penny ante stuff up until now. Parlor tricks. Very soon he’ll know the true nature of his talent. Power like that can ruin a person, Hannah. You have to keep him anchored. You and Mia and Zack and Amanda, you’re his family now. Comfort him. Love him. Yell at him, if need be. Just don’t let him fade away into the futures. That’s where people like Theo become people like Azral. You do not want that.”

Ioni’s pretty young face twisted with hatred. She raised a stern finger.

“The time may come when you’ll be tempted to trust the Pelletiers. Don’t. They destroy worlds, Hannah. They destroyed yours twice.”

The actress felt a sharp flutter in her stomach as she tried to process all the new information.

“You’re right. I can’t handle this.”

“I said you couldn’t handle my story. I have every faith you can handle yours. I’ve seen you in times to come, Hannah. You’re magnificent.”

The actress flicked a hand in hopeless bother. “If you know so much about the future, then help us.”

“I just did.”

“Tell me something I can use to save someone I love.”

“Sweetie, I just did.”

Hannah clenched her jaw, exasperated. Ioni lay a gentle hand on her wrist.

“If I could fill your life with smiles and happy faces, I would. But the future doesn’t work that way. It’s a map that’s always changing. I can’t even guide you through the minefield of today without steering you wrong. All I can tell you is to be brave, be strong, be there for the people who need you. You do that and you’ll be okay.”

“If the future’s always changing, how can you be sure?”

Ioni bloomed a sage little grin. “There are some events in life that are so reliable, we don’t bother predicting them. The sunrise. The full moon. The rainbow after a storm. These are all things that can’t be stopped by mere mortals. You know what the augurs call them?”

“What?”

She took Hannah’s hand and breathed a soft whisper through her hair.

“Givens.”

Ioni kissed her cheek, then backed away. Hannah looked into her palm and found a small folded square of purple paper. A crude pencil drawing of a theater mask graced the front. A happy face.

Once Hannah glanced up again, the girl with two watches was gone.

She took a heavy gulp of air, then reclaimed her seat on the shoeshine stand. She fumbled with the seams of her paper construct until she gave up and stuffed it in her jeans pocket. Her hard drive was already overflowing with wild new data. She couldn’t take another byte.

Theo continued to twitch in somnolent anguish. Hannah stroked his arm with her fingertips, rolling Ioni’s words around her thoughts like boulders. You have to keep him anchored. You and Mia and Zack and Amanda, you’re his family now.

A cold flutter gripped Hannah’s heart when she caught Ioni’s glaring omission. Why didn’t she mention David?

The light on the pay phone turned green. The door swung open and a gaunt old woman exited the tube. Zack tapped Mia’s shoulder.

“You’re up.”

—

She fed enough coins into the slot to buy twenty-six minutes. A recorded voice asked her to close the tube door and kindly spare others from her business. Mia ignored it.

While she listened to the dulcet chirps of Peter’s ringing phone, she cleared her throat and peeled off her silly mask. As if he’d see you, she chided herself. As if he’d judge.

Zack paced her side like an expecting father, doubling her anxiety. She forced her gaze past him, onto the bulky gray bank machine that stood against the neighboring wall. It reminded her of a video poker console with its seven large buttons and crude pastel graphics. A dark glass beacon rested on top like a novelty fez. She assumed it only flared in the event of criminal tampering.

After two minutes and thirty rings, Amanda and David joined Zack in his fretful hovering. Mia shrugged in tense surrender, then hung up. Loose coins drizzled into the return tray.

“You sure you got the number right?” David asked her.

“Yeah. I double-checked.”

“Try again in a few minutes,” Amanda said. “He could just be—”

The pay phone rang. Mia leapt at the handset, plugging her free ear with a finger. “Hello?”

A taut male voice filled the receiver. “What’s your name?”

“What?”

“Your name. Say it.”

“Mia. Mia Farisi.”

The voice loosened up. “All right. Just had to make sure. You guys in the city?”

“Yeah. We’re here. Can you—”

“And you’re together. All six of you.”

“Yes. We’re all together. Can you just ease my mind and confirm that you’re—”

“Peter Pendergen,” he replied. “You called my house a few weeks back and spoke to my son Liam. The two of you had a misunderstanding about the definition of ‘pen pal.’ Better?”

Mia sighed contentedly. “Yes. Thank you. And I’m sorry about that call. If I put him in danger—”

“No. He’s fine. My people would never hurt him. Listen, I’m being watched. I don’t have much time. You got a pen and paper?”

“Yeah. Always.”

He dictated an address in the Battery Park district of Manhattan and then, with a brusque impatience that bothered her, made her read it back.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said. “Come as quick as you can.”

“Okay, but can you bring whatever painkillers you have? Theo’s—”

He hung up before she could finish. Mia kept a dubious stare on the receiver.

“Everything all right?” Zack asked.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. He just seemed nicer in his letters.”

Amanda moved to the shoeshine stand, flanking Theo’s side while Hannah gently shook him awake. He blinked at the sisters in drowsy puzzlement, then surveyed the parade.

“What . . . what are we doing back here?”

“We never left,” Amanda said.

Hannah rubbed his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“No. I’m confused. Last thing I remember, we were picking you both up from the roof.”

“What roof?”

He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. I feel weird.”

Hannah fumed at Ioni. What the hell did you do to him?

“We’re going to see Peter now,” Amanda told him. “Are you okay to walk?”

Theo nodded unsteadily. “Yeah. I can walk.”

As the group regathered, Mia took a final glance at the bank machine. She knew they were called “cashers” here and that they were maintained by the state government. They could be used to pay taxes and traffic tickets, even renew a drinking license.

Behind the dark round glass on top of the console, the civic camera continued to fix on Mia. It knew a few things about her as well.

—

Melissa snapped awake in her swivel chair, dazed and half-blind. She brushed the dreads from her face and glanced around the narrow van. A chubby young blond in a sweatsuit yawned at his surveillance console. He was yet another unfamiliar face from the Manhattan DP-9 office. Melissa had dozed right through a shift change.

She arched her sore back. “Did I miss anything?”

“No ma’am,” the agent replied.

Quarter Hill was located fourteen miles north of the city, a wealthy little hamlet nestled snugly inside a ten-foot tempic wall. The gates were guarded by a security firm that had been cited several times by police for overzealous force.

Melissa peeked over the agent’s shoulder at the thermal imaging display, where two orange silhouettes casually moved around the dark blue backdrop of a living room. From all indications, Peter Pendergen led a perfectly mundane life. When he wasn’t typing away at his latest novel or debating Irish history on Eaglenet forums, he lounged around the house with his thirteen-year-old son. If anything, it was the hint of anguish in Liam Pendergen’s voice that suggested something wasn’t right.

The conversation in the living room came to a halt. The father took his son by the shoulders and drew him into an embrace. The directional microphones picked up a gentle whisper.

“Call your team,” Melissa said. “Tell them to get ready. Pendergen’s about to move.”

“What did he say? I couldn’t hear it.”

“Neither could I. But that’s a good-bye hug if I ever saw one.”

Her handphone beeped with a new text message. She pulled it from her pocket.

Case Lead Alert. Oct-5. 11:07am. Civic Camera #NYS-55-1948C (New Union Square). Sighted: Farisi, Mia. Kidguard Facial Recog: 98%.

Melissa opened her computer and logged into the camera alert network. It had been four weeks since she added the ghosted images of the fugitives to the facial map database. As minors couldn’t be entered into the Blackguard registry of criminals at large, she threw David and Mia into Kidguard, the archive of missing children. The effort finally paid off.

Her screen displayed a grainy still photo of the group’s youngest member. Mia cradled a pay phone handset and scribbled something into her ever-present journal. Three tall people stood behind her. Though their masks prevented the camera from making positive IDs, Melissa had no trouble recognizing David, Zack, and Amanda.

As she phoned the local office, she kept her somber gaze on Mia’s frozen image. Should have kept your mask on.

Rosie Herrera was Melissa’s equivalent at the New York DP-9 branch, a stout and square-jawed matron who endlessly groused about the Bureau’s glass ceiling. Fortunately, she wasn’t too jaded to help.

“They can’t have gotten far,” she told Melissa. “Let me call my guy at the precinct.”

“No. The police aren’t prepared to handle these people. All I need is your fastest ghost team at Union Square. The girl wrote something in her book. I’m guessing it’s a new meeting address.”

Melissa’s phone beeped with an interrupting call from a person marked simply as Nameless. She narrowed her eyes at the screen.

“Rosie, hold on.” She switched lines. “Cedric?”

Cain chuckled. “Professional pointer: when a shade hides his name, you don’t say it out loud.”

“Look, this isn’t the best time . . .”

“I know. I got the same alert you did. Don’t bother with the ghost drills. In five minutes, I’ll know exactly where your runners are headed.”

Melissa’s stomach churned as she tried to guess his methods. Integrity’s resources were as frightening as their freedoms.

“I see,” she replied. “So this is an anonymous tip then.”

“No. That’s coming. This is just a heads-up warning to gather your forces and gather them big, because you’ve got one last chance to bring these people in. They get away this time, it’s out of my hands. They’ll become Integrity’s problem, and vice versa.”

Melissa rubbed her aching back. “I understand.”

“Good. Make your calls. Get ready for mine. And next time, don’t say my name.”

He hung up. Melissa heaved a loud breath, then switched lines again. “Rosie?”

“Yeah. I’m here. You still need that drill team?”

“No. Now I need everyone.”

The young agent leaned forward in his chair, baffled by the thermal scanner. A moment ago, there were two orange figures on the monitor. Now there was just one. In the blink of an eye, Peter Pendergen had vanished.

—

Battery Park was one of the few areas of Manhattan that had to be rebuilt twice. In August of 1931, a clash between police and pro-immigrant protesters erupted into a citywide riot known as the Deadsetter’s Brawl. It culminated with a massive blaze that killed 112 people and destroyed half the new buildings on Battery Place.

Today the street was a posh and pristine beauty, flanked by acres of lush greenery to the south and sleek glass office towers to the north. Commemoration had turned the business side into a tranquil void. Pigeons merrily strutted about the concrete, free to forage without the usual human bustle.

Zack found a parking spot mere yards from their destination, a twelve-story structure of sloped steel and mirrors. The entire ground floor was enclosed in a thick sheath of tempis.

Amanda swept a nervous scan of the area. “So where is he?”

“Inside,” Mia guessed. She motioned to the four-foot metal post that stood near the barrier. “There’s the buzzer.”

“Seems like a strange place to meet. I mean, why here?”

“I’m sure it’s all just part of the zigzag,” Zack speculated. “He’s dodging his own people as well as the Deps.”

Hannah tapped a tense beat into her thigh. She didn’t have the strength to tell her companions about her encounter at the parade. Now she reeled in the dark subtext of Ioni’s comments. She’d called today a minefield. What if this was the first bad step?

They chose to travel light for their rendezvous, limiting themselves to one knapsack each. Zack nestled the last of their cash in a front flap. The sisters combined their essentials into one bag, saving their strength for an ailing Theo. They propped him up like crutches and walked him to the building.

Mia hunched over the intercom and pressed the call button.

“Uh, hello? Peter?”

After five seconds of silence, a ten-foot square of tempis melted away to reveal a pair of swinging glass doors. They unlocked with a hollow click.

The Silvers moved dazedly through a brushed stone foyer, past the unmanned security desk. The directory listed fifty-four different companies in the building, everything from law firms to placement agencies for corporate augurs. Zack swallowed a daffy chuckle when he noticed a nonprofit advocacy group called the Justice League of America.

Suddenly the tempis sealed up behind them, blocking the doors like a snowdrift. Hannah fixed her round white eyes at the barrier.

“I don’t like this.”

“If Peter wanted to hurt us, he would have done it already,” Zack insisted. “He could’ve killed us all in our sleep at that old man’s house.”

Amanda eyed him cynically. “The Pelletiers don’t want us dead either. Doesn’t mean they have good intentions.”

Zack looked to David. “This is the part where you say something smart and assuring.”

The boy had little to offer at the moment. A bad bump of the arm had set his wounds on fire. Between the agony in his hand and the area’s screaming history, David could barely hold a thought. He cast a blank stare down the hallway.

“We came a very long way to meet this man. Might as well finish what we started.”

The hallway soon opened up to a gargantuan lobby of polished green marble. Four towering ghostboxes swirled with abstract holograms while a bubbling stone fountain filled the area with serene white noise. Above the four balcony levels, a giant lumic projection of clear blue sky turned the chamber into a synthetic courtyard.

Mia looked around with discomfort. This stony paradise reminded her too much of the Pelletier lobby in Terra Vista. What if Peter was merely another Sterling Quint in waiting? What if they’d traveled 2,500 miles just to come full circle?

“Hello at last.”

The Silvers threw their busy stares around the lobby, and soon discovered a brown-haired man sitting alone among the many sofa clusters. He propped his feet on a coffee table and shined them a guarded smile.

“You’ve been through stitch and strain, my friends, but you did it. You’re here. Now the hard part’s over and you get some well-deserved rest.”

He motioned them over. “Come. Sit.”

He was dressed in a simple blue button-down over jeans, with white running shoes that were faded at the soles. His feathered hair was peppered with hints of gray and his steel-blue eyes were marked with gentle crow’s-feet. Even while lounging, the man radiated a coarse virility. He was a Hollywood gumshoe in color, an Indiana Jones between sequels. Hannah figured he was the type of man she’d go wobbly for in ten to fifteen years, when she was finally done with moody creatives.

Amanda looked at his handsome face and saw a hint of something that bothered her, the same artificial cheer that Derek had always carried around terminal patients.

“You’re Peter Pendergen.”

“That I am,” he replied, in the same curt voice that had ruffled Mia over the phone. “Which pretty sister are you?”

“Amanda.”

“Ah yes. The formerly incarcerated. Glad to see you guys got out of that fix in one piece.” His gaze wandered to Theo, still lost in a harrowed daze. “Mostly.”

Mia took the farthest easy chair in the cluster. “So . . . what happens now?”

“Now we talk of a great many things. If you like what I have to say, then we move on together. If not . . .” He forced a nonchalant shrug. “We go our separate ways with no hard feelings.”

Zack perched on the arm of Mia’s chair. “You sure it’s safe to talk here?”

“Normally it wouldn’t be, but you did a good thing by coming on Commemoration. I paid off the few security guards on duty. We have the whole building to ourselves.”

He looked to David, shuffling restlessly behind a love seat. “Have a seat, lad. I don’t bite.”

“It’s okay. I’d rather stand.”

Theo moaned with pain and bedlam as the sisters walked him to the sofas. His consciousness had become a rapid-fire montage of premonitions, all as vivid and real as the present. He dodged falling debris in San Francisco and lay dying on a street in Washington, D.C. He danced at Zack’s wedding and cried at Mia’s funeral. He shouted with joy as he watched Amanda soar above him on butterfly wings of aeris. He saw Hannah in more iterations than he could count. She stood tall and proud over every corner of his future.

This man in front of him stood nowhere.

As Theo cast his bleary eyes on the brown-haired stranger, his foresight screamed at him. He fell to his knees and screamed back.

Hannah and Amanda dropped to his side. “Theo!”

“What happened?”

He gritted his teeth, curling his fists. “Not him . . .”

The man rose to his feet, peering at Theo over the cushions. “What’s the matter with him?”

“We were hoping you knew,” Zack said.

“That’s why I asked you for painkillers,” Mia complained.

He threw a quick and helpless glance at the upper railings, then turned back to Theo. “Look, why don’t we get him to the sofa, all right?”

Amanda felt his sweaty forehead. “He’s burning up.”

“Just get him to the sofa and stay here. I’ll find a first aid kit.”

“Not him,” Theo wheezed. “That’s not Peter.”

Now the other five Silvers eyed their host in wide alarm. He stopped and turned around, his hands raised defensively.

“Look, I don’t know what your friend is suffering, but I assure you I’m Peter Pendergen. I can prove it. Just let me . . .”

David caught a reflective glint on the balcony. His eyes popped wide.

“GET DOWN!”

“Hannah!”

Theo pulled her down just as a hissing bullet struck the floor beyond her. A second shot shattered the lamp next to Zack. He fell off the chair.

Mia barely had a chance to process the gunfire when she saw the false Peter run away in a speedy blur. Her mind stammered with shock. He shifted. He shifted. He’s a—

Zack grabbed her and yanked her down, just as a bullet cracked the arm of her chair. He pulled her under the coffee table.

Amanda’s thoughts turned white, and a geyser of tempis erupted from her hands. It quickly bloomed into a crude but massive shield that covered the sisters and Theo. She had no idea if tempis could stop bullets until she heard two gunshots and felt a pair of agonizing stings in her thoughts, like hot knitting needles. She shrieked and toppled to the ground, her barrier vanishing in a blink. A pair of crushed bullets dropped to the marble.

David was the last to stand his ground, caught like a pinball between reason, panic, and rage. For the boy who could dredge up the past, it was easy to look back thirty-one hours and relive his recent errors. He’d hurled a gunshot noise at an armed and twitchy Dep, a foolish move that cost him two fingers. Now he waltzed right into an ambush, ignoring his instincts as this false Peter Pendergen tried to get him to stand still for the rifle scopes.

No more mistakes, he thought, and then dredged up the past again.

The lobby suddenly filled with screaming people and flames, a spectral re-creation of the great blaze that engulfed Battery Place in August 1931. Firemen in tin helmets ran back and forth with axes while smoldering wooden furniture lay juxtaposed among the sleek sofas of the present. The images were so realistic that Hannah shrieked with pain when her arm fell into fire. It took three full seconds to realize she wasn’t burning.

“What’s happening?!”

Amanda seized her arm, shouting above the ghosted din. “It’s David! He’s giving us cover!”

“Where is he?”

The pair frantically looked around, but they couldn’t see anything through the eighty-year-old smoke. Amanda flinched when a burning woman ran through her.

“I don’t know! We’ll get Theo out and come back!”

The sisters struggled to ferry Theo through forty yards of ghosted chaos, retreating all the way to the entry hall. Amanda jostled the knob of a utility door, then broke it open with a tempic shove.

They scrambled down a narrow white hallway, its concrete walls echoing with loud clamor. Hannah kicked open the first door on the left, a locker room for security guards. Wooden batons hung from wall hooks while a leaky faucet dripped into a moldy sink.

Amanda swatted the towels from a bench and sat Theo down. He panted with strain, still lost in branching futures. He glimpsed David four minutes from now. Through a half-bloody face, the boy calmly asked Theo not to tell the others about the awful thing he just did.

“I won’t . . .”

Hannah kneeled by his side. “What?”

“I don’t know. I’m all . . . I’m all messed up.”

Amanda doused a towel and dabbed it against his forehead. Hannah looked at her nose.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Huh?”

The widow ran a finger under her nostrils, then shook the blood off.

“It’s okay. It’s from the tempis. We need to find the others.”

The thundering ruckus from the lobby came to a stop. Hannah and Amanda hurried back to the hallway to see a lone figure stagger through the archway. Blood poured from a thin gash in his forehead, striping the left side of his face.

The sisters ran to him. “David!”

“Are you hit?”

He closed his eyes and leaned on Amanda as she walked him into the maintenance hall.

“I tripped over a coffee table. Smacked my head on the edge.”

“Where are Zack and Mia?”

He glanced behind him, throwing flecks of blood. “I thought they came this way. You didn’t see them?”

“No.”

Hannah covered her mouth. “Oh my God . . .”

“Shit. Shit!” David broke away from Amanda and unslung his knapsack. Between his T-shirts and spare jeans lay the two compact service pistols he’d seized from his Dep hostages. Each one was loaded with a dozen .40 caliber rounds.

Amanda bounced her hot green stare between the gun and David. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“Going back for them.”

“The hell you are. You cracked your head open. You probably have a concussion.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“No you won’t!” Hannah yelled. A half hour ago, Ioni painted a quick glimpse of the future that had suspiciously omitted David. Now the actress had a dark hunch why.

“Amanda and I will find them. You go in there and watch over Theo. Keep him safe.”

“Look, I’m telling you—”

“And I’m telling you, David, if you don’t listen to me right now, I’ll never speak to you again!”

David eyed her with wide surprise, then plucked the baton from Hannah’s hand. He thrust a pistol in its place. “Okay, but you’re not going out there with that stick. These people are shooting on sight. You can’t give them the chance.”

While Hannah tested the frightening weight of Ross Daley’s weapon, Amanda took a cautious peek into the lobby.

“Those can’t be Deps. I mean they wouldn’t just fire at us. Would they?”

Like Mia, David had seen the false Peter Pendergen flee the scene in a streaking blur. These weren’t Melissa’s people at all.

—

Rebel dropped his rifle against the wall and scratched his stubbly head. He’d dressed for battle like he was going to the gym—black T-shirt and sweatpants, white high-top sneakers. He didn’t bother with the bandana mask this time. His wife had commandeered all the security cameras an hour ago while Mercy Lee flooded the lobby with enough solic static to ensure that the Deps wouldn’t see a thing in their ghost drills. They’d taken a day and a half to set this trap. Everything had gone flawlessly until forty-one seconds ago.

He pressed his collar mic and summoned his team back to his perch on the mezzanine. One by one, they returned—four men and one woman, each from a different family. They were all inexperienced in long-range weapons, but desperate times had motivated them to learn.

Freddy Ballad, a tall and stringy blond of twenty, threw his hands up in fluster. “What happened?”

Rebel shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maranan got wise.”

“Gemma said the augur wouldn’t be a problem.”

The shrill voice of a ten-year-old girl hissed through their earpieces. “I said he probably wouldn’t be a problem.”

Freddy snarled into his mic. “It’s your job to be sure.”

“And it was your job to shoot the Aussie before he pulled any ghost tricks. How did that work out?”

“Enough,” Rebel snapped. “Freddy, settle down. Gemma, I don’t want to hear another word out of you unless it’s intel.”

“I’m working on it.”

With a hot blast of air, Bruce Byer de-shifted at the edge of their gathering, flushed with exertion and rage.

“You idiots could have shot me!”

Rebel frowned. He knew Bruce was a self-serving coward, like all Byers. But he was a skilled actor who strongly resembled Peter. No one was better suited to bait the hook.

“Calm down. We knew you’d clear the lobby.”

“Really? Like you knew the sick yellow chinny would catch on?”

Mercy Lee gripped her rifle with ire. The willowy young woman was a daughter of the clan’s last pure Asian family, though one could hardly tell from the excessive amount of mascara she wore.

“Stow it, penis. No one’s in the mood for your mouth dump.”

“I said enough.” Rebel rubbed his eyes, then checked his watch. “In eight minutes, this place’ll be crawling with Deps. We gotta work fast.” He pressed his earpiece. “That means you, Gemma.”

“I got it. I got it. Trillinger and Farisi went east. They’re hiding in the office cubes. Looks like one of them’s bleeding.”

“What about the others?”

“Dormer and Maranan are in the maintenance hall. Not sure which part but . . . God.”

“What?” Rebel asked. “Are they going to be a problem?”

“No. It’s the Givens you need to worry about. In ninety-one seconds, they’ll come back through the southern arch. They are . . . Jesus, you guys have to be careful. They’ve gotten stronger. A lot stronger.”

Rebel took an anxious breath. He’d learned to listen to Gemma Sunder’s warnings. The girl saw things no one else could.

“All right. Freddy, you go after the boy and the augur. Forget the rifle. Just do what you do.”

Freddy smiled. His fists encrusted with spiky tempis. “Now we’re talking.”

“I want the rest of you on the sisters. Take them out. Do it fast. Mercy . . .”

The young woman nodded nervously. She knew she was Rebel’s ace in the hole. “I’ll be ready for them.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes at Rebel. “Where are you going?”

No one else had to ask. The cartoonist who’d rotted Rebel’s hand was in this building right now, hiding in the office cubes.

“Just help the others,” he told Bruce. “You all know what’s at stake here. Go.”

They dispersed. As Rebel hurried to the eastern door, Ivy’s dulcet voice rang through his earpiece.

“You be careful, Richard. You hear me? You kill them all and come back alive.”

Rebel pulled out his new revolver and checked the chambers. He’d been woefully unprepared in Terra Vista. It cost him six people and a hand. He knew better now. He was ready.

—

The sisters stopped at the lobby entrance, their heartbeats pounding in synch. Amanda choked back a scream and squeezed her golden crucifix. Please, God. Please let Zack and Mia be all right.

Hannah watched her sister’s teary prayer and suddenly rued her own agnosticism. She always saw higher meaning as something outside her reach, like fractal math or long-term monogamy. As the gun dangled in her quivering hand, all the actress could conjure was Ioni’s bright assurance. The sunrise. The full moon. The rainbow after a storm. These are all things that can’t be stopped by mere mortals. You know what the augurs call them?

“Givens,” she muttered.

“What?”

Hannah looked at her sister through moist eyes. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what they fought about this morning. She couldn’t fathom why they wasted any of their precious time on battles.

“I love you.”

Warm tears rolled down Amanda’s cheeks. “I love you too, Hannah. I love you more than anyone. As soon as you get in there, you go as fast as you can. You don’t slow down for a second.”

Hannah wiped her eyes. “I won’t.”

“I will not lose you today.”

“You won’t,” Hannah said. It occurred to her that she wasn’t entirely faithless after all.

“Are you ready?”

They clasped fingers in the dainty little way of children, and then anxiously pulled apart. Amanda coated her hands with shiny white tempis. Hannah shifted into the blue.

The Great Sisters Given stepped forward into the fray.