WHEN HE WAS LITTLE, Simon was afraid of escalators. There was something about the appearance of the steps, each one with its own little set of metal teeth, the whole thing moving around and around like a song on endless loop. Mom and Dad had tried everything—carrying him on their hip, lifting him onto the first step, holding his hand while they counted to three before encouraging him to kick out one tentative foot, like testing the water before jumping into the pool—but none of it worked. Simon would just hang back nervously, refusing to have anything to do with it, his eyes large in his pale face.
But one day, near Christmastime, as Mom and Dad tried to coax him onto the escalator at a department store, Ruby simply took his hand in hers and began to lead him away. They marched past the makeup counters with their clouds of perfume, past the stiff-looking Christmas tree with its painstakingly placed ornaments, past the menswear section, where the neckties hung like streamers from the walls. Ruby didn’t have to look back to know that Mom and Dad were behind her, following closely, and she led them all around the corner to where she’d glimpsed an elevator earlier.
Simon looked so plainly relieved at the sight of the shiny metal doors that Dad could only laugh, but Mom bent down so that her face was close to Ruby’s.
“It’s nice of you to take care of your brother,” she said softly, so that no one else could hear; Simon was busy jabbing at the up button. “But he’s going to have to do it eventually. If you don’t face your fears, how can you ever get over them?”
The doors to the elevator dinged open, and Ruby pointed. “You just find another way up,” she said as Simon bounded inside, punching the button for the second floor.
From inside the elevator, Dad had his foot wedged against the door to hold it open. But Mom was still watching Ruby with an odd expression, a look of amusement in her eyes.
“Find another way up,” Mom murmured after a moment, placing a hand on Ruby’s back to guide her onto the elevator. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
But that had always been how Ruby’s mind seemed to work; if there were two possible answers to a problem, either A or B, then Ruby was always on the lookout for C. If the escalator wasn’t going to work, there must always be an elevator somewhere.
There was always another way up.
And now, standing grimly beside her brother in a different elevator—this one far less festive, far less inviting—Ruby found herself thinking again of that moment.
Nobody had said a word since the elevator had begun its slow climb, and this was more unnerving than anything else. London remained at the very front, standing absolutely still, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched each floor slip by through the slats in the grate. The red-haired man leaned into the corner, his considerable weight cushioning him, and he had one hand resting on the emergency lever. Ruby kept cutting her eyes in his direction, willing him to pull it, but his gaze was fixed on the floor, his eyebrows lifting anxiously now and then.
Beside her, Simon had gone as jittery as a mouse. Whatever defiance he’d shown to London’s face seemed to disappear as soon as the man turned his back, and now one of his eyelids was twitching. Ruby let out a deep breath as they passed the twelfth floor. It felt a bit like they were on a roller coaster, those moments of churning anticipation, her insides like something coiled and ready to spring, though she was pretty sure there was nothing good at the end of this ride, no free-falling, cartwheeling glee.
Even so, with each passing minute, she felt a great calm begin to overtake her. Somewhere around the eighteenth floor, Simon’s breathing started to become raspy, a choked wheeze that nobody else seemed to notice. But at the same time, Ruby could sense a kind of steadiness of her own, and the clanging of the elevator as it rose seemed to tap into something deep inside her, a calming rhythm as clear as Morse code, constant as a drum and true as a heartbeat. Up they climbed, the numbers painted on each floor moving into the twenties, and then the thirties, and finally the forties.
Beyond this, at the very top, the elevator slowed and then jerked to a stop. It was enough to unbalance Simon, who half fell into Ruby. The elevator operator clearly wasn’t sure what to do now that they’d arrived, and so he continued to hover near the emergency brake, despite the fact that they were already stopped. When the metal had quit shuddering and the elevator car had gone still, London spun around.
“Come with me,” he said, as if they had another choice, and then he flung open the grate, turning around only once to give the red-haired man a hard look, in case he had any notion of following them, too. He didn’t; the moment Ruby and Simon had stepped out of the elevator to where London was waiting in an area the size of a closet, the gate banged shut behind them and the man wrenched at the down lever.
The three of them stood and watched as he was lowered back into the building, disappearing from view a slice at a time, first his feet, then his knees, and so on until all they could see were his eyes, watery and nervous. And then they were gone, too.
Simon seemed to have regained some of his courage, and he was now glowering at London, his face dark. Ruby had only a moment to glance around at the concrete walls of the vestibule before London yanked open a heavy gray door marked NO ADMITTANCE and a blast of wind rushed in, forcing them to shield their eyes.
London waited, holding it open, and after exchanging a glance with Ruby, Simon went first, moving tentatively out onto the blackened surface of the roof, hundreds of feet in the air, where only the very tops of the other skyscrapers interrupted the cloudless sky.
The wind continued to whip at them, stinging Ruby’s eyes, and she squinted at London as he began to walk over to the ledge, his dark jacket flapping wildly behind him. When he was near the wall, he turned around and crooked a finger at them, and Ruby and Simon—still rooted in place near the door—reluctantly picked their way across the uneven surface of the roof, hovering a few feet back from the edge.
“Do you know why I brought you up here?” he asked, his voice raised against the wind.
“To toss us over the side of the building?” Simon suggested.
London smiled. “So that you could see all this.”
“We’ve already seen it,” Ruby said. “Nobody’s in the mood for sightseeing.”
“Come,” London said, laying a spindly hand on the wall, and it seemed they had no other choice but to inch over to the edge, where a concrete barrier that came up to their necks surrounded the periphery of the roof.
Taking a deep breath, Ruby looked out across the city, the dazzling height of the buildings, the shining surfaces turning the sunlight to splinters. When she glanced over at Simon, she could see that his eyes were busy at the horizon, and Ruby followed his gaze to the great expanse of Lake Michigan, vast as an ocean and silvery as a coin.
The wind whistled and the building moaned, but otherwise there was nothing; Ruby couldn’t even hear herself breathe, and so she was surprised when a sound drifted up from below, faint and thin. She rose onto her tiptoes to see what it was.
At first there was only the dizzying drop and the steep angle of the building, forty-seven floors of sheer distance. But when she looked again, craning her neck to the left, she saw two men balanced on a narrow platform with railings on all sides, washing the windows just a few floors down. The whole thing was rigged up to a series of cables with a pulley to send them up and down the building, and they were laughing as they scrubbed at the windows, as if they were hundreds of feet below, their feet firmly on the ground. Ruby stepped away from the ledge, feeling light-headed, and she saw that Simon had done the same.
“You see that?” London said, pointing at a few thin columns of smoke in the distance, off to the south of the city. “That’s why I brought you up here.”
“What is it?” Simon asked.
“It’s just one example,” he explained, pacing near the edge of the building. “Just one of the many examples of how people are destroying this planet. They cut down the forests, and then act surprised when there’s erosion. They pump smoke and chemicals into the atmosphere, and then can’t believe that the climate is changing.” He paused to look at them, his eyes glinting. “When Sophie died, it was Otis’s fault for taking her there, and then for not getting her out. But it was also the idiot who threw a cigarette into the woods,” he said. “And this is why they need to be taught a lesson.”
Simon looked impatient. “If you care so much about the Earth, why not show people how to take care of it, instead of making it worse?”
“Why should I help them?” London said, spinning around to face the city, so that his words were whipped behind them. “Nobody has helped me.” He stood there for a moment, his hands on the ledge, his shoulders rounded. And when he turned around again, he was smiling. “Except you.”
Ruby took a small step backward. “We’re not helping you.”
“No,” he agreed. “You’re not. But Simon will. As soon as that compass spins, we’ll begin our work together.”
“No,” Simon said, the word landing heavily between them. He stepped forward until he was only a few feet from London, and he stood there glaring at him, his feet braced and his T-shirt blowing around his skinny frame. His eyes blazed, and he looked so angry that for a moment, Ruby could almost see what everyone was talking about, the potential in Simon, the possibility of greatness, the magic of it all. But then the wind fell abruptly all around them, the world going still, and he was just a boy again, his hands clenched into fists, his chin jutted angrily.
“I’m sorry,” London said, waving a hand around him, and Ruby realized that he was the one who’d stopped the wind, and the magnitude of that—of that one impossible act—settled heavily over her. He tilted his head at Simon. “I couldn’t quite hear you with all that noise.”
But Simon didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his hands the way he had that night on the road, and with his eyes squeezed shut, he snapped them in London’s direction, a movement so purposeful, so powerful and full of intent, that Ruby was almost more stunned that nothing happened than she might have been if something had.
But it was indeed nothing, and Simon dropped his hands again in defeat.
London began to laugh. “And what was that supposed to be?” he asked. “Rain? Snow? Lightning? Wind?” At this last word, right on cue, the wind picked up again, so suddenly that Ruby stumbled forward as the pressure built at her back. London’s smile remained frozen as he watched. “You should be thanking me,” he said to Simon. “You’ve got hardly an ounce of natural skill, and here I’m trying to make you the youngest ever Chairman of the Makers of Storms Society. Who wouldn’t want that?”
“You mean who wouldn’t want to be your little puppet?” Simon shot back.
London simply shook his head, still chuckling. “You’re no better than your sister,” he said, and this time, when Simon lifted his hands again, a fleeting thought crossed Ruby’s mind, a possibility that was horrible and thrilling at once, but tempting enough to make her linger on it for the briefest of moments. She looked at London, leaning there against the ledge with a manic grin, and she wondered what it would take to tip him right over the edge.
The wind was coming in from the west, rushing out toward the lake, and the numbers came to her almost automatically as her eyes bored a hole through him: speed of the wind, and weight of the object, and amount of leverage, plus a jumble of other calculations and factors, variables and measurements.
All this, in the seconds that passed while her brother—gathering himself, angling his hands, muttering something under his breath—aimed all of his concentration at that very same man. And with the quickest flash of movement, to Ruby’s great surprise, it worked this time, and he seemed to channel the wind, directing it sideways at London, who—with a look of shock—was knocked backward, falling against the wall with his hands up, as if trying to block some invisible opponent.
And then, just like that, the wind died again.
Everything happened fast after that. Simon was still staring at his hands in amazement when London staggered to his feet and lunged at him. Ruby let out a yell that sounded as if it should have come from someone else, then threw herself at London’s back, where he had Simon pinned to the ground, a big hand around his neck.
Simon’s face was turning a deep red, and the only thing Ruby could think to do was grab London’s tie and pull hard. A fog seemed to roll in all around them then, though where it came from Ruby couldn’t be sure, and she heard voices behind them, halfway across the roof. Before she even had a chance to register who it was, whether they were friends or enemies, Storm Makers or just regular old people, she felt herself being hauled away from London, still clinging to his tie so that his face went purple, and he let out a gargling sound as he tried to claw at her.
“Let go,” someone said, but Ruby held on, her teeth clenched. Through blurry eyes, she could see that someone else had Simon by the foot and was trying to wrestle him away from London, whose hand was still at his throat, and it wasn’t until she saw his fingers go slack that Ruby dropped the tie. London slumped to the ground, breathing hard, and then it was Otis—Otis!—who pulled Simon a safe distance away, putting himself between them before turning to face London again.
Ruby whirled around to find Daisy, and she felt weak with relief, her legs wobbly and a lump forming in her throat. But Daisy said nothing, only moved out in front of her so that she was a few feet from Otis, the two of them facing down London, who was now backed into a corner of the roof.
He flashed Otis a smile. “It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough,” Otis said.
“You’ve heard about all my efforts, then?” London asked, looking pleased with himself. He flicked his eyes over to Daisy, whose hands were balled into fists. “Your father would have been impressed, no? Not just with my events on the solstices, but also my restoration of the Vacuum…” He turned back to Otis with a wolfish grin. “Perhaps that’s something you’d like to try?”
Otis didn’t even flinch. Instead, he raised one eyebrow in a look of amusement. “I’m not worried about your little machine, Rupert.”
London paused for a moment, and a strange smile spread across his face. “I’ve missed this,” he said. “You were always the only one who could best me.”
“It was never about beating you,” Otis said. “It was about getting good enough to protect people. Or have you forgotten?”
“Have I forgotten?”
There were a few beats of calm, the eye of the storm, and then London lunged forward again, a crazy glint in his eye, his arms outstretched. A wall of flame erupted between the two men as London moved forward, and the fire seemed to move with him, almost like it was something alive. The rest of them stumbled backward, but Otis—Otis didn’t move a muscle. He should have been backing away; he should have been putting up a wall of wind, a blast of cold air, anything. But he just stood there, his face glowing in the heat as the flames moved closer.
“You were the one who forgot,” London said as he stepped closer. “You were the one who stopped protecting someone.”
Otis said nothing. He only stared down the wall of fire, his mouth set and his eyes curiously far away.
“And now look at you,” London said, drawing near him. “No fight left in you, old friend? Still haven’t learned how to put out a fire?”