After so long stuck inside the festering anus of hell, a shower felt like heaven.
Pan pushed her head into the spray, the powerful water massaging her scalp. It was so hot it was almost scalding, a hundred cuts and scrapes and bruises protesting. But the heat was good, scouring her skin, scrubbing her clean of every last trace of the Engine.
A torrent of black water spiraled around the plug—smoke and dirt and dust and blood. She wished that the shower could cleanse her inside as well, carry away all of the hate and the grief and the guilt. Her soul was blacker now than it had ever been.
It didn’t make any sense. The day was a blur of disbelief, her mind doing its best to push the truth away. All this time she thought she was fighting for what was right, fighting to save the world. Not a hero, never a hero—she had killed too many people to ever be called that—and certainly not a saint. But the things she’d done, she’d done them for the right reason.
Take one life and save a billion, she’d always told herself. But she’d been taking the wrong lives, and put billions more in harm’s way.
She gripped her hair in her hands, pulling until it hurt. More dirt ran from her, as thick and dark as oil—so much it seemed like it was pouring from inside her, like she was rotten in there. And that was true, wasn’t it? She’d been doing the devil’s work, and what did that make her if not something truly evil?
It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.
But she didn’t ask, either. She didn’t question it. She’d taken Ostheim’s words for granted, she’d obeyed him mindlessly. After everything that had happened with Christoph, after she’d almost knocked his head clean off in that apartment in Queens, she’d needed something good. She’d needed a way to redeem herself. When Herc had marched into her cell all those years ago he’d given her exactly that.
You did a bad thing, kiddo, but you know what, it doesn’t have to be the end. He’d smiled at her—so much younger, all his teeth still where they were supposed to be, so hard but so kind—and he’d said it. Take one life, save a billion. Pick door number one and I’ll show you how.
She’d been so relieved that she’d said yes and never looked back.
Letting go of her hair, she cranked the temperature up even further. She wrapped her hands around herself, shivering despite the heat. It was too bright in here and she closed her eyes, but all she saw there were the enemy Engineers she had slaughtered. Dozens of them. All those kids in Paris, thrown into a war they couldn’t possibly understand, all the ones before that.
Not to mention Patrick, and his sister Brianna. Pan’s stomach cramped at the memory. She hadn’t killed Brianna but she’d captured her, and let her die in the worst possible way. Patrick, too, his body fused with the concrete of Rockefeller Plaza, screaming as he held the bloated body of his sister. Oh God, what did I do to them? It was unimaginable, it was unbearable. Why hadn’t they just said something to her? Why hadn’t they told her the truth?
They had, she realized. How many times had they told her she was fighting for the wrong side? They told you the truth, but you wouldn’t hear it.
She pounded her head against the wall, again and again, harder each time until a wave of vertigo grabbed her, trying to haul her into darkness. The exhaustion had completely emptied her, left barely enough inside to keep her standing. Her left leg was actually twitching as her muscles struggled. But there was something else there, too, something not entirely unpleasant in the way her body felt. It was as if a cloud had been lifted from her soul.
It wasn’t just fatigue, she realized. Stretching her fingers out in front of her, she willed up a charge—just a small one.
Nothing happened.
Again, drawing it up from deep inside, snapping her fingers like she was sparking a lighter.
Her contract had been canceled.
She didn’t know whether to scream with fear or howl with laughter. She saw Ostheim—the thing that had posed as Ostheim—stretch its spider limbs into the Engine, could picture them probing the machine, flicking those infernal switches and ending her deal as easily as programming a washing machine. If Ostheim was anywhere near as powerful as Mammon said he was, if he knew as much about the Engine as Pan feared, then why wouldn’t he cancel her contract, leave her defenseless?
Hey, at least you don’t have to vacation in hell, right?
Except sooner or later, once Ostheim had opened the gates, hell would be right here, walking the streets. The whole world would burn.
Suddenly the slap of the water on her shoulders was too much, too hot. She turned off the shower, her whole body trembling, steam rising off her. She just stood there in silence, trying not to feel anything much at all. Right then, one more thought, one more emotion, would be enough to scatter her cells in a million different directions.
Eventually, she wasn’t sure how much later it was, the cold started to creep back in. She stepped from the cubicle and shivered her way across the bathroom, grabbing a plush dressing gown from the back of the door. Truck had driven them south, through the mountains and well into the night, and now they were in a luxury hotel somewhere in northern Italy. Her room was huge but it still wasn’t large enough for all of her ghosts. Her dead—the ones she had killed, the ones she had let die—crowded on the bed, on the carpet, on the desk, in the shadowed corners, all of them watching her. Patrick and Brianna were there, too, their twin faces gaunt, their dark eyes accusing.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered to them. “I didn’t know.”
None of them replied, their eyes bulging from cracked sockets, their flyblown lips speaking soundlessly, their withered fingers reaching for her. She couldn’t bear it so she ran to the door, escaping into the silent, deserted corridor beyond. She slammed it behind her, trapping the dead inside.
Where the hell was everyone else?
They were scattered through the hotel, but she’d seen Marlow enter his room, almost directly opposite her own. She ran to it, pounding on the door loud enough to wake everybody on the floor. Everything ached but at least some of the tiredness had gone, some of that endless ache the Engine pushed inside you, like your body was made up of lead and concrete and corrugated iron. She pressed her ear to the wood, hearing nothing.
“Marlow, open the door, goddammit,” she yelled, thumping again.
A groan, footsteps, the click of the lock, then the door swung open to reveal Marlow’s face. He blinked at her, his mouth hanging open like he’d just woken from a hundred-year sleep. He was wearing nothing but jockey shorts, his lean body a patchwork of scars and bruises. He smelled of the same luxury-brand shampoo as she did. It seemed to take him a while to recognize her.
“Pan?” he said after a moment. He yawned.
“No, you idiot, it’s Santa Claus.” She pushed past him into a room lit solely by a table lamp. The bed was ruffled, and she perched on the end of it, drawing cotton threads from her dressing gown and rolling them into balls. Marlow closed the door and traipsed over, clambering back under the covers. His eyelids looked like they were holding sash weights and he squinted at her through them.
“Can’t sleep?” he said, yawning again.
“Just didn’t want to be…” What? In a room full of ghosts? On your own? “Just thought I heard something. Wanted to check.”
Marlow nodded. “I’m cool,” he said. “Well, you know, not cool exactly. Not after today. You okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Pan shot back. The anxiety was a lump of stone right in the middle of her, heavy enough to pull her down through the floor, through the ground, to drown her in the dark. She opened her mouth and the air refused to come. It took a desperate gulp and a bolt of adrenaline to kick-start her lungs. “Contract has been canceled.”
“Yeah?” said Marlow. “That’s good, right?”
“Great,” she said. “When Ostheim comes after us, not having a contract is gonna be real helpful.”
Marlow sighed, chewing at his knuckles in the infuriating way he always did. She rubbed at her chest, over that lump of stone where her heart should be. All she could feel right now was pent-up rage, like there was a live grenade in there, too, pin pulled.
“Right,” she said, getting to her feet. “Well, this was fun.”
“Hey, you came to my door, Pan,” said Marlow.
She spun around to face him and for a second she thought the grenade had blown, the world burning white for a second. The anger was boiling up her throat but she choked it back down, just standing there. Her fists were balled so tightly her finger bones could snap. Why had she come here?
Marlow didn’t speak, just lifted the sheet and tilted his head to invite her in.
Yeah, right, she thought and almost said. She didn’t move, her feet glued to the carpet. It was Marlow, the guy who’d ruined everything, who’d let Charlie into the Nest, who’d led Ostheim right to the Engines. Not his fault any more than yours. Ostheim had you all fooled. And when she looked at him again he was just a guy, just a teenage boy, caught up in the same crapstorm as her. They were both puppets in a show that neither of them really understood. And the sudden tide of exhaustion that swept through her was enough to carry her to the side of the bed, to climb in beside him.
Smiling gently, he lowered the sheet down over her. His hand lingered for a moment then landed on hers, as delicate and hesitant as a butterfly. They lay there, face-to-face in the twilight. Pan tongued the gap where she’d lost a tooth, her heart drumming faster now than it had back at the Engine.
What on earth was going on?
Marlow pulled her close and she didn’t resist, putting her arms around him, her cheek against the smooth skin of his chest. She could hear the thump of his pulse, the soft wheeze of his lungs. He was so warm. He held her tightly and she let him. She didn’t even know why, other than it was quiet here, in his room. Being here with him, it kept the ghosts away.
And she kind of loved him for it.
She moved her head, her lips brushing his neck, then his jaw. Her heart was hummingbird-fast, no longer made of rock but hollow-boned and light enough to lift right out of her. A smile danced on her lips and she was suddenly sure, so sure.
“We made a deal,” she said, her fingers tracing patterns on the bare skin of his arm. “I owe you a kiss.”
Marlow murmured and she pressed her lips to his before he could say anything stupid. She held them there, everything quiet, everything beautifully peaceful, everything perfect.
Marlow opened his lips and started to snore.
Pan pulled back in surprise. Marlow was fast asleep, his mouth hanging open, his nose flaring. She gave him a gentle nudge, then a firmer one, but he didn’t so much as stir. She wasn’t sure whether to be angry or humiliated, but in the end she laughed, returning her face to his chest. His breaths were like the soft whisper of ocean waves and when she closed her eyes that’s what she saw—sunlight and surf, golden sands in every direction and the gulls wheeling overhead. She lay there, in the warmth, in the quiet. She just lay there next to him, and she slept.