I thought I saw him flinch. “All right, then make yourself useful and hold this lamp.”
I lifted a goose-necked desk lamp and aimed the light at the tangle of wires Nathan was studying. I heard Omar telling the girls that Herr Hofmeister had introduced a new step to their routine. They were to perform a grand jeté, leaping into their partner’s arms, and then hold an attitude and remain in it until their partners put them down again.
“It is very important that you keep your chin up and not look down,” he told the girls in the singsong tone I recognized as his “suggestive” voice. I wanted to make that leap myself, but I blinked and focused on Nathan.
“You have very steady hands,” I remarked.
“Yes,” he dead-panned. “I am the soul of steadiness and reliability. A brick. A tower of strength—”
“You are,” I said. “You’ve only convinced yourself otherwise because of Louisa.”
“Who’s Louisa?” Gus asked.
“His sister,” I replied. “She was in Faerie and hasn’t quite recovered from it.”
“Oh,” Gus said casually. “I came across a cure for that in one of the books in the library. When we’re done with this I’ll look it up for you . . . say, do you think this red wire is the one to cut? Or this blue one?”
Nathan stared at Gus. “You have a cure?” Then he looked down at the wires and frowned. I glanced behind me and saw Beatrice Jager take three dainty running steps and leap into Buzz’s waiting arms. He soared out the window with her to a chorus of oohs and aahs from the other dancers who were lined up to take their grand jetés. Helen, Daisy, and Rue were standing at the open window applauding each dancer as she soared into the night.
I turned back to Nathan and Gus and saw their frozen faces.
“What’s wrong . . . ?” I began, but then I followed their gazes up. They were looking at Herr Hofmeister—or rather, at the mouth of the gun he had pointed at Nathan’s head.
“You will kindly please stop what you a doing,” he bit off in chopped syllables. “That is a very important prop in tonight’s performance.”
“It’s a bomb, Herr Hofmeister,” I said. “It will kill you, too, when it explodes.”
“I know very well what it is,” he said. “It will be my grand finale, but I will die for a good cause. These men who look at me like dirt will remember me as the last face they see. I will be remembered—not as the ridiculous dancing master Herr Hofmeister, but by my real name, Aleksandar Zupan, Serbian patriot who died to liberate my country from the yoke of Austro-Hungarian oppression!”
“Serbian patriot? Austro-Hungary?” I echoed. “What does all that have to do with the Woolworth building?”
For a moment Herr Hofmeister looked confused. I almost felt sorry for him. Then he spit on the floor. “Archduke Franz Ferdinand is here tonight. When he dies, Russia will rally to our cause and there will be war.”
“It’s just a rumor that the archduke is here,” I said, standing up. “Van Drood has made you believe that so you’ll do his bidding.”
“I do no man’s bidding but my own!” Herr Hofmeister barked angrily.
“Can you get Omar to de-mesmerize him?” Nathan hissed. “This thing just started ticking.”
But Omar was across the room, still shepherding our girls out of the window. He was motioning for Gus to come over to carry Susannah Dewsnap out the window. I couldn’t interrupt.
“Of course it is ticking. Do you think I would rely on these silly girls to complete my plan? It is set to go off at seven-thirty when your American president pushes the button on his desk. The ignorant crowds will believe that their own president has blown up the building. Chaos will reign! Riots will ensue. In the coming days my manifesto will be found and read throughout the world. The Serbian nation will rise to power!”
“I don’t think so, old chap,” Nathan said, his eyes still on the mechanism of the bomb. “You’ve been had.”
Herr Hofmeister looked like he was going to have an apoplectic fit. I stepped closer to him, withdrawing the repeater from my pocket. When I depressed the stem it played a lilting lullaby that softened something in Herr Hofmeister’s eyes. He lowered his gun.
“Van Drood has done this to you,” I said. “Judicus van Drood. Perhaps you recall meeting him?”
“Yes,” the dancing master said, furrowing his brow as if trying to recall something that had happened a long time ago. “A man came to see me in my humble garret in Paris, where I was living in exile. He told me he was a member of the Black Hand and said I could help to right the wrongs my country had suffered under the Austrian empire. He told me that the Order was supporting the Austrians in their crusade to crush my homeland and was responsible for the deaths of my family.”
“He was lying to you,” I said. “This is what van Drood does. He finds your vulnerable spot.” I thought of what he had said to me in the fun house. “He told me that I was a monster, that my mother never loved me, that I would never belong.” I noticed that Nathan, though his eyes were still on the bomb, had grown very still. He was listening to me. And so was Helen, who had come over from the window to stand beside me. All the other girls were gone.
“He drove a wedge between me and my friends because I would not trust them with the truth. But I know now that all the things he told me were lies.”
“Were they, Ava?”
The words were in van Drood’s voice, but they didn’t come from Herr Hofmeister’s mouth. I wheeled around and found myself looking into Nathan’s dark gray eyes—hadn’t they been a lighter gray before? He was still holding a pair of wire cutters to the one of the wires attached to the bomb, but he was looking up at me with a cold calculated look I’d never seen before on his face.
“No—”
“But yes, Ava, dearling, here we are again. Why shouldn’t I take a younger, more handsome form, especially one so suited to me? After all, he is my son.”
“That’s a lie!” Helen cried out.
Nathan—or the thing inside Nathan—swiveled his head to stare at Helen. “Oh my dear, you have been so useful in helping me gain access to this young man. Watching you—his oldest friend—fall in love with a Darkling made him almost as vulnerable as watching the same thing happen to his beloved. Or didn’t you know he loved Ava?”
“It doesn’t matter to me if he loves Ava, but he’s not your son. I’ve known Nathan since we were children. His father was Daniel Beckwith.”
“I thought so, too, until your friend Ava suggested otherwise. Then I looked into the archives and found that old Daniel was away in Scotland on the relevant dates. India Beckwith changed Nathan’s birth certificate so no one would know. She even fooled me!”
He leered in a way that made my blood run cold, precisely because I’d seen almost the same expression on Nathan’s face before. The resemblance between the two was impossible to deny.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Nathan’s father!” I cried. “Blood means nothing compared with how a person is raised and whom he chooses as his friends and what he does. Nathan is a good man. He risked his life to save Louisa. He saved Ruth from the Hellgate Club.”
I saw a flicker of light in Nathan’s eyes—like the flash of a fish swimming through murky water—but when he spoke his voice was still van Drood’s.
“All very valiant. But then why don’t you love him, Ava? It’s your not loving him that made him vulnerable to me. You have done this to him.” He smiled a ghastly grin that stretched as wide as the funny-face sign at Coney Island. Smoke gushed out of his mouth. That flicker of light in Nathan’s eyes had gone out. The thing in front of me was so revolting I wanted to run away from it, but Nathan was still in there somewhere.
“I do care for Nath—” I began, and then, stepping closer and kneeling by his side, I looked into those darkened eyes and spoke directly to the man I hoped was still there. “I do love you, Nathan.”
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“Let’s see how much.”
Van Drood’s voice came from behind me. I whirled around to see Herr Hofmeister aiming his gun directly at Nathan’s heart. I screamed and began to move, but before I could, something else flew between us—a flurry of ribbons and lace and blonde hair.
“Helen!” Nathan screamed, his own voice restored. He pushed me aside and leapt for her as she fell. A red rose was blooming on the white ruffled blouse of her costume. Herr Hofmeister was staring at Nathan and Helen, a startled look in his eyes. Because van Drood had left him? I wondered. But when I stood he raised his eyes to me and I saw that van Drood was still there. It was van Drood who looked surprised.
“I thought she didn’t love him,” he began. Helen’s act had not only driven the shadows from Nathan, she had managed to confound the Shadow Master himself. There was a spark in his eyes, a chink of light like a tear in a blind in a darkened room. Just as weakness opened a wedge for the shadows, so strength must open a crack for the light.
I followed Nathan’s gaze down to the bomb. When he had dropped the wire cutters they had severed the red wire.
“Nathan,” I said, “that red wire . . . were you supposed to cut it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “What are we going to do?”
I looked at Helen and Nathan. I couldn’t carry them both out of here—but I could carry the bomb. I picked up the metal box. I’d never flown carrying anything so heavy, but I’d just have to try. I carried it to the window.
“Ava, what are you doing?” I heard Helen’s weak voice calling to me. I turned around.
“I’m sorry I didn’t put more faith in you, Helen. You’re the bravest girl I know. Take care of each other.” I turned back to the window. The flimsy costume I was wearing was no match for my unfurling wings. I heard Helen’s gasp and Nathan’s voice.
“I knew that costume suited you,” he said. “Wings of fire for a phoenix.”
“It was you!” I said, half turning. “You sent me the dress.”
But there wasn’t time. The metal box in my hands was ticking away the seconds. I launched myself from the window into the open sky—and plummeted down. The bomb was too heavy. It was dragging me down toward the ground where thousands of people were waiting to see the Woolworth Building burst into incandescent light. Instead they would all die in a fiery inferno like the girls at the Triangle factory. I had to get the bomb out to sea.
I beat my wings as hard as I could, struggling to gain altitude. Little by little, I rose up into the sky. I could see the harbor lights to the south twinkling in the dusky twilight. I aimed in that direction, but with the weight of the bomb dragging me down, I’d never make it.
Suddenly it was as if the air around me lightened and a tailwind pushed me forward. I looked to my right and saw Raven flying beside me, his wing tips nearly touching mine. Ghosting me. Where his wing had been damaged, the new imped feathers—brown and gold and russet—had already taken root.
“I don’t supposed you’d consider handing that thing over to me?” he shouted.
“Not on your life,” I replied.
“Then we’d best make haste to the sea.” He whistled a sharp note and I felt myself buoyed up. I looked to my left and saw Pythagoras. Then I heard Marlin’s voice and saw him taking the lead. The fledglings were arraying themselves around me in a V formation, carving a wedge out of the air to make it easier for me to fly. Never mind that they’d all die if the bomb went off in the air. They flocked around me because they were my flock. I caught the thermals and soared. I’d never felt so free before, lifted by my friends.
“Ava. ” Raven’s voice reached me. “We’re over the harbor! Bank a little to the right to avoid that tug boat.”
I did. Then Marlin yelled, “Bombs away!” in a surprisingly gleeful voice and I dropped the bomb.
I heard its dull thud in the water below us and then, like an afterthought, the explosion. A great jet of water gushed upward and fiery trails of red, blue, gold, and green exploded around us. In the glow I saw Raven’s face beaming. I looked to my right and Marlin’s face was also lit up with excitement as the fireworks splashed across the sky.
“Boys.” I heard Sirena’s voice sigh on the wind. “They love blowing things up.”
There was an unmistakable note of glee in her voice, though. The fireworks lighting up the harbor and the shining white spire of the Woolworth Building were spectacular. Helen would love them, I thought.
And then, thinking of Helen, I began to fall.
36
RAVEN CAUGHT ME and steered me back toward land.
“I have to find Helen,” I told him. “She was shot.”
I started flying toward the Woolworth Building, but Eirwyn intercepted our flight path, whistling sharply.
“Nathan’s brought Helen back to Henry Street,” Raven interpreted. I had understood a little of Eirwyn’s language. Wing-wounded was the bit I’d caught.
We banked south toward the Henry Street House, skimming over the Lower East Side tenement rooftops. Only a few months ago I’d been running across these rooftops chasing Rue. Now they were packed with crowds spread out on blankets and kitchen chairs, picnicking, drinking homemade wine and ale, eating cold chicken, playing cards and singing and dancing—all to celebrate the lighting of the Woolworth Building. They had no idea how close they’d come to seeing it explode. Nor did most of them notice our cloaked wings passing over their heads. Only a few old women—babushka-wearing Jewish grandmothers, wizened Italian crones wrapped in black shawls—looked up as we passed and made signs with their crabbed fingers or spit over their shoulders.
On the roof of the Henry Street House, though, we were greeted by an excited group: the rest of the Darklings and the girls they’d carried from the Woolworth Building—both the Blythewood girls and the other girls from the Hellgate Club—Kid Marvel and a boisterous crew of madges, Agnes and Mr. Greenfeder, Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows, and a whole conflagration of lampsprites that lit up the roof like a Christmas tree.
They all burst into applause when we landed. Miss Sharp and Agnes stepped out of the crowd to greet us—but then halted, their eyes riveted on something just over my head that was casting a glow on their faces. I turned to see what they were looking at, afraid there’d been another bomb that had lit the Woolworth Building on fire, but found that it was me. My wings were glowing with a lambent flame.
I turned back to Agnes and Miss Sharp and met their gazes. The roof had grown silent. My friends from Blythewood—Cam and Beatrice and Dolores, Myrtilene and Etta and Susannah and Mary MacCrae—had come forward out of the crowd to stare at my wings. Mr. Bellows’ mouth hung open. I hadn’t seen him look so surprised since Miss Corey and Miss Sharp had kissed. I heard the madges murmur, “A phoenix!” and Cam Bennett whistle something under her breath and Myrtilene Montmorency say “I’ll be—” before Susannah kicked her shin to quiet her.
It was my worst nightmare. I had been revealed to all my schoolmates. Would they turn on me now? Turn me in to the Council? Turn away in revulsion?
But then Dolores was stepping forward, holding her sister Beatrice’s hand. She raised both their hands into the air. “Three cheers for Ava for getting rid of the bomb. Hip, hip—”
They all cheered me, the madges, too, Delilah spinning around in a hypnotic dance, the Irishmen breaking into a jig, the lampsprites fluttering up into the air like miniature firecrackers. It would have been perfect if I hadn’t been missing three faces.
“Nathan and Daisy are with Helen,” Miss Sharp whispered in my ear. “I think you’d better get down there.”
The fire in my wings cooled at her words. I quickly told Raven where I was going and followed Miss Sharp inside and down the stairs to a room on the third floor. It was one of the rooms Miss Wald used to see patients. Miss Wald was there now with her black nurse’s bag, sitting beside a narrow iron-framed cot. Helen
lay in the bed, her face as white as the sheets and the bandages covering her chest. Nathan sat on the bed beside her, and Daisy stood, still wearing her patriotic shop girl costume, wringing her hands. When she saw me, Daisy ran to me and started whispering in my year. “She’s not—”
“I thought we’d sworn off secrets,” Helen interrupted in a weak voice.
“You’re right,” Daisy said, pulling me to the bed. “We’ve had enough secrets. They’re all out now. Ava’s half-Darkling—why, that’s not so bad! And I’m engaged to Mr. Appleby—if he’ll still have me. And Nathan’s—”
“The son of the Shadow Master who’s been filling my head with tenebrae for months,” Nathan said, breaking into Daisy’s bright, nervous chatter without taking his eyes off Helen.
“But you’re free of them now,” Daisy said, her eyes wide as silver dollars. “D’you know, Ava, after you left, Nathan carried Helen down twenty-seven flights of stairs because the elevators were all jammed with those awful men who kidnapped us? Don’t worry, though, the madges rounded them up when they left the building and are holding them until Mr. Omar can de-mesmerize them—and then Nathan carried Helen all the way here and woke up Miss Wald and got her to get a doctor from Bellevue so they could remove the bullet from Helen’s spine. She would have died otherwise!”
“Yes, Nathan saved me,” Helen said, turning her head weakly in my direction.
“You saved me,” Nathan said to Helen, squeezing her hand.
“Oh, pish,” Helen replied. “I doubt that bullet would have hit you anyway. Herr Hofmeister was a terrible shot.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nathan began.
“Oh, but he is a terrible man,” Daisy interrupted. “The madges have him in custody and are interrogating him. . . . ”
Daisy chattered on about Herr Hofmeister, but Nathan and Helen weren’t listening. They were looking into each other’s eyes. Not with the moonstruck haze of lovers, but with the solemnity of soldiers after a battle. Helen had saved Nathan, not just by intercepting that bullet meant for him, but because her selfless action had banished the shadows from Nathan’s soul. But were they gone for good? I studied Nathan. He was pale and drawn, his eyes sunk into his face, but those eyes were a clear gray again, and nothing moved in them besides concern for Helen.