“How far is this from your place?” she asked Imogen when they were back in the big room.
“Five minutes’ walk? We’d be neighbors if you lived here.”
Darcy smiled back at her, then looked at her printout of apartments. Her heart squeezed a little when she saw that this was one of the places with no listed price.
“Is this lease even legal?” Imogen was asking Lev. “I mean, a dance studio would be zoned for business, not residential.”
“It was illegal as dance studio,” he said with a shrug. “Now is legal again.”
Darcy didn’t care. The very fact that she could live in New York, in this apartment, hardly seemed real. Legality was an afterthought.
She took a slow breath. “How much?”
Lev opened a green leather binder, the spine of which crackled. “Thirty-five hundred. Utilities included.”
“Crap,” Darcy said, and two things clicked inside her. One was a hopeless feeling of falling through the floor, the other was the certainty that she could write here. That she had to write here.
“Can you give us a moment, Lev?” Imogen asked quietly. He bowed, a knowing smile on his face, and drifted away into the tiny kitchen.
“I have to ask my sister,” Darcy said, already texting: What does $3500/month do to budget?
“So you want it?”
“I need it. I don’t even know why.” Darcy stared down at the street. It had the same bustle as the view from Moxie’s, but the streets were more crowded here in Chinatown. And from only five stories up instead of fifteen, the rippling current of bodies was more intimate, more personal. An open-air stall selling fresh fish bathed in a shaft of sunlight, white ice and silver scales glittering. “This room’s so big, I’d have to tell myself stories just to fill it up.”
Imogen smiled. “Where would you write?”
“My desk goes there.” Darcy gestured at the corner where the two walls with windows met. She would orient the desk outward and diagonally, taking in the whole view. The rest of the room would stay empty.
“You can pay that rent and still eat?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just write and not eat.” Darcy realized that the desk she was imagining was from her school, square and wooden, with a scooped plastic chair. Was that the best her imagination could do? Some writer.
Her phone dinged with Nisha’s answer:
$3500/mth = 2 yrs, 8 mths #mymathisyourgod
She groaned and showed the message to Imogen. “This means I lose four months!”
“Um, you could get a job, you know.”
Darcy almost started to explain that her parents would surely make her go to college if it came to that. But Imogen probably thought that Darcy had already graduated. She promised herself to tell Imogen how old she was very soon, even if it meant feeling young and, frankly, a bit less real.
But not right now, while her future was being decided.
The phone dinged, Nisha again.
Alternate plan: 3 whole yrs but eat only $17/day
HAHA RAMEN GIRL! #weightgain
Darcy sighed. Nisha didn’t realize how expensive ramen could be here in New York. Of course, there were noodles with Tuscan kale, pork shoulder, and white miso reduction, and there were noodles pressed into bricks and priced at three for a dollar. Darcy liked them, too, as long as she could add Tabasco, turmeric, and a soft-boiled egg. She could write on seventeen dollars a day, especially in this magnificent room.
“I’m going to take it,” she whispered, and Imogen gave her a smile and a satisfied cat’s-eye blink, as if she had never doubted Darcy’s steadfastness at all.
CHAPTER 12
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU doing?” said the man in the black sedan.
I scrambled away from him, across the sidewalk and onto the Andersons’ lawn. My heart was pounding and the world felt sharp and real.
“What am I doing?” I yelled. “You’re the one stalking my house!”
“Your house?” He glanced up at the stitches in my forehead. “You’re Elizabeth Scofield, aren’t you?”
“I’m the person who’s calling the police unless you get the hell out of here!” My hand went to my pocket, where there was no phone.
“No need, Miss Scofield.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a large wallet, which he flipped open to reveal a badge and photo ID. “Agent Elian Reyes, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
I stared at his ID, then at him again. It definitely was his picture, nerdy glasses and all, and the badge looked very real. A metal eagle splayed its wings across the top, fiery gold in the bright sun of the living world.
Agent Reyes flipped the badge case shut and opened his car door. But he paused a moment, waiting for my approval before stepping out onto the sidewalk.
I nodded, but took another half step backward.
“Sorry to upset you, Miss Scofield.” He pocketed the wallet as he stood, then leaned back against his car, arms crossed. “It wasn’t my objective to frighten anyone.”
“Then why the hell are you stalking my house?”
He paused a moment, drumming his fingers on his arms. “I’m authorized to tell you why I’m here, to avoid any misunderstanding. It’s because of the attention you’ve received since the attack.”
“Right. But there aren’t any reporters here.”
“There were, but they gave up yesterday. That was smart, taking your time getting back from Dallas.”
“Uh, thanks.” I wondered if Mom had thought that part through.
“But I’m not here to protect you from reporters.” His voice dropped a little. “My agent in charge is concerned about the group who committed the attack.”
I kept my breathing steady. “But they’re all dead.”
“The attackers are, but they were members of a larger cult.” He paused again, as if wondering whether to continue.
“Please tell me what’s going on, Agent Reyes.”
“You’re only seventeen.”
“Old enough to sneak up on FBI agents, apparently.”
All I got for that remark was a raised eyebrow, and then the words, “Perhaps I should talk to your mother.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that. My mother scares easy. Like, she’s afraid of cars on highways.”
“That must make driving interesting.”
“You have no idea.” I took a step toward him. “Just tell me what’s going on, Agent Reyes. I survived machine guns this week. I can probably handle whatever you have to say.”
He glanced back at my house, then sighed. “Fair enough. The gunmen belonged to an organization called the Movement for the Resurrection, which has an Armageddon mentality, an isolationist dogma, and a charismatic leader. In other words, all characteristic of a destructive cult—what is sometimes called a death cult.”
“Crap,” I said. “But everyone says those four guys did it on their own.”
“That’s what the cult leaders say. But we’re still looking at the group as a whole.” He raised his hands. “Not that you should be concerned. It’s just that you’ve been on the news a lot.”
“As a symbol of hope,” I said softly.
“Yes, Miss Scofield. A symbol of life, even.”
“And they’re a death cult.” I let out a slow sigh. “Crap. I hate death cults.”
“I also dislike them. But, again, this is purely precautionary.” He turned to glance at my house again, as he’d done every thirty seconds or so while we’d been talking, even though I was standing right in front of him. My mother was still inside, of course.
That thought, that as we stood here he was still doing his job, calmed me a little.
“Thank you,” I said.
“It was only fair to tell you.” He nodded, a firm little motion of his chin.
“No, I mean thank you for doing this.” My gaze dropped to his beautifully shined shoes, and I suddenly wished I wasn’t barefoot. “For protecting people.”
My mind went back to the airport. The TSA agents there, the guys my dad always complains about when they search his luggage, had fought back against the attackers, pistols against machine guns. . . .
“You’re very kind, Miss Scofield,” Agent Reyes said. “But rest assured that the Movement will be under surveillance for the foreseeable future. There’s no reason for you to be scared.”
“I’m not.” I had powers now, after all, and I’d walked on the flipside. Some of my best friends were ghosts.
Not that Mindy was anywhere in sight. Had she vaporized in a fit of fear? Or just run off?
“I should go. My mom’s waiting. Thanks for not telling her.”
“That’s your call.” Agent Reyes reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. “But if you change your mind, I’m happy to explain everything.” With a hint of a smile, he added, “Hopefully not in a scary way.”
“Okay. Maybe.” I looked down at the card. “ ‘Special Agent Elian Reyes’? You didn’t say you were a special agent.”
He gave me a shrug as he got back into his car. “Little-known fact about the FBI: we’re all special agents.”
He didn’t sound like he was kidding, but I had to laugh. Then I felt dorky, and waved as I turned and walked away, trying not to consider the fact that his glasses were kind of cute.
* * *
Mindy wasn’t in the back lane, or in the backyard. She wasn’t going to be much help if I ever got in trouble in the afterworld, I realized. Not that it was fair to blame her for running away. Whatever year she’d been born in, she was basically an eleven-year-old.
“Lizzie?” My mom stood in the back doorway, rubbing her hands on a dish towel. “Where’d you go?”
“Oh, sorry.” I looked over my shoulder. “I was just looking around.”
“For what?”
I shrugged, and squeezed past her into the house. Mindy wasn’t in the kitchen either.
On the kitchen counter was a pile of dough, stained black with squid ink. It had my mother’s handprints in it, and the uneven look of dough that wants more kneading. I went to the sink to wash my hands.
“Are you okay?” my mother said.
“I’m fine. I just wanted some fresh air.” If Mom demanded a better excuse than that, I could always hand over Special Agent Reyes’s business card and let him explain.
But all she said was, “Okay.”
We split the dough in two and stood there awhile, kneading it to an even consistency. It felt good to have something squishing between my fingers, something pungent and fishy-smelling and undeniably corporeal.
I wondered where Mindy had run off to. Was she hiding in the house? Or was there some deeper level of reality that she could go to? Somewhere farther down than the flipside, where I couldn’t see her at all?
Both she and Yamaraj had mentioned “the underworld,” wherever that was.
My mother was staring at me, and I realized that she expected to hear more about my little wander outside.
So I changed the subject. “Did you ever have a dog?”
My mother’s hands stopped moving. “When I was little, yeah. Do you want to get one?”
“Nine months before I go to college? That would be kind of random.”
“Right, but maybe you’d feel safer with a dog around.” She glanced out the open kitchen door, like she thought I’d been checking the backyard for terrorists.
“I feel totally safe, Mom. I was just wondering. You don’t talk much about when you were little.”
“I guess not.” She stopped kneading again. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Nowhere.” That wasn’t true, but I could hardly say it had come from the ghost of her best friend, the one she’d never mentioned. “I guess I’m asking . . . did you ever go through anything like this?”