Hourglass
Page 20
Waiting around in the early morning hours when you have no money, not even a few dollars for coffee? There’s nothing to do, nothing, and time seems to stretch into infinity.
I can’t say it was boring, though. We knew that at any second a Black Cross patrol might sweep through and see us. That kept the adrenaline pumping.
“We should have stayed on the train,” I said wearily, after a couple hours of walking around the block. “We could’ve slept, like that drunk guy.”
“Could you sleep right now? Honestly?”
I sighed. “Probably not.”
Lucas cast a sidelong glance at me, and his mouth quirked in a half smile.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re not allowed to get mad.”
“It’s my hair, isn’t it?” I turned to see my reflection in the window of a nearby dry cleaners. Although my outline was a bit hazy because of the enforced diet I’d been on lately, I could see that, sure enough, my dark-red hair stuck up at weird angles. It was obvious that I’d been yanked out of bed and hadn’t had a chance to take care of it. Quickly I combed through it with my fingers, trying to restore some kind of neatness. “Oh, my God.”
“You look fine,” Lucas said. “Just silly, kind of.”
“Oh, yeah?” I gave him a mock-angry glare. “You’ve looked prettier, too, you know.”
He rubbed his chin, clearly feeling the stubble there. Between the five o’clock shadow, the rumpled clothes, and his wild bronze hair, Lucas came across as fairly disreputable. I almost liked that nobody but me could tell what kind of person he really was.
“Maybe we should make a trip to the beauty salon,” he said.
“Get his and hers manicures.”
I laughed. “You’d rather go back for the fall term at Evernight Academy.”
That made him grin, too. “Oh, I can just see that. ‘Hey, Mrs. Bethany, miss me?’”
The shared joke warmed us both and took the edge off our exhaustion and fear. We embraced, and it would’ve lasted a long time but for something sharp jabbing into my abdomen. “Ow. What the—”
I looked down to see my jet brooch, still pinned to the waistband of my jeans, where I’d put it the afternoon before. Tenderly I touched the carved petals of the flowers there.
“You’ve still got it,” Lucas said. “If we could only bring one thing with us, I’m glad it was that. Of course, if we could’ve brought two things with us, my coffee can of money would’ve been the second choice.”
Although I hated to say it, I had to. “We could pawn the brooch again, like we did when we first ran away.”
Lucas shook his head and said, heavily, “I couldn’t get it back for you this time.”
After another hour or so, the shops finally opened. It was still hard to figure out which was the right one, because most of the stores seemed to stock a lot of the same merchandise: trinkets for tourists, mostly, like paper fans and parasols or polyester kimonos and slippers. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a woman behind a counter who looked familiar.
“Excuse me,” I said, as Lucas and I wove our way through the merchandise toward her. “I’m looking for Balthazar.”
She froze, and for a moment I thought she was scared of us. We did look pretty frightening. Then her face relaxed as she recognized me. She hurried to the back of the store, pulled back a bead curtain, and yelled something in Chinese. The old man I’d seen before appeared from behind the bead curtain; when he looked at Lucas, his eyes narrowed, but then he recognized me. He led us through the bead curtain and up two flights of rickety steps. Rapping twice on a door, he called to Balthazar, then motioned to us, like, take it away.
I opened the door. Inside was a small room with a sharply slanted ceiling—an old storage room, or maybe an attic, that had been converted into a cramped bedroom. A double bed filled almost the entire room, and crates of paper parasols and fans filled most of the rest. The one lamp had an embroidered shade in brilliant orange and pink, which made the light unexpectedly warm and almost pretty. In the center of the bed, beneath a black silk coverlet emblazoned with a dragon, propped up on some pillows, lay Balthazar.
“Bianca?” He didn’t quite seem to believe his eyes. “Lucas?”
“You look better,” I said. He did, but that was a matter of degrees. Scars still marked his chin and cheeks. Balthazar wore no shirt, so I could see that in the center of his chest was a dark, angry star—where Lucas had staked him. None of that seemed to matter as much as the smile that spread across his face.
“It’s good of you both to come,” he said, “but it’s dangerous.”
“You’ve got it the wrong way around.” Lucas closed the door.
“We’re the ones on the run this time.”
“What?”
“I slipped up,” I confessed. “Raquel saw me drinking blood, and she—well, she turned me in. We only barely managed to escape.”
“Raquel—that’s impossible. She wouldn’t.” Then Balthazar thought it over, moving past his initial rejection of the idea. “I’m sorry.”
“We have to talk about something else,” I said quickly. “If I start crying today, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
Balthazar winced as he pushed himself completely upright. His voice was gentle as he said, “Sit down. Both of you.”
The only place to sit was the foot of his bed. As soon as I touched the mattress, I knew I wanted to lie down, so I stretched out across the end. Lucas sat next to me cross-legged and stroked my jeans-clad calves with one hand. The bed felt like the most comfortable place in the world; until that moment, I hadn’t realized it had been more than six weeks since I’d slept on a real mattress. I had almost forgotten anything could be so soft.
Balthazar said, “Tell me what you need.”
“Cash,” Lucas said bluntly. “If you’ve got any.”
Balthazar motioned toward the corner. “My wallet is in the pocket of those slacks. Grab it, will you?”
Lucas did so and tossed it to Balthazar. Then my eyes went wide as Balthazar pulled out seven hundred-dollar bills and slapped them into Lucas’s hand. “I’d give you more if I had it on me, but I don’t.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Lucas stared down at the money. “This is—well, it’s a lot.”
“You saved my life, Lucas,” Balthazar said. “I guess that means I owe you one.”
Shaking his head, Lucas replied, “You don’t have a life to save, buddy.”
“You know what I mean,” Balthazar said.
“Yeah, I guess I do. “Lucas was quiet for a few moments.
I protested, “Balthazar, we don’t want to take all your money.”
To my surprise, he laughed. “This is hardly all my money.” When I frowned in confusion, Balthazar leaned against the headboard and smiled. “I invested in sugar in the eighteenth century. Coal in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, I bought some stock in Ford Motor Company. In the late twentieth century, I sold that stock and sank the proceeds into computers. Money is not one of my problems.” He sighed. “If you could remain in New York another week or so, by then I’d be able to go to the bank, get some real cash for you.”
“That’s okay, Moneybags,” Lucas said. “This will get us out of town.”
“If this is about pride, please, stop and think.” Balthazar looked stern. “Keeping Bianca safe matters more than scoring points.”
Lucas glared at him. “This doesn’t have jack to do with pride. We can’t even spend one more day in New York. They’ll be watching the train and bus stations by this afternoon if they aren’t already.”
Balthazar held up one hand. “No time even to rest, huh?”
“Guess not,” I said. Regretfully I pushed myself up from the soft bed. “Will we be able to reach you here?”
“It’s going to be another week or two before I’m back on my feet. I’ll be staying here.”
“But, later than that—could the people downstairs forward a letter to you? Or do they have a phone number we could use?” A lump had begun to form in my throat. “There has to be some way we can talk to you again someday. This can’t be good-bye forever. Right?”
Balthazar and Lucas shared a look. I knew they both thought it would be safer if this really were good-bye forever. I also could tell that Balthazar didn’t want this to be the ending for us either, and that Lucas didn’t exactly approve. Looking Lucas very squarely in the eye, Balthazar said, “Take one of the cards at the cash register downstairs. That phone number will work for me while I’m here, and I will check in for messages every so often after that. You might ask them about transport out of town, too—there’s a way to get out of New York without coming near a bus or train station.” The pause was slightly awkward, so Balthazar quickly added, “And ask them for some blood before you go. They picked some up from the hospital for me yesterday, and you could probably do with a couple of pints.”
“There’s something else you have to know before we go.” I felt weird about discussing this with Balthazar, but I knew he’d probably find out sooner or later. He needed to be on his guard.
“Charity is in New York.”
“What?” Balthazar pushed himself upright in bed. “Is she trying to find me? Does she need my help?”
“She needs help,” Lucas deadpanned, “but not yours.”
I shot Lucas a glare. “Charity’s fine. She was worried about you, that’s all.” I wondered whether to tell him about her attack, but I decided against it. Balthazar was injured and in no shape to deal with that kind of news.
“One more thing,” Lucas interjected. At first I thought that he was going to talk about Charity’s attack, but he was thinking more constructively. “Black Cross suspects we might’ve let you go. They’ll be looking for you, too. So I wouldn’t hang out in Manhattan any longer than you’ve got to.”
“I understand.”
I crawled forward and put my arms around Balthazar’s neck. Because of the wound on his chest, I couldn’t really hug him, not like I wanted to, but this would do. He rested his head against my shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Thank you,” he said. “Both of you.” Now that I had stood in the center of a ring of Black Cross hunters and feared for my life, the same way Balthazar had, I could understand the depth of gratitude he felt.
Right when the embrace threatened to last too long, I let go and backed off the bed without another word. That was the end of our farewells, except for my smiling over my shoulder at Balthazar as we went out the door. He held up his hand in a wave, visible in the narrowing crack of the door as Lucas pulled it shut.
Lucas paused, the two of us standing together on the cramped stairwell, and said, his voice low, “If you want to stay here, tell me now.”
I kissed him, and it was all the answer he needed.
Chapter Thirteen
BALTHAZAR’S FRIENDS DIRECTED US TO A CHINATOWN bus, a cheap mode of transportation that usually shuffled new immigrants from Asia between different Chinese-restaurant jobs up and down the East Coast. However, it was a mixed lot on the next bus to Philadelphia—a few older people and a lot of college students typing on laptops they balanced on their knees.
The bus was late, and it ran slow. Heavy rains up north, the driver said. Flooding on the highways. We didn’t care. Our money was rolled up in the front pocket of my jeans; though it dug into my flesh, I found the pressure of it reassuring.
I rested my head upon Lucas’s shoulder as we leaned back in the seats. Maybe the bus was really comfortable, or maybe we were so tired that anything would’ve felt good. Both of us drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes I felt as though dreams and wakefulness were bleeding together like watercolors, soft-edged and pale. All that was real was the reassuring scent of Lucas’s skin and the knowledge that, for now at least, we were safe.
I can’t say it was boring, though. We knew that at any second a Black Cross patrol might sweep through and see us. That kept the adrenaline pumping.
“We should have stayed on the train,” I said wearily, after a couple hours of walking around the block. “We could’ve slept, like that drunk guy.”
“Could you sleep right now? Honestly?”
I sighed. “Probably not.”
Lucas cast a sidelong glance at me, and his mouth quirked in a half smile.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re not allowed to get mad.”
“It’s my hair, isn’t it?” I turned to see my reflection in the window of a nearby dry cleaners. Although my outline was a bit hazy because of the enforced diet I’d been on lately, I could see that, sure enough, my dark-red hair stuck up at weird angles. It was obvious that I’d been yanked out of bed and hadn’t had a chance to take care of it. Quickly I combed through it with my fingers, trying to restore some kind of neatness. “Oh, my God.”
“You look fine,” Lucas said. “Just silly, kind of.”
“Oh, yeah?” I gave him a mock-angry glare. “You’ve looked prettier, too, you know.”
He rubbed his chin, clearly feeling the stubble there. Between the five o’clock shadow, the rumpled clothes, and his wild bronze hair, Lucas came across as fairly disreputable. I almost liked that nobody but me could tell what kind of person he really was.
“Maybe we should make a trip to the beauty salon,” he said.
“Get his and hers manicures.”
I laughed. “You’d rather go back for the fall term at Evernight Academy.”
That made him grin, too. “Oh, I can just see that. ‘Hey, Mrs. Bethany, miss me?’”
The shared joke warmed us both and took the edge off our exhaustion and fear. We embraced, and it would’ve lasted a long time but for something sharp jabbing into my abdomen. “Ow. What the—”
I looked down to see my jet brooch, still pinned to the waistband of my jeans, where I’d put it the afternoon before. Tenderly I touched the carved petals of the flowers there.
“You’ve still got it,” Lucas said. “If we could only bring one thing with us, I’m glad it was that. Of course, if we could’ve brought two things with us, my coffee can of money would’ve been the second choice.”
Although I hated to say it, I had to. “We could pawn the brooch again, like we did when we first ran away.”
Lucas shook his head and said, heavily, “I couldn’t get it back for you this time.”
After another hour or so, the shops finally opened. It was still hard to figure out which was the right one, because most of the stores seemed to stock a lot of the same merchandise: trinkets for tourists, mostly, like paper fans and parasols or polyester kimonos and slippers. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a woman behind a counter who looked familiar.
“Excuse me,” I said, as Lucas and I wove our way through the merchandise toward her. “I’m looking for Balthazar.”
She froze, and for a moment I thought she was scared of us. We did look pretty frightening. Then her face relaxed as she recognized me. She hurried to the back of the store, pulled back a bead curtain, and yelled something in Chinese. The old man I’d seen before appeared from behind the bead curtain; when he looked at Lucas, his eyes narrowed, but then he recognized me. He led us through the bead curtain and up two flights of rickety steps. Rapping twice on a door, he called to Balthazar, then motioned to us, like, take it away.
I opened the door. Inside was a small room with a sharply slanted ceiling—an old storage room, or maybe an attic, that had been converted into a cramped bedroom. A double bed filled almost the entire room, and crates of paper parasols and fans filled most of the rest. The one lamp had an embroidered shade in brilliant orange and pink, which made the light unexpectedly warm and almost pretty. In the center of the bed, beneath a black silk coverlet emblazoned with a dragon, propped up on some pillows, lay Balthazar.
“Bianca?” He didn’t quite seem to believe his eyes. “Lucas?”
“You look better,” I said. He did, but that was a matter of degrees. Scars still marked his chin and cheeks. Balthazar wore no shirt, so I could see that in the center of his chest was a dark, angry star—where Lucas had staked him. None of that seemed to matter as much as the smile that spread across his face.
“It’s good of you both to come,” he said, “but it’s dangerous.”
“You’ve got it the wrong way around.” Lucas closed the door.
“We’re the ones on the run this time.”
“What?”
“I slipped up,” I confessed. “Raquel saw me drinking blood, and she—well, she turned me in. We only barely managed to escape.”
“Raquel—that’s impossible. She wouldn’t.” Then Balthazar thought it over, moving past his initial rejection of the idea. “I’m sorry.”
“We have to talk about something else,” I said quickly. “If I start crying today, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
Balthazar winced as he pushed himself completely upright. His voice was gentle as he said, “Sit down. Both of you.”
The only place to sit was the foot of his bed. As soon as I touched the mattress, I knew I wanted to lie down, so I stretched out across the end. Lucas sat next to me cross-legged and stroked my jeans-clad calves with one hand. The bed felt like the most comfortable place in the world; until that moment, I hadn’t realized it had been more than six weeks since I’d slept on a real mattress. I had almost forgotten anything could be so soft.
Balthazar said, “Tell me what you need.”
“Cash,” Lucas said bluntly. “If you’ve got any.”
Balthazar motioned toward the corner. “My wallet is in the pocket of those slacks. Grab it, will you?”
Lucas did so and tossed it to Balthazar. Then my eyes went wide as Balthazar pulled out seven hundred-dollar bills and slapped them into Lucas’s hand. “I’d give you more if I had it on me, but I don’t.”
“Whoa, whoa.” Lucas stared down at the money. “This is—well, it’s a lot.”
“You saved my life, Lucas,” Balthazar said. “I guess that means I owe you one.”
Shaking his head, Lucas replied, “You don’t have a life to save, buddy.”
“You know what I mean,” Balthazar said.
“Yeah, I guess I do. “Lucas was quiet for a few moments.
I protested, “Balthazar, we don’t want to take all your money.”
To my surprise, he laughed. “This is hardly all my money.” When I frowned in confusion, Balthazar leaned against the headboard and smiled. “I invested in sugar in the eighteenth century. Coal in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, I bought some stock in Ford Motor Company. In the late twentieth century, I sold that stock and sank the proceeds into computers. Money is not one of my problems.” He sighed. “If you could remain in New York another week or so, by then I’d be able to go to the bank, get some real cash for you.”
“That’s okay, Moneybags,” Lucas said. “This will get us out of town.”
“If this is about pride, please, stop and think.” Balthazar looked stern. “Keeping Bianca safe matters more than scoring points.”
Lucas glared at him. “This doesn’t have jack to do with pride. We can’t even spend one more day in New York. They’ll be watching the train and bus stations by this afternoon if they aren’t already.”
Balthazar held up one hand. “No time even to rest, huh?”
“Guess not,” I said. Regretfully I pushed myself up from the soft bed. “Will we be able to reach you here?”
“It’s going to be another week or two before I’m back on my feet. I’ll be staying here.”
“But, later than that—could the people downstairs forward a letter to you? Or do they have a phone number we could use?” A lump had begun to form in my throat. “There has to be some way we can talk to you again someday. This can’t be good-bye forever. Right?”
Balthazar and Lucas shared a look. I knew they both thought it would be safer if this really were good-bye forever. I also could tell that Balthazar didn’t want this to be the ending for us either, and that Lucas didn’t exactly approve. Looking Lucas very squarely in the eye, Balthazar said, “Take one of the cards at the cash register downstairs. That phone number will work for me while I’m here, and I will check in for messages every so often after that. You might ask them about transport out of town, too—there’s a way to get out of New York without coming near a bus or train station.” The pause was slightly awkward, so Balthazar quickly added, “And ask them for some blood before you go. They picked some up from the hospital for me yesterday, and you could probably do with a couple of pints.”
“There’s something else you have to know before we go.” I felt weird about discussing this with Balthazar, but I knew he’d probably find out sooner or later. He needed to be on his guard.
“Charity is in New York.”
“What?” Balthazar pushed himself upright in bed. “Is she trying to find me? Does she need my help?”
“She needs help,” Lucas deadpanned, “but not yours.”
I shot Lucas a glare. “Charity’s fine. She was worried about you, that’s all.” I wondered whether to tell him about her attack, but I decided against it. Balthazar was injured and in no shape to deal with that kind of news.
“One more thing,” Lucas interjected. At first I thought that he was going to talk about Charity’s attack, but he was thinking more constructively. “Black Cross suspects we might’ve let you go. They’ll be looking for you, too. So I wouldn’t hang out in Manhattan any longer than you’ve got to.”
“I understand.”
I crawled forward and put my arms around Balthazar’s neck. Because of the wound on his chest, I couldn’t really hug him, not like I wanted to, but this would do. He rested his head against my shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Thank you,” he said. “Both of you.” Now that I had stood in the center of a ring of Black Cross hunters and feared for my life, the same way Balthazar had, I could understand the depth of gratitude he felt.
Right when the embrace threatened to last too long, I let go and backed off the bed without another word. That was the end of our farewells, except for my smiling over my shoulder at Balthazar as we went out the door. He held up his hand in a wave, visible in the narrowing crack of the door as Lucas pulled it shut.
Lucas paused, the two of us standing together on the cramped stairwell, and said, his voice low, “If you want to stay here, tell me now.”
I kissed him, and it was all the answer he needed.
Chapter Thirteen
BALTHAZAR’S FRIENDS DIRECTED US TO A CHINATOWN bus, a cheap mode of transportation that usually shuffled new immigrants from Asia between different Chinese-restaurant jobs up and down the East Coast. However, it was a mixed lot on the next bus to Philadelphia—a few older people and a lot of college students typing on laptops they balanced on their knees.
The bus was late, and it ran slow. Heavy rains up north, the driver said. Flooding on the highways. We didn’t care. Our money was rolled up in the front pocket of my jeans; though it dug into my flesh, I found the pressure of it reassuring.
I rested my head upon Lucas’s shoulder as we leaned back in the seats. Maybe the bus was really comfortable, or maybe we were so tired that anything would’ve felt good. Both of us drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes I felt as though dreams and wakefulness were bleeding together like watercolors, soft-edged and pale. All that was real was the reassuring scent of Lucas’s skin and the knowledge that, for now at least, we were safe.
