“You know, I’ve never actually eaten a hot dog from here before,” Rowan said. He zipped his track jacket all the way up to his chin and thrust his hands into his pockets.
Echo looked up at the board behind the counter at Crif Dogs. They had just emerged from the phone booth at the back of the restaurant after exiting the Agora. No one had looked askance at two people making their way out of the very small booth. The hidden market might have been practically abandoned, but the entrance enchantment that encouraged potentially curious onlookers to avert their gazes held firm. Echo wondered if the magic would need topping up soon. She wondered who would do it.
“Do you want one?” Echo asked, hefting her backpack higher on her shoulder. The bowl was heavy, but also comforting in its heft. “I think I have enough cash on me.”
At the prospect of a potential sale, the blue-haired girl behind the counter lowered her magazine to peer at them over its pages.
Rowan shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to stoop so low as to exchange actual money for food.”
The blue-haired girl rolled her eyes and went back to reading her magazine.
“Yeah, I’d hate to make a habit of that,” Echo said, trying to keep her tone light, but unable to fight the note of impatience that seeped into it. “Besides, I kind of just want to get back to Avalon and the Ala.”
“Right,” Rowan said as he reached for the door. The little bell on top of it jingled as they left the shop. “Princes to save.”
“Just another Tuesday,” Echo said.
Rowan’s words were flippant, but they made something tighten in Echo’s chest. She hoped there was a prince left to save after Tanith was done with him. A brisk wind bit into their cheeks as they made their way westward on St. Marks Place toward the Astor Place subway station. Summer had fled and autumn had snuck up on Echo without her noticing the change of seasons. One day it had been muggy and hot; the next, falling leaves and pumpkin-flavored everything. Time was marching on faster than she liked, and every day that went by without Caius felt longer than the last. Echo trudged ahead, hands burrowed in the pockets of her leather jacket, head down against the wind.
An elbow jostled her in the side when she went three blocks without uttering a single word. Echo shot Rowan a look. It was still hard to be near him, but it was getting easier. Slowly. There was too much baggage between them for reconciliation to be swift and painless.
“You all right?” Rowan asked, even though Echo was pretty sure he knew that she wasn’t.
She nodded, and he let her have the lie. “Yeah, I’m just …”
“Worried about him,” Rowan supplied when her sentence failed to find its ending.
“I know you don’t like talking about Caius,” Echo said.
They drew to a stop across the street from the subway station and waited for the light to change. A bus rolled past, spewing acrid fumes.
“Caius is okay,” Rowan said, tapping one foot as the light switched from green to red and yellow cabs, undeterred by traffic laws, blasted through the intersection. “I’ve decided that if you like him, he can’t be that bad.”
Echo’s eyebrows crept up. “Never imagined I’d hear you say that.”
Rowan ducked his chin into the high collar of his jacket, long legs gobbling up the crosswalk as Echo broke into a half jog to keep up with him. “I don’t like seeing you sad. And him being gone is making you sad, so I’m gonna help you get him back.”
Echo let his words marinate as they clambered down the steps into the train station. It was late morning on a weekday. The platform wouldn’t be too crowded, and the utility closet on the far end of the northbound track was usually secure as a gateway to the in-between.
There was no attendant in the station booth, so Echo hopped the turnstile. Rowan swiped his MetroCard behind her. He’d always been more lawful than she was.
They were halfway down the platform when Echo spoke again. “Thank you,” she said.
“What for?” Rowan asked. He already had the pouch of shadow dust in his hand, ready to smear some on the doorjamb.
Echo shrugged. Things felt complicated, and if there was one thing she hated having to articulate it was complicated feelings. “For being my friend,” she said succinctly.
Rowan paused in front of the utility closet. The train must have just left the station because the platform was empty save for a woman surrounded by bags and a shopping cart who was napping on a bench about twenty feet away. After the attack on Grand Central, the 6 train didn’t go north of the next stop, Union Square anyway.
“I’m your friend no matter what,” Rowan said. “I know things have been rocky between us and we can’t go back to the way things were, but I’ve always got your back.” He chucked her under the chin. “Even when you’re being a butthead.”
The tightness in Echo’s chest eased a fraction of a millimeter. “Butthead is my middle name.”
Rowan laughed as he dipped his fingers into the pouch. They came away stained with the rich blackness of shadow dust. “That’s unfortunate.”
He smeared the dust on the frame of the door before cracking it open. The hinges squealed. “M’lady,” he said as he offered Echo his hand.
They had traveled through the in-between like this countless times since childhood. She knew the feel of his hands as well as she knew her own. Every knuckle, every muscle. Echo slipped her palm into his, lacing their fingers together. “After you,” she said.
They stepped over the threshold and everything went black. Echo pictured their destination: the Hudson River shoreline, where they would find the small boat, cloaked with the same enchantment that made the phone booth at Crif Dogs so inconspicuous, that would take them back to Avalon Castle. No one would bother it until they got there. In a few minutes, they would be home and one step closer to finding their lost prince.
Echo had a moment to orient herself in the impenetrably dark void that was the in-between before she noticed that her hand was holding on to nothing.
Rowan was gone.
Echo fell to her knees when she emerged from the darkness, her hands clutching at the dirt as if she could summon Rowan through sheer force of will.
He was gone. His hand had slipped from hers and he was gone.
Echo looked around wildly, hoping against hope that her mind was simply playing tricks on her, that she would find him standing somewhere nearby, as nonchalant as ever and wondering why she was acting like a crazy person.
All she saw was long yellow grass swaying in the wind and errant scraps of garbage that had floated down from the highway. An empty Cheetos bag fluttered in the breeze beside a crushed Budweiser can. The boat bobbed in the water about a hundred feet down shore from where she stood.
She was alone.
No. No, no, no, no.
To be lost in the in-between was to be lost forever. There had been recent reports of it acting strangely, but Echo hadn’t given them much thought. She had been too focused on searching for Caius, on cobbling together a plan to find him. Nothing else had mattered. Until now.
Rowan was gone.
Echo slid her backpack off her shoulders, unceremoniously dumping its contents onto the pebbly shore as she rummaged for the pouch of shadow dust. Maybe he hadn’t left the station. Maybe she could find him if she went back. Maybe —
Her phone rang.
Echo ignored it, cursing the mess her backpack had vomited up. Crumpled candy wrappers and empty water bottles and a gleaming silver bowl and an army of highlighters. A scented candle. Two issues of Wonder Woman, for some reason. The pouch was small, and easy to miss. Echo unzipped the exterior pockets of her bag and searched each one. It was in there somewhere. It had to be. She never left home without it.
The phone rang again and again as tears clouded Echo’s vision.
The ringing stopped, then started again before the particulars of the sound registered in her addled mind.
The Star Wars theme song.
Rowan’s ringtone. The one he’d programmed into her phone one afternoon.
So you’ll always know it’s me, he’d said.
Echo picked up the phone, nearly dropping it in her haste to swipe the screen to answer the call.
“Hello,” she said, voice thick with fear and hope and a jumble of a thousand emotions she couldn’t name.
“Echo.”
Rowan’s voice sent a wave of dizzying relief through her, one so powerful she had to sit down, heedless of the sharp pebbles digging into the seat of her jeans.
“Rowan? Are you okay? What happened? Where are you —”
“Lincoln Center,” he interrupted. His voice was nearly drowned out by an announcement over the subway station’s public address system. “Somehow. I’m fine,” he said, even though he sounded as frazzled as Echo felt.
She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked the gods for their mercy.
“Where are you?” Rowan prompted when the only sound Echo felt capable of emitting was a reedy sigh.
“Near the boat.” She could feel tears cooling on her cheeks. She hadn’t even realized they’d fallen, so great was her relief.
“Go on ahead,” Rowan said, sounding out of breath as he navigated the station platform. From what Echo could make out over the connection, it was crowded with commuters. “I’ll meet you there. I’m gonna take the long way home.” He let out a shaky laugh that didn’t fool Echo in the slightest. He was scared. “I don’t know what the hell happened back there, but I’m not really feeling in-between travel right now.”
“Okay,” Echo said, voice barely above a whisper. The ordeal hadn’t lasted more than two minutes, but she felt wrung out. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. “Be safe.”
“I will,” Rowan replied. “Go home. I’ll meet you there.”
He hung up and the line went dead. The phone slipped through Echo’s limp fingers. A full-body tremble seized her. That had been too close. She had already lost one person she loved. The thought of losing another was almost too terrible a weight to bear.
With unsteady hands, Echo gathered up her belongings and shoved them into her backpack. Equally unsteady legs carried her toward the boat. She clung to the knowledge that Rowan was safe, that she hadn’t lost another person. This was her life now. An endless parade of fear and uncertainty, marked by moments of blinding terror.
A manic laugh erupted from her throat as she clambered into the boat.
“Just another Tuesday,” she said. Unable to stave off another peal of unhinged giggling, she was glad that the river was the only witness to her unraveling.