Hourglass

“Don’t see what difference it makes.” Lucas leaned his head against the tiled wall. “As long as we’re putting some distance between us and them, it’s all good.”

All good were not words I would’ve used to describe our situation. I thought I realized what he was trying to do. “I know you want to be strong for me,” I said softly, “but right now I think it’s more important that you be honest with me.”

“Strong.” Lucas closed his eyes tightly. “Is that what I’m being? Because it doesn’t feel like it.”

Black Cross was all he ever had in the world, I told myself. What I went through was horrible, but for Lucas, tonight was even worse. He lost his mother, his best friend—everything but me. Maybe it’s my turn to be the strong one for a while.

“We’ll be okay.” I took his arm in my hands and examined the burns from the holy water. They were thin pink stripes that looked like lines of very bad sunburn. “Wait and see.”

Just then a gust of wind blew through the tunnel, heralding the arrival of the train. I cast a worried glance behind us as we boarded, but nobody followed. Only one other person was on the car, a college-age guy who was asleep across the seats and smelled strongly of beer.

As the train rumbled into motion, I led Lucas toward a map of the subway system. “You know your way around New York better than I do,” I said. “So you can figure out if we’re going the right way.”

Lucas moved slowly, like a man walking through water. He focused on the map, clearly wanting to do something useful. “Like I said before, there’s no right way. Except, you know, farther from them.”

“Of course there’s a right way.” I was surprised Lucas hadn’t seen it; the answer seemed so obvious, to me. “We need money and a safe place to hide for a little while. In other words, we need to find a friend.”

“Balthazar,” he said.

I nodded. “So, are we headed to Chinatown or not?”

Lucas put his hands on either side of the map. “Yeah. We’re going the right way.”

Although Lucas remembered the name of the street Balthazar had directed us to, at first neither of us could spot the correct store. It was too early for the shops to be open, so they all looked the same: identical storefronts shuttered tightly with metal grates. We had to wait.

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.