Mystic City (17 page)

I sigh with relief. He looks even better than I remember. His sun-streaked hair is messy and he brushes it back with his hands. Under his cloak are a tight navy V-neck and a torn pair of jeans. His blue eyes glisten in the darkness.

“Why do you care where I go?” The question comes out more harshly than I intend.

“I don’t. Not really.” He bites his bottom lip and looks away. I can tell he’s lying. Instead of making me mad, however, it sort of … flatters me. I remember Turk telling me how cryptic Hunter is, how difficult he can be to understand.

I glance ahead, into the Block. “Where are you going?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Where are
you
going?”

“Home.”

“Through the Block?” I can tell he doesn’t think this is a good idea. “Let me help. You look like you could use a tour guide.”

“I can make it on my own.”

Hunter shakes his head. “I’m not taking any chances with you. Come on, let’s go.” He pulls his hood back up, takes my hand—I feel a delicious tingle—and we’re off.

At first, I’m surprised by Hunter’s stealth—how he moves like a cat, how with his hood covering his face and his hands in his pockets, he practically blends into the night—but he
is
a rebel, after all. Used to hiding, disappearing. No wonder he hasn’t been caught and imprisoned.

We’re mostly silent as we move farther into the Block. I look up; on either side are ramshackle mystic homes with roofs that look like they might cave in at any second. The green-black water below gives off a salty, overwhelming smell. I can tell we’re on a slight incline. We must have trekked a mile by now, though I don’t know where we’re heading.

The shouts up ahead seem to be getting louder. “Come on,” Hunter says, glancing over his shoulder. “Slowpoke.”

“I’m not slow!”

“You’re like a snail. If we were in France, they’d cook you up.”

“Oh, please.”

Just when I least expect it, the walkway ends. Suddenly, my feet are on something soft—a mass of land has risen out of the water. I’m guessing we’re at one of the highest points in the Block. “What’s this?”

Hunter looks down. “Grass.”

Oh! I’ve read about this in school—we don’t have it in the Aeries. I stop and reach down, running my hands over the flecks of green and brown.

“Aria.”

I jerk my attention back to Hunter. “Yes?”

“If you like the grass, you’ll
love
the trees.”

I flick my eyes up—as far as I can see there is land, more land than I have ever seen, sprinkled with real, live trees. Trees! They are thin and sickly and nothing like the plush plants in the Aeries greenhouses, but here they are. I’m surprised that no one in the Aeries seems to know this all exists.

“You know, it wasn’t always like this,” Hunter says. Walking next to him makes me feel protected. I can’t help but notice the muscles in his arms, bulging against the cotton sleeves of his shirt.

“Like what?” I ask.

“So run-down and tired. The Block used to be beautiful—the hub of the city.”

I look around and scrunch up my nose. “What happened?”

“You’ve heard of Ezra Brooks, obviously,” Hunter says.

“Who?”

Hunter’s jaw goes slack. “Well, you know about the Conflagration, don’t you?”

I think back to what I learned at Florence Academy. “Of course. It was an attack on the city. Now it is a day of mourning, when we remember the hundreds of lives that were lost because of the mystic bomb.”

“Ezra Brooks died in the Conflagration. He was the representative the mystics had chosen to run in the election against your family and the Fosters’ man. Ezra tried to convince the city to pay for renovations to restore the Block to its former glory. When he died, the government abandoned that plan and made it the only place mystics were legally allowed to live—the most undesirable part of all Manhattan.”

“Undesirable? But there’s solid ground here,” I say. “There’s nothing like this in the Aeries.”

“True. But think how much hotter it is down here than all the way up there. Nobody who doesn’t have to would want to live in the Depths. Besides, there isn’t
that
much land.”

I look around. It seems sad that all this is hidden, but I suppose it does make sense. “And this Ezra Brooks … he was a mystic?”

“Yes. He was a great man, actually,” Hunter tells me as we walk past a grouping of shacks, their windows open and bare, their roofs missing shingles and patches of paint.

I think of the campaign posters I saw on the way to Lyrica’s house. “Was he related to Violet Brooks?”

“Sure was,” Hunter says. “She’s his daughter.”

I stop. There’s a window up ahead with light streaming out; I can see a family—a young man and woman and a child—sitting at a table, eating dinner.

“Nonmystics weren’t the only people who died during the explosion, you know,” Hunter says. “We lost a lot of people ourselves—innocents who did nothing wrong.

“After the Conflagration the city started the mystic drainings and forced us all to live in the Block.” Hunter stops, seeing me staring at the family. “That’s the Terradills, Elly and Nic. They have a baby around five months old. Nic owns a gondola with a few other men, and that’s how he makes a living.”

“Are you friends with them?” I ask.

Hunter considers this. “Friends? Not really. But everyone in the Block knows everyone else. It’s a pretty tight-knit community.”

As we walk, Hunter points out the homes of other mystic families, most of whom either own gondolas and make their money independently or work in the Depths for the government, operating water taxis, disposing of garbage, performing building maintenance, and doing other mundane jobs. The way he talks about them makes it seem like he knows them all intimately.

“The farther in the house is—closer to the Great Lawn—the more money a family has.” He eyes my clutch and my shoes. “Of course, that’s relative. It’s not even close to, you know, how much money people have in the Aeries.”

I try to smile—Hunter is skirting the issue that my family is one of the reasons why all these people suffer, why they all live in such horrid conditions without enough money or food. I suddenly feel sick to my stomach.

“And where do you live?” I ask to change the subject. “Up ahead, where the noise is?” The sounds—music, and commotion, and children screaming playfully—have grown louder as we’ve worked our way deeper into the Block.

Hunter doesn’t answer. “Come on,” he says. “There’s a POD only a few hundred yards that way, just outside the Block.”

“Wait,” I say at the same time that he goes to grab my hand. Our fingers touch and my hand buzzes with energy.

He pulls away. “Sorry. I forget how dangerous my touch can be to you—I’m not used to dealing with …”

“Nonmystics?”

Hunter cracks a grin. “I was going to say girls. But yeah, sure. Nonmystics.”

I feel myself blush—thank God it’s dark and he can’t see. “Well, don’t be sorry. Be careful.” For the first time in a long while, I feel relaxed, despite being in this strange, dangerous part of the city. It might have something to do with what Lyrica told me, but I also know it has a lot to do with Hunter, with how he puts me at ease. “I’m not ready to go home just yet.”

Hunter’s face brightens. “Really?”

Just then, we hear what sounds like a miniature rocket blast in the sky. “Where is all that noise coming from?”

“The carnival,” Hunter says. “It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a great time. Everybody lets their hair down and forgets their worries. For a night, anyway.”

“What’s a carnival?”

Hunter looks shocked. “Seriously? Well, come on. We can’t let you leave the Block without having a bit of fun.”

The carnival is the liveliest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s sort of like a plummet party, only instead of celebrating destruction, everyone here seems to be celebrating
life
.

Hunter leads me through a labyrinth of booths with mystics inside them selling their wares—tiny trinkets and dolls and wooden shoes, rows of buns and muffins and candies and chocolates, dresses made of thin material that waves in the wind, and hats, gloves, belts, and more.

Mystics pass me with plates of fried dough, their hands covered in powdered sugar. “Look!” I point to a tank full of water, where a young mystic is sitting, waiting to be dunked. He’s soaking wet, which makes me think he’s already been submerged. A few feet away, a group of kids are lined up, throwing tiny balls at the lever on the tank and hoping they’ll sink him again.

“Looks cold,” Hunter says, rubbing his arms. “Want one?” He motions to a booth full of stuffed animals, the kind my mother would never allow me to have when I was younger: teddy bears with bows around their necks, plush giraffes and monkeys and other exotic animals you’d find in a zoo.

“Sure,” I say. “Only I don’t have any credit here, and I’m almost out of coins—”

Hunter scoffs. “Aria, you can’t just
buy
one of these.”

“You can’t?”

“Nope.” He motions to the woman behind the booth, who nods and hands over five plastic rings, all in different colors. They look like cheap, oversized bracelets. Light from the carnival brightens his face. “You gotta win ’em.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup.” Hunter flexes his biceps. “Here, hold these.” He hands me four of the rings and keeps one for himself. “Now stand back and watch a master at work.”

Hunter eyes the row of empty soda bottles. Each one is worth a certain number of points—the more points you get by tossing a ring over the bottle, the nicer a stuffed animal you win.

He rolls his neck, then flicks his wrist: the ring soars out of his hand and hits the soda bottle in the middle with a clink, failing to land around its neck, then tumbling to the ground.

“Oh no!” Hunter looks at me sheepishly. “That wasn’t my fault, you know. It was a bad ring.”

The mystic behind the booth laughs. “Of course,” I say. “Factory defect.” I slide a blue ring off my wrist. “Here, try this one.”

“Thanks.” Hunter eyes the center bottle, worth a thousand points—the top prize. “I’m coming for you.” He reaches back, tosses the ring. There’s too much strength behind his throw—the ring smacks the bottle, then lands next to the previous one on the ground.

“I swear I’m good at this!” Hunter cries. I start to giggle, and he does, too. “Really.”

“I believe you. But how about you let me give it a try.”

Hunter cocks his head. “Oh?”

I take a green ring off my wrist. “Watch and learn.”

I eye that same central bottle and rotate my wrist back and forth, practicing. Not too heavy a throw, but not too light, either. I swing my arm back, then release—the ring sails into the air and drops directly onto the bottle.

“Oh my gosh! I won!” I jump up and down, and Hunter wraps his arms around me. Immediately, I freeze, stiff as a board, and Hunter pulls away, embarrassed.

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “Um, don’t worry about it.”

Hunter picks the fallen rings up off the ground, and I hand back the two we didn’t use. The mystic behind the booth blinks at me. “Which one, miss?”

I’m studying the selection of stuffed animals when, out of the corner of my eye, I see a little girl—no more than seven or eight—standing a few feet away, staring longingly at an orange giraffe. Her face and hands are dirty, and the beige material of her dress is worn.

“That one,” I say, pointing to the giraffe. The mystic hands it to me.

Hunter gives the giraffe a pat. “Good choice, Aria. He looks very healthy.”

The little girl is staring at me, and I walk over to her. “What’s your name?”

She’s silent.

“It’s okay,” Hunter says, as if he knows the girl—which, actually, he probably does. “You can tell Aria. She’s my friend.”

“Julia,” the girl says in a small voice.

I hold out the giraffe. “Well, Julia, I won this for you.”

She gives the hint of a smile. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” I watch as she reaches tentatively for the stuffed animal. “Will you give him a good home?”

Julia nods emphatically. “Yes. I promise.”

Hunter wipes some of the dirt from Julia’s face. “You should probably get back to your mom now, right? I bet she’s looking for you.”

Julia looks from Hunter to me. “Thank you.” She runs off into the crowd, the stuffed animal cradled in her arms.

“That was really nice of you,” Hunter says. The way he’s looking at me is so intense that I can feel myself blushing.

“It was no big deal.” I look away. “What’s that?” I point to a large, whirring machine that seems to be producing batches of pink fluff.

“Cotton candy,” Hunter says, elbowing me playfully. “Want some?”

“No, it looks horrible!”

“Are you kidding? It’s delicious!” he yells, and takes my hand again. The jolt is less surprising this time, more manageable. I wonder if he is doing anything with his body to make it this way or if I’m getting used to him.

Everywhere I turn there are more giddy people. It’s the first time I’ve seen drained mystics looking happy. They still look weak, with the pallor I’ve come to realize results from the drainings—even the children have dark circles underneath their eyes, their skin a pale, chalky color. But no one seems to care. They’re all smiling and laughing and chasing each other. There are games set up everywhere, and lights! There are so many lights—it’s like something from a movie, the way blues and greens and purples and reds are captured inside paper lanterns
that line the booths, tiny bulbs strung across the trees like at Christmastime.