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“I can try.”
“Don’t let her leave,” I say. “Not until I get there. Do anything you can to keep her there. Hold her down if necessary. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Then I’m off, rushing down the library steps and turning onto Forty-Second Street. The shelter is ten blocks north and several long cross blocks west. Through a combination of jogging, speed walking, and willfully ignoring traffic lights, I make it there in twenty minutes.
Bobbie is waiting for me outside. Still dressed in her work khakis and cardigan, she stands at a noticeable remove from the circle of smokers I saw two days ago.
“Don’t worry, she’s still inside,” she tells me.
“Has she talked more?”
Bobbie shakes her head. “Nope. Still keeps to herself. She looks scared, though.”
We enter the building, Bobbie’s familiar presence allowing me to bypass the woman at the desk behind the scuffed glass. Tonight, the converted gymnasium is far more crowded than the afternoon of my first visit. Nearly every cot has been taken. Those that aren’toccupied have been marked with suitcases, trash bags, grungy pillows.
“There she is,” Bobbie says, pointing to a cot on the far side of the gym. Sitting on top of it, knees pulled to her chest, is Ingrid.
It’s not just her hair that’s changed in the past three days. Everything about her is darker, dirtier. She’s become a shadow version of her former self.
Her hair, now the color of tar save for that patch of telltale blue, hangs in greasy strings. Her shirt and jeans are the same ones she had on the last time I saw her, although they’re now stained from days of wear. Her face is cleaner but raw and weathered, as if she’s spent too much time outdoors.
Ingrid looks my way, recognition dawning in her bloodshot eyes.
“Juju?”
She leaps off the cot and runs toward me, pulling me into a strong, scared embrace.
“What are you doing here?” she says, showing no sign of letting me go.
“Looking for you.”
“You left the Bartholomew, right?”
“No.”
Ingrid breaks the embrace and backs away, eyeing me with palpable suspicion. “Tell me they didn’t get to you. Swear to me that you’re not one of them.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m here to help.”
“You can’t. Not anymore.” Ingrid collapses onto the nearest cot, her hands covering her face. Her left one trembles, out of control. Even when she grasps it with her right, it still shakes, her dirt-streaked fingers twitching. “Juju, you need to get out of there.”
“I plan to,” I tell her.
“No,now,” Ingrid says. “Run away as fast as you can. You don’t know what they are.”
Only, I do.
I think I’ve known for a while but wasn’t able to completely comprehend it.
But now all the information I’ve gathered in the past few days is starting to make sense. It’s like a photograph just pulled from a chemical bath. The image taking shape, emerging from the blankness, revealing the whole ghastly picture.
I know exactly what they are.
The Golden Chalice reborn.
41
At Ingrid’s insistence, we go someplace secluded to talk.