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Chapter Fifty-Seven

LUNA

He cared for my wound with his mouth while I was in the half-dream of blood-lock. This time, my fingers and toes aren’t numb and I am just sleepy, not unconscious. He didn’t take as much as he did in the draining house.

With my head on his thigh and my arms around his leg, he rows with the long oar. When we dock, he ties down the gondola and helps me onto the pier.

The orange falls out of my pocket again. He grabs it before it rolls off the pier.

“Oh, that… I want, right now.”

Again, he starts to peel it, and again he stops. His hand isn’t shaking this time, but he balls it into a fist and releases it.

“I was going to fly you home.” He digs his fingers into the skin and peels off a swatch. “I think we should walk.”

“Okay,” I yawn.

“It’s quicker through the liminal.” Another big patch of peel comes away. He tosses them into the trash. “Eat first.”

The last piece of rind comes away as we walk the path north, around the lake. He places the wedges in my mouth, one by one, his arm around my shoulder. I admire his glowing skin and full lips against the background of trees and sky. My blood makes him so beautiful.

After he’d drunk the blood my body was casting off, he glowed.

When he drained me and put me into thrall, I didn’t have a chance to see him.

Was he this luminous? Did the shape of his face seem to click into the space around him like a puzzle piece?

Were his eyes a whirlwind? Was his skin twenty-four karats?

Is he taller? Wider? Was he always this powerful? I can’t imagine surviving his displeasure. My stomach curls into itself at the thought of breaking the promise the Universe made him—that he would be too beautiful to be defied.

“So, here’s a thing,” I say after swallowing the second-to-last bite.

“Yes?” His eyes are hypnotic, and behind them, he loves me. I can’t ever give that up. The lie is so magnificent.

“I think I can fix it. The coil.” I shove the last piece of orange in my mouth and talk around it. “Not yet. I’m not good enough yet. I don’t want to make a mess. But… it’s doable.”

He walks without answering.

“Carmine?”

“It’s a long walk. If you’re done eating, we can go faster in the liminal.”

“I’m done.”

He touches me and we are in the flat dead gray of the in-between. It’s darker here, but somehow, also lighter, as if the blacks aren’t all the way black. How can this be faster?

I ask, “Do we have to run or…”

But Carmine’s walking toward the lake. I have to follow.

We are between the Bow Bridge and the northern shore of Central Park Lake.

There’s a boat in the center. Maybe thirty feet long.

The top is a mini-yacht like rich TV characters have, with a deck and a cabin below.

But it’s cut sideways and the bottom is a flat slab.

Carmine’s brow knots and his mouth sets into a stiff line.

“Was it there in the real world?” I ask. He turns to me, and he is so serious, every thought leaves my head.

“It does not exist in the Manifest.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you shouldn’t be here.”

With the flip of a switch, we leave the liminal. The colors of the night saturate the world, and the boat is gone.

We catch a cab back to Harlem.