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Chapter Seventy-Three

CARMINE

A vampire can live in the liminal, but it is difficult to hunt. Everything is either dead, like rocks, dirt, and clothing, or on its way to dead. So unless you’re Viaro, with his particular talent, it’s almost impossible to scent accurately.

I breathe in her intoxicating sweetness, standing on the liminal shore of Central Park Lake, on the far side of the Bow Bridge.

Her scent isn’t strong, but she’s here, exactly where I expected.

On the boat in the lake. From here, it’s the top cabin of a fiberglass thirty-footer torn from its engine and embedded in a rickety raft.

A low cast-iron fence runs between the water and me, then there’s a few feet of shore.

That’s close enough for discomfort. There’s one way for a vampire to get onto a boat without some kind of pier or bridge.

A bird form in the Manifest may slip into the liminal over the boat and land on his feet.

But he cannot land in the water or he will sink like a stone.

No amount of swimming will bring him up.

Even his bird form, if he enters the liminal in the air over the water, he will get sucked down. It’s like threading a needle.

But it begs the question of how Charles got her aboard. A bat isn’t strong enough to carry a woman onto a boat, and a raven isn’t strong enough to get her off it.

“That you?” Viaro asks from behind me. I turn. “Yup.”

“What are you doing here?”

Absently, he picks up a leaf from the ground and sniffs it. “You told me to find Charles.” He points at the boat. “He’s there.” He crunches the leaf and lets the dust fall. “On the boat.”

“How?”

“You didn’t ask me to find out how.”

“Where’s Ario?”

“Here.” He comes right behind. “No bridge. No raft parked around. Nothing. It’s just… out there.”

“He must have… thrown her?” I’m baffled by the mechanics.

A dove trills and a twig snaps.

“Get down,” I whisper.

We crouch in the bushes. About thirty meters away, a white bird lands on the other side of the fence and turns into a man. Not a man. A boy.

“Fuck,” Viaro says under his breath. “Laro knew you were coming to New York?”

“Of course he did.” Who else was going to help me receive and send immediate messages to the Luganos over the invisible all-powerful internet that I can’t get used to? He knew everything.

“What is he doing ?” Ario grabs my arm as if I know.

Laro walks toward the water. My heart is seized in a fist. The stake in it feels as if it’s pulling me apart. He steps into the water.

“You’re going to let him?” Viaro is shocked. Laro was one of us the day he was sired.

I put my finger to my lips. I am worried. My body is having a reaction to seeing my son walk into liminal water like this. But I also trust that he is neither suicidal, nor stupid.

Laro takes another step, then another, but does not sink. He is walking on the water.

“You saw nothing?” I ask Ario. “Right there? Where he’s walking?”

“I swear. There’s no-fucking-thing. Not a sunken ship or a pier the city didn’t finish. Nothing.”

Laro goes through the door and into the cabin. The door closes. I am cut off from her.

“We will go there,” I say.

“Then what?” Viaro asks.

“We will kill them.” I’ve already started along the fence.

“But whatever he walked on?” Ario has to jog to catch up to me. “It might only exist for him.”

“Then we will fly in from the Manifest, over the boat.”

“That boat doesn’t exist on the other side,” Viaro says. “How are we supposed to land on it?”

“You’re not going to help her from the bottom of the lake,” Ario adds. “None of us are.”

I keep walking to where Laro crossed. I don’t care if Viaro is right. I can’t do nothing.

I can’t be too frustrated with them. I cannot expect them to live and die for Luna. Either they’ll help me or they won’t, but the bulk of the risk has to fall on me.

“I’ll go first. I will locate the boat, then come back to the Manifest, right above. You’ll follow me because you trust me. Because you don’t want Charles to get three rings and you don’t want the raven ring at the bottom of a liminal lake.”

“Which is where it’s going to end up if you try to do this,” Ario says. “Boss, look, the ‘locate the boat’ part is suicide. You have no margin for err?—”

Ario claps his mouth shut when there’s a scream from the boat. Begging. The cabin door slaps open. We freeze, then gently step into the shadows.

A huge vampire with a body built for intimidation exits with a smaller one held over his head. He walks on the water exactly where Laro did, then tries to drop the smaller one, who clutches at every scrap of purchase on his companion’s body.

I hunt for visual hints of Luna. But I can’t see anything through the open door. It’s all flat fucking gray. The only proof she’s there is the increase in the intensity of her scent.

Eventually, the bruiser kicks the screamer off him and watches him disappear in the water before spitting in that spot.

“Bitch.” He spits again and storms back onto the boat.

“Fuck,” Ario whispers.

“There’s something,” Viaro adds, squinting where the vampire sank.

“Yes.” I see it before he points it out. Liminal water has no current or direction. It is more reflective, even though there’s less light to reflect. Something sticking out of it will look like a mole on a clear expanse of skin. “It’s his foot.”

“Toes of the left.” Viaro turns to us with new purpose in his expression. “He’s on top of something.”

“Drowning forever,” Ario adds. “We can’t leave him there. I don’t know what he did, but nobody deserves that.”

“Hold on.” I grab Ario’s arm as he’s starting to leave. “I don’t think it’s just him.”

“Him, who? The big or the small? Because we know the big one isn’t alone.”

“Neither is the small one.”

They both look at the toe sticking out.

“Shit,” Viaro mutters.

“You two chickenshits won’t have to come on the boat after all. I just need you to promise me that if I don’t make it, you’ll take care of Luna. She’ll stay in thrall if I sink. That’ll be the rest of her life. You have to protect her.”

“We promise.” Viaro jabs Ario with his elbow.

“He’s admitting it’s a suicide mission,” Ario says.

“Not if you do what you’re supposed to do,” I say. “Listen.”

We crouch together, and I quickly lay out the plan.