The Shadow Men (Hidden Cities #4)

The Shadow Men (Hidden Cities #4) Page 23

“And killing you,” Trix said.

Sally slowed down, out of breath, getting her bearings. She looked at Trix. “That, too,” she agreed. She glanced back and Trix followed her gaze. There was no sign of the Shadow Men, but if Trix was really marked, they would find her again as soon as they got away from Sally’s No-Face Men.

Her heart ached, but not from exertion. In all of this madness, with the stakes so high, how would she ever find Jenny and Holly?

“Hey,” Sally said, reaching out to touch her. “I’ll find them. Whoever you and your friend are looking for, I’ll find them, and get you out of here. We’ll all be safer with you back where you belong.”

Trix felt relief wash through her, but then she frowned. She didn’t understand why Sally would bother to help her in the midst of all this.

An angry sneer lifted one corner of the little girl’s mouth, and suddenly Sally seemed much older, almost cruel. “I’m going to send you back with my own mark on you,” she said. “And with my No-Faces on your trail. I won’t let them kill Veronica, but they can punish her. Imprison her. Keep her from trying this fucking shit again.”

Trix stared at her in wonder. Ten or eleven years old, but so much older than her years, Sally Bennet had it all figured out. She might not be able to turn back time and prevent the horror and devastation that had hit two Bostons tonight, but she knew how to stop Veronica from making it any worse. And Trix and Jim would get Jenny and Holly back in the bargain.

“Just tell me what I need to do,” Trix said, hopes soaring.

“For now?” Sally said, grim and dark-eyed. “Just keep up.”

She started running again. Trix took a deep breath and ran after her, putting her fate and the fate of those she loved in the hands of a little girl. But she knew she had no choice. Jenny and Holly were out there, somewhere, in the ruin of two cities. The survivors of those two Bostons, and the people of Trix’s own city … they were all now depending on Sally Bennet.

When he saw Jenny shrink away from him, all of Jim’s strength fled. For an instant, hope had raced through him like adrenaline fire, but then he had seen the lack of recognition in her eyes and knew that when she looked at him, she saw a stranger. This wasn’t his Jenny.

Exhaustion weighed him down. Thus far, determination had driven him on. He loved his family, but he needed them even more, and that need propelled him through despair and past weariness. But all along, hopelessness had whispered in the back of his mind like some tiny devil seated on his shoulder, and now at last he surrendered to it.

Jim turned his back on the restaurant—on not-his-Jenny and not-his-Jenny’s mother—and tried to walk away. He managed three steps before his legs went out from under him and he fell to his knees on the cracked pavement. No tears came. Numb, he felt his whole body sag.

In a moment he would get up. In a moment he would continue his search. In a moment he would catch up with Trix and they would pretend that two cities hadn’t just smashed together, that people weren’t dead and dying around them, that Bostonians weren’t facing their doppelgängers, their reality falling apart. In a moment—

“Do you know me?”

Her voice froze him in place. For a moment he could not breathe, and his chest clenched so tightly that he thought his heart had paused as well. Then she touched him gently on the shoulder and spoke again. “Hey,” she said. “Anybody home in there?”

Jim shuddered and smiled at the same time. How many times had she said the same words to him? When he was lost in thought, painting in his mind, she would try to talk to him and it would be like her voice—her presence—was muffled conversation from another room. And then she would touch him, and ask him that same question, in those same words, though rarely with the same sadness.

If he just kept his eyes closed, if he didn’t answer, maybe he could pretend for just a little while that she was his Jenny after all.

But he couldn’t do that. The sounds of chaos and crisis filled the city, and closing his eyes did not make them go away. There could be no pretending.

Jim turned to look at this woman who was not his wife. She wore a confused and troubled expression, and he wondered what she was seeing on his face—surprise or love or madness, or some combination of all three? “I’m sorry,” Jim said, unable to keep himself from searching her eyes for some sign of recognition. “I keep wishing I could wake up and find out it’s all a nightmare.”

Not-his-Jenny nodded. “Me, too. I think there’s going to be a lot of that going around.”

Her mother stood on the restaurant’s front stoop, gazing worriedly at the two of them. But then something inside the restaurant drew her attention, and after a quick glance, she set aside her broom and went in.

“So, are you going to tell me who you are?” she asked.

Before he could answer, a fire engine roared down the street without its siren, a grim-faced man behind the wheel. They both watched it pass, and Jim saw that a number of people had come out onto the stoops of the apartment buildings on the block. A van pulled up and two burly men got out, staring at the damage to the façade of a music store across the street that had specialized in antique vinyl records. The owners, he figured. The store existed in his Boston, too, and somehow that reassured him.

She was still waiting for an answer.

“I’m Jim,” he said, feeling foolish, as though she ought to know. But of course she didn’t. “Jim Banks.”

“Why don’t you come inside, Jim?” she said.

He looked at her, amazed at her tenderness, as he always had been. “You don’t even know me.”

“No, but I can see you know me. Or you think you do.”

“Jenny—” he began.

“Jennifer,” she corrected. “No one’s called me Jenny since my grandfather died.”

Jim nodded, studying her. Jennifer. That would make it easier—at least a little. She had an old scar on her chin that his Jenny had never had and she wore her hair pulled back into a ponytail, revealing three studs in each ear. She was thinner than his Jenny, too, by at least ten pounds. More time at the gym.

“Jennifer,” he echoed, finally climbing to his feet. “Why doesn’t it freak you out? I mean, yes, I know you, but you’re not afraid of me. Why aren’t you calling the cops right now, reporting me as a stalker or something?”

“The cops have bigger troubles tonight,” she said. “Besides, you showing up here, calling my name, looking at me like that? It’s not the weirdest thing to happen to me tonight.”

A tremor of excitement went through him, and he could feel his face flush. He glanced at the shattered windows of the restaurant, but from this angle he could only see the ceiling fans and the old tin ceiling. “She came here, didn’t she?” he asked, nodding at Jennifer. He smiled. “Is that what you’re talking about? You must have thought you were going crazy. And your parents—”

“Who are you talking about?” Jennifer asked.

Jim had to laugh at her tone, and the crinkle of her eyes, and the way one corner of her mouth lifted higher than the other. All so familiar to him. All parts of his Jenny. “The other you,” he said. “My Jenny. Your double, or whatever.”

But even as he spoke, Jennifer shook her head, backing away from him, broken glass crunching under the soles of her shoes. “Jesus,” she said, putting a hand to her temple. “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

And Jim knew he was wrong. He wanted to scream in frustration, but knew he would only chase her away. “Jennifer,” he said, keeping his voice low and steady enough to draw her attention. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

She let loose a frantic little laugh. “You mean other than the earthquake?”

“I’m getting the idea you already know it wasn’t just an earthquake,” Jim said.

That snapped her out of whatever hysterical slide she’d been in. She looked around the glass-strewn street, glanced over the tops of buildings at the altered cityscape, and then started again for the door to the restaurant. “You’d better come in.”

Jennifer used her shoe to brush away some of the glass that her mother’s broom had missed, and led the way into what had once been a quaint little restaurant with the best steaks, seafood, and desserts in Boston. Her father, Tad Garland, had been the mastermind behind the desserts. To the amusement of many customers, it was his wife, Rose, who had made it the place to go for steak and seafood. People craving a good meal came to Junction 58.

The interior of the place looked much the same as it had in Jim’s Boston—or it would have, if not for the crack in the ceiling and the shattered glasses and bottles behind the bar, and the pictures and other hangings that had fallen off the wall. Junction 58 was some kind of train reference—Tad Garland loved trains—and there were tracks that hung from the ceiling, a whole maze that a pair of model trains and their passenger cars and boxcars steamed through over and over again during lunch and dinner seatings. The track was still there, but the trains had fallen, and lay smashed to pieces on the floor.

Tad Garland sat in a chair, staring at the broken remains of one of his model steam engines, which he had arranged on a table before him.

And a different Tad Garland—slimmer and better dressed, with round eyeglasses and a long gash on his left cheek—stood over by the bar, gazing wide-eyed at Jennifer’s mother, as though Rose Garland might be a ghost.

Jennifer moved toward her father, the Tad who was sitting with his broken train, and glanced meaningfully back at Jim. “Dad,” she began.

Both Tads looked up.

Rose Garland went behind the bar, moving past her husband’s doppelgänger as though she wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, and searched until she had found five glasses that weren’t broken. A little more fishing turned up an undamaged bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The woman responsible for the best steaks in Boston wasn’t going to screw around with wine or margaritas. “I’m pouring myself a drink,” Rose said. “Anyone doesn’t want one, I’ll drink yours for you.”

Strangely, it was the other Tad—the one who obviously didn’t belong—who first spoke to Jim. “Who might you be?” he asked.

“His name’s Jim Banks,” Jennifer answered for him.

Her mother and father both looked at her like she’d cussed in church. Rose threw back two fingers of Jack Daniel’s, then poured a little more. No one else made a move for the glasses she had set out, at least not at first. But after a few wordless seconds, the other Tad moved down the front of the bar, righting a fallen stool, and picked up a glass of golden brown whiskey. He sipped it, looking at Jim over the top of the glass and touching his cut. “You have any idea how any of this is possible, Mr. Banks?” he asked.

This question got all of their attention. All four Garlands—the ones who belonged here and the one who didn’t—narrowed their eyes. Jim studied the two Tads and wondered where the other Rose might be. Was she dead, or had she divorced Tad and left Boston altogether? He decided she must be dead. It would explain the way the other Tad looked at Rose, and there was no way that the Rose Garland he knew would’ve let her husband keep the restaurant if they’d gotten a divorce. Just the fact that the other Tad had been here when the two Bostons merged meant he still owned the place, at least in his city. And how the hell would that work, now that there were two Tad Garlands in this version of Boston, but only one Junction 58?

“I know a little,” Jim admitted.

The Tad who belonged swept the pieces of his train off the table in front of him, and they clattered to the floor. “Well, spit it out, then, buddy. ’Cause my head’s splitting in two.”

As if realizing what he’d said, Tad flinched and looked over at the other Tad, who laughed and toasted him with glistening whiskey. “Something’s splitting in two,” the other Tad said. With that, he grabbed another of the glasses Rose had poured and walked across the bar to his double, setting the drink on the table.

Tad looked at the glass for a second, then shook his head with a dubious chuckle and picked it up, sipping the whiskey just like the other Tad.

“Actually, it’s not anything splitting in two,” Jim said, glancing around the bar, worried about what he ought to say and what he ought to keep to himself. “It’s two things coming together that shouldn’t.”

Jennifer hugged herself. Jim wanted to do it for her, to embrace her and make her feel safe and warm, but she didn’t know him.

“You want to explain that?” Rose asked.

“It may be hard to believe—”

“Are you kidding?” Jennifer said. “After the past couple of hours, what could be hard to believe?”

Jim nodded. She was right. No use trying to break it to them gently. “Short version,” he said. “A long time ago, an asshole named McGee fucked around with magic and basically broke Boston into three pieces. Not pieces. That’s wrong. Three variations. Three possibilities. All three were real, side by side … well, in the same space, I guess. And part of the structure that held them apart gave way tonight. Two of the cities crashed into each other. Places where they were the same, like your restaurant, were affected the least. But in other places, where the cities differed the most …”

“The cathedral,” Jennifer said, her eyes haunted as she glanced out through the shattered windows at the street. “We saw.”

Jim gestured at the two Tads. “You guys aren’t going to be the only ones dealing with this tonight. My bet? A huge percentage of the city are meeting their twins right now, or they will be soon.”

“Not me,” Rose said, pouring herself another splash of Jack and staring into the glass. She smiled bitterly. “Turns out I’m dead.”