station at the Empire State Building to exchange work vouchers for clothing or food.
“Now what?” said Eph.
Nora looked diagonally across Seventh Avenue, seeing Macy’s one block away, its front entrance boarded. “We’ll go through the store and into the pharmacy. Follow me.”
The rotating doors had long ago been locked, the broken glass boarded tight. Shopping, either as a necessity or a leisure-time pursuit, no longer existed. Everything was ration cards and vouchers.
Eph pried a piece of plywood off the Thirty-fourth Street entrance. Inside, the “World’s Largest Department Store” was a mess. Racks overturned, clothing torn. It looked less like looting and more like the scene of a fight, or a series of fights. A vampire and human rampage.
They accessed the pharmacy through the store counter. The shelves were almost bare. Nora picked up a few items, including a mild antibiotic and a few syringes. Eph pocketed a bottle of Vicodin when Nora wasn’t looking and jammed it into a small pouch.
In a matter of five minutes they had what they came for. Nora looked at Eph. “I need some warm clothes and a pair of sturdy shoes. These camp slippers are worn down.”
Eph thought about cracking a joke about women and shopping but kept quiet and nodded. Farther inside, it wasn’t so bad. They walked up the famous wooden escalators—the first such set of moving stairs ever installed inside a building.
Their flashlights played over the vacant display floor, unchanged since the end of shopping as the world knew it. The mannequins startled Eph, their bald heads and fixed expressions giving them—in the first moment of illumination—a superficial resemblance to the
“Same haircut,” said Nora with a faint smile. “It’s all the rage…”
They moved through the floor, casing the place, looking for any signs of danger or vulnerability. “I am afraid, Nora,” Eph said, much to her surprise. “The plan… I am afraid and I don’t mind admitting as much.”
“The exchange will be difficult,” she said, her voice low as she pulled down shoe boxes in a back room, looking for her size. “That’s the trick. I think you should tell it we are getting the book for Mr. Quinlan to study. The Master surely knows about the Born. Tell it you plan to grab the book as soon as you can. We’ll have a location to set the bomb—and you’ll lure it in. He can bring as much reinforcement as he wants then. A bomb is a bomb…”
Eph nodded. He watched her face for some sign of treachery. They were alone now; if she was going to reveal herself to him as the turncoat, this was the time.
She eschewed more-fashionable leather boots for something sturdy and without heels. “The fake book just has to look good,” Eph said. “It has to look
“Fet is on it,” said Nora with absolute certainty. Almost with pride. “You can trust him…” And then she realized who she was talking to. “Listen, Eph. About Fet…”
“You don’t have to say anything. I understand. The world is fucked and we deserve to be only with those who care for us—above and beyond all things. In a strange way… if it was going to be anyone I feel good that it was Fet. Because he will give his life before he allows any harm to come to you. Setrakian knew it and chose him above me and you know it too. He can do what I never could—be there for you.”
Nora felt conflicting emotions now. This was Eph at his best: generous, smart, and caring. She would’ve almost preferred him to be an asshole. Now she saw him for who he really was: the man she had once fallen in love with. Her heart still felt the pull.
“What if the Master wants me to bring the book to it?” asked Eph.
“Maybe you’ll tell him we are chasing you. That you need the Master to come and get you. Or maybe you insist on him bringing Zack to you.”
Eph’s face darkened a moment, remembering the Master’s abject refusal on that point. “That raises a major issue,” he said. “How can I set this thing off and get away?”
“I don’t know. Too many variables right now. This whole thing is going to require a lot of luck. And courage. I wouldn’t blame you if you are having second thoughts.”
She watched him. Looking for a crack in his demeanor… or an opening so that she could reveal her complicity? “Second thoughts?” he said, trying to draw her out. “About going through with this?”
He saw the concern in her face as she shook her head. No hint of duplicity. And he was glad. He was relieved. Things had changed so much between them—but she was at heart the same old freedom fighter she always had been. It helped Eph to believe that he was the same too.
“What is that?” she asked.
“What?” he said.
“It looked almost like you were smiling.”
Eph shook his head. “Just me realizing that the bottom line is that Zack goes free. Whatever it takes to achieve that, I’ll do.”
“I think that’s amazing, Eph. I really do.”
“You don’t think the Master will see right through this?” he said. “You think it will believe that I could do this? That I could betray the rest of you?”
“I do,” she said. “I think it fits the way the Master thinks. Don’t you?”
Eph nodded, glad she wasn’t looking at him at that moment. If not Nora, then who was the turncoat? Not Fet, certainly. Could it be Gus? Could all of his bluster toward Eph be a cover? Or Joaquin was another possible suspect. All this twisty thinking was making him even more crazy.
…
He heard something out in the main display area. Stirring noises, once assigned to rodents, nowadays meant only one thing.
Nora had heard it too. They switched off their flashlights.
“Wait here,” said Eph. Nora understood that, for this subterfuge to succeed, Eph had to go alone. “And be careful.”
“Always,” she said, drawing silver.
He slid out through the door, careful not to bump the handle of the sword jutting out of his backpack. He pulled on his night-vision monocular and waited for the image to stabilize in his vision.
Everything looked still. All the mannequins had normally sized hands, no extended talon for a middle finger. Eph circled right, keeping to the edge of the room, until he saw the hanger swinging gently on a circular rack near the down escalator.
Eph drew his sword and went swiftly to the top wooden step. The nonworking escalator ran along a narrow, walled space. He descended as quickly and as quietly as he could, then took in the next level from the landing. Something told him to keep going down, and so he did.
He slowed at the bottom, smelling something. A vampire had been here; he was close behind. Strange for a vampire to be out on its own, not otherwise industriously employed. Unless patrolling this department store was its assigned task. Eph ventured out from the escalator, the floor revealed in green. Nothing moved. He was about to start toward a large display when he heard a light click in the opposite direction.
Again he saw nothing. Ducking low, he wove around the clothing racks in the direction of the noise. The sign above the open doorway gave directions for the restrooms and the administrative offices, as well as an elevator. Eph crept past the offices first, looking in every open door. He could come back and try the closed doors after he had cleared the rest of the area. He went to the restrooms, nudging open the door to the women’s room just a few inches to see if it made much noise. It was nearly silent. He entered and scanned the stalls, pushing open each door, sword in hand.
He returned to the hallway and stood listening, feeling as though he had lost whatever thin trail he had been following. He pulled on the men’s-room door and slipped inside. He passed the urinals and poked open each stall door with the tip of his sword, and then, disappointed, turned to leave.
In an explosion of paper and trash, the vampire leaped out of the open trash barrel in the corner near the door, landing on the edge of one of the sinks across the room. Eph lurched backward at first, cursing and swiping at the air with his sword to ward off any stinger attacks. He quickly asserted his position, leading with his silver, not wanting to get backed into a stall. He brandished the weapon at the hissing vampire and circled past it, coming close to the barrel it had sprung from, paper rustling at his feet.
