Dying Is My Business

they knew where to find us is the fact that they know we’re the ones with the box.”

“But they made a mistake,” I said. “They assumed we had the box with us at the house. That should buy us some time.”

“Not a lot,” Bethany said. “As soon as they realize their mistake, they’re going to come after us again. If they found us once, they can do it again. We have to get the box back from Gregor now.”

The light changed. Thornton started across the street. “We can leave it there, it’ll be safe with him.”

Bethany hurried to keep pace with him. “There is no safe place for it. The Autumnal Equinox is tomorrow. You know that. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Wait, what does the equinox have to do with anything?” I asked.

She ignored me, still trying to convince Thornton to listen to her. “The safest place for it is in Isaac’s vault, where we can keep an eye on it. As soon as we get the box I promise you we’ll go back, but right now we need you. I don’t know how to find Gregor, but you do. And even if I knew the way, he wouldn’t give it to me. He doesn’t trust topsiders, but he trusts you, Thornton. You’re the only one he’ll give it to. We can’t do this without you.”

Topsiders? The equinox? Just when I thought I was getting a decent handle on things, I was confused again. I felt like a preschooler sitting in on a Ph.D.-level class.

Thornton stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to Bethany. Pedestrians, annoyed to find someone standing in their way, mumbled to themselves about stupid tourists, but when they looked up and saw his face they blanched and skirted around him quickly. “I have to see Gabrielle,” he said. “Bethany, I’m fucking dying!”

“You’re already dead,” she said. He winced at the harshness of her words. “If we don’t secure that box, there’s a damn good chance everyone else is going to die, too. I can’t let that happen, even if it means not getting you back in time. This is bigger than you, Thornton. It’s bigger than all of us.”

He glared at her, his eyes like steel. I saw the muscles of his jaw clench under his waxy, pale skin. “You really are a bitch, Bethany. Do you know that?”

“Yes,” she said.

He sighed. “Fine, I’ll take you there. Let’s just get this over with.” He walked back in the direction we’d come from, purposely knocking into Bethany’s shoulder as he passed. The pearl-like charm around her neck jangled.

She shook her head. “I don’t have a choice,” she said, but I didn’t know if she was talking to me or herself.

“You can take off that charm now,” I said. “The danger’s passed.”

She glared me. “I’m not taking any chances,” she said.

I followed then as they walked single file down the sidewalk. They didn’t speak or look at each other. Silence filled the space between us like poison gas. I didn’t like it. For a while there, being with Bethany and Thornton had felt like the closest thing to friendship I’d ever known, but whatever bond of trust and camaraderie that had developed between us was broken now, maybe irreparably.

One thing still nagged at me, something Bethany had brought up but couldn’t answer. Whoever had sent Bennett and the shadowborn knew where we were. But there was a ward around the safe house, and Bethany had told me how wards worked. Nobody should have been able to find us unless they already knew our location.

Ingrid was right. Someone had betrayed us. Someone who knew exactly where we would be last night.

Someone had turned Bennett’s corpse into a revenant in order to get me out of the way before the shadowborn came. Why? And why use Bennett, of all people? That was no accident. It implied that whoever was behind it knew me—or at least enough about me to know Bennett and I had crossed paths before. There were very few people with that kind of information.

Put together, all the clues pointed to someone on the inside.

But who? It couldn’t be Bethany or Thornton. Fear wasn’t something you could fake, and they’d both been genuinely frightened of the shadowborn. What about the colleagues Bethany and Thornton had mentioned—Isaac, Gabrielle, and Philip? Any one of them could have sold us out to get the box for themselves.

All roads led back to that fucking box. Underwood was holding it over my head as leverage and forcing me into an impossible position. It was putting Bethany and Thornton in constant danger. It was getting people killed, good people like Ingrid. I was starting to hate the damn thing.

And just like that, I knew what I had to do about it.

I quickened my pace to catch up to Bethany. Thornton continued walking briskly ahead of us, not looking back and doing his best to stay upright.

“You mentioned the equinox before,” I said. “What does that have to do with the box?”

“The equinox is when what’s inside the box becomes incredibly powerful,” she said. “More powerful than you can imagine.”

“It still sounds like some kind of weapon to me,” I said. She didn’t answer. “I guess I’m finally going to see it for myself, huh?”

“I guess so,” she said, “provided Gregor gives it back to us. He’s a hoarder. He’s not exactly known for sharing.”

“He’ll give it back. We’ll make him if we have to.”

She arched an eyebrow at me. I still hadn’t decided if I found it endearing or annoying. “Good luck with that,” she said.

“Trust me, I can be very persuasive when I want to be,” I told her. “So how far away is Gregor’s apartment?”

“He doesn’t live in an apartment.”

“House, then. Whatever.”

She smirked and shook her head. She pointed at the street corner, where a sewer grate sat at the curb. “He lives down there somewhere. Through the sewers.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Thornton gave the box to a homeless man?”

“Gregor’s not a man, Trent,” she said. “Gregor’s a dragon.”

I stopped, staring slack jawed at her as she walked ahead. “He’s a what now?”

Twenty

The ruins stood on the far side of the West Side Highway, directly across from the lush greenery of DeWitt Clinton Park, with its manicured grass and impeccable swing set. The ruins looked out of place, a reminder of a much older New York City, before the relentless tentacles of gentrification had strangled it. Once an apartment building, time and decay had turned it into little more than an empty, crumbling, graffiti-covered facade. With no walls and no roof, it stood open to the elements.

Thornton led us through the hole where the front door should have been. Beyond it, where the interior of the building once stood, was a field of overgrown grass and weeds. He led the way through the field and past a low, broken brick wall that marked the rear corner of the building. There, he cleared away some trash and twigs to reveal a thick metal door in the ground, inscribed with the words N.Y.C. SEWER. A padlock sat hooked, but not locked, through the door’s latch. Thornton removed the lock and pulled the handle, but the door slipped from his fingers and clanged shut again. He stared at it as if he couldn’t understand what had just happened.

I pulled the door open for him. Beneath it was a hole in the ground—dark, rectangular, and lined with concrete. A ladder stood bolted to the side, running deep into the darkness below. Behind me, Thornton was still staring at his hands.

“You okay?” I asked.

He looked up at me, and said only, “We should hurry.” They were the first words he’d spoken to either of us in nearly half an hour.

Bethany started down the ladder first. When she’d descended a dozen feet or so, I went next. It grew