and falling in deep snow. So cold. He hated the cold.
The car was still there, filling up with snow. He got in, turned it on, fiddled with switches. This and that happened, but the top didn’t go up. He sat there, hundred-dollar bills and note cards all around him, blood seeping from his forearm, snow filling the car. An important business term was eluding him. What was it? Something about… taking stock. That was it. Time to take stock. What did he have? He had this car, of course, but it wasn’t his main asset. His main asset, his only important asset-yes, face facts-was the girl. He had to do something about that asset. There were two choices: protect the asset or destroy it. He tried to think of other options and could not. Protect or destroy, but it would be his choice, no one else’s. He was in charge.
Freedy switched on the headlights, the only lights in town, and gunned the car up College Hill.
Nat and Izzie, lying on top of the Dumpster lid, heard the sound of the fading engine through the storm.
“Where’s he going?” Izzie said.
“To get her,” said Nat. His jaw was bad. He felt the side of his face: caved in.
“But where is she?”
Where was she? A milion sounds nice. It was somewhere in there, right in the open. Later would be no good. He had to figure it out now. He was supposed to be smart, supposed to be good at solving problems. Solve this one. A simple sentence. A milion sounds nice. What was the most important part of any sentence? The verb. Sounds. Nat said it aloud. “Sounds, sounds, sounds. For something to sound nice…” There had to be a listener to hear it. For something to sound nice, you had to hear it. To hear it, you had to be in a place to hear it. Freedy had a place. He’d been listening.
A convincing idea, especially since he had no others. “Let’s go,” Nat said.
They went, but it was slow. He was slow, not Izzie. He was slow lowering himself off the Dumpster, slow finding his way to the street. Izzie tugged him along, stooping once to pick something up, somehow sharp-eyed and surefooted in the darkness.
“If he does anything to her, my life is over,” she said.
“That’s not true.”
“How can you be so stupid?”
His jaw hurt too much to argue.
They ran, or tried to run, up College Hill.
“What’s that in your hand?”
“For killing him,” Izzie said.
Crazy amount of duct tape. Took forever to get it all off, free her from the pipe. She fell to the dirt floor with a thump. The candle burned near her face. The other twin was a lot prettier now.
“Bad news,” Freedy said. “They fucked me.”
The gold eye, the one that would open, opened. “I need a doctor.” So quiet he could hardly hear her, even with his super hearing.
“Say that again and you won’t.” He wasn’t in the mood. What was he going to do with her? The simple solution was asset destruction, moving on. But moving on to what, exactly? And he’d invested a lot in her. Plus there was still the potential for a big payoff. He just needed a time-out, that was all, to rethink.
“Feel like a little spin?” he said to her.
She just lay there.
“Get up,” he said, louder and not so friendly.
They heard him. On the other side of the wall, Izzie turned sideways, raised one foot high like a trained Thai kick boxer, precisely as Grace had done the night they found the tunnels, and kicked in the wooden paneling in the big room of the old social club. Nat shone his flash through the opening, and there they were in a little square room lit by a single tall candle balanced on the dirt floor, Grace on her back, hair matted with blood, Freedy crouched over her.
Izzie saw her sister’s face and made a horrible sound. The next instant she was diving through the hole in the wall, switchblade glinting in the candlelight, so quick. But Freedy was quicker. Somehow he was already up, already slapping at her arm as though he’d known what was coming. The next moment, she was down. By that time, Nat was in the little room too, flashlight raised high, striking with all his strength at the back of Freedy’s head.
He never connected. Without even looking, Freedy jabbed with his elbow, a pistonlike blow that caught Nat just under the rib cage, knocking the wind out of him, knocking him down. The candle fell, started rolling, rolled through the hole in the wall, dropped down into the big room on the other side. Then Freedy’s fist started landing, although Nat couldn’t see a thing, flashlight smashed, candle gone. He took a punch in the back, scrambled away, felt Grace. He found her hand, not warm, not cold, the same temperature as his.
Nat held on to her, would hold on to her at any cost; but then came that fist, and again, and he felt her slipping, slipping away, and gone.
Total darkness. Didn’t bother Freedy. This was his territory. Freedy slung the girl over his shoulder and carried her out of the little square room and into F. Had he ever felt stronger? No. This kind of challenge or whatever it was brought out the best in him. He headed down F, the girl on his shoulder, at a fast walking pace, almost trotting in total darkness. Didn’t bother him. He turned into Z, invisible Z, without breaking stride. Z, on the way to building 13: now came the beauty part.
Total darkness: until flames shot up on the other side of the wall. Nat felt heat flowing in through the hole. He rose. Izzie was already up, the knife, half the blade snapped off, in her hand. They stepped out into a tunnel they didn’t know, heard a grunt in the distance, hurried after the sound. Flickering light followed them for a few yards, dwindled to nothing. They kept going, almost running in the darkness. Nat kept one hand on the wall; he didn’t know how Izzie was doing it. She was a little ahead, then more so.
Suddenly his hand felt nothing but empty space. He froze. “This way,” she called from somewhere on his right. “Another tunnel.” He followed her. She moved so fast, almost as though she could see in the dark. He heard another grunt, Freedy’s grunt, much closer now.
And another, closer still, followed by a moan, a female moan. Nat caught up with Izzie, brushed against her, took her hand: ice cold. He felt something else, a sort of breeze, a damp breeze, blowing in his face from the direction they were headed. “Wait,” he said in Izzie’s ear.
“Piss on that,” she said, shook him off, kept going. He went after her, stumbled on something soft.
In the darkness, but very near, a few feet away, no more, Freedy said: “Come and get me.”
Izzie made a savage noise.
Lights flashed on. Red ceiling lights, the color of exit signs, recessed behind mesh screens. In the light, Nat saw a sort of snapshot. They’d come to a sheer drop-off in the tunnel. Grace lay on the edge of it. Freedy clung to a ladder bolted to the brick wall, leading down, just his head and shoulders visible. And Izzie had stepped, or charged, right over his head, and was now turning to look back, poised in midair, the switchblade in her hand, her eyes wild. The piece of eight Grace had found in Professor Uzig’s cake floated weightless around her neck.
No one can remain poised in midair. She fell out of sight, and it was far, far too long before the thud.
“The beauty part,” said Freedy, and started up.
Nat kicked at him, kicked right at his head. An alarm started ringing, not far away, distracting Freedy for a moment, probably the only reason the kick landed at all. Not on his head, but his shoulder, the right shoulder.
Freedy cried out in pain. “Call that fair?” he said. “That’s my bad shoulder.” He lunged up the ladder, swiped at Nat with his left hand, got hold of one of Nat’s legs. With his other leg, Nat kicked that bad shoulder again, hard as he could. Freedy lost his grip on the ladder, held nothing but Nat’s leg. He dug his fingers into Nat’s flesh, trying to somehow kill him that way. Nat kicked him one more time, without compunction.
Nat heard, or felt, a faint flicking sound: Freedy’s fingernails, snapping off. Freedy looked surprised. Then he fell. Another expression, a vengeful one, was coming into his eyes when he disappeared from view.
Nat looked over the edge. A long drop to a brick floor. Freedy lay beside Izzie, both of them in postures the living can’t adopt.
He turned to Grace, lying in the tunnel.
