“I know you can keep secrets. You’ve kept plenty of them. But he has ways—”
I’m blushing. Will is careful not to pull my hair as he ties the blindfold. He can probably feel the heat coming off my cheeks.
“I didn’t mean—” From his voice, I guess that he is blushing too. “I was thinking of torture,” he says finally. “Not anything improper.” But then his voice becomes bitter. “Not that I have any say over what you and Elliott . . . the way your relationship—”
I turn toward him, though I can’t see him through the fabric. I trip over my own feet, and Will steadies me. “You already warned me about Elliott,” I say.
“I did.”
“That’s really all you can do.” Because even though I’m sure that my relationship with Elliott isn’t what he thinks it is, or will be, it’s my problem to fix.
“I know,” he says. And then, changing the subject, “We’ll be going down another flight of stairs. I’ll tell you when we reach them.” We walk to the end of the corridor, through a creaky door, over a place where the floor is uneven.
The stairs are torture. Even with Will’s guidance I have to feel to find my footing, and it’s distracting having him so near. Finally we reach the bottom. And then he leads me across a floor that gives under my feet . . . wood planks? And through another room.
“Stop,” Will says, and I hear him fumbling with a key. Then “Come into my lair.” Something in his voice makes my heart speed dangerously. I try to hide my discomfort by taking my time removing the scarf from my eyes and then smoothing my hair.
We are in an underground room, lit by gaslights. The printing press takes up most of the space. The mechanism looks complicated; it’s wooden with a series of knobs and handles, as well as a huge wheel, where it appears the paper is fed through.
“How did you learn how to work it?”
He picks up several pieces of lead type, arranges them to spell my name. And then, as if embarrassed, knocks them away with the side of his hand. “I found some books in one of the libraries and studied. In the beginning I just printed messages to take home for the children. Eventually I learned to print more sophisticated jobs.”
“Did you come down here often? Every night?” I ask.
“Probably once a week.” He sets to work, consulting a sheet of paper covered with Elliott’s bold handwriting.
Wooden crates line the walls. At first I think they are filled with extra printing paper, but they are actually yellowing newspapers.
I step toward them. “Where did you get these?”
“Kent and I rescued them from the same cellar where we found the printing press,” he says. He doesn’t even look up from arranging the type with deft fingers.
I pick up a delicate paper, holding it ever so carefully. Even with the gaslights, it’s difficult to read the newspapers. I’d like to take them upstairs and comb through them for days. It’s like a glimpse of life when the world was normal. Before the plague.
They feel precious.
I flip to a society page with a picture of a girl in a fancy wedding dress with a veil. April would love something like that, and with the contagion spreading she could use a veil. I set the paper down.
“What are you printing?” I ask.
“Warnings, from Elliott. A list of symptoms of the Red Death.”
“By the time you have the symptoms, it’s a bit too late, isn’t it?”
“I don’t question my orders, but I don’t think he means the diagnosis to help the victim. I think he means for the other citizens to avoid those who are infected. It makes it easier to kill them. Or exile them.”
He’s judging Elliott. And maybe Elliott deserves it. The print on one of the flyers he’s already made reminds me of the one about my father. I steel myself to ask him about it.
“Did people find the one you wrote about my father helpful?”
Will flinches. But he can’t ignore this question. He abandons the press and looks at me.
“Araby—”
“Did Malcontent pay you to say those things? To make my father a villain?” My fists are clenched, my nails digging into my palms.
“I wasn’t paid. I chose to do it.”
“I wish you hadn’t.” My voice is small, and I hate myself for it, but at least I said it.
“The people who approached me felt that the knowledge should be out there. We’ve been living with this, with the aftermath, for our entire lives. It seemed better for people just to know.”
“Did you think of me when you printed it?” The audacity of the question makes me feel sick. But when he stands there like that, his hands shoved into his pockets, his face so young and yet so world-weary, I want to touch him, to wipe the pained expression from his face. And that makes the betrayal rush back, more overwhelming than ever.
“I always thought about you. From the night I took you home, I never really stopped thinking about you.”
I won’t let myself dwell on this answer, or the pain of what could have been. I won’t let myself reach out and brush aside the hair that’s fallen over his face.
“Did you discuss me with Malcontent? Tell him that you could bring me to him?”
Anger feels better than fathomless grief. For years I simply wanted to hide from the world and all the pain. Now I want to fight. At this moment I want to fight Will.
“I never—” He steps away from me, pivoting, and then pacing across the room. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t make offers to him.”
He crosses the room in two strides. With the low ceilings, he seems even taller than before. He towers over me. I can see his agitation in the movement of his hands. The look in his eyes.
“I never met Malcontent before that night. He didn’t know anything about me, or the club, or the printing press. He just knew that you had been in my apartment. His men followed you the night you skinned your knee. The night you brought Henry the mask.”
I reach for my own mask now, thinking of that night. Of the terror, and the dark cloaked men creeping out of the alley. Of Will removing the splinter from my finger when I was safe.
“He took my neighbor, you know. I couldn’t save her.”
I feel my anger dissipating. “What . . . did he do with your neighbor?”
“I don’t know. She disappeared at the same time as Henry and Elise, only he never let her go. Her mask was left broken in her apartment. It was my fault for drawing his attention.”
“Or my fault, for coming to your apartment.”
“I suppose we could spend all evening assigning blame. You are who you are, and all the villains want you.” I wonder if he includes Elliott among the villains. “It’s why I returned to the city. To do what I can to protect you.”
“As long as you don’t get in my way,” I say with more bravado than I feel.
“I won’t.” He goes back to the press, arranging sheets of paper on the machine, turning knobs. “I told you yesterday, I’m here to support you. And I’ll honor my agreement to help Elliott as long as he doesn’t become as much a tyrant as the others.”
“He won’t,” I insist. “Elliott is nothing like Prospero or Malcontent.”
“Not yet. But he isn’t in power yet. I’ve studied how the government worked, before the plague. Eventually, we’ll need elections. Real elections.”
Elliott is not likely to approve of such an idea. Or agree to it.
“I can finish this later,” he says. “You don’t want to stay down here with me.”
Yet I do. This room feels safe, but I have too much to accomplish and we can’t linger here.
Will picks up my scarf. If I let myself, I could enjoy his touch as he wraps the fabric around my eyes, as he takes my hand to lead me outside. But I will not allow myself to feel such things. Not when I’ve agreed to be by Elliott’s side.
I don’t let on that the blindfold is loose, that I can see enough to be able to retrace my steps. It seems to take him forever to remove the blindfold. I stand, my chin tilted upward, as he unties the knot. We’re standing in front of a window. Will looks out.
“The moon is covered by clouds tonight. Let’s check the roof to be sure everything is ready for when Kent and the others arrive.”
We climb multiple stairways until we finally come to the roof. Outside it is fully and completely dark. Nervousness wells up from the pit of my stomach. April and the children and Kent will be coming in on the airship. We were shot down once before; it could happen again.
Elliott is on the roof, smoking a cigarette. He grimaces but doesn’t say anything. Not about me arriving with Will. Nor about my absence from my room, if he went back to retrieve me.
The sky is filled with hazy clouds, and I suspect it will rain before dawn.
“I wanted to make sure everything was ready,” Will says.
“I had the same idea.” Elliott stubs out his cigarette and moves to help Will.
They prepare lengths of rope and the huge piece of canvas that was used to hide the ship when it was on the roof of the Morgue. I stand to the side and watch the sky.
Elliott pauses beside me. Being on the roof reminds me of the fireworks, the celebration in the bay. “Just think how beautiful the ship would look, if it were illuminated.”
“Kent would never risk that,” Elliott says.
“But imagine a world where it wasn’t a risk. I’d like to live in that world.”
“I’d like to create it for you.”
His gaze is too intense; I can’t hold it. Glancing over, I see that Will is checking the great iron rings that will hold the ship down once it is in place. The wind is blowing the clouds, and as I watch I think I see something. The prow of the ship. I point upward.
“They shouldn’t be here for two more nights,” Elliott says.
“Unless something happened. It’s cloudy. If Kent was desperate . . .”
“Kent doesn’t get desperate,” Elliott says. But Will has gone very still. Finally he looks at me.
“It’s why I wanted to have everything ready. He told me he might bring the ship in early, if things weren’t going well . . .” He pauses. “With April.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I CAN’T BREATHE. SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED to April, and in the days we’ve been in the city, I’ve come no closer to finding Father. We don’t even know if he’s alive. I watch the progress of the ship. What if April is dead?
“So you’ve been checking the roof?” Elliott asks Will.
“On and off. Tonight is the first night I thought their arrival might be a possibility.”
There’s nothing we can do but wait. Half an hour passes. We don’t speak. We don’t assure one another that nothing is wrong. We simply wait, the three of us, standing together, but not close enough that I could reach out to either of them.
The ship is mostly obscured by clouds, but when it emerges from cloud cover, it’s magical. Like something from a children’s story.
Kent guides the ship in, and Will and Elliott begin tying it down as Kent leaps to the roof to help them.