Mia tapped his wrist. “Zack.”
He snapped out of his trance and pressed the gas pedal, marveling at the taxi in the rearview mirror. A true New York cabbie would have honked him into oblivion for dawdling at a green light. This wasn’t Zack’s city on any level. Calling this place New York was like calling a dog a zebra, or swapping the concepts of blue and yellow.
“This should be Soho,” he uttered. “I mean we came out of the Holland Tunnel, so . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what they call it now.”
Mia stroked his wrist with sympathy. Though she’d never set foot in the old New York, a future self had sold this world’s version as a paradise beyond description, beautiful enough to evoke tears. Now she glanced through dry eyes at the windblown scraps of litter, the garish assault of animated ads. Wrong again, she seethed. You just keep giving me bad information.
Amanda writhed uncomfortably in the backseat. She could feel every tempic construct within a half-block radius, a hundred cold fingers pressing her thoughts. Barricaded storefronts stretched along both sides of the street, each one ready to ripple and dance for their visiting queen.
“What time is it?”
David checked his watch. “Half past ten.”
She eyed the stores suspiciously. “Middle of a Tuesday morning. Why is everything closed?”
Hannah stroked her lip in bother. The whole city seemed eerily quiet at the moment. There were only a handful of pedestrians on each block, most of them dressed from head to toe in lily-white garments. A husky street vendor sold a wide assortment of white Venetian masks.
“Something weird is going on here.”
“It’s not just here,” said Zack. “Everything was closed in Jersey too.”
Mia’s eyes bulged at a masked young couple in white bathrobes and sneakers. The man brandished a hand-painted placard that said New York Thrives on 10-5.
“Commemoration,” she said.
“What?”
“Ten-five. Today’s the anniversary of the Cataclysm.”
The Silvers glanced out their windows with fresh unease. They recalled Sterling Quint’s discussion of the great temporic blast that destroyed half of New York City on October 5, 1912. The day had become a major holiday in the United States and a near-religious event here in the rebuilt metropolis.
The Arrow turned north onto 6th Avenue. Mia read the scrolling lumic banner that stretched above all lanes. This is our day, New York. The whole world is watching. Show them why this is the greatest city on Earth, now and forever.
Zack shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know if our timing’s really good or really bad.”
Mia plucked Peter’s day-old message from her shoulder bag and reread it. “We need to find a pay phone.”
“I’m looking.”
“Maybe we should look on foot,” Amanda suggested. “Get out and stretch our legs. If we can.”
One by one, the others checked on Theo in the front passenger seat. He’d spent the whole ride with his head against the window, twitching in restless slumber. Now his eyes were wide open and marked with deep red veins. His headaches had once again become bundled with visions, prophetic flashes too quick and obscure to make any sense. The only clear image he saw was Azral Pelletier. His harsh and handsome face popped up over and over, enough to erase all doubt. The white-haired man was coming back as sure as the moon, and probably sooner.
Theo glanced out at a distant flurry to the east. “I think I see where everyone went.”
—
The Ghostwalk was a ritual that dated back to the first Commemoration in 1913. It began as a silent procession down 3rd Avenue—fifty thousand mourners in white robes and masks, all marching for the souls of the lost. As the years progressed and cracked hearts slowly healed, the Ghostwalk grew a fluffy tail of musicians, dancers, and other sunny revelers who sought to honor the dead by celebrating life. The cavalcade expanded each year until it became known as the March of the Spirits.
Today the twin parades were joined in bipolar harmony, the yin and the yang, the grief and the joy. The event moved to Broadway in 1942, starting at 96th Street and ending at City Hall Park.
The Silvers caught the tail end of the Ghostwalk at 14th Street, at the corner of New Union Square. They hovered at the edge of the crowd, watching the parade through their newly purchased masks. They indulged the vendor when they saw aerocycle cops scanning the crowd from twenty feet above.
Mia felt ridiculous in her butterfly eye-mask, even though half the locals around her wore sillier disguises. She stood on her tiptoes in a vain attempt to peer over the wall of spectators.
David offered her a smirk and a hand. He looked like a superhero in his white domino mask.
“Let me give you a lift.”
Mia’s brow curled in worry. “You’re hurt.”
“My spine’s just fine. Come on.”