But every step brings me closer to Julian, and to the girl I pledged to become.
I’ve seen pictures of the Finemans’ house on the news, and once I reach the tangle of narrow streets in the West Village—so different from the ordered grid that defines the rest of Manhattan, and in some ways a surprising choice for Thomas Fineman—it does not take me long to find it. The rain is still coming down, moisture squelching in my sneakers. The Finemans’ townhouse is impossible to mistake: It is the largest house on the block, and the only one that is encircled by a high stone wall. An iron gate, hung with brown nests of ivy, gives a partial view of the front path and a tiny brown yard, churned mostly to mud. I walk the street once, checking the house for signs of activity, but all the windows are dark, and if there are guards watching Julian, they must be inside. I get a surge of pleasure from the graffiti someone has scrawled on the Finemans’ stone wall: murderer. Raven was right: Every day, the resistance is growing.
One more turn around the block, and this time I’m scanning the whole street, keeping my eyes up, looking for witnesses, nosy neighbors, problems, escape routes. Even though I’m soaked through, I’m grateful for the rain. It will make things easier. At least it keeps people off the streets.
I step up to the Finemans’ iron gate, trying to ignore the anxiety buzzing through me. There’s an electronic keypad, just like Julian said: a tiny LCD screen requests that I type in a PIN. For a moment, despite the rain and the desperate scrabbling of my heart in my chest, I can’t help but stand there, amazed by the elegance of it: a world of beautiful, buzzing things, humming electricity, and remote controls, while half the country flounders in dark and closeness, heat and cold, sucking up shreds of power like dogs picking gristle from a bone.
For the first time it occurs to me that this, really, might have been the point of the walls and borders, the procedure and the lies: a fist squeezing tighter and tighter. It is a beautiful world for the people who get to play the fist.
I let hatred tighten inside of me. This, too, will help.
Julian said that his family kept clues embedded in or around the gate—reminders of the code.
It doesn’t take me long to figure out the first three numbers. At the top of the gate, someone has tacked a small metal plate engraved with a quotation from The Book of Shhh: HAPPY ARE THEY WHO HAVE A PLACE; WISE ARE THEY WHO FOLLOW THE PATH; BLESSED ARE THEY WHO OBEY THE WORD.
It’s a famous proverb—one that comes, incidentally, from the Book of Magdalena, a passage of the Book I know well. Magdalena is my namesake. I used to scour those pages, looking for traces of my mother, for her reasons and her message to me.
Book 9, Proverb 17. I type 917 into the keypad: If I’m right, I have only one number to go. I’m about to try final digits at random, when something within the yard flutters, catches my eye. Four white paper lanterns, stamped with the DFA logo, have been strung up above the porch. They are flapping in the wind, and one has been stripped almost loose of the string; it dangles awkwardly, like a semi-severed head, tapping a rhythm against the front door. Except for the DFA logo, the lanterns look like decorations you might find at a child’s birthday party. They look strangely incongruous above the massive stone porch, swaying high above the bleak yard.
A sign. Has to be.
9174. The gate clicks as the locks retract, and I’m in.
I slip into the front yard quickly, closing the gate behind me, taking in as much as I can. Five floors, including a sunken basement level; curtains all drawn, everything dark. I don’t even bother with the front door. It will be locked, and if there are guards anywhere, they are no doubt waiting in the hall. Instead I slip around the side of the house and find the concrete stairs that lead to a warped wooden door: the basement entrance. A small window set in the brick should allow me to see inside, but a set of heavy wooden window slats obscures the view completely. I will have to go in blind, and pray that there are no guards at this entrance.