I swallow. “Joan, you can’t run.”
She glances back to the train and wipes her eyes. “What happens if I stay?”
I don’t know, I don’t know how I can spin any of this, if I have any more lies left in me—“We’ll work it out, together,” I push. “Joan, it’s not too late for us.”
The conductor comes to the front of the train and shouts, “ALL ABOARD!”
Joan shakes her head. “I’m not living behind bars, Alex. And for tonight, there’s no pardon.”
She’s right, of course she’s right, but I can’t watch her—the Joan I’ve come to love, to trust—go. I tighten my hold on her slightly. “Joan—”
“There’re certain things that can’t be undone.” She shakes her head, her voice breaking. “And I accept that.” She looks at her hands, then up at me, her eyes now wide and resolute. “But you could leave the Unit behind. You could come with me.”
“What? Where—you mean just run? Joan, we’d be fugitives—”
“We’d be free,” she says, determined. “A new city, a new start for you, no Unit, no McEvoy, no Gunn. Just the chance to make magic together. A chance to embrace what we were meant to do, Alex.”
“Joan, think about this, before it’s too late,” I press. “You could explain it was self-defense, maybe even cut a plea bargain, if you give up your blood-spell—”
“I don’t need saving, Alex.” Joan shakes her head. “In fact, I think you’re the one who needs saving. I think when you were on our stage with me it was the most awing, wondrous feeling you’ve ever felt, because it was for me, too. I’m not ready to give that up. And I don’t think you are either.”
I stare into her dark almond-shaped eyes, and for one hot, desperate moment, I nearly agree with her. I don’t know if I can watch her go. Maybe I could turn my back on everything I’ve worked for—the broken man I’ve managed to somehow piece back together. The charge I’ve come to own. The person I’ve become proud of.
“Joan, I’m not my father.” The words almost say themselves, escape before I have a chance to think them through. But as soon as they’re out in the world, I know they’re true. Despite how much I want Joan, need her, my allegiance, first and foremost, has to be to myself. “I’m different than I was before.” I wrap my hands around her wrists. “I won’t hide. I believe in what I’m doing now, and I just can’t run away.”
“So that’s it?” she whispers. “We say good-bye? Go our separate ways?”
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Joan. Please, think through this—”
“But that’s the thing, I have.” She moves her hand over to my right ear, and I feel something soft and sweet-scented bloom beside my temple. I carefully pluck the newly sorcered flower from my hair. A black, red-tongued orchid, a spitting image of the one I made for her so many nights ago at the Den, when things, as complicated as they were, were also simpler. “If you’re honest with yourself, Alex, you’ve always known the truth of me.”
I shake my head. She can’t go. If she goes, she’s a fugitive, a criminal. “If you run, when we meet again, Joan . . . Christ, it’s not going to be like this.”
She gives me a sad, loaded smile. “That’s assuming you can catch me, Mr. Danfrey.” Quick as a cat, she leans in, places her lips onto mine. “I will never, ever forget you, Alex,” she adds, a whisper. “You helped me become who I was meant to be.”
Of course, I know she’s right, because in a strange, twisted way, her words are just as true for me. And yet the feeling of having Joan so close again is thrilling, addictive. Instinctively, I reach to keep her with me just a little while longer, but that fast she slips away, turns and darts back the way she came. One more step and she disappears for an instant, and through her magic fold, her linked trick, she emerges again near the stairs of the train, down the platform, thirty feet away. “Wait, Joan—”
The train begins to move.
“Joan, wait, STOP—!”
But there’s no stopping her, that becomes immediately, painfully clear. She grabs the handle up the train car stairs, gives me this teasing little curtsy, a nod that this is our final performance together, that the world was once our stage. She flashes me that heady smile once more, and despite everything, despite all reason, I find myself smiling with her.
Joan steps onto the moving train, and then just like magic, poof—
She’s gone.
About the Author
Photo by Pieter M. van Hattem Lee Kelly is the author of City of Savages. She has wanted to write since she was old enough to hold a pencil, but it wasn't until she began studying for the California Bar Exam that she conveniently started putting pen to paper. An entertainment lawyer by trade, Lee has practiced in Los Angeles and New York. She lives with her husband and son in Millburn, New Jersey. Follow her on at @leeykelly and on her website at newwritecity.com.