“I read the first two while you were sleeping,” she said. “They’re good. I like Blue Jay.”
“Dad based him on this kid he knew growing up.”
She picked Behold, Abaddon out of the stack and paused at the cover, struck by it the way people always were. She turned it over, but of course there was nothing on the back. No explanation at all. Dad had been so proud of that.
“It’s an origin story,” I said. “Well, the first half is, anyway.”
Hannah glanced up at me. Her eyes were a deep liquid brown in the lantern light. I held out my hand, and she slid the book across the floor. The cover of Behold, Abaddon had always been one of my favorites. That clawed hand exploding out of the sidewalk. The Brotherhood reeling back in horror. I slipped on my gloves and opened it to the two-page splash that began and ended the book. A city of crumbling black towers that stood against a blood red sky streaked with smoke.
“A hundred years before the Brotherhood, there was a nuclear war,” I said, tracing the lines of the drawing with one finger. “Liberty City was one of the last cities left, only it wasn’t called Liberty City then. It was called Abaddon.”
I moved from the city to the desert plain that enclosed it.
“It was surrounded by this wasteland called the Gardens of Null.”
I turned the page. A gleaming alien ship breaking through the atmosphere above the ruined city.
“Then one day the Volanti appeared. They said they were the last survivors of a war that almost destroyed their own planet, and they wanted to make sure something like that never happened to anyone else. They remade Abaddon into Liberty City and created the Brotherhood of Wings to watch over it. Then they disappeared.”
“Why?”
Hannah was leaning deep into the glow of the lantern.
“Nobody knew,” I said. “After a few decades with no sign of them, most people thought they were some kind of fairy tale and went on with their lives. But then, a hundred years after they first arrived, the Volanti reappeared.”
“Where had they gone?”
I turned to the middle of the volume. Abaddon was Liberty City again. The skies were clear and blue. The Brotherhood’s Aerie sparkled in the sun.
“They never really left,” I said. “They just went into hiding. Only a few Volanti had made it to Earth so they decided to wait until their numbers grew and the world became something worth conquering.”
“So it was a trap,” Hannah said. “They were never trying to save anybody.”
I nodded.
“But the Brotherhood stopped them.”
I wanted to say yes, the Brotherhood saved the day. But I couldn’t even open my mouth. I paged through the last half of the story, but stopped before I got to those three pages toward the end.
“Card? Come on, you’re killing me.”
Part of me wanted to rip that volume in half and toss it away, but who was I to keep it from her? I sent it skidding back across the floor and into her hands.
Hannah leaned against the wall and opened it to the middle. She tucked her hair behind her ears and pored over the pages, moving from panel to panel, eagerly at first, but then more and more slowly as she got toward the end. I knew those panels so well I felt like I was reading them right along with her, or like I was sitting beside Dad as he drew every line and wrote every word.
I could tell when Hannah got to those three pages. Her whole body stiffened. She read them once, then again, and then she was still for a very long time before shutting the book and pushing it away from her. All the air had gone out of the room and the light from the lantern felt small and feeble.
Footsteps echoed upstairs. Greer. I grabbed my mask and headed for the door.
“Card, wait.”
I stumbled through the spiral. Greer was there when I came out on the other side.
“Buddy! Good to see—”
He dodged out of the way as I ran past, strapping on my mask as I went. He called my name, but I kept going, up the stairs and into the lobby. Those three pages unfurled through the dark. Sally Sparrow. Cardinal. Blue Jay. Then you were there too. And Mom and Dad. And me.
I ducked through the opening in the door and suddenly realized that I’d left Dad’s comics behind. Part of me wanted to just go, but I knew I couldn’t. I slipped into the shadows of a nearby hallway and waited. Surely Hannah and Greer would head back to Lucy’s Promise soon. Minutes ticked by. An hour, maybe. Finally I couldn’t wait any longer. Who cared if they were there or not.
I made my way back down the stairs and into the Serra room. It was quiet. Maybe they’d gone out another way. I passed the first two sculptures and started into the spiral of the third. There were voices up ahead.
“. . . turn up anybody who saw what happened last night?”