“Who knew you spoke Spanish?” said Chae Rin from the backseat, though it was one of the few comments any of us had made the entire trip. None of us was much in the mood for talking.
Belle had been in Madrid before and knew the way to Natalya’s apartment. She drove us through the city, the skies clear, the sun pleasantly biting. Madrid had not gone untouched by the influence of modernity and globalization. Popular brand-name coffee shops, stores, and restaurants were on every corner. But there were sights I wasn’t as used to. We drove past the Plaza de Cibeles square, the castle-like white marble structure stretching up into the morning. Gazing out the window, I watched the street vendors and performers pass in and out of view. People skated under the sun and under the safety of the APD outside the city: a tower at the top of which a giant kinetic structure of moving metal plates reflected a frequency that spanned over a hundred miles. It was too far away for me to see it from here, but I’d seen it from above when our jet had begun to descend.
Natalya’s apartment was close to a gigantic park, tucked away in the Salamanca neighborhood, packed with chic restaurants and outdoor bars. Belle knew someone who ran a rooftop bar nearby—not her friend, per se, but certainly Natalya’s. It was still morning, and the bar hadn’t opened yet. He was willing to let us stay in secrecy for a few hours while the bar was closed, but he warned us that we’d have to leave before the clients started streaming in at sundown. Well, that was our timeline to begin with.
“Are you okay?” I asked Chae Rin after following her to the roof. She was sitting at one of the many empty tables with a glass of water in her hands. Water. Huh. I’d expected she’d have taken advantage of the setting and gotten some alcohol. But Chae Rin didn’t seem like herself. She was slouched over the table, worry aging her soft, pale features as she stared into her half-empty glass.
When she saw me coming, her expression hardened. “What’s it to you?”
“Whoa.” I stopped, holding up my hands in a sign of placation. “I’m just asking if you’re okay. No ulterior motives. I’m just a bit worried, that’s all. You’ve been weirdly quiet for a while.”
“You’re worried about me, huh?” I couldn’t tell if Chae Rin’s laugh was a jab at me or herself. But she waved me over and I took the invitation, sitting next to her.
“Hey, kid, you remember when we first met in Quebec? You were whining at me endlessly about joining this ridiculous fight, which, by the way, we still haven’t won because shit just keeps getting crazier and crazier?”
“Yeah.” A sudden surge of shame made me look away from her. “I said some really messed-up stuff too. I’m so sorry.”
But Chae Rin shook her head with a little smile. “No, it’s okay. I already beat you up for that, so it’s all good. But . . . you remember when I said that being an Effigy is hardest on families?”
I did. And after seeing Uncle Nathan, his worry and shame, I knew exactly what she meant.
“After the awards show, my sister told me that my mom had another . . . um.”
She hesitated and quickly looked at me. As she squeezed her hands against her glass, the normally confident Effigy seemed at once like a timid child scared of sharing her secrets.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not something that’s easy for us to talk about. My family never discusses it and my mom never sees a doctor because they’re all against it. I don’t know, I can’t explain.”
“No, I get you.” Back then, on the grounds of Le Cirque de Minuit, Chae Rin had been more fixated on her family than on the prospect of Saul attacking more cities. And I’d never even bothered to consider why that would be.
“She’s just not well, you know. She stays at home a lot. My dad takes care of her. But she gets so much anxiety normally, and it’s just gotten worse since I became an Effigy.” Lying back, Chae Rin looked up at the clear sky, squinting under the glare of the sun. “She’s so worried and paranoid all the time. And me being who I am, getting in the news for screwing up some mission, getting suspended, beating someone up, destroying a car or several—it doesn’t help.”
“But you save people too,” I said hopefully. “They won’t just see the bad, you know. They’ll see the good. And the good far outweighs the bad.”
Chae Rin didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know. The thing is . . .” She went quiet, fiddling with her fingers. It took her a while to speak again. “Even with all the crap we deal with on a daily basis and all the times I screw up . . . I’d rather be here than at home taking care of her like my sister. My sister can handle it. But I . . . Sometimes my mom’s anxiety is scarier to me than chasing monsters.” She let out a sigh, shaking her head. “Gross, right? I’m totally awful, right? I mean, I want to see her. I love her. And I was happy that last day at the circus when I thought she’d come to watch me perform, but maybe that was because I knew she’d just be there for a day or two. How could I be more comfortable out here than at home with my own mother? I mean, look where we are!”
Chae Rin gestured at the Madrid skyline, at the shopping boutiques and Spanish markets around the corner down below, at the tiny specter of the magnificent APD tower we could now see, somewhat, in distance. “It’s one mess after another. Since Saul appeared, we’ve basically been nomads, hopping around the world trying to stop him. I feel like a sprite in a role-playing game.”
“I once had this dream that we were in the Metal Kolossos MMORPG and my player didn’t equip me with the right defense accessory and I ended up getting killed by a dark elf. Which is weird because there are no dark elves in the game.” But before I could go too far, I noticed Chae Rin staring at me. I stopped, pursing my lips together sheepishly.
“This may never end. But I . . . At some point, I should go home. I should do it. Right, Maia?”
Hearing her speak my name was more jarring than I’d anticipated. She usually called me “kid,” or maybe “moron.” A flush of surprise rose up my chest, but Chae Rin was serious. As she looked back at me, she had the world-weariness of someone who’d lived much longer than her eighteen years.
“Right now going home is only going to put our families in danger. So we’ll just have to work hard and end this thing as soon as possible. I know it’s difficult, but . . .” I breathed deeply, summoning what I needed for the hopeful smile I gave her. “I think if we stick together, it’ll be all right. Don’t worry, Chae Rin. We’re a team.”
Chae Rin raised an eyebrow, amused, before sipping her water and staring out over the terrace. That’s right. As insane as everything got, we could count only on each other. I had to admit that as dangerous as it was, traveling the world trying to stop Saul had given me something important: a purpose. Comrades. That became all too clear whenever I thought back to how things were just a year ago, those nights alone in my room, that terrible loneliness after my sister and parents were gone.
I wasn’t alone so much these days. It was a good feeling.