The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“I’m sure,” Annie says, starting to reach forward to take the trinket from Maddie.

I’m overwhelmed with an insane desire to tear the ring out of Maddie’s hand and fling it over the edge of the observation deck. I could get arrested, if I did that, but the image burns in my mind, the sunlight sparkling off the gold as it falls, falls, falls and shatters on the pavement below into a thousand shards of reddish shell. Then she’d have to stay here. I want her to stay here!

“Wait! Don’t! Please!” I cry, choking back a sob. I don’t care that Tyler and Eastlin and Maddie are here to see. I don’t care if they’ll think I suck. I don’t care! I want her to stay here!

Annie pauses, hand poised in midair.

“What’s going to happen?” I babble crazily. “When you get back. What are you going to do? What’s going to happen?”

“I’m going to help the United Brotherhood of Luddites blow up the corporation barge at the Grand Aquatic Display,” Annie says smoothly, her brow serene.

“What?” I shout “No!”

“They’re slavemongers, Wes,” she continues. “My father. The corporation. All of them. They’re using slave money to finance the canal. It’ll flatten the wilderness and line their pockets, while fooling the poor into thinking it’s good for them, too. The Luddites are right. We have to make people see the canal is a mistake. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Damn,” Tyler says under his breath, his camera training an unblinking eye on the crazed girl in her tattered dress who’s holding my hand, her curls blowing like a corona around her head.

“Luddites!” Maddie exclaims, her eyes bright with happiness. “Wait! You’re one, too?”

“What?” I say, going cross-eyed with confusion. Tyler zooms into a tight shot on Annie, Maddie, and me.

Annie throws her head back, laughing, and says, “You all are amazing, you New Yorkers of the future. I love you.” She looks straight at me. An electric shock statics through the air, and my hair stands on end. A spark flies off my hand where it grips the metal railing, and I let go with a squeal of pain.

Before I can stop her, Annie plucks the cameo from Maddie’s waiting fingers and slides it onto the ring finger of her left hand.

For a split second, nothing happens.

Then beams of light pour out from underneath the ring where it meets her skin, and the static electricity in the air gets so thick I can hear it snap.

“Wait!” I scream in a panic. “No! Wait!”

But I’m too late, she’s already—





CHAPTER 15


The sky spins over my head and the observation deck drops from under my feet, and I hear an incredible roaring in my ears, louder than any sound I’ve ever heard, as the skyscraper beneath me pulls apart and vanishes into nothing. The sun burns brighter, and I close my eyes against it as I start to fall, seeing nothing but the red behind my eyelids, feeling wind rush through my hair, ripping the pins out of my pigtails. A slipper flies off, and my stockinged toes stretch into the void, my hands reaching out into thin air. Herschel’s ring burns into the skin of my finger, and it’s like there’s a light growing up from deep inside the shell, the figure of Persephone bending and moving as if she were as alive as I am.

I open my eyes and find myself plunging into fresh dusk, the sky below me ribboned with red clouds. Faster and faster, I pass a seagull, then a pigeon flutters off screaming in a cloud of feathers. The ground is speeding up to meet me, and I’m afraid I’m going to hit the cobblestones and that will be the end. I fling my arms up in front of my face to ward off the coming blow, but it’s no use, I open my mouth and take a breath to scream . . .