His voice was numb. “On the train.”
Amy spoke cautiously, keeping her voice even. “Yes. I was coming to see you. They carried me off. I couldn’t stop them.”
Fanning’s eyes floated away from her face. He glanced around uncertainly.
“But I’m here now, Tim. That’s what matters. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
How long could she sustain the lie? The sword was everything. If she could convince Fanning to give it to her …
“We can still do it,” she said. “There’s a way we can always be together, just like we planned.”
He looked back at her.
“Come with me, Tim. There’s a place we can go. I’ve seen it.”
Fanning said nothing. She sensed her words gaining traction in his mind.
“Where?” he asked.
“It’s the place where we can start over. We can do it right this time. All you have to do is give me the sword.” She extended her hand. “Come with me, Tim.”
Fanning’s eyes were locked on hers. Everything was inside them, the whole history of the man he’d been. The pain. The loneliness. The interminable hours of his life. Then:
“You.”
She was losing him. “Give me the sword, Tim. That’s all you have to do.”
“You’re not her.”
She felt it all collapsing. “Tim, it’s me. It’s Liz.”
“You’re … Amy.”
Fifty yards away, lying faceup on the ground, the man known as Peter Jaxon had begun to disappear.
His mind straddled two worlds. In the first, one of darkness and commotion, Fanning was hurling Amy through the air. Peter sensed this rather dimly; he could not recall why it should be so. Nor could he intervene, his powers to act, even to move at all, having abandoned him.
In the other was a window.
A shade, drawn over it, glowed with summer light. The image felt familiar, like déjà vu. The window, Peter thought. It means I must be dying. As he fought to focus his eyes, to bring himself back to reality, the light began to change. It was becoming something else: not a window in his mind but something physical. Through the dust-filled darkness was an opening, like a corridor ascending to a higher world, and through this tunnel a shining shape appeared. It teased at his memory; he knew what it was, if only he could summon the image forth. The picture sharpened. It resembled a crown, multilayered, each layer arched as it narrowed to a spiked peak. Sunlight flared upon its mirrored face, shooting a bright beam down the corridor, which was a hole in the clouds, into his eyes.
The Chrysler Building.
The corridor collapsed; darkness folded over him again. But now he knew: the night in which he dwelled was false. The sun was still up there. Above the cloud of dust it shone, bright as day. If he could get to the sun, if he could somehow lead Fanning into its light …
But this thought was lost as a great force gripped him, like a vortex. Its power was colossal. He felt himself being pulled, down and down and down. What lay at the bottom he did not know, only that when he reached it, he would be forever lost. Somewhere distant, his body was changing. Racked with convulsions, it hammered on the pavement of the broken city. Bones elongated. Teeth showered from his gums. He was sinking into a sea of everlasting darkness in which no trace of himself would remain. No! Not yet! He searched for something, anything, to hold on to. In his mind’s eye, Amy’s face appeared. The picture was not imagined but taken from life. They were sitting on his bed. Their faces were close, their hands entwined. Teardrops hung upon her eyelashes like beads of light. You get to keep one thing, she told him. What I wanted to keep was you.
Was you, thought Peter.
You.
He fell.
The pain in Michael’s leg exploded. Removing the glass had peeled the skin back like the rind of an orange, exposing the fibrous, subtly pulsating muscle beneath. Another backward reach above his head produced a long, silk scarf. He twirled it into a thick rope and tied it tightly around the wound. The fabric was instantly saturated. Was he doing this right? He wished Sara were here. Sara would know what to do. The things that came into your mind at a time like this: the brain was not kind, it had no sense of fairness, it taunted you with thoughts of the things you did not have or couldn’t do.
The noise outside had subsided as the destruction marched north. The air had an unnatural chemical smell, bitter and burnt. For the first time since he’d awakened on the street, his mind went to Alicia, the look on her face as the water crashed into her and swept her away. She was gone. Alicia was gone.
From the street, a crunch of glass.
Michael froze. The noise came again.
Footsteps.
Pushing with her heels, Amy scrambled backward. “Tim, don’t! It’s me!”
“Don’t call me that!”
She had lost him; the spell was broken. In his eyes, the look of white-hot fury had returned. Suddenly Fanning raised his head. A new emotion came into his face, one of unanticipated pleasure.