CHAPTER FOUR
Perry
Heat wavered above the pavement and the air stunk like garbage. Though it was the end of May, New York City was going through an early heat wave and we were feeling the brunt of it.
Me, Ada and Maximus had been walking up and down the city streets, searching for answers in a city that wasn’t providing anything but stink and hot air. Maximus was insistent on us taking the Subway but for whatever reason, Ada wasn’t too keen on the idea. In fact, every time he brought it up, her face paled a little. I’d never known her to have a fear of the underground but she seemed to believe that being in the unrelenting sunshine, walking on tired feet, was much better.
As we walked, Maximus went over the ways we could possibly track him down. We did internet searches for Regine Foray but they were coming up blank, as if his mother had never existed. The same went for Declan and Michael. Still, Maximus thought New York’s City Clerk could help us with records.
I felt a bit like an investigative reporter. I knew we could have probably holed up at a coffee shop and done most of this over the web, but there was something more proactive and productive about treading pavement and searching for answers face-to-face. It didn’t seem right to just whittle the day away on the internet while Dex was out there somewhere.
I tried really hard not to think about him, about what might be happening, whether he was in any pain, about why he was taken. But I wasn’t made of stone. I slipped up, often, and my body nearly crumbled each time. The thought of losing Dex was far too much to bear.
Luckily, Maximus, with his determination, kept me moving, and Ada, with her sweet, subtle displays of affection, let me know I wasn’t alone. And with them, we kept walking, block after Manhattan block, searching for something, anything.
After a visit to the city clerk turned up nothing, we ended up checking out the New York Public Library. When I remembered the lions coming to life in Ghostbusters, I laughed to myself and then was immediately met with sorrow when I realized how badly I wanted to make a joke to Dex about it. We had been the ghostbusters. Now there was no Experiment in Terror and no Dex.
We grabbed a quick sandwich at a kiosk and found a bench to sit on in Bryant Park. I stared up at the buildings towering over us, trying to find respite in their strange familiarity. It was weird being in a place you’d never been to but had seen so many times that you could trick yourself into thinking you had. Ada was having a ball people watching and muttering about how all the fashionistas are spotted in Bryant Park during fashion week.
It was then that a trick of the eye, the light hitting the door of a taxi cab as it swung open that caused the air to warp and shimmer, that I was struck with a terrible idea.
I had been getting no more visits from Pippa, but it was she who held all the answers. Even though she had been weak, ill and brutally vague during our last correspondence, she could go anywhere, see anything from inside the Veil. She would know where Dex was. And if she wasn’t going to come to me, I was going to have to go to her.
“Perry,” Maximus said, his low voice drawing me out of my thoughts.
I snapped my eyes to him with renewed verve. “What?”
He shook his head ever so gently. “Don’t even think about it.’
I frowned. “What are you talking about?” He couldn’t have just heard my thoughts, could he have? He wasn’t like us.
He slowly licked his lips and turned away, his gaze resting on the people passing by, hurrying, going about their busy but normal lives. He seemed to have an internal debate with himself. He sighed and then leaned back against the bench, his wide frame nearly knocking Ada over the side. She gave a little grunt of annoyance at his intrusion into her personal space.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he finally said, his words measured, as if he wasn’t sure how much each one was worth.
“You can hear my thoughts?” I asked loudly, then quickly lowered my voice when I realized we were in public. Ada stopped eating, mid-chew, and craned her head to give him a look.
He gave me a quick smile. “Sometimes. You’re right. I’m not like you. But I still pick up on things and I know enough to tell you not to go into the Thin Veil. I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Pippa.”
“Hold up,” Ada said, raising a finger in the air. “Let me get this straight. You, Ginger Rogers, you know about the Thin Veil. About our grandma. You can hear Perry’s thoughts.”
He nodded, not seeming to appreciate another nickname.
“And how do you know all this?” I asked. “For how long?” I thought back to my possession and was hit with anger. “And for God’s sake, don’t tell me you knew back when I was possessed!”
“Perry,” Maximus said gently, “I couldn’t hear your thoughts back then. It wasn’t until after you went into the Veil that I was able to pick up on you. You do remember the Veil, right? How Dex had to go in there and pull you out. You do not want to go back in there. If Pippa wanted you to –”
“Oh fuck off,” I sneered. “What the hell do you know about her? How dare you keep all of this to yourself!”
“I didn’t,” he said quickly. “Dex knows.”
My eyes widened then turned hard. “What?” I roared, getting to my feet, my iced coffee splashing out of the cup. “Dex knows?! Since when?”
He looked momentarily frightened but answered with conviction. “Since New Orleans.”
Before I had a chance to stew on that, to simmer on the fact that Dex had kept something from me, Ada spoke up.
“And what exactly does Dex know,” Ada asked. “You can hear Perry’s thoughts. You know about the Veil? What else?” She narrowed her eyes at him and leaned in closer. “Just who are you, you ginger freak?”
A wash of shame came over his brow. “I am Maximus Jacobs. A mere mortal like you both.”
“Mortal?” I repeated, finding it an odd choice of word. Everything about this was odd.
He nodded. “Yes. But, as I’m sure you’re guessing, it wasn’t always that way.”
“That’s totally not what I was guessing,” Ada commented.
Maximus looked to me. “You remember your Jacob, right?”
My Jacob. Spikey-haired, damaged, totally inhuman. He led me astray when I was fifteen and put the rest of my life into turbulent action. “How could I forget?” Then, wait. How did he know about them?
He raised his brows expectantly but I was too slow to piece it together. “Well,” he said, “I was Dex’s Jacob. Before that I was someone else’s. And after that I was Rose’s.”
“Rose?” This was crazy. I almost laughed. “So Dex…wait. Did Dex know? He must have.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “He didn’t. Which is why he, well, floundered through life I reckon.”
“He was in a mental asylum,” I said, feeling that anger build again. “You put him there.”
“No,” he said sharply. “I did not. I tried to help Dex, really I did. But I just couldn’t handle it, handle him. You weren’t there, you don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand. He slept with your girlfriend and suddenly you didn’t want to help him anymore. Is that it?”
“Perry, please, it’s in the past.”
I rolled my eyes. “No wonder Dex hated you.”
He flinched as if hurt. “He didn’t know.”
“I bet on some level he did. That you were there to help him and then you abandoned him.” I tried to slice him with the word.
“I went to help someone else that I could,” he said. “Rose needed me.”
I felt a pang of guilt at her name and wanted to ask how she was doing. She was nearly comatose after New Orleans and our incident with the Voodoo queen. But that was a concern for another time. Now, I had something so big on my plate I could barely handle it.
“All this time,” I said slowly. “From the start. You knew, you believed. And you lied.”
“I did what I had to do,” he said. “To protect you, myself, Dex. To protect the way things work.”
“You knew I was possessed and you sided with my parents,” I seethed. “You made it seem like I was crazy.”
“I had no choice, your parents would not have believed me,” he said, raising his hands. “Not then, anyway.”
I shook my head, unable to take it in. So all this time, he’d always known, always believed. Suddenly everything seemed to slide and click into place. I looked down at my hands, realizing I was tearing at my cuticles so hard they were drawing blood. “So now what? You’re mortal?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I went rogue. For Rose. I gave it all up.”
“Now?”