41 - TYSE

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I know it's Anneeta at the door before Clara calls out, "Who is it?" and Anneeta answers, "It's me."

I know because the moment I open my eyes, the overlay is back. Not like it was the first time, but like it was last night when Clara and I were kissing outside the tower.

The spark is floating all around us like snow. It has a fairy-tale quality to it, but not the fluffy kind of fairy tale. Not the prince on a horse with a happy ending kind of fairy tale, but the dark ones. The ones where you know there's witches in the forest and wolves waiting to eat you.

"Hold on, Anneeta." Clara turns to me. Smiles. "Good morning."

But I'm still in the overlay. Reliving last night when I was floating above the kiss Clara and I had outside in front of the tower ruin and the town down below wasn't mine, but hers.

I saw him. Her Finn. He was in the top floor of the missing tower. Only, of course, it wasn't missing in Clara's city. He and a redhead girl were looking out the window that was tinted blue. And then I looked down and saw that the hundreds of people who were there in our world had dwindled to dozens in theirs.

And they could all, every single one of them, see us .

They saw us.

He watched us. Her Finn. As I kissed my Clara.

And then his eyes came up and met mine. He saw me too. Both of me. The one kissin' her and the one floatin' in the air looking down.

We looked right at each other. And I saw it in there. The mean in him. I saw it.

That's why, when Clara started telling her little story about how he treated her that last day, I went all hot with anger.

He was mean to her.

I thought he was a dick from the very beginning, but… mean to her? How the fuck could anyone be mean to this woman? She's like a fuckin' lion cub. She's got power inside her that could probably destroy a fuckin' city and she's got no clue. None at all. It's never even entered her mind that she might… do something with that spark that pours out of her hands like magic.

"Tyse?"

I blink and the overlay goes with it. "What?"

"Anneeta's at the door. We should… get dressed?"

I let out a breath. "Yeah." I swing my legs out, stand up, grab her nightgown, and toss it to her. She's giggling. And I'm… so angry . But I force a smile and pull on my pants.

Then I turn my back to her as I stand in the center of the room and rake my fingers through my hair. Because today is real.

We are leaving.

We are gettin' on a train and we're going as far away from here as we can get. Because there's something really fucked up going on in this tower. Hell, in this whole city. I never thought much about why they just let us squat here. Why they feed us. And have a nice little lost and found where we can get new things for cheap. Or why they don't care that we're not paying taxes.

You know there's evil lurking when a government isn't grabbing those fuckin' taxes everywhere they can.

And now, after hearing those men talk at Stayn's last night, it's startin' to make sense. Just a little bit of sense. I know I don't have the whole picture, but the tiny bit I do understand is dark. And wrong. It's comin' for us. And if we don't get the fuck out of here, it's gonna get us.

There's a loud thump on the door, which I decipher as a kick. And then Anneeta is complaining. "Are you gonna open the door or what? I have something, you know. Something important."

Clara is out of bed now and she's the one who answers the door, not me. "Sorry, Anneeta. We were sleeping. What have you got there?"

I lean to the side to see past Clara and get a look at Anneeta. She's all dressed, like usual, looking like a fairy-tale kid trapped in a tower.

But she smiles at me, revealing that gap in her teeth. Then she holds something up to Clara, answering her last question. "I have a book."

"For me?" Clara's surprise, as well as her delight, isn't fake. And this is what I mean. She's a kitten.

And he was mean to her.

Anneeta sighs. "It's for you, yes."

"Come in. Come on." Anneeta is ushered inside the room by Clara, and this is when I see the book. I recognize it. A child's picture book called The Godslayer and His Courtesan . It's a popular book here and I've seen Anneeta carry it many times, though not recently.

Clara shuts the door.

As that is happening Anneeta's eyes find mine. "You have to make a promise, Tyse."

But I say, "No," before she even finishes.

"What?" Clara turns to face me. "You can't say that, Tyse. Not until she tells you what she wants."

I'm looking straight at Anneeta now. "I already know what she wants." Then I narrow my eyes and just say it. Because this day is whatever it is. It's the beginning, it's the end, it doesn't even matter. It's happening, right now, and we've got to make choices. "She wants forgiveness. Don't ya, Anneeta?"

"Forgiveness?" Clara is laughing. But that's because she doesn't know yet.

She doesn't have any idea what this child is.

Because she didn't hear Edward's slip-up last night in Stayn's office. "We heard that every tower has one." And he was talking about the Looking Glass. Which I was lying about. But it's what he said next that clued me in. "And that the new god needs ? —"

But that's where Stayn stopped him.

"Why would she be asking us for forgiveness?" Clara is looking bewildered.

I point to Anneeta's book. Because I remember now. I remember why she carries it around. It's got a picture of her mother in it. "Show her, Anneeta. Show her why you need to be forgiven."