“No!” Flora snapped. “That wasn’t a faint. It was like an epileptic seizure, without the tremors.”
“So shouldn’t we—”
“We’re not touching a damned thing,” Flora said, watching his ears and nose for a sign of liquefied brain.
Adrienne sat back down. The eyes of both women turned back to the tile. It remained in suspension but it was like a green sun, outwardly quiescent.
“Almost like it’s alive,” Flora said.
“It’s a stone,” Adrienne told her.
“It is a stone with secrets,” Flora said, correcting her. “Secrets I believe Dr. Caitlin O’Hara has just begun to unlock.”
As she spoke, Ben came to. He looked around, momentarily confused.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You appeared to have a seizure of some kind,” Flora told him. “Can I get you anything?”
“How long have I been out?”
“A little more than a minute, I’d say.”
Ben struggled to stand. “Caitlin’s doing that,” he said referring to the stone.
“Very likely,” Flora said.
“She shouldn’t be.”
“Also true.”
On unsteady feet, he made his way as quickly as he could from the room. He tried calling Caitlin as he left but all he got was voice mail. He searched for a text. Nothing new had come through.
With sickness rising in his throat, he limped into a night that suddenly seemed very much darker than before.
CHAPTER 24
In Washington Square Park, the water of the central fountain exploded in flame.
The few people who were in the park saw it and screamed. A second later they were pulling out their phones.
Minutes later, two fire trucks shrieked down Fifth Avenue and firefighters poured through the arch, running toward the fountain. Spraying water on the twenty-foot-high flames proved its inadequacy. They switched to using fire-retardant foam and that had some effect. One captain shouted into his radio, ordering as much foam as the firehouses in that quadrant of Manhattan possessed. Several firefighters ran toward the NYU buildings to collect fire extinguishers.
No one saw a figure in the southeast corner with her arms outstretched, as though she were worshipping the moon.
No one saw that figure topple to the ground.
And no one saw Minetta Brook begin to burn in its culvert underground.
Lying beneath the trees, Caitlin could only glimpse a sky that was the wrong shade of orange, coming from her right. She climbed to her hands and knees, then knelt upright, noticing that her clothes were smoking but not on fire. She craned her neck out from the thicket and saw flashing lights from fire trucks, then the fire shooting up from the water fountain.
She rose unsteadily and looked around. At the southwest corner of the park, flames were blowing out of the windows of the NYU law school library. There was the boom of another explosion and the flames shot tens of feet in the air. Bystanders were screaming; some firefighters were shouting while others aimed white jets of foam at the building. All the nearby trees were festooned in white foam and yet as the foam fell on the flames, the fire seemed to find apertures and surge through, still alive.
Then another blast, this time from a building on the west side of the park, flames coursing through the windows and more sirens in the distance.
Caitlin tried to move from her spot, but her legs wouldn’t have it. They slipped from under her, and once again, she was on her back.
Shutting her eyes, too spent to keep them open, she saw shadows of black and amber play on her closed lids. The colors formed the hint of a face, like one of those afterimages of Abraham Lincoln she used to stare at in the encyclopedia.
You are not finished, a voice said to her. It was a familiar voice. The ascended Yokane?
Caitlin thought, Screw you. I did what you asked.
The face faded, along with all traces of light. But before it went, it said:
It is not I who asks.
And then everything was gone.
Ben had been walking blind; he knew that. He called Caitlin’s phone repeatedly and got only voice mail. But with Caitlin’s history it was a fair bet to head toward the action, and Washington Square Park was certainly that.
He heard the trouble before he saw it or smelled it.
Red lights were flashing everywhere, and fires crackled with long shadows in all directions. The bloops of sirens sounded as smaller emergency vehicles sped down side streets to join the fire trucks. The sky was a seething orange and smoke was blowing every which way.
Ben approached a cop at the north entrance to the park. “Please,” he said, “I need to get in. I think my friend is in there.”
“No one is allowed at this time,” she replied.
Ben pulled out his ID. “I’m from the United Nations. I’m really worried about her.”
“Sir, I cannot let you in. Injured persons are being transported to the Lenox Hill emergency room on Twelfth and Seventh.”
Frustrated, Ben glanced west, where the fire trucks had clumped together.
“Are they having trouble putting out the fire?” he asked.
“It’s under control,” the cop said, but Ben noticed her hesitation and the surprise in her eyes. He walked away before she could think twice.
The west side of the park was obviously going to be impassable so Ben headed around the quieter east side instead. All the park entrances were blocked by police but there was one ambulance over on the east side, and EMTs were carrying someone on a gurney toward it.
Ben’s feet sped up before his mind caught on. He was running by the time he realized the patient was Caitlin. He got to the vehicle just as they were lifting the gurney into the back. His stomach lurched as he saw her face, her closed eyes.
“Let me through!” he shouted at the small knot of bystanders and paramedics, pushing at them. “I know her. I have to go with her.”
“Sir, you can’t—”
“I’m her boyfriend,” Ben snapped at the EMT, and climbed into the ambulance. “How bad is it?”
“She’s unconscious,” said the paramedic sitting beside her.
“How unconscious?”
The paramedic flashed him a look. Ben noticed that the man was sinking his thumbnail into the nail bed of Caitlin’s right pinky finger. Then he let go of her hand.
“No reaction,” he said as the door clunked shut behind them.
Ben felt his heart stop for a second. He picked up Caitlin’s hand and held it as the ambulance peeled away from the park.
Shortly after Ben had left, Flora rose from her stool.
The stone seemed to have calmed and stabilized, and she wanted to try to reconnect with Mikel.
Ambling down the basement corridor, Flora reached into her pocket for her phone to check messages and alerts. As she climbed the stairs to the first floor, her phone rang in her hand. It was Mikel calling via the radio.
“Caitlin O’Hara is in danger!” he called over static.
“What do you mean?”
“The Galderkhaani… I spoke with them. They want her to go back and change everything!”
“Dear Lord.”
“Is she still there?”
Before Flora could answer, she felt a hand grip her chin and a sharp point press against her throat. In a mirror across the room, she saw that Casey Skett was holding one of their ancient knives to her neck. With his foot he closed the door of the office behind them.