Dangerous Creatures

CHAPTER 6 Welcome to the Jungle

The good-byes were over. By the time John and Liv had boarded their plane for Heathrow and Ethan and Lena were headed for the Massachusetts Turnpike, Link and Ridley were on the way to New York City—the one-and-only setting of Link’s one-and-only dream. It had been a long time coming.

“Remember last time we were in New York City?” Link stole a sideways glance at her.

“You mean the time you pretended to be at church camp?”

“Best band camp ever. Sneakin’ into clubs in the East Village. Crashin’ at youth hostels and YMCAs. Sleepin’ in the Beater.” He patted the dashboard.

“How could I forget.” Ridley smiled. It had been an entirely magical hallucination, laced with powerful Siren mojo.

“Makin’ it in New York, Rid. That’s right up there with signin’ a record label or performin’ at the VMAs.”

“Slow down, Hot Rod. Maybe first you can just try to find a new band.” And I know just where to start looking, Ridley thought.

Link was thinking bigger. “Who knows? This could be the first chapter in my autobiography. Rock On: The Making of a Carolina Icon.” He said it like he hadn’t already told her a thousand times.

Ridley smiled. “And with any luck, maybe you can get your mother to ban your own book from the Stonewall Jackson High School Library.”

Link laughed, settling in behind the wheel. “A guy can dream.” He turned up the music.

Ridley shook her head. At least it wasn’t going to be called Meatstik, the name of his last band. And she had thought the Holy Rollers were bad. The Holy Rollers were the Rolling Stones compared to Meatstik, which was probably the reason that Link hadn’t been able to convince any of the members of his band to come with him to New York. Grable Honeycutt was going full-time at the Summerville Suds-It-Up, and Daryl Homer was just Daryl Homer. He’d probably still be sitting on his mother’s couch this time next year, unless his mother sold it out from under him the way she’d threatened.

“My money’s on Daryl,” Link had said when the band first announced they were breaking up, right before graduation. “Plus, who wants a gold velvet sofa smellin’ like a Homer’s butt?”

It wasn’t like any of them were leaving a great career behind. “(You’re My) Mystery Meat” and “(Feels Like I’m Chewin’ On) Indigestible Gristle,” Meatstik’s two most requested songs at the Summerville Community Center dances, showcased some of the worst lyrics Link had ever written, in Ridley’s opinion. (“Butcher my heart, fillet my soul, and when I bleed, sop it up with your roll.”) Actually, the very worst. And that was saying something, considering that Rid had sat through more Holy Rollers concerts than anyone.

“Now that the band’s broken up, maybe you should try writing about something other than meat,” she’d said.

“But meat’s what I miss the most,” Link had sighed. “Now that I’m not eating. And now that we’re together again.” Then he’d winked at her. “Our love is rare, medium rare.”

“Don’t you dare quote Meatstik to me.”

Ridley didn’t push it. Now wasn’t the time to be hurting Link’s feelings, especially not when she knew what was coming. Sooner or later, she’d have to tell him that this trip wasn’t about dreams. Not anymore. It was about TFPs—talents, favors, and powers. In particular, the favors she’d lost in a card game called Liar’s Trade at the club called Suffer. She was still too humiliated to admit the truth to anyone—and too afraid.

She owed a debt to Lennox Gates, who was more than just a powerful Dark Caster club owner. If Link didn’t go to New York, he would be giving up more than his dream. He would be getting Ridley into a mess of trouble even she couldn’t escape. Or, depending on how you looked at it, delivering her into the hot mess of trouble she’d just gotten herself into.

Maybe I should tell him to turn around now. I already gambled Link’s future away, she thought, with a pang of guilt. It’s too late to worry about mine. But she shook it off, as quickly as it came. She couldn’t do what she needed to do if she let stupid feelings get in the way.

I’m doing him a favor. I need to deliver a drummer to Lennox to settle this first marker, and Link is going to New York to be a drummer. Is there anything so wrong with doing us both a favor? And that band, what were they called? Devil’s Horsemen? Hangmen? They weren’t really all that bad, were they?

There have to be worse things in the world than spending a year with a few Caster rockers with a solid in to good gigs.

In fact, Ridley knew there were. It was the other thing she’d lost that night—the one she couldn’t even begin to let herself think about. The part where she owed not just a drummer but a second marker, a house marker, which meant it was up to the house to decide when to cash it in, and for what.

In other words, Lennox Gates owned the house and the club, so he owned her marker. In other words, he owned her until a year from the day she lost the game.

She owed him one favor. Or worse—a talent, maybe even a power.

No limits.

Anything he asked.

He could make her step off the top of the world’s tallest building if he decided to. Drown herself in Lake Moultrie. Shut herself in an Arclight.

In fact, Lennox Gates could make Ridley do anything she’d ever made anyone else do, using her own Power of Persuasion. He could collect whenever he wanted, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Ridley could still see him gloating, that night at Suffer.

More like insufferable. That’s what he was.

She put it all out of her mind.

First things first.

She had to settle her gambling debt, and to do that, she had to get Link to New York. One drummer, coming right up.

In Philadelphia, Rid only let Link out of the Beater long enough at the local truck stop to buy a Coke, not that he could drink it.

In East Brunswick, New Jersey, she was relieved to see signs posted everywhere that only an attendant could pump the gas, so getting out of the car wasn’t even an option. “Sorry, Hot Rod. It’s the law.”

Ridley couldn’t help but feel an irrational panic that he might turn around and drive right back home. She could sense his nerves all the way from the other side of the car. Link couldn’t keep his hands on the wheel. He was too busy tapping on every other surface of the Beater.

“I just gotta pull over and breathe for a second.” He exhaled loudly, like a smoker without a cigarette.

“You’re fine.” Ridley reached out her hand. I should pat something, right? Maybe his arm?

She let her hand fall on his leg, awkwardly.

“You don’t know that. What if I suck? What if I never get a new band? What if this was all just a stupid idea?” He said the words like they were new thoughts, and Ridley tried not to smile.

“When has that ever stopped you before?” She gave up on the patting.

After that, Ridley was on standby, ready to implement emergency measures. Link was freaking out at the wheel, and Ridley was stuck in his passenger seat. If she didn’t do something, she was going down with this ship.

Like it or not, they were in this together.

Link shrugged. “I could get a job at the Suds-It-Up, I guess.”

It was the saddest thing she had ever heard. It gave her a thought so un-Ridley it felt like heartburn in her brain.

This must be what it’s really like to be Bound to a person. You can’t just wave it away, turn it magically on or off. Really connecting yourself to another person is infinitely more complicated than that.

She looked at the fire-forged Binding Ring on her finger. Ridley had to do something, for both of them.

Rid wriggled her fingers, watching as the colors of the ring shifted from a bright blue to a milky green. Caster green, she thought. Like some big old Caster mood ring.

She closed her eyes.

No. It wasn’t a Cast. It wasn’t even a Charm. It wasn’t the same as a cherry lollipop or a piece of gum or anything she could chew on or suck on or sweeten up her Siren powers with.

It was a wish.

But as she wished, she felt a strange pull—as if something was giving way in the deepest part of her own mind, the way it did when she was Kelting with a Caster or Charming her way past some unsuspecting Boy Scout.

I wish this Beater could Travel. If John were here, he’d be able to figure out a way to do it. We’d Rip from here to New York City in a heartbeat.

Ridley’s heart pounded and she opened her eyes just in time to see the Beater crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, over the water from Manhattan into Brooklyn.

“Wait,” she said, turning to Link. “Did you see that?”

“It’s kinda hard to miss the Brooklyn Bridge, Rid. Even for a boy from Gatlin.” Link grinned. He was back to his old self. Something about the city always charmed Link as completely as anything Rid could do to him.

“You didn’t notice anything weird just now? Between New Jersey and here?”

“You mean, aside from the license plates bein’ the wrong color and the radio stations bein’ all jacked up? And how you gotta pay money just to drive on the highway? Everything’s weird, Babe. This is the North.” Then “Stairway to Heaven” came on and all conversation came to a mandatory stop. It was one of the only rules in the Beater. You had to respect the Stairway.

Rid held up her hand in the moonlight, staring at the ring. What were the words of that Binding Cast? Something send us? Did the ring do it?

It had faded back to blue again, and now it didn’t look any more powerful than the other pieces of jewelry she was wearing.

Link didn’t make the Beater Travel. He didn’t even notice it. And I didn’t imagine it. I couldn’t have.

Because they were in New York.

She didn’t know how or why, or even who was responsible—but at least nothing bad had happened. She had gotten her wish. There was no turning back from New York now.

Ridley couldn’t tell if it was because of the ring, but as they crossed through the darkness from one stretch of sparkling lights to the next, the Brooklyn Bridge seemed like the most magical place in the world, or the second most magical. It reminded Ridley of the Caster bridge that led to the seam, the great boundary between the Mortal world and the Otherworld. Except where that bridge had been a splintery old dock, this one was almost a monument to Mortals. She wondered why she’d never noticed it before. The immense scale of everything—the cables rising high into the night sky overhead, the support beams striping them with shadow and light as the Beater sped by—it wasn’t like anything either of them was used to seeing around Gatlin.

It was Mortal and breathtaking, and Ridley couldn’t imagine ever getting used to the idea that the pathetic, broken-down human race could pull off something this beautiful.

Just when you think they can’t surprise you, she thought. Then you have to start worrying that they can.