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“Mary knows where you went last night,” Vari announced. “Everyone knows.”
Allie looked around at the other kids, and Allie knew from the way they looked at her, and from the distance they kept, that she had suddenly become an outsider. Someone to be feared. Someone who could not be trusted.
“Mary doesn’t want to talk to you,” Vari said. “Ever.”
“Listen, you little weasel, you tell me where Mary is, or I swear I’ll take you straight out into the living world, and stomp you down so hard, you’ll sink clear to China!”
When Vari didn’t talk, Allie took things into her own hands. Allie had heard that Mary liked to wander the unused floors when something was troubling her. A quick trip to the elevator control room found all the elevators on the usual floors, except for one. There was a single elevator waiting on the fifty-eighth floor.
It was the emptiness that hit Allie first. She knew the unused floors of the great towers were empty, but some were more empty than others. When you stood in the concrete expanse of floor fifty-eight, you felt like the only person in the universe.
Mary was there all right, in a far corner looking out of the windows at the world below. When she turned to see Allie her expression hardened. Other elevators began to arrive, and kids piled out of stairwells to watch the situation unfold.
Mary strode toward her with such sternness about her, Allie felt sure Mary would slap her…but she didn’t. Instead Mary stopped a distance away. Dueling distance, Allie thought. The distance from which Aaron Burr must have shot Alexander Hamilton.
“I want to know where Nick is,” Mary asked. Allie could see she had been crying, although Mary tried not to show it.
“I need your help,” Allie said.
“First tell me where Nick is!”
Allie hesitated. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Lief and Nick have been captured by the Haunter.” At the word “Haunter,” many of the little kids gasped, and clung to older children.
“See, didn’t I tell you?” Vari said. “They brought this on themselves!”
“Shut up, Vari!” It was the first time Allie had heard Mary yell at him. It was the first time she heard her yell at anyone. Now she turned her anger toward Allie. “You deliberately went against my wishes, and my warnings!”
Allie was not about to deny it. “I know. I’m sorry, and you can punish me any way you like, but right now we have to rescue Lief and Nick.”
“Your actions put them in harm’s way.”
“Yes,” admitted Allie. “Yes, they did. I was wrong, but right now—”
Then Mary turned to all those gathered. “Let this be a lesson to everyone that nothing good can ever come from leaving this place.”
Now Allie was getting frustrated. “Yes, fine. I am the poster child for bad choices. Now can we just get on with what has to be done!”
Mary looked at her with the same sadness her eyes held when she looked out from her high window. A single tear came, and she wiped it away.
“There is nothing to be done.”
Allie heard what Mary said, but was convinced she hadn’t heard her right.
“What?”
“Nick and Lief are lost,” Mary said. “You’ve lost them.” And Mary turned to walk away.
Allie shook her head, and felt like lunging at Mary just as she had lunged at the Haunter, but she held herself back. “No! No—you can’t just leave them.”
Then Mary turned on her with a powerful vengeance. “Don’t you think I want to save them? Do you think I want Nick spending an eternity imprisoned by that evil spirit?”
“Then do something about it.”
“That would risk every child here, and I won’t put them in danger. I protect them! I don’t send them out to fight a war! The Haunter leaves us alone. We leave him alone. That’s the way it is with all the monsters. Even the McGill.”
Again, nervous whispers at the mention of the McGill.
“The world out there is not a kind one, if you haven’t figured that out,” Mary said. “Sometimes we sink, and never come back. Sometimes we are captured and are never seen again. Losing Nick and Lief is tragic, and I will not make it more tragic by sending other defenseless children for the Haunter to enslave.”
