I can’t kill him, though. Not before he undoes all the curses, including mine.
Elizabeth is already out the door. Laurie, I remember. He probably has a two-minute lead on Arbus. Not enough.
We have to assume he’s headed home. Elizabeth is trying to call his phone, but he’s not picking up. Hopefully because he’s too busy running.
Arbus’s malevolence cannot contain itself. The adrenaline of our confrontation must be manifesting itself in spite. Because he’s left us a trail. A horrible trail.
These poor people thought that they were taking a walk on a nice summer evening. They may have been coming home from dinner or a late night at work.
Now they are victims.
A man in a suit lies on the sidewalk, screaming, “Where are my legs? What have you done with my legs?” An eleven-year-old girl is tearing off her clothes as if they’re covered with scorpions. The boy beside her is tearing out his hair in clumps, not recognizing the blood on his fingers.
A block later, two lovers who went for a stroll are now beating each other to a pulp. A man who’s taken his dog out for a walk is now trying to hang it by its leash. Not hesitating for a moment, Elizabeth runs over and punches the man in the chest; startled, he drops the leash, and the dog runs safely away into the park.
It’s an awful choice—do we stay and help these people, or do we rush past them and try to stop Arbus?
“Come on,” Elizabeth says, running ahead. She’s got her phone out again and is calling the police.
Let them handle this. We have to cut right to the cause.
“He’s using up so much energy,” Elizabeth says to me once she’s off the phone.
“He wants us to find him,” I say. “This is it. Checkmate.”
We get to our building and find that the doorman is throwing himself back and forth through the plate glass window, knocking shard after shard with his body. I don’t want to touch him, because there is glass all through his skin, but how else can I stop him? Elizabeth moves to block him and I move to catch him, but he dodges us, kneels to the ground, and starts to pick up the glass, moving it to his lips. Elizabeth kicks it out of his grasp; he howls.
Another tenant approaches the building—Alex, the preppy jerk from 7A.
“What’s going on?” he says, shocked.
“Hold him and don’t let go until the police come,” Elizabeth orders.
Alex goes into a wrestler pose, grabs the doorman, and nods.
“I’ve got him,” he says, unyielding and unquestioning.
We sprint for the elevators.
“My apartment or your apartment?” Elizabeth asks.
I shake my head and point to where the elevators have gone. Both of them sit on the top floor.
“The roof,” I tell her. “It has to be the roof.”
Chapter 30
I’M RUNNING FOR THE STAIRS. I take them two at a time, flinging myself from landing to landing. I don’t look at the floor numbers. I can’t think about the climb or the precious minutes stolen by each flight or the way my lungs are burning. All I know is that I will not stop running until I am on the roof.
Stephen is behind me, but he doesn’t speak. There is no pausing to collect our thoughts. There is no strategy. No plan.
And then I am facing the door to the roof. It is a gateway of thick, imposing gray metal. I shove through.
Our squat, nine-story apartment building isn’t one of those with an on-trend, sexy rooftop garden. The space I stumble into, squinting in the sudden, harsh daylight, is a bleak, open square of cement ringed by a low brick edge.
I see my brother first.
“Laurie!”
I start towards him, but a chillingly calm voice brings me up a few yards short of him.
“I wouldn’t get any closer if I were you.” Maxwell Arbus stands with his hands clasped at his back. His gaze is speculative and practiced, like he’s assessing the worth of some antiquity.
Without taking his eyes from me, Arbus tilts his head in Laurie’s direction. “Your brother is entertaining some unusual ideas at the moment.”
I risk looking away from him so I can focus on Laurie. My brother’s eyes are glassy, his expression grossly serene.
“I haven’t decided yet what Laurie most wants to do,” Stephen’s grandfather tells me. “Fly or jump to the next building.”
“Don’t.” My voice almost cracks. I don’t want to break for this man, and I know I’m on the verge.
“The jump would be more sporting, don’t you think?” Arbus continues. “He might make it.”
I attempt negotiation. “Please let him go. My brother has nothing to do with this.”
Arbus’s laugh is like a sharp bark. “He’s here, isn’t he? I think that makes your brother very much a part of this.”
“And my mother?” I don’t want to do this. I’m letting him bait me, but I can’t stop. Rage and fear are driving my thoughts, my words.
“A lovely woman, I’m sure,” Arbus answers. “Such a shame that single mothers can’t discipline their children as needed. If you had a proper father, I’m certain we wouldn’t be in this unpleasant predicament.”
I’m withering beneath his cruelty and he can tell. A smile slides up one side of his thin mouth.
“In fact.” His voice becomes dangerously quiet. “I’d hate for her to miss the finer points of my instruction.”
After shifting his weight slightly and uttering a few words I can’t hear, Arbus says, “The curse on your mother is lifted.”
I know better than to feel relief, an instinct that’s confirmed when he tells me, “Soon she’ll fully grasp what a mistake it is to leave her children alone for so many hours of the working day, all too free to meddle in the lives of others. Consequences are best realized in a stark and brutal manner. Else the lesson may not be learned.”
His gaze shifts to Laurie. My brother, wearing a bemused smile, begins to walk to the edge of the roof.
“No!” The shout isn’t mine. It comes from Stephen.
Laurie stops just shy of the two-foot brick ledge that rings the building.
I understand why Stephen hasn’t spoken before now. He can’t see his grandfather, but Arbus has been chatting so freely with me that Stephen knows precisely where the cursecaster is standing.
Arbus’s eyes narrow, focusing on the space behind me. “I was wondering when you’d join the conversation, Stephen.”