The world ripples around Aislyn’s house. “Go away!” Aislyn screams. “Leave me alone! None of you belong here!”
And because belonging is as quintessential to Staten Island–ness as toughness is to the Bronx and starting over is to Queens and weathering change is to Brooklyn, and because they stand upon Aislyn’s ground where she is Staten Island and her will becomes supernatural law—
Her voice echoes and the wave of city-energy that ripples along the grass and leaves and air and asphalt is like a thousand-clarion hurricane blast—
And then they are gone. Their car is gone. All of the awful, spindly creatures that have been drawing closer around Aislyn, their movements too illogical and jittery to contemplate and their voices rising and falling in soft inhuman jibbers, are gone—even the one that held the unconscious girl in its mouth. When it vanishes, there is a faint, startled ump? But then Aislyn’s front yard is quiet and empty again, at last.
Only the Woman still floats nearby, because Aislyn didn’t mean her.
Aislyn stands trembling in the wake of all this, her hands loose, her head swimming. She’s tired. Exhausted, suddenly. It takes a lot, she realizes, to drive away so many parts of herself. But sometimes, to survive, that’s just what you have to do.
She folds herself down into a crouch and covers her head with her hands and sits there on her house’s doorstep, shaking and rocking back and forth. After a moment, the Woman lands with a light tap of feet on the concrete beside her. Then a hand touches Aislyn’s shoulder, gentle and warm.
“Friends,” says the Woman. “Right? Facing the big, scary multiverse together.”
It’s surprisingly comforting. “Yeah,” Aislyn murmurs softly, not lifting her head, although some of her shakes ease off. “Friends.”
She feels that sudden sharp sting again, high on her shoulder, near the back of her neck. The pain of it fades quickly, however—and in its wake, as the Woman in White takes her hand away and sighs in satisfaction at last, Aislyn feels warmer. Safer. No longer confused at all.
She lifts her head and smiles up at the Woman in White, who smiles back in warmth and welcome. And for the first time in perhaps Aislyn’s whole life, she no longer feels alone. A whole city cares about her! So what if that city is not New York.
Quietly, all over Staten Island, more towers and oddities begin to grow. It is the infrastructure of a different city, laying the foundations of a different world. And now, only one thing can possibly stop it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
New York Is Who?
They reappear in front of the Charging Bull of Wall Street, collapsing in a pile beneath its bronze nose. Tourists do stuff like this all the time for selfies, so neither the super-early-morning joggers—it’s nearly dawn—nor the cluster of nuns on their way to morning prayers pay them much attention. There lie the unremarked-upon avatars of New York, or three out of the five at least, panting and dazed and trying to get their bearings after suffering a colossal defeat.
Bronca’s still a little out of it when she struggles up enough to check on Veneza, who appeared with them. Young B’s seen better days. Her brown skin is more sallow than it should be, and her hair is lank and still wet with… something… that stinks. It’s an utterly alien stink. The waste products of incomprehensible metabolic processes from a completely different evolutionary pathway, bad breath from beyond. But as Bronca ignores the stink and checks to make sure Veneza is still breathing, Veneza’s face scrunches and her eyes crack open. Even then Bronca is worried. She can’t see any of those white things growing on Veneza anywhere, but the poor girl was in Squigglebitch’s hands… mouth… for a while.
As soon as Veneza sees Bronca, however, she groans. “I was headed out of town. I was. Don’t start with me.”
The complaint eases a lot of Bronca’s fears at once, and she lets out a weak laugh. “I wasn’t going to. Just glad you’re alive.”
“Yeah. Eu também.” Veneza sits up, rubbing her eyes. “God, fuck, I thought I was gonna die. Just looking at some of those things… I felt like everything in me was just ready to shut down. They shouldn’t exist. That place shouldn’t exist.”
“What?” That’s Brooklyn, who is climbing to her feet and ineffectually trying to hide the giant split torn into her skirt. It’s nothing indecent, but she’s the type.
“Nice legs,” Bronca says, just to fuck with her. Brooklyn grimaces back.
“That place. Where Squigglebitch is from.” When Veneza lowers her hand, her expression is haunted, and that’s when Bronca sees the strain. She’s playing it off well, but there’s deep, atavistic fear in her face. “It wasn’t actually where she was from. She didn’t take me there, thank God, because I don’t think… It was more like a halfway point, where things from both places could exist. That’s where she hangs out when she’s not here. Except it’s wrong all in itself, yeah? Nothing’s supposed to work that way. I just don’t understand how buildings could be built like that.”
“Like what?” Queens asks, before Bronca can mom-look her silent. Bronca reaches up to check Veneza’s forehead and press the back of her hand against Veneza’s cheeks. She’s chilled rather than warm, and shaking with more than the chill. Her voice skirls higher and louder when she answers.
“Like things that shouldn’t exist, damn it! All skewy, and…” She scrunches her eyes shut. She’s trembling so hard that it shakes her voice. “The angles were fucked up, Old B. They were all wrong.”
If she had delivered this in her usual snarky tone, Bronca still would’ve been unnerved. That Veneza instead drops it in a high-pitched stage whisper makes every little hair on Bronca’s skin stand on end.
“Oh-kay, no,” she says, taking hold of Veneza’s shoulders and shaking her, gently, until she lowers her hands and stares at Bronca. “Stop thinking about that shit,” she says. “Some thoughts are poison. You can think them, but only when you’ve got the strength—or therapy, whichever floats your boat. ’Til then? Right now? Close it off. Focus on right here and now.”
“I, I don’t…” But Veneza swallows and takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m going to try.” Abruptly she grimaces, looking around. “Why the fuck am I sitting on the ground? Gross. And—” She sniffs at herself, then makes a horrified face.
“Yeah, you’re very rank,” Queens says, though she’s grinning, relieved to see Veneza’s all right. “When this is all over, I’ll go home and get you some of that good incense. My aunty will probably send you a million idlis, too, once I tell her you ate all of mine.” Veneza giggles, and Bronca feels her relax.
But then it’s Queens’ turn for a haunted look, as she blinks and sobers. “But it is all over. Isn’t it? Without Staten Island…”
“I can’t believe she did that.” Brooklyn’s frowning as she extends a hand to help each of them to their feet. To her shame, Bronca actually needs the help. She’s exhausted, and her hip hurts, and her back has twinged something awful. “I don’t even know what she did. Like, that was Star Trek shit. We didn’t go fast like when Manny carried us out of the Center, we just went. She didn’t even put us on the ferry. Straight-up teleportation.”