man present. “I saw you and your cohort attempting to synchronize with your primary. Did you find him?”
Manhattan shakes his head. “No. We saw him, but…”
That’s when Bronca inhales, remembering what she’d suddenly noticed during their whatever-it-was. “Those tile patterns,” she says. “I know those fucking tile patterns.” And then she turns and heads for the meeting room door. Behind her, the others are still for an instant, then she hears them scramble or stumble to follow.
Beyond the meeting room, the Center has closed for the evening. Yijing’s left a sticky note on the monitor of Bronca’s office desktop, even though she knows that Bronca only turns the damn thing on when she has to: “600K in new donations!!” Bronca stares at it for a moment, unable to process the number, then she puts the note aside to focus on something that makes sense. Like tracking down the living embodiment of New York City from clues she picked up in a dream.
By the time the machine has finished its endless boot-up sequence, she’s gone to one of her bookcases and yanked out a big photo book titled Beaux Arts Century. And by the time the others have crowded into her office to try to figure out what she’s figured out, she’s found it. “This. This!” She slaps one of the photos in the book, then turns it around for them. It’s a full-color, high-quality picture of a room with a beautifully vaulted ceiling, tiled with what looks like decorative gold bricks.
Manhattan leans down to peer at it, and a muscle in his jaw flexes. “That’s the style. Not the place.”
“Yeah, I don’t think the primary is sleeping in the Grand Central Oyster Bar,” drawls Brooklyn. She’s frowning, though. “But I do feel like I’ve seen tiles like this in other places.”
“You have,” says Bronca, grinning, “because back before people with no taste started replacing every beautiful thing in this city with cheap bullshit, it was one of the most distinctive architectural forms in the world—an art movement that was centered in New York. They’re called Guastavino tiles. Obsolete now, but back in the day they were designed to be fireproof and self-stabilizing. Perfect for a city that’s half-underground and full of flammable trash.” She taps the ceiling in the photo. “There’s only a few examples of this left in the city. So…”
“Ohhhhh, yeah, I got you,” says Veneza, sliding into Bronca’s desk chair and pulling the keyboard toward herself. Bronca sees her typing in “Guastavino tiles” and “Manhattan.”
Manhattan, meanwhile, has been thumbing through the book. “This says a lot of the Guastavino vaults were in old tenements,” he says, looking troubled. “Buildings that are derelict—” He stops. Bronca sees how his eyes widen. Then he turns the book around so fast that the motion knocks over a cup of pens on Bronca’s desk. “Here,” he says, his voice tight as he points. “Here.”
Brooklyn looks, and chuckles. “Oh, my God. Of course.”
Veneza looks, then grins, and turns the desktop monitor so they can see the web page she’s pulled up. DECOMMISSIONED SUBWAY STATION IS ARCHITECTURAL JEWEL IN THE CITY’S CROWN, the header reads. It’s the same place that Manhattan has found in Bronca’s book. “Old City Hall Station.”
“Then that’s where he is,” Manhattan murmurs. He leans on the desk, letting out a sigh of relief. “We can go and find him, finally.”
“It’s not easy to get to,” Brooklyn warns. “That station is defunct, closed to the public most of the time. Only way in—if you don’t want to sneak onto the tracks and risk electrocution, getting run over by a train, or getting arrested—is via the Transit Museum, but they only do tours once in a blue moon. I think I’ve got a favor I can call in, though.” She reaches for her phone.
“Can’t you get there on the 6 train, when it turns around?” Veneza asks Brooklyn. “Tourists do it all the time. I did it once.”
“Yeah, but they don’t let you out of the train. It doesn’t even stop.”
Hong has come to peer at the book while they’re talking. Then he shakes his head impatiently and glowers around at them. “Fine. You’ll need to get there as soon as you can. We’ll have to hope that the strength your primary gains from consuming you four will finally allow him to awaken and properly protect the city, even without the fifth borough.”
Silence falls for a moment.
Then Brooklyn says, “I’m sorry, what?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They Don’t Have Cities There
In the morning, after Aislyn