The Darkest Legacy (Darkest Min - Alexandra Bracken Page 0,126

I told her. “It must be unbearable to see her like this.”

“It’ll only be unbearable when I give up hope of ever getting her back,” she said. “And I won’t. Not ever. My heart is a wheel. It breaks all the damn time, but, most days, it just rolls on.”

I UNFOLDED THE MAP AND smoothed it across the steering wheel again, looking between the X Roman had marked on it and the building across the street. We’d used the burner’s limited GPS capabilities to search for the Baton Rouge address, but there must have been some glitch in the satellite feed, or he’d made a mistake in transferring the information over onto the paper. This couldn’t be it.

“I think this is right,” Roman said, shielding his eyes from the glare of sunlight to get a better look at the building. “Unfortunately.”

“It’s like I can hear the screams of ghost children from here,” Priyanka said, shuddering. “Tell me Ruby loves roller-skating so much she’d drive across multiple state lines and risk capture by the government for a fun day out.”

Riverside Rink was just outside of Baton Rouge proper, on a street yet to be touched by that magic reinvigoration we’d seen in other places. The flow of money and government-sponsored work had apparently stopped at the city’s center.

We parked across the street, behind a shuttered McDonald’s, and ate our lunch of vending-machine food on a faded rainbow play set. Roman insisted on keeping watch to see if anyone was coming or going. So far, nothing. No one.

“I don’t think she’s here,” I said, tossing the M&M’s wrapper into the restaurant’s overflowing trash can. A swarm of flies immediately descended on it. “I don’t think anyone’s been here in a good decade.”

Half the letters on the rink’s fluorescent sign were missing, plundered by neglect or thieves, I wasn’t sure. Its parking lot was empty, all of its lines faded. The windows, like all the other buildings’ in the neighborhood, were boarded up and spray-painted with warnings against trespassers.

“Well, we’re here. At least we’ll see what she found so intriguing about this place,” Priyanka said. “You good?”

Roman checked that there was a bullet in the chamber of his gun, then nodded.

The roller rink was completely locked down, and the front door had been chained for good measure. It made finding the back door open that much stranger.

“Stating for the record that I don’t like this,” Priyanka said.

“There is no record,” Roman whispered.

She gave him a look. He gave her one right back.

“Should I go first?” I suggested.

We kept our backs to the brick wall, facing the mountain of trash piled high in the nearby dumpsters. The smell was bad enough that I lifted the collar of my shirt over my nose and mouth.

Roman led us inside, sweeping his gun back and forth as he searched what once had been the rink’s kitchen. There was still a grill, but all the other machines had been taken, leaving behind only a congealed bit of orange cheese on the tile floor as a relic. The light filtering in from outside faded the farther we moved into the building. I pulled the flashlight out of my back pocket and switched it on.

Roman had stepped into the main rink area, only to whirl toward us again, the back of his hand pressed hard to his mouth.

“Don’t—” he started to say as I passed him.

Too late. I smelled it, too. The sickly sweet stench of rotting food had blended with the unmistakable reek of human waste and…something else. Something like death.

The flashlight’s thin beam illuminated the skating rink in slices of horror. Cubbies of roller skates, left untouched. Garbage and buckets were scattered haphazardly across the rink.

A body.

The girl was curled on her side, facing away from us, hugging her knees to her chest. A long dark braid stretched out on the floor behind her, the end buried beneath a stray wrapper. Her plaid shirt was a deep red, shot through with black. She wasn’t moving.

She wasn’t breathing.

My feet slowed.

Stopped.

Ruby.

The flashlight slipped out of my fingers, cracking against the hard ground. Blood roared in my ears until I thought it would tear me apart.

Two hands landed on my shoulders. Priyanka turned me toward her, saying something I couldn’t hear. I pulled back, watching as a grim-faced Roman circled the girl and crouched down in front of her.

Priyanka’s hands dug into my skin painfully, but she couldn’t look away from him either, not until he glanced up and shook his