As we stroll down a street in Greenwich Village, I give my brother a suspicious look.
We're half a mile uptown from his apartment, surrounded by elegant brick buildings of various beige and brown shades. Their windows are large, and while the buildings themselves are only slightly taller than those in East Harlem, they're infinitely less depressing with their sculptural designs and golden street numbers. Plants in gigantic concrete pots line the way, and ordinary cars—as opposed to the town cars and limousines of last night—fill parking spots. Chattering young people emerge from wide doors with books under their arms and backpacks on their shoulders, and vivid purple flags jut out from buildings and into the air.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I ask, eyeing another New York University torch logo upon a flag as we pass it.
Shade told me that we were going out after I realized who the handkerchief belonged to.
I asked him where, and he told me that we were going uptown to pay Professor Julian Jacos at NYU a visit.
"It's certainly not a bad one," Shade says in turn, a skip in his step as we cross the street. "And anyway, since when are you into good ideas?"
I trail my brother across the street and to the narrow building that he beelines for. It's the color of pale sand, and its glass doors wait for me and Shade. The word Hall follows a man's name, and beneath the name of the building reads the word Anthropology.
"True," I mutter. "Good ideas have never really been my thing."
But . . . still. NYU is a little less than two miles north of Wall Street, and though things seem relatively normal up here, I hear people talk.
About the Calores, about the Scarlet Street Fighters.
The terrorists.
College kids whisper their wild theories about what the hell is going on in New York City. They make it all sound more like a story than a reality, more like . . . a dream. In the last twelve hours, the internet has exploded with news regarding the Calore family and the little anybody knows about the Scarlet Street Fighters—who have officially been titled a domestic terrorism group. Nobody, however, really seems to think that the Calores are on the bad side of things, and somewhere along the line, everybody decided that the Street Fighters are just a bunch of Socialist radicals who hate the ultra-rich.
"Room nine hundred and five," Shade says, stopping not far from the door. "I have to go buy groceries."
I halt with him. It appears that Shade's giving me my first real mission. And I'm doing it alone.
Part of me just wants to ask if he's actually buying groceries this time.
"What?" Shade asks, noting my raised eyebrows and partial cringe. "You know him better than me."
I scoff. "Not really, actually."
Shade just smiles. "Then I guess after today, you'll know him better than me."
The old hallway that I walk down is a quiet place.
Commercial carpeting absorbs the clicks that my boots would otherwise make, and I don't hear the voice of a single student or professor of anthropology. Sunlight streams into the hall from windows, filling it with that clean, airy color that autumn brings. The only people that surround me are those in the portraits lining the corridor, and the men and women are of all different eras and places. Some of them have faces more similar to monkeys than those of humans.
Room nine hundred and five approaches soon enough. The door is already open, and some slow acoustic music filters out into the hall from it.
I don't let myself think about much of anything—not why I'm here nor what I'm doing—as I take a step in front of the office door and then another inside. My knuckles rap against the wall to alert the professor of my presence.
The office is largely wooden, with mahogany floor paneling, an entire wall of bookshelves, and a large oak table surrounded by cushioned chairs. A rug that looks extraordinarily soft lies underneath the table, and atop it, stacks of papers await somebody's eyes. The bookshelves are about ready to burst with the thick texts that line them, but it doesn't seem that there's elsewhere to place the books. A few even rest in stacks alongside the table. Paintings of various scenes that I vaguely remember from history class hang from the walls, along with photographs of modern dance and Broadway performances.
Simple chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, but with the tall windows at the far end of the room, they're hardly needed. The cool fall light streams in from the street, backdropping Julian Jacos's desk.
It's an absolute mess.
A lamp rests on top of another book stack. An empty Starbucks cup has been stuck inside of a coffee cup, one of five randomly placed at another corner of the desk. Unopened envelopes and papers fill a letter tray to the brim, and countless sticky notes droop from desk corners. The computer and office phone are about ready to fall off the desk altogether. Knickknacks, that I, personally, would call useless fill up the little space that isn't consumed by folders or pencils or textbooks.
"Do close the door, Miss Barrow," Julian says from his chair behind the desk, which must be incredibly comfy with its bulky brown leather design.
I do what he says before venturing further into the office. At a closer look, I notice the framed diplomas and academic awards decorating another section of wall, the wastebasket with countless pieces of crumpled-up paper inside of it, and the portable chalkboard on the floor that has all sorts of scribbled, illegible questions written upon it. Some file cabinets and a separate, smaller desk rest off to Julian's side, and there's no shortage of things going on there either.
For a medium-sized room, there's a lot going on.
I take a seat in one of the chairs before Julian's desk, staring at the man who hid a grenade inside of his violin case and got away with it. He doesn't look especially tired, though. If anything, his brown eyes glimmer with curiosity. Somebody must've let him know that I was paying him a visit today.
"My brother just sort of ditched me outside," I explain, not thinking of much else to say.
"Oh?" Julian's acoustic music carries on from his desktop. The professor-turned-Scarlet Street Fighter tilts his head at me. Then he gives me a soft, somewhat weary smile. "But you must have some idea of why you're here, don't you?"
Yes. Even if being here feels wrong. I'm talking to Julian like I know him, though in fact, I've never exchanged a single word with him.
I took his jazz class for six weeks, but I never actually spoke to Julian Jacos. He's certainly the kindest of the teachers at the Academy. He has a warm smile and wears robes during class, and he's never one to correct. But aside from the obvious things, I only know that he's an extraordinarily talented man in the arts, an apparent double agent for the Scarlet Street Fighters, and . . . a professor of anthropology.
It feels wrong that I'm going after information about Coriane Jacos using her own brother, using Cal's uncle.
I sigh, not-at-all prepared to go where I'm about to go. Still, I reach into my purse pocket and draw out Cal's handkerchief. I deposit it on top of the desk, finding a rare empty spot.
"I guess they're interested in your sister," I say.
The professor watches the handkerchief. Something in his eyes shifts, goes far away for a moment. "Cal gave that to you?"
I nod. "I was crying. Cal gave it to Maven to give to me. I only realized that it was his this afternoon."
Julian returns my nod. "That was very nice of him." When I watch him glance down to the handkerchief again, I realize that he looks at it as though it's a memory encapsulated within a scrap of fabric. His eyebrows crunch together. "I'll tell you a story, Miss Barrow. But let me put on some tea first."
"She was so excited to come to the city."
A mug of Earl Grey tea warms my fingers as I recline back in the office chair. The hot liquid has a calming effect on me and my stomach, and it keeps me from looking around or fidgeting too much.
Instead, I look ahead towards Julian, who doesn't seem to be looking at anything at all as he passively swivels back and forth in his fancy chair. He sips at his own mug of tea, eyes going all over the place. He might speak to me, but his words are carefully recited. He sounds like he's reading a book.
"We grew up in one of the Boston suburbs in a two-story house that had a white-picket fence. Both of our parents were teachers, so we were never rich, but nobody ever thought anything of that. Our family had lots of friends in the neighborhood, and we were always going across the street to play with the other kids. On weekends, we'd drive out to Rockport, this little seaside town north of Boston, to go on boat rides and look around the little novelty shops."
Julian's eyes gleam with the fond memories of a long-gone childhood.
"We lived a simple life. We were happy, and we didn't know that there was anything else that the world could offer us. I spent my summers at the public library reading all sorts of books, and Coriane spent hers playing soccer for the local girls' team. When she was eight and I was ten, our parents put us in music lessons together. Soon enough, we realized that I could sing and that she could play a killer violin. I only play now to carry on that legacy of hers."
Julian swallows some more of his tea.
"When we got to high school, we got busier. I joined the debate and speech teams and my school's choir. I loaded up on all of the advanced classes. When Coriane got to ninth grade, she tried out for our school's honors orchestra, and though it was a class typically reserved for juniors and seniors, nobody could turn that talent of hers away. When she found out that she had made it . . . I had never seen her so happy as she was that day."
I let the professor continue his story, nodding along as he goes. I don't know if it's him or the story of Coriane Jacos that I know ends like a tragic poem, but I find myself forgetting to breathe.
"The summer before my senior year, our family went on a number of college tours. We went all over the New England area, and eventually, we made our way to Manhattan to see Columbia and NYU. Though Boston's only four-or-so hours from here, our parents had never taken us, and now, I wonder if that was for good reason. Because when they finally did, my sister fell in love with the city in an instant. She took one look at its lights and buildings and people and decided that once she graduated herself, she would leave the suburbs for the City of Dreams and never come back.
"After our trip, she wore her 'I Heart New York' shirt to bed every night. She started studying all of the landmarks in Manhattan, and when we went again a few months later, she knew the city just as well as any native. She was obsessed. But I could hardly blame her when New York was only a city that could finally parallel her light.
"I wish that I could say I hadn't fallen just as hard for Manhattan as she did, but I ultimately decided to go to NYU for anthropology—but my story, Miss Barrow, is a story for another time. Two years later, she followed me here, having become somewhat of a prodigy when it came to the violin. Yet despite all of that talent, she told me one day that she didn't want to play in an orchestra. She wanted to teach music to little ones. So she majored in education."
Wow. What a simple, uncomplicated dream. It doesn't sound like anything that a Calore would ever be involved with.
"Coriane was my best friend from the day that she was born. We grew up playing together. She was my closest, most loyal confidant, and she never failed to make me laugh either. She was always so easygoing and happy, and her smile could light up a room."
Julian's lips twitch, signifying the end of a nostalgic story. My grip on my cup tightens, and I force myself to take another sip of tea.
"And as her big brother, I promised to always protect her. So the night that she wanted to go to a college party with some of her friends, I insisted on tagging along." Julian takes a deep, shaking breath.
I sense what's coming. Somehow, I know exactly what happens next.
"Tiberias Calore and some of his friends snuck into the party. They weren't students of NYU, but I suppose that all young people enjoy a good college rave now and then. That night, during the second semester of her Freshman Year, Coriane's smile didn't fail to light up the room. He noticed her and asked her to dance with him. She said yes."
And that, by the expression of regret and anger and resentment that Julian wears, was the moment that ruined everything for his sister.
Julian tells me about how Tiberias Calore and Coriane Jacos danced at the college party to the strange moves of the nineties. They played table tennis and sang along to the house music that was popular at the time, and afterwards, they danced some more. Only because Coriane gave him one of those don't mess this up for me looks did Julian stay away from the two, though he refused to leave the party altogether and ultimately hung out near the spiked punch bowl—both to keep an eye on his sister and alert the other party guests that if they cared, the punch was spiked.
Before the night was over, they exchanged cell phone numbers, which in nineteen-ninety-six, were finally becoming commonplace.
At first, she only thought that he was a ballet dancer for the Manhattan Dance Academy. It wasn't until the following week, after a whirlwind of movie theater dates and car rides, that Coriane found out exactly how rich Tiberias Calore was.
He showed her his family's skyscraper just off Wall Street. The building had finished its construction the summer before, and it was even more beautiful and golden than it is now.
"Our parents were worried," Julian says again. "He seemed like a kind man, and he certainly cared for Cori, but his family owned one of the biggest corporations in the city. A job like that doesn't come without strings attached."
Yet Coriane had already fallen in love with Tibe—that, apparently, is Tiberias Calore's nickname—for his mischievous sense of humor, his pretty bronze eyes, and the sense of safety that she felt around him. Nothing could change her mind. Not even those strings.
"She was of middle-class suburbia, and he was of modern-day city royalty. She knew that, too. Deep-down, she knew that she could never be a part of his world. She hadn't been groomed for it. But for Tiberias, that was what he loved about her so much. She made him feel normal; ordinary. And she had this innocent, untainted, wonderful light to her that he simply had not seen in his world before."
Because that light didn't exist in the world of Tiberias Calore.
"Other girls in the city had been chasing after Tiberias for years, and they weren't pleased to find that my sister had so easily captured his heart."
But soon enough, they were married. They eloped without telling anyone, without asking for anybody's approval. And nobody could do anything about it once they were wed.
The rest was history.
"Coriane continued with school. Despite her new life of penthouses, social events, and outrageously-priced jewelry, she still wanted to be a teacher. Tiberias paid for the rest of her tuition along with mine, and he bought our parents a house out on Long Island as an apology for eloping with their daughter. They didn't accept it, though. After their marriage, our parents rarely visited New York City at all."
She struggled. Tiberias Calore might have loved Coriane, but it wasn't enough to protect her from the dangers of his world. With the money the Calores had, they managed to keep her out of the newspapers and gossip columns more often than not, but within the circle of Manhattan's disgustingly rich . . . there stood criticism. Tiberias Calore's business partners wondered why he had married such a simple girl when he could've had a daughter of any Wall Street business. The young debutantes of the city sneered at and bullied Coriane when she made her high society appearances. And no number of diamonds or emeralds could change that.
She drifted away from her friends at NYU. She was living on the Upper East Side instead of in a cramped dorm, and what little spare time she had was now dedicated to the demands of planning brunches and wine parties. And besides. Her friends didn't see her as the same person after she married the son of a billionaire.
"I'm ashamed of it, but there was a time when I drifted away myself. I was up to my neck in my studies here, and like our parents, I was angry with Coriane for not consulting me on her decision to get married. Though I suppose that was only because she knew what I would say.
"We drifted like that for about two years. But one night, sometime during the spring semester of her senior year at NYU—I was now at Columbia working on my Ph.D. in anthropology, and that's still a story for another day, Miss Barrow—she knocked on the door of my apartment and announced to me that she was pregnant."
Julian's eyes glisten with memories. He pauses, taking a long sip from his now-cooling cup of tea.
"Cal was an accident, actually," the professor says, chuckling a little. "Coriane and Tibe hadn't planned on having any children until my sister got her foot in the door with teaching. They were still incredibly young, and though Tiberias's life had already been planned out for him, Cori had a multitude of dreams. But as soon as she found out that she was pregnant with him, she wanted nothing more than to be a mother. You should've seen her smile the moment she told me."
Julian smiles, but it's only to disguise to hide the beginnings of an ugly frown.
Shivers lash down my arms. My eyes sting, even though they shouldn't.
"Maybe we should take a break," I whisper.
This story is poisonous. I'm dying to find out how it ends, but every word Julian speaks hurts to hear.
The professor nods. "I'll boil some more tea."
She got her teaching degree just as she was entering her second trimester with Cal.
After Coriane graduated, she decided that she would put a pause on her career to care for her son until he was a few years old. She didn't want the nannies and tutors that were thrown at her. She wanted to raise Cal herself.
To make sure that he didn't turn out like any of the people that were so cruel to her.
Cal was born on Halloween of nineteen-ninety-nine. He was a big, healthy baby who didn't cry often and smiled a lot. Tiberias Calore insisted on carrying on the family tradition and naming their child Tiberias, but it was Coriane's idea to nickname him Cal.
"We half-jokingly called him Prince Cal for a time. The day he came home from the hospital, anybody who knew Tiberias Calore even remotely sent baby clothes and toys and all of the other things that a little boy might need. The gifts filled up an entire penthouse floor. I showered him with toys and books for his parents to read to him. Anabel Lerolan undertook the responsibility of decorating his nursery—with the help of the best interior designers money could buy in Manhattan. My parents finally relented in their stubbornness and took a very long trip to New York.
"Coriane spent every waking moment with Cal, and though he was a busy man, Tiberias always made time for Cal. He loved Cal more than anything in the world. He was his son, his blood, his legacy, but more than that . . . Cal was the manifestation of his love for Coriane. Their life together might have been riddled with judgment, but Cal made it unquestionably worth it."
Julian's eyes darken. "Nobody saw her death coming. Before Cal, Coriane had struggled with the weight of her new life. Some might stand to argue that she had a bout of depression during her junior year at NYU. She lived in a world that spent its every breath judging her. She had her husband, who undoubtedly loved her and did his best to protect her, but even Tiberias Calore wasn't always enough.
"Cal, however, was. After he came around, things seemed to be getting better. She smiled more, and her laughter returned. But one day, when Cal was just about nine months old . . ."
Julian's voice breaks. I bow my head, unable to look at the professor. I close my eyes for a moment. Hard.
"It was just her and Cal at the penthouse. Tiberias was working late at the Academy. I had visited them that morning, read Cal a story at the breakfast table and talked to Coriane about the Hamptons trip she and Tibe were planning."
Julian draws out his story as though prolonging it will stop his sister from dying.
"One of the neighbors complained about the fit that the baby upstairs was having. He was screaming from in his nursery, and nobody was doing anything about it. Ultimately, when the Calores' phone continually went to voicemail after several tries, the building had somebody unlock their penthouse to check on Cal and Coriane, who was supposedly home.
"They found a bathtub full of lukewarm water. The tiles were slick with it, along with a little blood. My sister was resting face-first in the water, wrists cut open." Julian cringes. "A small kitchen knife lay on the bathtub's lip. There were no signs of struggle, and nothing was in her system. Everything pointed to suicide. I was closer to the Upper East Side than Tiberias was when we got the call, and I watched from one side of her cold, damp body as he fell to his knees and cried in the living room that the police had placed her in.
"Somebody took Cal away to stay with his grandparents on the Calore side. That night had been the first time he stood up in his crib, you know," Julian adds, and that little fact makes everything worse. "Investigations followed, but they led nowhere, and Tiberias couldn't bear to go through the pain of prolonging anything. He convinced himself that his wife had been hiding her feelings from him, that her depression had never really gone away and that she was still struggling.
"The police declared Coriane's death a suicide. Except it wasn't."
"How do you know?" I breathe, leaning in towards Julian's desk. Silent tears wet my eyes, but I'm far too engrossed in this tale to care about them.
Julian only shrugs. "Because Coriane was never that selfish. She never would've left Cal willingly. She never would've let him think that of her."
"Do you—"
"No. I don't." I don't know who killed her.
Julian sighs. "What I do know is that regardless of how she died, Tiberias Calore wasn't good for her. He knew it, too. He was selfish in bringing her into his world when he knew that she would never sustain in it. Cal brought some of that innocent, beautiful light back into her once he was born, but Coriane was never quite the same after her marriage to Tibe. She had come to New York City with a smile upon her face and a dream in her eyes, and she left it in a lonely bathtub with her child crying for his mother.
"More than likely, Coriane was murdered by a dissenting member of the Calores' crime ring or a particularly clever rival. I honestly can't imagine who else could've done it. She was just another casualty in the Calores' crusade to control New York.
"Of course, I didn't know anything about that until recently." Julian glances up at me for a moment. "I only found out about it through one of your members when they approached me earlier this year. It was a big risk on their part, but I suppose that they had done their research beforehand. They told me about Tiberias Calore and his secret life, and . . . Coriane's death suddenly made sense. You have to understand that I don't agree with their means. I don't condone what happened last night. But I agree with their end. I want Tiberias Calore taken down for everything that he's done, including endangering my sister the way that he did."
Julian's voice has gone quiet, no more than a whisper now. His music is louder than him.
"And I suppose that is the end of the story."
"Thank you for all of that," I say, standing at the door to Julian's office. I look to the professor across the room again, a hint of a smile at his lips. I think that once the story was over, it was like a release for Julian. I don't know when the last time was that he spoke about Coriane as he did to me. "And thanks for the tea, too."
Julian never asks me about my role as a Scarlet Street Fighter nor anything to do with the Academy, ballet, or his jazz class. We might as well have never met before this afternoon.
"It's all in a day's work," Julian says, shifting in his chair. He picks up the pair of reading glasses from his desk and puts them on, and a moment later, he's digging through his book stack.
I nod, hand now at the doorknob. I'm not exactly sure of what Shade wanted me to get from this conversation, but I suppose that I'll return to his apartment and retell Coriane Jacos's story to the best of my ability. Then, perhaps, my brother will tell me what the point of all of this was.
"Miss Barrow?" Julian asks as I'm about to twist open the door.
"Yes?" My hand pauses.
Julian's smile broadens until it's a near-grin. "Last night, Cal came to me during one of my breaks from the orchestra. He asked me if I thought that he was a good teacher. I told him that I thought he was an excellent teacher." Julian stops, and a low, delighted chuckle leaves his throat. "In turn, Cal told me that one Mare Barrow thought he was only a seven out of ten."
I laugh a little along with Julian. "I was just kidding. I told him so when he asked me how he could be doing better. But honestly, I didn't think that Cal would care so much."
As he rifles through some papers, Julian shrugs. "He shouldn't. Not when he is as talented as he is. But at the same time, he's gone through his entire life being told that he must be perfect, that he is perfect. It's quite startling for Cal when somebody contradicts that. Especially when it's coming from somebody as talented and as perfect as you are."
I don't have much to say to that, and I only pinch my lips together. Julian laughs it off. "I know that you won't, but don't be too nice to him during those lessons. It won't hurt to make Cal question himself now and then. It's good for him, actually. And don't let anything I told you today affect how you treat him. He wouldn't want that."
I imagine that somewhere along the line, Cal told his uncle a little about me. He knows about our lessons, after all, and most don't. He knows that from time to time, I'm a little cruel to Cal.
I nod again. "I won't, Julian."
Julian examines me over the frame of his glasses. "He'll want the handkerchief back, but my nephew's too prideful to simply ask you for it. It would be an acknowledgment that he cares about a silly piece of fabric, and he just couldn't have that. So when you return it to him, don't act like it's a big deal. Say thank-you and be done with it."
I admit that it's strange to hear somebody talk about Cal like that.
I nod one last time. "I will."