by Sean Easley
“We need to do something,” Rahki says. “Quickly.”
One of the vines curls up through the trunk of a nearby topiary—the one pruned to look like a life-size giraffe—and the bush begins to move. Slowly at first. The transformation starts in the legs—first the back ones, then the front—and the topiary giraffe steps forward on uncertain hooves. The leafy beast bends its neck and bolts toward the guests.
Plastic chairs fly. An older ambassador in petticoats jumps out of the way, barely avoiding being trampled.
More vines curl through the grass toward the other topiaries—the towering rabbit, an alpaca, a moose, a swan, even an enormous leopard—and bring each to life.
“They are turning the topiaries into icons!” Sev shouts.
Some of the guests flee for the arches, but the vines have grown over the portals and are sprouting more of the black and blue flowers, cutting off our escape. Those shriveled blossoms . . . they’re the same as the ones I’ve been seeing on Nico’s lapel. I’ve seen them somewhere else too, though I can’t quite place where.
“Cam!” Rahki calls over the stampeding bushes.
Right. Do something.
The vines are the source of all this chaos—they sprouted when the Hoppers reshaped the bindings on the pergolas—which means the vines are also our key to stopping this.
I call out to Rahki, but she’s already directing the guests to stack chairs and tables so that she can bind them into a temporary shelter to guard the guests against the rampaging shrubbery.
Elizabeth, Sev, and Orban answer my call instead.
“We have to plug those pergolas,” I tell them. “Break the connection.”
They jump into action, each choosing an arch to try to fix this mess.
And what a mess it is. A bushy alpaca trots around the garden wall, leaving root-shaped hoof prints in its wake. The topiary leopard prowls around Rahki’s makeshift shelter while Rahki lashes out in careful attempts to bind the leopard’s foot or tail to the earth with her duster. The swan splashes wildly in the pond, dark flowers blooming from its beak, the giraffe is barreling across the green, and the topiary bunny is munching on the trees and pooping out flowering mini bushes. Which leaves . . .
The moose. It stands between me and my arch, wagging its antlered head as if to say, Go ahead. Try me.
I ready my plug—the spring-loaded mechanism we use to disconnect the doors. The moose paws at the ground like a mama protecting its baby. Only, in this case the baby is the pergola behind it. How does it know what I’m planning to do?
The moose charges, and all I can do is run. I hurtle over dense flowerbeds and short, not-quite-as-murderous shrubs to get away. Branches and leaves scrape across my back as the moose swipes at me with its wooden antlers.
A weight crashes into me from the side, sending me skidding across the slick, cool grass.
I slide to a stop under a calm, cloudless sky.
A hand presses into my chest and holds me down. “Are you okay?” Admiral Dare leans over me, huffing and out of breath. She must have knocked me out of the moose’s path before it trampled me. She may be old, but she’s still spry.
“I’m okay,” I say.
The admiral stands, not bothering to brush the grass and dirt from her taffeta dress. “You have a way to unbind those arches?”
I raise the plug in my clenched fist.
“Get to it, then,” she says, and charges off to distract the moose-bush. Maybe she’s not so bad after all.
I limp toward the unguarded pergola—the vines grow out from the trellis in a spray like flames—and I struggle to reach through the tangle of overgrowth, but the going is difficult. The tough vines creak and crack; branches snap. My muscles ache as I fight my way through the thickening foliage.
Then I see it—the pin that connects the trellis to the Hotel. I squeeze my arm through the vines to extend the plug, but I can’t quite reach the pin. Thorns poke at my skin. Blue flowers bloom and die inches from my face. I stretch as far as my arm can go, breaking what branches I can as the vines curl around my arm, up my leg, my torso. The shoots dig into my belly, as if they’re trying to grow through me.
Just a little farther.
Fft-bing!
The pin pops from the hinge, and the vines stop. I take a deep breath, fighting back the tingle of adrenaline coursing through my limbs. One arch down.
I free myself of the tangle and take in the state of the garden. Two of the topiaries—the swan and the moose—have collapsed. Their bond to whatever was controlling them has been broken. Rahki is laying bindings on the rabbit’s ears, rooting it to the ground so that it can’t go hopping over to trample the guests in their chair-bunker. Admiral Dare has subdued the alpaca, and Elizabeth and Orban are both emerging from their newly plugged pergolas.
Then I spot Sev, lying on the ground.
Under the attacking leopard.
“NO!” I scream, and race toward him. Rahki must see him too, because she leaves her bushy rabbit and takes off in his direction as well. If something happened to him . . .
Elizabeth jumps in my way, her hands outstretched to stop me.
“Move!” I shout.
She grabs my shoulders and forces me to look at her. “Stop, Cam. Stop! You have no weapon, and that monster is not playing around.”
Behind her, Rahki takes a flying leap and knocks the flared end of her baton into the topiary leopard’s head. The duster sticks firmly, giving her leverage to swing off it and drag the beast off Sev’s motionless body.
A twist of her wrist pulls the duster free as she scrambles back to her feet. She’s got its attention, but now the icon is turning its ire on her, prowling around Rahki as if looking for an opening to attack. Rahki matches its movements, duster at the ready.
I pull away from Elizabeth’s grip. I should be doing something, but she’s right—I don’t have anything to fight the creature.
Or do I?
The other topiaries lay withered and dead around us, now that the other pergolas are broken. That means . . .
I bolt for the final arch, stripping off my ripped jacket as I go. The fabric will only get caught in the branches.
The vines of the arch engulf me immediately, curling around every part of my body, but I press on. I have to stop that thing. I have to save Sev.
Thorns poke into my skin, scrape my face and arms. One digs deeply into my thigh—and it hurts so, so much—but I’m close now. The pin’s head is just under my fingers. I arrange the plug by sense of touch alone, hoping I’ve got it right, as the overgrowth squeezes the breath out of me.
Ghostly images swim behind my eyelids. Images of Nico, and of Cass, and midnight-blue flowers. As my vision dims, one thought rises to the surface:
Isn’t it strange how much these tangled vines look like scribbles?
20
The Empty Chair
I walk the Nightvine in my dreams. It’s different tonight, though. More alive.
And it’s angry.
The twisting path curls and writhes, trying to buck me off and send me tumbling into that vast emptiness beneath it. All the while Nico’s laughter echoes through the air. You’ve lost, Cam, he says. It’s mine now.
Then I fall. I reach for the vine to catch myself, but my fingers find only loose coins.
• • •
I wake to the sound of rain and a choir of chirping birds.
As I blink away sleep, I reach for Nico’s coin at my neck, but it’s not there. In its place I feel a long, scabbed-over scratch.
The vines. The garden party.
Sev.
I sit up to see where I am, and marvel at the long glass wall that extends before me, fogged with dewdrops. The rain forest jungle beyond teems with life. In the distance a tall, skinny waterfall shimmies as it pours into a rocky pool speckled with rain. A lemur clings to a tree directly in front of my bed, watching me with its huge, curious eyes.
Hospital beds and medical equipment blink and beep all around.
I’m in the Apothecarium—the Hotel’s equivalent of a nurse’s office.
I check out the damage on my arms and legs. My skin is a mess of scrapes and scratches extending all the way up into my cartoon-key-print hospital gown. What happened? Was I able to unbind the pergola and stop the leopard?
Nico’s coin rests on the bedside table, along with everything else I had on me, including Mom’s key. I feel better once the necklace is tied back around my neck and the topscrew is back in my hand, but then I notice the person in the bed next to mine.
“Sev!” I hop down and stumble over to my friend’s side. He’s unconscious and doesn’t look good—long scrapes crisscross his face, his chest is wrapped with gauze, and there’s a cast on his leg—but at least he’s breathing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should never have convinced myself that Nico was still a good guy, or made Rahki and Cass keep quiet about the letter. I was wrong.”
He doesn’t answer me.
“Mr. Pronichev is on medication,” a voice behind me says in a distinctly Alpine accent. “He won’t be waking up for a while.” It’s the Countess Physiker, head apothecary. Her curly hair is done up in an old-timey nurse’s cap.
“Is he going to be all right?” I ask.
She busies herself at her equipment. “Needs rest. Binding will help. Now,” she says, shoving me back into my bed, “you rest too. Fixing your face.”
“What’s wrong with my face?”
She makes a dramatic circle around my entire head with her finger. “Will fix. Lie down.”
I obey, trying not to imagine what those thorns did to Oma’s “favorite chipmunk cheeks.”
Countess Physiker opens a jar and sets it on the bed next to me. “Be still. To screw-up face is not so good.” She dips her fingers into the blue substance and smears a glop onto my cheek.
“Is that shaping dye?”
“Quiet, or you will end up with bulbous nose like bird.” She motions to a toucan on a branch outside the windows. “Shaping dye is good for healing. Encourages change.”
“Are you going to use it on Sev, too?”
“Not yet. To use this soon, I might change too much. Do not worry. He was awake earlier, and told me to remind you that your birthday present is waiting for you in his room.” She fakes a smile. “Happy birthday.”
Happy birthday, indeed.
“Strange, the way this happened,” she says as she works. Her grammar is awkward, like she doesn’t quite know how to express what she’s saying in English. “The magic that did this . . . it should not. Dangerously close to breaking the Life binding.”
“Magics are not allowed to kill,” I say, remembering. The fundamental bond of Life prevents even rogue magics from causing lethal harm to people. To violate that rule would have extreme consequences, though I don’t know what those consequences might be. “But is that still true if someone is controlling the magics? Then it’s the person using the magic that causes it.”
The countess frowns. “Even controlled, magics may only harm under special circumstances. They will rarely risk damaging people. The penalties for breaking fundamental bonds are too high. Magics violate the treaty—magics break their binding—magics no longer held together.”
She continues slathering my wounds with the dye, and I ponder her words. I knew that Stripe contracted people to do his dirty work because he couldn’t do it himself, but I never realized that breaking fundamental bonds could break him, too. Is that what’s happening? Is Stripe using Nico to do what Stripe can’t, thereby protecting himself from somehow violating the treaty? But Nico was supposed to be immune to Stripe’s influence, forever in perpetuity. The only way that Stripe could influence him again is with a new contract.
Unless Nico’s doing this on his own.
Eventually the countess stoppers the jar. “It’s okay. You can enter,” she shouts into the hall. “But only two! The rest wait!”
Rahki and Sana dart through and race toward us—Sana to my bed, Rahki to Sev’s. Despite Countess Physiker’s warning, Oma lurks in the doorway, hand over her heart.
“Are you okay?” Sana asks me, but her eyes keep darting over to Sev.
“Yes. Sev will be too. Countess said he just needs rest.”
She breathes a sigh of relief. “When news reached the Motor Pool, we worried that something had gone wrong with our icons. Thank the binding it wasn’t statues.”
“Is everyone else okay?” I ask. “The ambassadors?”
“We succeeded,” Rahki says. “The ambassadors are still here too. The MC put the Hotel on lockdown; no one in or out. But . . .” They exchange a look.
“But what?”
Rahki glances over at Oma. “She’ll tell you. We’re just glad you’re okay.” She takes Sana by the arm. “Come on, habibi. Let’s give them some space.”
The two of them leave me alone with a much-too-serious-looking Oma. Her expression is soft, like the one she wears whenever Cass needs a new surgery.
“Oma,” I say, realizing what that look must mean, “where’s Cass?” I scan the empty beds. She wasn’t in the garden, so she shouldn’t have gotten hurt. “Did something happen to her?”
Oma sits on the edge of the bed and hands me a slip of paper folded around a faded wooden coin. Cass’s coin.
Dear Everyone,
I’m checking out of the Hotel for a bit to find Nico and join the Hoppers. Don’t worry about me, though. The Museum will take care of me just as well as the Hotel would.
And don’t be mad, Oma. Cam got to run away last year. It’s my turn.
See y’all soon,
Cass
When I look up, Oma’s eyes are filled with tears. I sit forward on the bed and wrap my arms around her. Oma puts her head in her hands and starts sobbing, and before I even know what’s happening, we’re both crying.
Cass would know how upset Oma would be by this, adventure or no adventure. What was she thinking? Now Oma’s squeezing me so hard that I wonder if she’s worried I’m going to vanish again too.
Maybe I should vanish. Then at least I couldn’t mess up anything else. Did Cass leave because of me and my insistence about her doing front desk duty? Is this my fault?
“May I come in?” says a new voice.
I press my thumbs into my eyes to wipe them, struggling to make out the figure of my dad at the threshold.
The sight of him sends a jolt of anger through me. It’s not only my fault that Cass left—it’s his, too. He made us like this. We’re a family of people who run, and that started with him. If he’d done the right thing all those years ago, Mom would still be here, and Cass would’ve never met Nico.
“Go away,” I tell him, and stare out at the dancing waterfall. “You don’t belong here.”
“I’m going to bring her back,” he says. “Don’t you worry.”
“Worry?” I clench my teeth. “This is your fault. You encouraged her.”
“That’s not—”
I let go of Oma, toss the sheet aside, and rush at him to push him back into the hall. He doesn’t resist. I knew he wouldn’t. Like I know it’s not his fault that Cass left. Not really. Even so, once he’s through the doorway, I slam the door in his face.
“Cameron!” Oma shouts.
“He doesn’t get to be here for this,” I say. There’s too much going on, and I need to focus on what comes next. Having him around will just complicate things. I can apologize later, once we’re all back together.
I brace myself for Oma’s anger, but for once she doesn’t correct me. Instead she wraps me back up in her arms and sits me back down.
“I’ll find her,” I promise under my breath, too quietly for anyone but the Hotel to hear me. “I’ll bring her home.”
21
The Intersection of Lost and Found
I flop onto my bed with The Ledger of Ways, relieved to finally be home, and anxious to start fulfilling my silent promise to Oma. The book weighs heavily in my lap.
“You should have warned me
,” I tell it. I don’t expect an answer. I just . . . wish someone could have prepared me for this mess.
The days of the Hotel are numbered.
Someone besides Nico.
I settle back into my pillows and run my fingers down the book’s pages, watching the paper shimmer to life, recreating the disaster in the Kinder Garden. As if I need a reminder. I’m already angry—at Dad, at Cass, even at myself. Seeing all those Embassy guests running around in a panic makes the back of my neck burn.
“I don’t want to see this,” I tell the Ledger. “The whole point of you is to show me things I don’t know, not to rub my face in my failures.”
The page goes blank, and then a single sentence scrawls across the page in what looks like Cass’s handwriting.
That’s your whole point.
Those are the words she said to me when I was trying to convince her to stick to her front desk duty. I should have listened. When we were in school together, I always got angry at people who treated her differently. They were the enemy. Have I become Cass’s enemy?
Light spreads across the paper. It’s still showing the garden, but from a different perspective. The drawing shows Cass under one of the pergolas before the attack. That’s strange. I never saw her at the party. She’s rubbing something onto the pergola’s pin. Is that . . . shaping dye?
A burst of energy floods the arch, and she goes through.
My jaw clenches. It was her. Cass allowed the Hoppers in.
I flip the page to find her inky figure rolling into a familiar foyer. Checkerboard tile. Angel statue. It’s the Museum. Bee gives Cass a bright smile and a pat on the back as if to say Welcome to the Hoppers.
• • •
The next day I get through my morning responsibilities as quickly as possible, which is a bit easier than usual, thanks to the lockdown. Many of the ambassadors have now been escorted by the Maid Service back to their respective corners of the globe for safety, though a few stayed behind, hoping that the Hotel will return their stolen property to them soon. Good luck on that. Others say they still want to attend the gala, but that will, of course, be canceled now.
