The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series)

by Madeline Claire Franklin

  We come together and stop, toes facing toes, eyes rising to meet eyes. The cold light over the stairs makes his hair shimmer green and blue, casts shadows over his eyes, makes his face angular and rugged. He looks tired, but alive. There is so much I want to say to him, to ask him, but I need to know everything is okay, first. As okay as it can be, anyway.

  “Where were you?” I wonder. “Are you all right?”

  He smiles, and for a moment all my worry dissolves with the familiar crinkle around his eyes, the slow spread of white teeth, holding back a secret joy. “I’m fine.” His voice is low, quiet—maybe even content.

  Before I know it, he’s holding my hand. He draws a pale white orchid from his pocket, the stem bound up with gold silk ribbon, and slips it over my hand, onto my wrist, fingertips nimble against the delicate skin over my pulse. My bones shiver, but it’s not unpleasant.

  “You didn’t have to,” I tell him, quiet.

  “I wanted to,” he tells me, a bit louder.

  “How did you know I was going to be wearing gold?” I return my gaze to his eyes, and find them shifting between the present moment, and elsewhere in time.

  “Lucky guess,” he lies. I wonder what secret he’s keeping from me, but does it really matter right now?

  My heart trembles, and I wonder if it’s mine or his. I wonder at the slow, hard rhythm it takes up when he holds my hand. His grip is not delicate, as if he’s afraid I’ll slip through his fingers, but firm, like an accomplice pulling me towards adventure—towards freedom.

  I wonder at the wordless way we turn and walk back inside, staring at each other as we go. I wonder at the sadness and fear balled up inside of me, trying to tie down my excitement.

  I wonder at my wonder.

  We move through the crowd, two slight smiles belying the fierce pull and acute focus between us. Whatever song is playing, the bass drum is loud, tearing at the speakers, sinking sound into the floor and dragging bodies with it. The sound is strange, wonderful, new—but inconsequential. Sound is nothing compared to the feeling of my arms falling around Trebor’s neck—his hands settling on my waist—the space between us shrinking. Electricity forks up and down the entire length of our bodies, bridging the distance.

  I look at him, fall into his endless emerald eyes, and feel intensely hateful of the fact that I don’t know what’s going on behind them—that I don’t know all of his secrets, his favorite season, what kind of music he enjoys, his best and worst childhood memories. I feel like I should know them, that somewhere inside of me I do. It feels wrong that, right now, I don’t.

  Trebor tilts his head, parts his lips to say something, but no sound comes out. Instead he pulls me closer, and I find myself staring at his lips, at the perfect rise and fall of their shape. They curve into a strange, daring smile, and a slow warmth kindles in my belly. He pulls me a little closer, until the gap between us is almost completely gone, my stomach flat against his, chest to his chest. His leg brushes against my leg, my knee, my inner thigh, sending a jolt through me that knocks me off rhythm, makes me feel like I’m melting.

  I look into his eyes and we freeze. The music bleeds into the background, until all I can hear is the beat of our heart and the waver of my breathing. I can feel his breath on my lips, his heart pounding in my chest, his hipbones angled against my hips, and I’m not sure how we got here so suddenly.

  Then I think of all the times he’s held my hand, or held me—all the times our hearts have beat as one—and I realize maybe it isn’t so sudden at all.

  But if I do this, if I give in to this obvious thing—the shared heartbeat, the ability to feel each other’s emotions when we’re crying—these insane feelings I have for someone who is not ever going to be human—what then?

  I look at his lips, and my heart hammers. “I have to confess something, Trebor,” I whisper.

  “You can tell me anything,” he murmurs back, voice tunneling through me, ripping me wide open.

  I blink back the power of his words and find my voice again. “I’m a coward.”

  He cocks his head, questioning.

  “I’m afraid of you. And myself. And everything that’s happened, that could happen, that probably will happen.” I swallow.

  Trebor takes a long breath, brings a hand to my neck to brush my curled hair back, over my shoulder, causing goose bumps to rise along my arms. “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” he murmurs, and leans his forehead nearer to mine. “Even I used to be afraid of what would happen, until I met you.”

  I feel his words on my cheek, soft as sunlight. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to be brave.”

  “Then be brave, Ana. Face it head-on. Laugh at the unknown. I’ve got your back.”

  “Okay,” I agree. “I will.”

  He smiles. “Good.”

  I lean a little closer. “I’m still afraid.”

  He leans a little closer. “It wouldn’t be bravery if you weren’t.”

  And then I lean in closer still, and we inhale, two breaths drawn from the same fistful of air. My whole body is alive with fear, with anticipation, every nerve aware of him and singing—

  Someone slams into us, knocking us over like a single, six-foot bowling pin. Trebor takes the brunt of the fall, hitting the ground backside first. He manages to catch me somewhat, and for a moment we’re a tangle of limbs on the gymnasium floor, knees hooked, my hands curled against his chest.

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I say, disentangling, aware of the circle spreading out from us, the people staring, no longer dancing.

  Trebor shakes his head, laughing. He helps me up, pulls me to my feet, one hand still in mine, the other settling on my waist.

  “Sorry, triple G,” John laughs, wobbling in place, red-faced and shiny. “Didn’t see the Twin Towers standing there.” He cackles and high-fives a friend, stumbling away into the crowd, clearly drunk, leering back at us and giving me a once-over before they disappear.

  I wonder how red my own face is. “Awesome timing, jackass,” I grumble, watching them go. My peers realize there will be no fight, and the crowd fills in around us again. I startle when I see Andy, his stark white tuxedo making him stand out in the crowd. He’s watching us closely, an eerie smirk on his face.

  Trebor’s hand tightens on mine. I look over at him, wondering if he saw Andy too, but he’s staring in the opposite direction, expression frozen, eyes riveted like a cat catching sight of a mouse—or a mouse catching sight of a cat.

  “Trebor?” I ask.

  He faces me, hulking over me, talking fast. “Ana, quickly, listen to me, this is very important. I have to go right now. There’s something I haven’t told you that I need to tell you as soon as possible. Can you meet me tonight?”

  “What?”

  “Can you get away for a little bit tonight and meet me somewhere?”

  “What?” I ask again. “Where? When?” I realize I’m clinging to him, that he’s clinging to me, but we don’t stop. He’s pushing me backwards, slowly, farther into the crowd.

  “Meet me at your mother’s grave at midnight. Don’t talk to strangers while I’m gone. And please, please be able to forgive me.” His eyes turn to water the moment before he rushes off into the crowd, into the night. I watch him go, hear the music come up around us again as my perception expands to follow him, but he’s gone faster than I can track him. All I’m left with is the image of his eyes flashing in my mind, so suddenly sad, so suddenly sorry.

  Kyla bumps into me.

  “A! Where have you been?” She grabs my arm, grinning. “Was that Trebor? Where’s he going?”

  I look at her and try to smile. “Hey, we were dancing, yes, I don’t know.” It’s hard to breathe, like Trebor’s sudden exit has stolen the air from my lungs.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  I force a close-lipped smile, and nod. “I just need to sit a few songs out, I think. I’ll be fine.”

  Kyla’s eyes tell me she doesn’t believe me, but she nods a
nyway.

  — 43 —

  I take a few minutes in the ladies room to collect myself—to calm myself. It’s difficult when your heartbeat isn’t necessarily determined by your own body, but I take comfort in the fact that maybe by focusing and slowing my heartbeat back to a normal rate I might be helping Trebor in some way. It’s hard—the bathroom is filled with girls reapplying makeup, checking their teeth, taking pictures of themselves with their cell phones. Kristen Leigh spots me slinking out of a stall and corners me.

  “Look everyone, it’s Cinderella,” she squawks, getting a few chuckles from some of her friends.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I mutter, washing my hands.

  “Really? It’s just that you’re trash, all dolled up to look like someone special. Did prince charming fall for it?”

  “What do you care?” I ask, exasperated, whirling to face her. “What does anything about my life have anything to do with you?”

  She shrugs and smiles, pink lips stretching to flash blinding white teeth. “I just don’t like you.”

  I rip a paper towel out of the dispenser by the sink and dry my hands. “Well, the feeling is mutual.”

  She scoffs. “The difference is, no one cares what you think.”

  I narrow my eyes at her, wondering what would happen if I used a magic net on her. Would she go back to Sheol, where the demons belong? Clearly, magic can’t solve all my problems. Words don’t seem capable of solving this one, either, so I just smile at her.

  “That’s okay,” I tell her. I reach out and touch her arm like an old friend, and enjoy the frightened confusion spreading across her face. “Because, again, the feeling is mutual. You have a lovely time tonight, Kristen.” I give her my creepiest over-enthusiastic wink before I turn around and walk out of the bathroom.

  Momentary glee shakes the heaviness from my mind, and I’m surprised by the truth of my words. I really don’t care anymore what anyone in this goddamn school thinks about me. I’m so incredibly done with caring, I almost laugh out loud when I return to the gymnasium.

  But then a hand reaches out and grabs my arm. My heart leaps into my throat, and I turn around—

  “Lay off the punch, Ana,” Andy says, hooking my arm with a too-dazzling smile. “You ready to dance yet?”

  “Um…” But he’s already maneuvering me to the dance floor, the same way he once maneuvered me into Kyla’s kitchen to talk about gypsies—it just happens, before I know it.

  “I saw Trebor earlier. Where’d he run off to?” he asks, taking my hand, turning to face me.

  “He wasn’t feeling well,” I lie, skin crawling when his other hand falls on my waist.

  “Too bad. You know, he’s a really nice kid.” He smirks. “Between you and me, though, he’s a little weird.”

  “Ha, yes.” I nod, hesitating to place my hands on his shoulders. In the thick of the crowd on the dance floor, I peer beyond Andy and take in the twisting mass of bodies and familiar faces, all dressed up in unfamiliar attire. It’s all the more strange when I see faces I don’t recognize, and stranger still when I notice several in particular, here and there, watching me with unabashed intensity.

  Because there’s nothing I can think to do, I pretend I don’t notice.

  “Did you have a chance to ask your father about your mother’s clan?” Andy asks.

  “Huh? Um. Yeah. He knew about it.” Eyes bouncing around the room, I see three, four, five faces, not all of them looking at me, but some, and all of them shining out from the crowd, as if illuminated by a soft internal light.

  “And what about the box?” Andy asks, drawing my attention back.

  I almost answer, but stop myself. “I didn’t tell you about a box.”

  Andy blinks—caught or confused? “What? No, I meant did you ask him if your mother had any of those boxes. Why, do you already know of one?”

  Every hair on my body stands on end. “Even if my mother had one, no one could open it now but her. So it’s useless.”

  “True.” Andy nods. “But if you did have one, it would be worth a lot of money.”

  “I wouldn’t be interested in selling.” I frown.

  He knows. It’s no good pretending.

  “I understand. Sentimental value.” He gives me one of his most charming smiles, and it feels like slugs moving over my skin.

  The music crashes around us, and I feel like I’m in another world. It’s different from dancing with Trebor. I felt like we were the only people alive when I danced with him. With Andy, I feel cut off—trapped. He’s smiling, and kind-eyed, but there’s something so wrong about him right now.

  “Are you okay?” Andy asks, his face too earnest, too concerned, as if it might slip into mockery at any moment.

  “Why are you dancing with me?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow.

  He doesn’t answer right away, but after an awkward moment he replies. “Because I like you. And I hope I’m not too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “To save you.”

  I stand still, forcing Andy to do the same. “Save me from what?”

  “You know what.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “The Irin,” he says. “They think you have the key.”

  I blink, and my eyes refocus on a girl in the crowd with fire-engine-red hair, standing about twenty feet behind Andy. Our eyes meet, and hers go wide—but I turn away, trying to pretend I don’t notice.

  I pull away from Andy, but he holds onto my hand, my arm, too stiffly, and we both try to look like nothing weird is going on.

  “How do you know about them?” I ask, fear taking firm root inside of me.

  “It doesn’t matter, Anastasia. Let me help you.” Anastasia? No one in school calls me that.

  “The key has nothing to do with me.” I frown, twisting my arm in his grip.

  Andy gives me a sorry look. “You don’t know, then.”

  “Let go,” I hiss, heart hammering as I see those glowing foreign faces moving towards us.

  “Let me help you.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “Ana—”

  I give a final yank and pull my hands free from his. Turning, running, I dive into the crowd, weaving around bodies, and slip out the back of the gymnasium, into the parking lot. I sprint past students, teachers, faces I recognize, rolling or squinting their eyes at me, but I don’t give a single damn about them. The drum of fear beats too loudly for me to slow down, to try and act normal. I sprint to my car, fall into the driver’s seat, lock the doors, and wait for something terrible to happen.

  But no one follows me out of the school. Nothing jumps up from the backseat of my car. The parking lot is motionless.

  I grab my phone and text Kyla that I have to go, that we’ll talk later, that I’m so sorry. The fear inside of me twists up through the firmament, sprouting tiny buds of panic, a root network of living terror that I’m scrambling to catch and destroy before it destroys me—but I can’t. It’s too deep, too far-reaching. It’s out of my control.

  “Then be brave,” I whisper Trebor’s words to me, and jam my keys into the ignition.

  — 44 —

  The cemetery gates are closed at this hour, but I know better. I slip in through the crooked bars around the maple tree that’s grown through the iron fence over the last century, and slink through the shadows, towards my mother’s grave. I’m wearing a black zip-up hoodie I found in my car, covering the bright gold of my dress, keeping out the cold as I move over the graves.

  Row after row of grave markers pass by as I tiptoe through the dark, some strewn with old flowers, some neglected and covered in weeds. When I find my mother’s grave, I hunker down by her headstone, leaning against it as if to listen. I breathe deeply, too frightened to be sad tonight.

  “How did this happen, Mom?” I wonder quietly, almost soundlessly. “I never thought I could pass for normal, but now I’m a paranormal freak whose life has been built on lies. And who’s lying? Which lies are wors
e? Mine, yours, theirs? I’m not even sure anymore. If I ever knew at all.” I touch the cool stone with my forehead, feel the fingers of cold reach deep, through skin, scalp, and bone, to the nape of my neck, like an icy hand lay there.

  “I hope you’re really out there somewhere.” I swallow, sitting up, looking at the familiar letters chiseled into granite and seeing no words at all. “Watch over me, please? And Dad. And Kyla. And watch over Trebor, too. Even if—even if he’s keeping secrets, I don’t think he’s bad. I really think he means to help me. And I think—I think I…” But the words freeze in my throat. I close my eyes instead, and listen for my mother’s voice as I have so many times before, but there’s only the sigh of the wind, and the pounding of my heart.

  “Anastasia Flynn,” a husky voice comes from behind, and I jump to my feet.

  But it’s too late. I’m trapped. Those faces at the dance, shining and foreign, surround me now, dressed all in black: three men, three women, each with black tattoos snaking up their arms. Six Irin.

  If they’re Irin, I should feel relieved, shouldn’t I? So why do I feel like running?

  A tall, lithe woman with raven-black hair steps forward, hands at her back. “Where is Trebor?” she demands.

  I swallow, shake my head, have no idea how to respond. “Who are you?”

  “You know what we are,” she tells me. Her voice is low, like a threat. “The same thing he is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The woman takes a long, predatory step forward, the fabric of her black jumpsuit stretching over the sculpted muscles of her legs, catching the dim moonlight and swallowing it into dark. “Don’t bother lying, human. You’re harboring a fugitive, if you lie.”

  “What?” I try to withhold expression, but my eyes betray my shock.

  She cocks her head. “I’m sorry, how silly of me. Of course he would have lied to you.” She glowers. “He’s a traitor. Trebor has joined with the Sura. They’re looking for weapons to wage war on the Malakiim.” She steps forward again, stares me in the eyes, and even though I’m several inches taller than her I feel small, powerless. “He has Fallen. And he only means to use you as a weapon, as well.”