Because the story is about all of us. It’s about the Malakiim ruling from their heavenly world of Shemayiim, policing humans and Sura alike. It’s about the Malakiim’s soldiers, the Irin, a race born and bred to serve and protect. It’s about the havati bashrat—the forbidden, supernatural bond I share with Trebor, my own Irin protector, who I have not seen or heard from in almost sixteen months. It’s about my best friend in the entire world, Kyla Patel, who has literally been to hell and back with me.
Kyla, whose future is tied with mine.
Kyla, whose fate I saw in a vision once, in a dream, when I was seventeen years old.
I swallow and try to push Nikolai’s vision from my mind as I have been trying to do for the past year and a half. But it’s October now, and despite the unseasonably warm weather this week, October always brings to mind the ghosts that have been clamoring for attention, just the other side of life.
“Are you sure you still want to go?” my father asks me one last time before he leaves. He looks at my worn violin case and overstuffed backpack, waiting by the front door. “Amrita is still in the hospital—”
“I know,” I stop him with a forced smile. “But she’s going to be fine. The doctor said she’ll be back home tomorrow if the swelling goes down. She told me herself she’d be home tonight.” The smile is a little less forced now, thinking of Amrita, Kyla’s mother, lying in her hospital bed, harassing her nurse to stop poking me with your instruments, I’m fine!
Abe purses his lips, lowers his voice. “You’re not going all the way to Europe to avoid seeing Kyla, are you?”
I try not to frown. “No, Dad. I bought this plane ticket weeks ago. Remember? How was I supposed to know her mother was going to get T-boned by some jackass on a cell phone?”
He studies me, gives me a sad, knowing look, but says nothing more on the matter. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you before you leave, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Gimme a hug anyway.” He gives me a lopsided smile and opens his arms to me.
I go in for a hug and let him squeeze me tightly to his chest, returning the embrace with as much affection as I can muster. I love my father. I need him to know that. I need him to know that I didn’t run away because of him.
The summer after I was blinded to magic—after Trebor left, after Kyla went off to college—I packed up this very same backpack, grabbed my violin and whatever money I had stashed in my savings account, and hopped on the first bus headed over the state line. I’ve been traveling ever since: busking for money, staying in hostels and sleeping in train stations. On warm nights, I sometimes sleep in parks, on boardwalks, under bridges. I wonder if my mother’s people—the now-extinct clan of travelers called the Ouros—had ever lived like that.
But I didn’t run away because of my father. Every time I see him, when I come home for a day or two, here and there—I need him to know that. Because I can’t tell him the real reason why I had to drop out of high school, why I had to leave town. I can’t tell anyone that if I had stayed—if Kyla and I had remained best friends—if my life had gone on exactly as it was…then Kyla might have been dead by now. Murdered. While trying to save me.
But I fixed it. People don’t die trying to save their former best friend’s life. People can’t die trying to save your life if you never, ever see them. And if that is what the future really held for Kyla and me when Nikolai gave me that vision, then this is the only course of action I could have taken to keep her safe. I had to stay away from her. I had to make her hate me, no matter how hard it was.
Sometimes, I think it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
“Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone,” Abe says, tousling my dark red hair before he pulls away. He kisses me on the forehead with a mwah and grabs his keys from the hook by the front door.
“Bye, Dad,” I say with a chuckle.
“Bye, sweetheart.” He smiles before he walks out the door, and it makes me happy to see it.
I look at the clock hanging over the mantle on the other side of the living room. If I know Kyla, and I think I still do, she left Manhattan the second she got her hands on a form of transportation, after she got the phone call from the hospital. It wouldn’t matter that her mother is not in any danger—she had a concussion and needed a few stitches after the accident, but that was all—Kyla would find a way to come home.
She would have gotten the phone call last night. And right now, it’s almost noon, which means she might already be at the hospital. Which means she could, realistically, show up at any minute if her mother decides to take a nap or send Kyla out for lunch.
It’s not that I expect Kyla to hunt me down the moment she knows I’m in town, but that it’s a possibility. I’ve dedicated the last year and change to keeping away from Kyla—to keeping her safe from the future Nikolai showed me. I cannot afford to take a single risk.
When my father’s truck pulls out of the driveway, I sling my purse over my shoulder and head out the door, walking to the nearest bus stop. The unseasonable heat combined with all of my clothes being stuffed into my backpack has driven me to wear flip-flops and a shortish, gray cotton skirt, with a simple black tee shirt. I won’t stick out, even if I am still unreasonably tall for a woman.
Hopefully, no one will notice that in a crowd.
— 2 —
The North campus at the University at Buffalo is laid out over hundreds of acres of green space, which, right now, are crawling with students. There are stages set up by the Center for the Arts, near but not quite part of the main stretch of academic buildings. It’s for some kind of music festival the campus has every year, a few weeks before midterms.
Vendors are set up along the perimeter of the official festival area: food and drink stands, tee shirt booths, fundraising tables for fraternities and sororities, all of them advertising “WE TAKE CAMPUS CASH.” There are people everywhere, standing and sitting, some people stretched out on their backs on the grass. No one notices when I slip between them and take a seat on the grass between two picnic blankets held down by some very stoned college students.
I lean back on my elbows and cross my legs at my ankles, trying to listen to the band that’s on stage right now. It’ was only one o’clock when I got off the bus a minute ago. I have a lot of time to kill.
Most of the time I’ve spent on college campuses has involved crashing frat parties. I know, it doesn’t sound very much like me. But it’s a trick I learned from another busker out in California—Allison. She wasn’t as young as me, but she was petite and bright-eyed, and could pass for late teens, early twenties.
First, you doll yourself up to make it look like you are a legitimate college girl trying to impress other legitimate college students. Then you stash your stuff in a locker at the bus station and put the key in your bra so you don’t lose it. Then, (and this works best if you have a partner like Allison) you show up looking like you’re ready to party—maybe even actually party a little, but remember the most important rule: do not drink or consume any mind-altering substance. In fact, never drink anything that you didn’t draw from a tap by yourself, unless it’s from a sealed water bottle.
When the party starts to thin, find a corner, a couch, a pool chair—whatever you can find that looks like it’s out of the way and unlikely to be disturbed before morning—and pretend to drunkenly slump yourself down on it, feigning the kind of slow pass-out that comes with binge drinking.
Then sleep until you’re kicked out the next morning.
I’ve only had to use this trick a handful of times, thankfully. There are a lot of kind, unusual people, especially on the West Coast, who are willing to help a girl out with a couch to sleep on, or at least the use of a shower and/or their washer and drier.
When I’m feeling particularly wealthy (there is good money to be made in busking, some days), I’ll buy a week or two in a hostel dorm and hang out with all the European kids who have come to travel across the U.S. for their gap-year, bef
ore heading home to start their first year at university, as they say.
Kyla would be proud: I guess I’m finally out of my shell. Somehow it’s easier to be friendly when you’re all alone, when no one knows anything about you, or where you come from, or what your nicknames were in high school.
“Where are you from?” They always ask.
“New York—the state, not the city,” I always say.
“Why’d you come all the way out here?” They always ask.
“Just looking for an adventure, I guess,” I always say.
“You have a boyfriend back home?” Some of them ask.
“Yeah. His name is Trebor,” I always say. And the more I say it, the more it feels like the most untrue thing about me.
I haven’t felt the flicker of his heartbeat since the night he returned to Shemayiim. I haven’t seen him, except in dreams. I haven’t heard from him in any form, not even a message delivered by another Irin, not even a letter slipped under my door. It hurts, but more than that, it makes my mind go wild with tragic possibilities.
Movement to my right draws my attention: two of the stoned college students are making out on their picnic blanket, giggling and kissing, running their fingers over each other’s bodies, through each other’s hair.
I look back to the stage and pull a pair of sunglasses out of my purse, trying not to think about those scarce moments Trebor and I shared. They were never lighthearted, never giggling and soft. Every kiss was a plea. Every touch was a wound, reminding us of what we cannot have.
Not yet, anyway, I think, too forcefully.
Or maybe not ever.
I swallow both truths, and dig my cell phone out of my purse to check the time.
1:12.
I still have a lot of time to kill.
The hours tick by like molasses. I’m bored out of my mind, making myself anxious with too much time to think: wondering if going to Europe by myself is a terrible idea; wondering if Trebor is dead; wondering if I remembered to pack enough resin for my bow; wondering if Kyla has already gone to my house, trying to find me—or if, when her mother told her I’d visited her in the hospital, Kyla had sniffed and shrugged, and changed the subject.
Eventually, as dusk approaches, all I’m really thinking is: ohmygod I have to pee.
I’ve been lurking among the students for hours, not wanting to go to the row of port-a-potties on the edge of the festival, where there are no crowds to hide me. I don’t really believe that Kyla would think to come here to look for me—if she would even bother to look for me to begin with. I don’t like crowds, and she knows that. I don’t like parties. I don’t like situations that can easily fly out of my control, and she’s known that about me longer than I’ve known it about myself.
But Kyla is clever, and as well as I know her she knows me. She might very well be thinking: Where is the very last place in the world that I would expect to find Ana? Then that’s where she’s hiding.
Finally, when my bladder can take no more, I make a B-line for the nearest big, green, plastic outhouse. I hold my breath, but it’s not so bad—cleaner than I expected. When I’m done, I steal a few pumps of hand-sanitizer and hurry out the door, sights narrowed on the edge of the crowd just a few feet away—
“Ana?”
I jump, turning to the sound of my name. “Andy?”
He’s standing there, unshaven, clad in cargo shorts and a tie-dye shirt, with a comically oversized beverage container in his hand, the kind with a lid and a bright green straw.
“Hey, holy crap, how are you?” Andy says, striding over to give me a hug.
Andy and I were never close, not even after what happened with the skinwalker—with him knowing pretty much everything about me that I never wanted anyone else to know. But Andy was sorry for what he did, and never stopped trying to make it up to Kyla and I those months before he went away to college.
“I thought you went to Boston University?” I say.
“I do, but my cousin’s band was playing today, I came home to support him.” Andy’s grin wavers. He no longer has the easy charm that the skinwalker gave him as part of their deal, but I like this version of him better. I like anyone who can be even remotely authentic—maybe because I want so badly to be authentic, too. “So…what’s happening, Ana? I heard you dropped out of school?”
I smirk. “Well, it’s pretty hard to conquer senioritis when you’ve seen the things I’ve seen.” I don’t mean to sound so bitter, but I do.
“Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.” He purses his lips, shrugs. “So, what are you doing now?”
“I’ve been traveling. Making money busking. I’m leaving for Europe in the morning, actually.”
“Whoa, that’s huge. That’s crazy. What an adventure.” Andy looks startled, like he can’t believe I’m doing it, and he can’t decide if it’s awesome, or the worst idea he’s ever heard. “You have friends over there?”
“Um, I’ve met a few people at hostels. They said I could crash on their couches a night here or there.”
“Wow, that’s awesome. I’m so jealous. I want to backpack around Europe when I graduate, but that’s a long way off…” Andy frowns and lowers his voice. “Hey, did you hear…about John?”
I frown at the mention of our high school bully—my high school bully—the one who ran me off the road my junior year and nearly killed us both. He may have been influenced by Sura that night, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t want to hurt me. It seemed like that was all he wanted since I beat him up in eighth grade. I guess I wounded his ego so badly that he made it his life’s mission to never let a day go by without hurling some kind of derogatory insult my way.
“About his glass eye?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “ Or about his mother kicking him out of his house after he was expelled from school? Or about getting busted dealing drugs on the West Side?” I scoff, making a gesture like rubbing my thumb and forefinger together. “World’s tiniest violin.”
Andy purses his lips. “Yeah, no, you’re right. Forget I mentioned it.” He shifts, uncomfortable.
“Sorry,” I say, crossing my arms, trying to tamp down my obvious distain. “It’s just that John Cassidy is a name that evokes a lot of negative feelings.”
“No, it’s cool, I get it. The guy was a huge jerk to you for years, and then he almost killed you. I’d be pretty pissed off, too.”
I make a sound of acknowledgement, although pissed off isn’t exactly the phrase I would have used.
Andy looks up, trying to be casual again. “Oh, by the way, Kyla is looking for you.”
“What?” My heart leaps into my throat, blood draining from my face in the split second it takes for me to register what he’s just said.
“I just ran into her, she asked if I’d seen you around.”
“Where? Where specifically did you run into her?”
“I—I don’t remember—by the vendors, maybe?”
“Here?” I want to shout in dismay, but it comes out breathless. “I have to go. Sorry.”
“What? Why?” Andy looks perplexed. “Wait—Ana—wait!”
He tries to stop me, but I’m already turning, running, dashing into the crowd, burying myself in a sea of bodies, hoping that it’s not too late.
Want to keep reading? Click here to purchase The Tower!
Also by Madeline Claire Franklin
The Poppet and the Lune
Ghost City
About the Author
Madeline Claire Franklin has been writing, making movies, telling lies, and otherwise creating stories for as long as she can remember. She holds a BA in Media Studies/Production with a minor in Anthropology from the University at Buffalo, where she further expanded her storytelling capacity through film, animation, and the study of the human race. She is also an avid collector of psychic readings.
The Hierophant is her second novel, and the first book in the Arcana Series.
Find out more about Madeline and her books at her website, http://www.madelineclairefrankli
n.com.
The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) Page 29
