“Because you don’t have control yet.”
That was probably true. Then again, it was my lack of control that had given me such speedy access to Natalya’s memories in the first place—and insight into her death.
“Belle . . . there’s something else.”
I stopped. Voicing my theory on Natalya’s death meant openly accusing the Sect of something very serious. If I told Belle, and Belle reported me to Sibyl—or worse, the Council—how fast would the next Effigy pop up to take my place?
But then, back at La Charte, Belle hadn’t seemed so sure about their suicide claim either. It was worth a try. Even if Belle was super loyal to the Sect, she wouldn’t turn on me. Belle wasn’t like that.
“Belle, when we first met,” I continued, “I mean, when we first talked, at the hotel in Brooklyn, you said you didn’t believe Natalya could commit suicide.” When Belle said nothing, I inhaled deeply and continued. “Like I said, I’ve been seeing some of her memories.”
Belle’s hand squeezed her paintbrush more tightly than before. “Yes, you said.”
“Well . . . about Natalya’s death . . .”
“I don’t want to know.”
“What?” I frowned. She couldn’t be serious. “What do you mean—”
“What I mean is that I don’t want to know.” Belle’s voice was quiet. “I’m not interested. At all. So please don’t say another word.”
“But why—”
“I said, please don’t say another word.”
The rough edge of Belle’s voice spooked me into silence. Belle let her arms dangle uselessly at her sides for a moment before finally placing her brush down with a sigh. “Maia,” she said after some time. “Don’t . . . don’t focus on Natalya’s memories. Leave them alone. I know you might think that it matters, but it doesn’t. Chae Rin, Victoria, you, and I—we’re each here for a specific purpose. A duty to fulfill. Your duty is to find Marian, to access her memories. That is your only goal. Don’t be distracted by anything else.”
It sounded almost like a plea.
“Focus on the mission at hand,” Belle continued. “It’s what . . . it’s what Natalya would have done.”
The words were calm enough, but because Belle had turned her back to me, I couldn’t see her expression. My imagination filled in the blanks, forcing me to picture the same devastated eyes I’d seen during our first real meeting at La Charte.
Belle’s first meeting, that is, with Natalya’s pathetic replacement.
I lowered my head. “It must be weird, right? Me being here? Instead of her?”
“It’s just the way things are.” With light barefoot steps on the mahogany flooring, Belle walked over to the lavender settee.
Silence stretched between us.
“I was the oldest girl in the foster home,” Belle said, surprising me. “Just thirteen. Wayward. Angry. Natalya found me and gave me a new purpose.” Her loose blond hair shielded her face.
Belle never spoke publicly about her pre-Sect childhood. Her foster mother, Madame Bisette, had given plenty of interviews to French media about their supposedly wonderful life, but given that Belle had yet to publicly acknowledge her existence, I’d always suspected that Bisette’s tales were more fiction than fact.
Natalya, on the other hand—Belle had talked about her plenty of times in interviews: a mentor who’d become like blood. And I of all people understood how important having a family was.
“My sister used to be such a fan of her,” I said with a soft chuckle.
“Did she?”
For Belle Rousseau to ask even the simplest question about June, even if it was out of boredom alone . . . I couldn’t believe it. My heart soared.
“Yes!” I replied, taking an excited step forward. “June—my sister—she totally worshipped both of you! She knew everything about you! All the stats!” I wanted to tell her everything. If only by some miracle June could see me do it, see me standing in front of Belle, uttering her name. “You guys . . . you and Natalya. You guys were like her heroes.”
“That’s her mistake, then.”
Quick and efficient. Belle’s sudden frigidness crushed my euphoria before it could sweep me away. And yet, as devastated as I was, I might have taken it a whole lot worse if Belle weren’t so obviously trying to avoid my eyes. Belle let her body sink into the settee, twisting so she could peer over the edge of the railing and into the field. What did she see when she cast her gaze over the thicket of trees silhouetted in the night? What was she was looking for with those eyes that had suddenly lost what little life they had left in them?
“You should know too,” Belle said, quiet as a grave. “None of us are really heroes.”
IT WAS A SUNNY AFTERNOON, perfect for a stroll, so stroll I did. I walked through the museum, peacefully, dreamily, like I was floating with the breeze. Squeezing through the other tourists, I passed the glass cases of butterflies and the magnificent displays of dinosaur bones with a sense of purpose. I knew exactly where I needed to go: a small shadowed archway in a forgotten corner of the building, blocked off by yellow tape. After one quick look over my shoulder, I ducked underneath it and entered the long, dark hallway.
Fear began drumming against my rib cage. I had to finish this as quickly as I could; I didn’t know how much time I had left, after all, before someone eventually came for me. Once I reached the end of the hall, I punched the code into the security pad. The door dragged open with a deep groan.
“Good.”
Natalya’s voice. It was Natalya’s voice.
Which meant that once again, I was inside one of Natalya’s memories, experiencing it from inside her body.
The moment I realized it, the memory fizzled as if a fuse had shorted somewhere. Seconds later I was standing in a secret room hidden away in this nameless museum. Thick books spanned its two stories, but the fossilized exoskeleton was what drew my attention first.
Long, twisting, and serpent-like—a phantom. Its sharp wings fanned out as if prepared for flight, fastened to the ceiling with sturdy, metal wires. A phantom’s skin was usually a nightmare mix of ghost and rotted flesh and skin spread too thinly over bone, but what I saw here was different. Its body was hard as crystal—no, it was crystal. It pricked my skin as I touched it, light dancing across its diamond-like surface. Creepy. Strange. And beautiful.
I could have stayed, entranced by it forever, but I had work to do. I moved on.
Odd-colored lamps hung from the vaulted ceiling on thin chains: massive, glowing pendants of every odd shape, dangling above my head. There were old globes strewn about the floor in between paintings that hadn’t been hung yet—except one. Directly over the fireplace hung the portrait of a bearded man in a dapper frock. On his head: an arrogantly extravagant silk hat, fastened over the familiar dark curls spilling down his neck. Wild but elegant. I read the plaque beneath the portrait.
Bartholomäus Blackwell II: 1849–1910
Blackwell. From deep inside Natalya’s body, I heard her chuckles, quiet in the musty air. “I should have known,” Natalya whispered. I would never get used to the feeling of my own lips pushing out someone else’s sounds. “They look exactly the same.”
It didn’t matter. I moved on to a row of books on the first floor. There were twelve of them, identical in shape and color, each bound in velvet and engraved in silver.
“The Castor Volumes,” whispered Natalya. I pulled out just one, my fingers tracing the Roman numeral on the cover.
This would have to do. Looking over my shoulder, I slipped a bit of paper from my pocket. Such a silly plan, but by now I was desperate. I just hoped that Belle would understand the message.
Le maison de merde
Floorboards
I had just slipped it between the sheets when I heard the wooden floor creak behind me. With a gasp, I dropped the book, turned—
The dream ended.
I woke up, sweaty and hot beneath my covers, the end of Natalya’s memory still a question.
• • •
“Rhys!”
Unlike the Effigies’ dorms, the agent dorms on the west wing were dull and colorless, narrow doors cloned in rows like an assembly line. Somewhat unfair, but then so was destiny.
“Rhys?” I knocked again, more urgently. “Rhys! It’s me! I need—”
The door swung open.
“Maia?”
My lips trembled shut. For maybe a good minute, I just let myself stare at him, at his thin, unbuttoned shirt open and fluttering, granting my eyes the cruel gift of his hard stomach, still wet and glistening. Oh god. A damp towel hung around his scarred neck, all askew as if he’d slung it there in a hurry.
Did he notice? He definitely noticed.
“Come on in.” With a playful grin, he stepped aside to let me through. It was a painfully plain room: bed, table, chair, closet. Well, it was a temporary place for him; he’d decided to stay in London until the Saul thing was over. Made me wonder how he normally lived at his field post. Or at home, wherever his home was. If he even had one.
Now that I thought of it, I didn’t know much about him at all. Maybe that was why I hadn’t told him about Natalya’s death yet.
Rhys adjusted the towel so it hung over his shoulder. The soft patter of the shower seeped in from the bathroom. “Something wrong?”
Yes. I couldn’t stop staring at the black sweatpants clinging to his hips. I shook my head. “I wanted to ask something.” It took me a minute to remember what.
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “What about?”
Rhys was still an agent of the Sect. As much as I liked him, at the end of the day, I didn’t know how he would react once I told him my doubts about Natalya’s “suicide.”
And yet . . .
Biting my lip, I remembered the way his hand felt, rough against my wrist as he drew me to him while Vasily and Blackwell approached. He’d done it to protect me. This was a guy who’d temporarily abandoned his field post in New York to look out for me—well, at least I wanted to believe it was for me and not the girl inside me.
I mean, he’d known her. Probably worked with her. Maybe they’d been close. But even if Rhys’s kindness to me was rooted in his attachment to her, whatever their relationship had been, that alone only strengthened my gut feeling: I could trust him. He’d want to know if someone had killed Natalya, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t spill my secrets to the wrong people; I had to believe that.
I just couldn’t handle this alone. I had to trust someone.
Nervously, I drew in a breath. “It’s about Natalya,” I said. “I . . . I think something happened to her.”
“Well, we all know that.”
“No.” I shut the door behind me. “I’ve been seeing some of her memories, even while I’m sleeping. And I—I think maybe she didn’t commit suicide.”
A trail of water trickled down his forearm as he squeezed the white towel in his hands. “Maia.” Sighing, he sat on the desk by the wall, folding his arms. “Scrying can be unreliable, especially when you haven’t been trained.”
“I know, I know. I’m only seeing bits and pieces right now, but I’m serious! I think something could be really happening here.”
Rhys didn’t seem convinced. Sliding the towel off his shoulder, he went back to drying his hair.
“Fine,” I said impatiently. “Then let me ask you this.” I thought of the dream I’d just had, the secret room where Natalya had left her urgent note. “Rhys, do you know what the Castor Volumes are?”
Rhys cocked his head, water dribbling from his soaking black hair down to his chin. “The Castor Volumes? Yeah, sure I do—every agent would. Thomas Castor.” He rubbed his hair. “He was one of the first Sect agents. Former employee of the East India Company. He traveled around recruiting other agents. He even found two of the first documented Effigies. Then . . . well, I guess he wrote a bunch of stuff about it.” He paused. “Why?”
“And his books . . . they’re in a museum, right?”
“Why?”
“Which museum?”
“Why? Or have you always been interested in nineteenth-century travel literature?”
I didn’t like the way he was staring at me. All of the brightness usually there on his face seemed noticeably, painfully absent. Now he just looked tired and agitated, and the thought that I’d somehow caused it made me more self-conscious than it should have.
“Just curious,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what Natalya would want with them.”
“Is that what you saw in your memory?” Wearily, Rhys swept the matted locks out of his face. “Don’t. Your job isn’t to snoop around in Natalya’s memories, but to figure out what you can about ‘Marian.’ Don’t forget that.”
“I haven’t!” I watched him dry his hair through narrowed eyes. “But don’t you think there’s something a little off about—”
“No, I don’t,” said Rhys shortly. “The Sect investigated and ruled Natalya’s death a suicide. That’s what they told us. That’s what they told me.” He shook his head. “And you’re saying something else might have happened. Do you realize that you’re accusing the Sect of lying? It’s just ridiculous.”
“But it’s possible.”
“It’s not.” I could tell from the growing tension in his face that he was rapidly losing his patience. “That’s not the way the Sect works.”
“That’s not how the Sect works?” I turned to the door, my hand resting on the knob. “Is that a fact or a wish?” I mumbled.
“What do you mean by that?”
I faced him. “You’ve been with the Sect for how many years?”
Rhys narrowed his eyes. “Almost all my life.”
“Exactly. All your life is a long time to be loyal to a place. I guess it’s a hard habit to break.” I shook my head. “I should have known.”
“That’s not—”
“And wasn’t Natalya your friend?”
“Yes.” He gritted his teeth.
“Then if there’s even just the smallest chance that something could have happened to her, wouldn’t you want to get to the bottom of it? Or are you so loyal to the Sect that you’d rather just toe the company line?”
“Maia!”
I’d heard him yell my name plenty of times before, but not like that. He whipped the towel from his head, and though he looked wild in his desperation for a second, it vanished with his next breath. His shoulders slumped with the exhale.
“I’m sorry.” The towel loosened in his grip. “It’s just . . . This is a very dangerous game you’re playing, Maia, and not just because you, a brand-new Effigy, are accusing an international organization of covering up a murder with unreliable evidence. Scrying itself is dangerous. If you’re not careful, you can lose yourself in the memories. And you can lose a lot more than that.”
“I know that! But I can’t control the memories, and the more I see, the more I—”
“Then don’t see.” Dropping the towel, Rhys walked up to me. His hands were large and hot against my arms. “Just forget about it,” he said. “Let Belle teach you. Find Marian. But leave Natalya’s memories alone. Okay?”
Leave Natalya alone. It was the second time I’d heard that plea.
I looked at him. “What are you so afraid of?”
“What?”
Carefully, I removed his hands—one, then the other. “You and Belle. You both told me to leave this alone. Why?” I searched his wickedly handsome face. “Are you afraid of what I’ll see?”
Rhys’s face remained unreadable even as he planted his hand on the door just above my head. The fine hair of his wet arm brushed my face. I could smell his bath soap, thick and sweet, curling from him with the heat. “Drop it. I mean it,” he said, the bluntness of his words was undercut by the pleading softness in his voice.
Under any other circumstances, I might have ended up giving in, melting into him, helpless. Not today. I was tired of being jerked around. With an impatient huff, I placed a hand on his chest and pushe
d him away. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks for nothing.”
“Wait,” Rhys said, just as I gripped the doorknob.
“What is it?”
Rhys hesitated before speaking. “No matter what you think about me, I hope you know something.” There was no fight in his voice as he spoke. He could barely even meet my eyes. “I’m still going to do my best to look after you. That’s what I promised myself when I first met you. For Natalya’s sake.”
His cell phone rang. We looked at each other, frozen by the sudden buzzing from the table. Then, silently, he pulled himself away.
“Hello?”
Sighing, I left Rhys’s room and started down the hall.
“Maia.” Rhys swung open the door, his phone still in his hands.
“What?” I spun around. “What is it now?”
“Saul.” His face turned grave. “They’re ready for the first interrogation. And they want you there.”
RHYS AND I PROMPTLY ARRIVED at the Research and Development department in the north wing. It was packed and busy; technicians in white lab coats whirled around, tinkering with monitors, sorting out wires, and handling medical equipment I couldn’t name if I tried.
“Good, you’re here,” said one tech after noticing us approach. “They’re just about ready to interrogate the suspect. Everyone else is already inside the observation room.”
He pointed at the pristine white door at the far left side of the room. We made our way there, stepping over long tubes coiled around the floor like metal vines.
The observation room was dark, but I could see them all clearly: the men and women lined up at the back, observing the window with stern faces. Sibyl stood at the front, hovering over the technicians at the monitor. And at the center of the room . . .
My lips curled. “Vasily?” He waved at me as I approached. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to observe the interrogation on behalf of Mr. Blackwell, who, unfortunately, is otherwise disposed. Besides,” he added, “you shouldn’t be too surprised to see me around these days. The Council did let you know that you’ll be monitored closely, isn’t that right?”
Fate of Flames Page 20
