Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  Claudine blinked.

  • • •

  Claudine, like the little fangirl-in-training she was, absolutely jumped at the chance to give a group of Effigies a tour of her house while Duval cooked dinner. Belle’s old room was behind the staircase at the end of the hall, third door on the left. I eyed the wooden floorboards as we walked in.

  “Claudine?” Lake bent over again, smiling. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me?”

  Claudine couldn’t understand, so Lake offered the little girl her hand instead. She took it. “I can buy you two some time,” Lake told me and Chae Rin, “but you’ll have to hurry.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. But what about Rhys?” He’d chosen to stay with Duval to smooth things over, and before he knew it, he was helping her cook.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep them all busy. Didn’t I ever tell you about that time I was positively assaulted by French paparazzi? It’s quite a long story.” Winking, Lake pulled Claudine along.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” said Chae Rin.

  But just as I started to close the door, I stopped and looked around the door frame. It was quiet, but I was sure I’d heard it: a soft, almost indecipherable thump coming from the next room. Jean and Charlotte were with Duval in the kitchen. Were there more kids in there?

  “What are you doing?” Chae Rin waved me over. “Come on. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Hesitantly, I shut the door. “I feel so dirty doing this.”

  “No point getting cold feet now.” Chae Rin knelt on the ground and put her ear close to the floor. “Besides, we’ll put everything back the way it was.” She began tapping the wood. “If Natalya really did put something in the floor, that spot should be hollow. Quit standing around like a moron and get down here.”

  Stifling a few choice insults, I followed suit, getting on my knees. “Ugh, I feel like I’m in an old spy movie.”

  Chae Rin looked me up and down. “Not in that basic-ass sweatshirt, you don’t.”

  “What’s wrong with my sweatshirt?”

  “Just keep looking.”

  Chae Rin and I moved along the floorboards, tapping and listening.

  “Man,” I complained, “where is it?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask—wait!” By the window, on the other side of Claudine’s bed, Chae Rin lifted the rug and tapped again. Hollow.

  “Be careful,” I warned. “At the end of this we have to put it all back.”

  Chae Rin rolled her eyes. “I know, I know.”

  It was one of those rare moments I was actually thankful for Chae Rin’s violent strength. She had to restrain herself to keep from ruining the floor, but she managed to yank out two boards cleanly, setting them aside behind her.

  “Holy crap,” Chae Rin said, peering inside. “You were totally right.”

  Nestled deep in a hollow hole was what looked like a cigar box.

  “It looks like an antique,” I said. Handcrafted, too, as evidenced by the beautiful carvings. But it was also dirty. Soil clung to the dark wood, trickling off when I turned it on its side. I ran my hand along the top over the engraving of a serpent curled in a circle, long enough to eat its own tail. But I couldn’t open it. The box was fastened by a brass keyhole.

  Keyhole.

  “I can’t believe it.” I reached inside my sweatshirt and lifted the necklace over my head to reveal the skeleton key. “No way.”

  It was a perfect fit. My heart raced as I lifted the box’s lid, but the moment it came off I yelped; a beetle crawled out of the box, scurrying across my fingers until I flung it off. Chae Rin squashed it with her hand.

  “Let’s not infest the poor girl’s room,” she said before grabbing a tissue off of Claudine’s desk and wiping her hand. “So . . .” She leaned over. “What’s in the box?”

  A lot of things, and unfortunately, none of them made any sense. An old pocket watch, its rusted chain long since broken. A pair of dice. Some silk ribbons and pearl buttons. Just random stuff.

  “Wait, is that a doll?” Chae Rin plucked it out of the box and grimaced.

  Dry mud caked its face so thoroughly that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been done on purpose. Threads stuck out of its simple maid dress at odd angles, its black hair of yarn ravaged and disheveled. Its eyes had been torn out of the fabric, but stranger still were its arms, both tied behind its back with black string.

  “Creepy.” Chae Rin shook her head.

  Definitely. I couldn’t even begin to fathom why Natalya would have wanted Belle to find this. There had to be more to it.

  It was finally dark out. The rustling trees outside the sliding glass door veiled parts of the sky. The smell of roast beef wafted through the ventilation. That was our ticking clock. We didn’t have to understand everything now. We had the box. Now we just had to take it back to the hotel and figure it out from there.

  “Wait.”

  Chae Rin drew her face closer to the box, squinting as she spied something beneath all the strange paraphernalia. It was an old sheet of paper, perfectly folded. Because of the dirt covering it, I’d almost missed it entirely. Chae Rin dusted it off and unfolded it.

  “It’s a letter!” she said.

  “Let me see.” Setting the box down, I took the letter. Thankfully, it was in English. Long, looping handwriting scrawled across the brittle, off-white paper. After sharing an uneasy glance with Chae Rin, I read the contents:

  “March the first, 1872

  My Dear Poupée:”

  I stopped. “Poupée . . .”

  Chae Rin nudged me. “If you’re going to read, then read. We’re running out of time here.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “My Dear Poupée:

  I am writing this letter knowing that you shall never read it. Indeed it pains me greatly to know that we will never converse again until I join you in hell, though I’m afraid you will have to wait longer than even I had initially expected.

  Two years, my dear friend, my sister, since you passed away, and I find my thoughts are still attached to you, to Patricia, to Emilia, and yes, even Abigail. Perhaps it is guilt.

  You would say, I suppose, that I should feel guilty. It was I who showed the gift to you, who began the game. It was I who started you all down your accursed paths. I’m sure you regret it. I’m sure you regret having ever come to my estate, but you see, that is why I am writing this letter.

  I do not feel guilty. I regret none of it.

  This is the freedom I have longed for. I will not turn away from this opportunity for the sake of appeasing whatever ghost of yours still walks these lands, troubling my sleep night after night with your judging eyes. I alone will use the power that has been given to me to its fullest. I will achieve what even you could not. This is the promise I make to you, that I give unto your grave with the hopes that your soul will finally let me go.

  I will do wondrous things, Marian, together with Nicholas. I will fulfill all my dirty wishes. I will reshape the world.

  I hope you’ll watch me fondly.

  Yours for the last time,

  Alice”

  I lowered the letter. “Alice . . .” My lips parted in a half gasp. “Marian . . . and Nicholas . . . ?”

  There was a knock on the door behind us. Chae Rin dropped the doll and straightened up. “Hurry and put the damn letter back in the box. Hey, what are you doing?”

  I couldn’t move. The letter trembled in my grip. “Alice . . . Alice wrote this to Marian. That Marian. Saul’s Marian.”

  Another knock.

  “Poupée. Saul kept calling me that, right from the beginning. Even during the investigation, but only when he wasn’t Nick anymore.”

  I thought back to the first time I’d scried, back to Marian’s memory of a girl alone in her study, her long blond hair spiraling to the floor as she rested her head on a pile of books, like a fairy tale immortalized in painting.

  “Saul’s two personalities.” My lips went dry. “Nick . .
. and Alice. I think Alice is the other personality. But this was dated 1872.”

  “Maia!”

  “Saul’s—no, Nick’s brother died in the late 1800s.” I got to my feet. “What if—”

  Someone kicked the door open. I turned just in time to see Chae Rin crumple to the ground. A hard rock had hit its mark, right at the back of her head, knocking her out cold before she’d even seen who’d thrown it.

  The man’s face was hidden behind a ski mask. A robber? Where had he come from? Where were the others? I could still hear the television, undercut occasionally by Lake’s bright laughter. They didn’t know. And they weren’t going to. The man shut the door and stopped it with a chair.

  Frantic, I stuffed the letter back into the box and slid it underneath the bed with my foot. I prepared a scream, but fear snatched it as the assailant launched at me, grabbing my arm.

  In his other hand was a device like the one I’d used on Saul in Argentina. Pushing me against the window, he tried to stab me in the neck with it, but I blocked his arm with mine. After a short struggle, I grabbed at his face and, with a feral tug, wrenched off his mask.

  No.

  “Vasily?”

  He grinned.

  I tried to pass him, but he grabbed me and shoved me back against the sliding glass door. That was when I found my voice again, loud and screeching, but I couldn’t wait for help, and I didn’t have time to think. Pushing him away, I slid open the door and ran out into the night.

  I was in a tiny backyard lined by a fence too tall to scale. I’d have to go around to the front. My adrenaline wouldn’t let my feet stop, but Vasily was faster than I was. I felt his hand around my sweatshirt collar, yanking me back before pushing me to the grass. The moment I turned onto my back, he was on top of me.

  “Get off me!” I fought against him as he climbed on top of me. “What are you doing?

  “I could ask the same thing to you.” Vasily’s ice-blond hair slipped its bond and fell over his face, strands of it clinging to the blood on his cheek from a wound I must have given him. “I was told to keep an eye on you, but to think you were digging into something like this . . . It’s too bad. I really liked you.”

  He gripped my neck.

  “No, don’t!” I sputtered, my right palm planted on his face as I tried to push him back.

  My hand was too sweaty. He flung it off with a jerk of his head.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but it’s just easier if I get rid of you. Don’t worry, it’ll be quick.” Blowing his hair out of his face, Vasily leaned in close. “Some things really should stay buried. Natalya made the same mistake.”

  The pain in my chest was almost too much to bear. It was a pain I’d never felt before. The world grew dimmer with each frantic beat of my heart, but my eyes were still wide-open, staring blankly at the night sky.

  Was this what it felt like? For Mom, Dad, and June? Did it hurt this much when they felt their last breaths being torn from their bodies? No, I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about them dying, and I didn’t want to die.

  But I was. I was dying. I could feel myself dying.

  Mom . . . Dad . . . June . . . Tears leaked from my eyes, but I couldn’t feel them at all against my skin. No . . . no, no, no! No!

  With a guttural yell, Rhys threw Vasily off me. I flopped onto my stomach, clawing the ground, soil clumping in my fingernails.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Rhys. “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

  I heard Rhys’s scream, but I couldn’t see them. I could only see the blades of grass, the chunks of dirt I’d ripped from the ground. I could see my dirty hands shaking.

  Vasily laughed. “Would you really kill me for her?”

  They were struggling, I could tell, but my mind was blank. As my heart thrashed against my chest, something pure and terrible began to shudder inside me. Anger? No. I didn’t know, but it hurt, it burned, it tore me from the inside. Shutting my eyes, I pressed my forehead against the ground, tears leaking as I pictured their faces: Mom, Dad, June. Since their deaths, I’d refused to think about it: what it must have been like to burn up in flames, the skin peeling off your flesh, the breath squeezing out of your throat for the last time. But now I couldn’t stop. Over and over again I saw them dying in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t stop.

  “I’m following orders, Aidan!”

  “You’re out of control!” Rhys must have punched him, because Vasily grunted. “You always have been!”

  “I learned to survive just like you. Wasn’t that the whole point of the Devil’s Hole?”

  “No! I’m not like that anymore!”

  “Yes, you are. If you weren’t, then why did y—”

  More punches. More noises deep from the gut. Off in the distance, I could hear children screaming . . . or was it June? I couldn’t tell anymore. I closed my eyes.

  The pure and terrible thing stirring inside me rumbled louder the faster the world spun. If I was safe, my body didn’t know it; I could still feel myself dying. I was still gasping for air. I could still see my parents, still imagine them suffocating and crying out for me. And Natalya—I could see her, too, clutching the rug, struggling to stay alive. It was too much. It was too much.

  The dam broke. I screamed and screamed. And when I opened my eyes—

  Fire. There was fire everywhere. Fire sprawling across the grass, crawling up the trees, licking the house.

  The house. The house was in flames. My house was on fire again.

  “Stop.” I gripped my head. “Stop! Please! Mom! Daddy!”

  I was incoherent now, between the screaming, crying, and pleading. Somewhere, deep within the hell I’d created, I heard Rhys’s voice.

  “Maia! Maia, stop! You can stop it!”

  I couldn’t hear him. I could only hear my family crying the way I’d always imagined they had when the fire took them.

  “Maia, please! Calm down! Breathe! You can do it!”

  “I can’t.” I covered my mouth against my meager, ragged breaths. “I can’t. I can’t!”

  It happened quickly. An ice-cold torrent of wind with the fury of a tornado swept through the backyard, taking the fire with it. The trees, the grass, the side of the house. By the time I had lowered my hands, all of it was covered in sleet and snow. The ashes turned to wintry flakes caught in the fine hairs of my skin. It was the last thing I saw before passing out.

  A CIGARETTE HAD CAUSED THE fire. Rhys and Belle told the police that lie because the truth would have caused a media frenzy: Maia Finley, successor to the great Natalya Filipova, freaks out and almost burns down a foster home filled with kids. The new face of the Sect indeed.

  I’d been alone in my sterile, private hospital room for at least an hour, staring blankly at the window, my latest failure replaying over and over again in my mind.

  When Rhys walked in and shut the door behind him, I pulled the covers over my face.

  “They’re okay, you know.” He sat in the chair next to me. “The fire didn’t spread as much as you probably think it did. Belle and Lake took care of it, though it did take a while to haul away some of the broken tree branches.”

  I already knew. Lake had called not too long ago. No one had gotten hurt, but that was only a fleeting relief from the misery. After gathering just enough of my senses to tell her about the box beneath Claudine’s bed, I’d ended the conversation there.

  “I could have killed them.” I clenched my bedcovers. “It’s all my fault.”

  “It’s Vasily’s fault.” Gently, Rhys untangled the sheet from my fingers. “Not yours. His.”

  Wiping the wetness from my eyes, I sat up. “Where is he?”

  “He escaped.” Rhys’s features grew cold. “While everyone was distracted by the fire. I put some field agents in town on the alert, but they haven’t seen him. He’s probably long gone by now.”

  I thought of Vasily’s remorseless smirk as he tried to choke the life from me. There was no other explanation: “He killed N
atalya.”

  “What?”

  I looked at Rhys. “He killed her. He practically admitted it when he tried to kill me.”

  Rhys’s face shut like a door, like it had before when I’d brought up the possibility of Natalya’s murder. But this time was different. He leaned over, propping himself up on his legs, his fingers twined between his knees. “If anyone’s capable of it . . . it’s him.”

  “Tell me about him.” I shifted to my side, pushing off my covers. “Who is he? He works for Blackwell, right? Could Blackwell have ordered Natalya’s death?”

  “I started training as an agent when I was ten years old,” he said suddenly. “A lot of us are like that.” His eyes were fixed on my bedspread. “The Sect likes to take in kids. Orphans, street kids, and so on. Kids can be molded more easily, I guess.”

  It was a rare opportunity, hearing Rhys speak about himself. “Are you an orphan?”

  “No,” he said. “There are some families out there that have sworn themselves to the Sect. Some have been with the Sect for decades. Like mine.” He smirked. “Fighting monsters as a family tradition.”

  I could see the muscles in his face and neck work as he swallowed, each tiny movement displaying the defined edges of his jaw.

  “I come from one of those families,” he said. “My dad fought. My brother, too. ”

  I blinked. “You have a brother?”

  I must have sounded a little too baffled, because Rhys smiled. “He’s more into the administrative side of things now.”

  “Oh.”

  He grew solemn. “I met Vasily at one of the Sect’s training facilities. In Greenland. Some training facilities are a little tougher than others.”

  I waited for him to elaborate. He never did.

  “When Vasily graduated and became an agent, he was scouted by Blackwell to be his personal operative. It happens sometimes. But what happened in Greenland . . .” Rhys shook his head. “I guess it changed him.”

  “Did it change you?”

  Rhys wouldn’t look at me. “Experiences always change people. But at the end of the day, he’s a Sect agent. He follows his orders. That’s what agents do. The Sect is absolute.”

  I stiffened on my bed. Of course Rhys would feel that way. He’d been trained too, by his family and by the same Sect that had forced me to swear allegiance to them.