by Ted Sanders
“It’s gone now,” April said blankly.
“No need to worry. If you felt it once, you’ll feel it again. Which way?”
April pointed to the southeast, trying to feel the missing piece again. To her great relief, she felt the trickling call once more. This time it clung to her, weak still, but perhaps a hair stronger. April fought to stay calm.
Isabel straightened, staring off into the distance. “It’s in the city,” she said.
“Chicago?” April said. The city was indeed southeast of here, an hour and a half away by car. “But how do you know it’s there?”
Isabel hesitated, seeming to measure her words. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “There’s a place in the city, a secret place that doesn’t want to be found. I’d bet my life your missing piece will be there.”
“What kind of place?”
“A fortress. There are people there, people like us, hoarding and hiding and—” She stopped. Her expression had grown fierce, but now she smoothed her face. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we find your missing piece. We need to make you whole again.” She laid a friendly hand on April’s shoulder and smiled. “We need to go.”
Isabel said this so matter-of-factly that for a second April didn’t know whether to laugh or pack her bags. “Whole again . . . We need to go.” She backed away, sinking onto the steps beside Baron. “But I can’t just . . . leave.” The thought was ridiculous, of course. She was barely a teenager. Derek would never let her.
Isabel shook her head solemnly. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t have a choice. You are Tan’ji.”
Another unfamiliar word, the strangest yet. Tan’ji. And for some reason, this word made April so weak in the knees that she was glad she was sitting down. “Wait,” April said, trying desperately to find her bearings. “Wait. You keep using words like I know what they mean. Instrument. Keeper. Tan’ji. And it’s almost like I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t.”
“You don’t know the words yet, but you already know the bond.” Isabel pointed two fingers at the vine and said, “This is Tan’ji.” She pointed to April. “You are Tan’ji. Your instrument belongs to you, and you belong to it. It and you both—together—are Tan’ji.”
Together. April understood that, at least. She understood bonds. “And you are Tan’ji too? You and your instrument?”
Isabel clasped the wicker sphere, her face hardening. “That’s right. This is Miradel. I’m her Keeper. I’m Tan’ji just like you.”
April noted the woman’s peculiar possessiveness, and was surprised that the wicker ball had a name, but she didn’t respond. She tried to straighten her thoughts. She was Tan’ji. She was the Keeper of the vine, apparently. And while a part of her knew absolutely what that meant—the vine was hers—another part of her struggled to comprehend.
“You’ll learn the words in time,” Isabel said, as if she understood. “Right now, only the bond matters. If a piece of Miradel was missing, I’d do anything—go anywhere—to find it. Because I’m Tan’ji. You’ll do the same for your instrument.”
April couldn’t bring herself to deny it. “And you’re sure that my missing piece is going to be in this . . . secret place.”
“I could be wrong,” Isabel said lightly, “but it doesn’t matter. We’ll follow the call of the missing piece and see where it takes us. If I am wrong, you will know. Besides, you can’t stay here. It’s not safe for a young Keeper unprotected, especially one with a broken Tan’ji. Blood in the water. I told you.”
The shadow in the trees. “I saw something in the woods last night, right back there. It moved, and it was really tall, like . . .” She looked up, gesturing into the air overhead.
“Impossibly tall,” the woman finished.
“Yes.”
“And there was a smell.”
April nodded, her heart pounding. “What was it?”
“One of the Riven,” Isabel said. Then she added ominously, “They’ve come for you. They’ve come for the vine.”
April’s anger flared up at those final words, but her confusion and fear wouldn’t let her sustain it. “Who are the Riven?”
“Their hunters have found you,” Isabel said, not really answering the question. “They’ve found you just like I did. I told you, you’re bleeding everywhere.”
“But what I saw wasn’t human.”
“No,” the woman said simply. Her eyes said she would explain no more.
April swallowed. “What do they want with the vine?”
“They want your power.”
“They can’t have it.”
“Then you can’t stay. You’re unprotected here. You have to come with me.” The wicker ball swelled again. “Come with me, and I’ll keep you safe.”
From the southeast, the call of the missing piece—that lonely and kidnapped part of herself—seemed to flicker and grow another fraction stronger. “I’m only thirteen,” April said lamely.
“I was only nine when I . . . began.” Isabel’s face turned dark. “And some are even younger.”
“But I can’t leave my brother. I can’t just go.”
Isabel squatted down and peered up into April’s face. “Keeper, listen to me. For the time being, your brother is safer with you gone.”
April searched for something to say, something sensible, something that would clip the wings of this absurdity that had exploded out of nowhere. But she found nothing. Nothing that could erase the pull of that distant beacon. And with that, she knew she would go. She would leave with this woman, would go searching for her missing piece, go far from whoever—or whatever—these Riven were. She would keep her brother safe. Leaving with Isabel would be, in a way, the most sensible thing April had ever done.
Isabel knew it too. The sad, intense smile returned to her face as she searched April’s eyes. “You don’t have a choice. We Keepers often don’t.”
April nodded decisively.
“I’ve seen your brother, you know,” Isabel said. “And your dad.”
Briefly April wondered just how long Isabel had been watching her, waiting for the right moment to approach. “That’s my uncle, not my dad. My parents are dead.” She emphasized the word “dead” deliberately, as she always did, but Isabel didn’t flinch. “They’ve been dead most of my life.”
Instead of saying she was sorry, as most people did, Isabel asked earnestly, “And how has that been?”
Thrown once again, April searched for the most truthful answer she could. “I . . . guess I don’t know. I don’t have much to compare it to.” She sighed and looked up at the house she had lived in for the last six years, the house she still thought of as Uncle Harrison’s. “Will I be able to come back here?” she asked, not quite able to look at Isabel.
“You can’t come back without protection,” Isabel said. Another nonanswer. “But you’re not safe here now. We have to follow the call and find the missing piece. Then we’ll do what we can, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I need until tonight. I have to get some things together.”
Isabel beamed, clearly pleased. “Bring a backpack, nothing more. Pack a blanket. And food.”
“Okay,” April said. “But also I have to . . . Derek. My brother.”
“What will you tell him?”
April thought. “I stay at my friend Maggie’s sometimes. Sometimes for a few days.”
“That’ll do.”
“And if I’m not back in a few days?” April kept her words as light as she could, but they felt heavy coming out of her mouth.
Isabel locked eyes with her, that wild glint back in her gaze. “You are Tan’ji now, April,” she said, her voice steely and sad at the same time. She reached out for a moment as if to take April’s hand, but then let it fall. “Things can’t be the way they were.”
CHAPTER TWO
Nine Days
HORACE ANDREWS THOUGHT HE MIGHT NEVER STOP BEING tired.
He lay on his bed, with Loki the cat slumberin
g enviably at his side. It was a Tuesday afternoon in mid-June, nine days after the raid on the Riven’s nest and the rescue of Chloe’s father. Nine days since the escape from Dr. Jericho and the rest of the Riven in that dark, underground labyrinth. Or at least, the calendar claimed it was nine days. Horace sometimes felt like only hours had passed, and that his exhaustion had not yet left him. At other times, though, the rescue seemed like a distant thing, years old, and his memories of it seemed like nothing more than visions from the Fel’Daera—promises made, but not yet fulfilled.
The last nine days had been confusing. Confusing and lonely. Summer days were often lonely, but this was a new kind of emptiness. He hadn’t seen Chloe since the night of the rescue, hadn’t been back to the Warren, hadn’t received word from Mr. Meister or Gabriel or Neptune or Mrs. Hapsteade. In a way, not hearing from the Wardens was a relief. No more missions, no heavy expectations. Most of all, no more secrets. No more lies.
But of course, he was still a Keeper. And not just a Keeper. He was a Warden, charged with protecting the Tan’ji from the Riven. Being a Warden meant new secrets around every corner, deep and surprising secrets—secrets which, when revealed, could knock you off your feet. And nine days ago, Horace had learned a secret so surprising that he still hadn’t found his feet again.
As if on cue, he heard the front door open. It was 4:04; his mother was home from work. She called hello up to him, and he hollered back. This was a change from their normal routine—or maybe it was the new normal, her calling out instead of coming up in person to chat. He wasn’t sure who to blame for that, but wondered if it might be himself. His relationship with his mother had changed ever since the nest—or rather, ever since the talk they’d had just afterward, a talk that felt as much like a dream as the nest itself. Yes, secrets had been revealed that night—deep and surprising—but what scared him was that he hadn’t even glimpsed the bottom. His mother was keeping deeper secrets still, secrets he wasn’t sure he wanted to learn.
Horace preferred not to think about it. As a result, of course, he thought about it all the time.
He lay there for another ten minutes, wondering if he could fall asleep again, maybe sleep until dinnertime came. Loki, stretched out lazily on the bed beside him and purring agreeably, certainly seemed willing to try. But Horace couldn’t sleep. Instead he took the Fel’Daera from the pouch at his side—a small oval box about the size of his hand. He swung the lid slightly open, the two halves swiveling smoothly apart like wings, but he didn’t look inside. He hadn’t looked inside the box since the nest. Every day was the same anyway, especially without Chloe around. Why bother?
He closed the box, slipping it back into its pouch. From a small pool of marbles on his covers, he plucked out a shooter and dropped it into the thick fur on Loki’s flank. The cat didn’t stir. Horace kept going, seeing how many he could get to stay. With each new marble, he chanted softly to the cat: “Three little marbles on you. Four little marbles on you . . .” These were the sorts of mindless activities he busied himself with these days, keeping his brain distracted. He was up to eleven marbles when a sharp, familiar voice rang out.
“God, Horace, need a new hobby much?”
Loki leapt up, scattering the marbles. Chloe—Horace’s good friend Chloe, so brave and fierce and pretty and true—stood at the foot of the bed. She was tiny, but her presence was huge, her dark eyes as full of keen mischief as ever. Her black hair had grown out a little. The Alvalaithen, a bone-white pendant in the shape of a dragonfly, hung around her neck. Its wings were a blur, fluttering madly. Chloe grinned. “Sorry for not knocking,” she said.
Horace grinned back, reveling in the sight of her, the sound of her surly voice. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never knocked,” he said. “Why start now?”
The dragonfly’s wings went still. The Alvalaithen—the Earthwing—was the reason she never knocked, of course. She didn’t have to knock. When the dragonfly’s wings were moving, she was incorporeal, her body still visible but formless like a ghost. This was her talent. Going thin, she called it, and while she was thin she could walk through walls, through trees, through fire—through anything.
Chloe looked around the room, and up at the glowing, precisely plotted stars on Horace’s ceiling. She went to the window and bent down in front of the tiny message she’d written on the wall the very first time she’d come here.
Dear Horace,
I hope this doesn’t get you in trouble.
Your friend,
Chloe
She peered at it for a moment and then announced flatly, “Being here again makes me feel sentimental.”
Horace laughed. “I missed you too,” he said.
Chloe licked her thumb and rubbed at the word “trouble,” but it didn’t budge. She grunted, apparently satisfied.
Horace couldn’t help but notice her arm. Two wide, fresh scars slashed down her right forearm, one on the inside and one on the outside, running from wrist nearly to the elbow. Eight inches long, they were shaped like the flames of giant candles. She’d gotten these scars—far from her first, but possibly the worst—on the night of the rescue. She’d gone thin and plunged her arm into the mesmerizing green fire of the crucible, deep in the Riven’s nest. Extinguishing the crucible’s light had effectively destroyed the nest and freed her captive father, but these scars were the price. Mocha colored and smooth as ivory, they drew Horace’s gaze like the flame that had created them.
Chloe noticed and held out her arm, showing them off. “What do you think? I sort of like them.”
“They’re . . . kind of cool looking,” Horace said, surprising himself by admitting it. He’d been horrified the first time he’d seen any of her scars—the slashes in the hollow of her throat, the forest of textured skin that covered the bottom half of her legs. But these new scars were different—dark instead of light. Burns left by a flame that was not a flame.
“They’re good reminders,” said Chloe. “That was a heck of a night—or a night and a day . . . and another night, I guess. Have you recovered?”
“Probably not.”
“You had it the worst,” said Chloe.
Horace wasn’t sure how true that was, but it had certainly been bad—horrible, actually. Sometimes he woke up in the night thinking he was still trapped in the great iron boiler Dr. Jericho had locked him in, the lightless coffin where he’d spent nearly twenty-four hours. He’d spent that terrible day not only facing his crippling fear of small spaces, but also knowing that his escape depended on a future he alone had foreseen—the future he had promised to his friends, the same future they too had risked everything on.
Sometimes Horace still couldn’t believe it had all worked out. Yes, he was the Keeper of the Fel’Daera, the Box of Promises. And yes, he could see the future. By opening the box and looking through the blue glass bottom, he could see what was happening a single day forward in time. But there was no guarantee that the future the Box of Promises revealed would come to pass exactly as he had seen. Promises could be broken, after all. On that night, however, everything he’d seen through the box had come to pass, even when it seemed impossible. Inside the nest, he had sent Chloe’s dragonfly forward through time twenty-four hours—another power of the box—and she had been there to receive it, exactly as the box had foreseen. Thanks to the box, and with Gabriel’s help, they’d destroyed the crucible, freed Chloe’s father, and escaped from the terrible clutches of Dr. Jericho.
Chloe sank onto the bed, giving Loki a scritch and fussing with the marbles. Horace now noticed that the scar on the inside of her forearm reached all the way down into her palm, where it branched jaggedly, like a stubby winter tree. She sighed and said, “I feel a little bad. I snuck in past your mom just now. I wasn’t sure what you told her after the nest—how you explained being gone for so long. I thought maybe she might be blaming me.”
“No,” Horace said quickly, and found himself wanting to say more. But he had no idea where to begin. “No.”
&nbs
p; Chloe searched his face. “You okay? Everything going all right?”
“It’s cool,” Horace said. “Totally cool. I’ve been sleeping a lot.”
“Me too. My dad and I are still staying at the academy.” The Mazzoleni Academy was a boarding school downtown. Chloe and her father, Matthew, had been staying there ever since their house had been burned down by the Riven. Chloe wasn’t a student at the academy—and it was summer anyway—but the academy was more than it seemed. Deep beneath its walls lay the Warren, the secret underground headquarters of the Wardens.
“My dad and I have been playing a lot of chess,” Chloe continued. “I’m getting pretty good, so you better watch out.”
Horace nodded, expressionless. He and his mother had not played chess once since that night. “Your dad’s doing better, huh?”
“Much better. He’s like . . .” Chloe’s face glowed, and Horace understood. She had her father back again. “The only bad thing is, I haven’t seen Madeline much. She’s still staying with Aunt Lou.” Horace had only met Chloe’s little sister once, a girl with serious eyes and copper-colored hair, but he knew she and Chloe were very close. Chloe had practically raised her. Chloe’s mom was not in the picture, having abandoned her family when Chloe was little. She’d simply taken off one day, never to return. “Anyway,” Chloe continued, “what about your folks? How’s your mom?”
Horace shifted uneasily, knowing how much Chloe liked and trusted his mom. “They’re fine. My mom is . . . you know. She’s good. Fine. The same.”
Chloe peered at him suspiciously. “She’s good, fine, the same. Super convincing. Are you in trouble? Grounded or something? Whatever lie you told her about the nest, I’m guessing she didn’t believe you.”
But that was just it. He hadn’t lied. Unbelievably—unthinkably, even now—he hadn’t needed to lie. “Not grounded,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Fine,” Chloe repeatedly dubiously. “Well, that’s good news, Horace. Because you’ve got to come with me.”
Horace frowned. “Mr. Meister wants us?”
