by L. J. Hatton
Klok had been dissected. My sisters taken. Jermay, Winnie, and Birdie lost. None of this was real. It was my mind trying to cope.
And yet I could tell the others all saw what I was seeing. They heard what I was hearing. It had to be real.
“What are you guys doing in here?” Birch wandered in from the other room, oblivious. “I heard shouting, and then it sounded like clap—”
He saw the warden, too. He reversed his steps but stopped, torn between retreat and abandoning us to Nye. Birch turned pale, then green as the bright emerald of his eyes leached into his skin, turning it sickly sallow. Now he knew the answer to whether his foster father had survived, and he knew how he felt about it.
“You’re all looking well.”
That voice. That infuriating, uncrackable calm befitting a sociopath.
“That’s what happens when someone gets out of prison,” I said. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
He wasn’t wearing his uniform from the Center. Instead, he was dressed as he had been the first time I saw him on The Show grounds: regular clothes with barely a hint as to what he did for a living. Most people wouldn’t even notice the ankh on his shirt pocket, and if they did, they would have no reason to find it sinister. Wardens were helpers—public servants. All the official reports said so.
“Succinct as always,” Nye said. “One of the things I like best about you—no need for politics.”
Without moving my mouth, I called for Klok low in my throat. His hearing was far superior to that of a regular human; it didn’t take much to alert him. He flew out of the bedroom, planting himself between Nye and us.
“Leave!” he beeped. “Leave now!” Along with a few choice sounds he chose not to translate into readable text.
“Down, boy,” Nye said. “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
Klok didn’t accept that claim. He responded with a transcript of the orders Nye had given the white-coated technicians in charge of dissecting him.
“Argument must have been your father’s signature,” Nye said to me, unimpressed. “Iva was forever contradicting me. It’s a pity the two of them never met.”
They had, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Leave!” Klok beeped louder, in a higher pitch. He didn’t appreciate being talked about as if he didn’t understand.
The golems slunk through the room, stealthy quiet, with Xerxes stretched low to the floor. Bijou slithered across the ceiling, miming the motion he used to breathe fire, though he’d not been lit. Nye was only intimidated by Bijou when the dragon was full-sized, but he saw Xerxes the way I did, with that undefinable spark of Magnus Roma hidden inside him. I’d seen the man taunt Xerxes in my father’s place.
“Don’t you start with me, either,” he told Xerxes. “We both know you’re a doorstop with feathers when you’re out in public.”
Xerxes triggered his wings; Bijou hissed.
“I’m positively quaking.” Nye pegged both golems with an icy stare.
I’d found the best way to deal with ice was to melt it.
Klok put his hand behind his back and slid the panel over his palm to expose the blue spark inside. I stole it from his hand and passed it to Bijou. He fed it back to me as I stoked the tiny blue fleck into my phoenix.
“You’ve learned a new trick. Impressive,” Nye said. I thought he might start clapping again. “Do you have any others you’d like to share before you set off the fire-control responses? These shoes aren’t waterproof.”
“Just one.”
Our disappearing act.
Flame beat his wings, surging enough heat toward the warden to curl the wallpaper behind him.
“Quick! Through the next room!” I said.
“You could.” Nye raised his voice into a mocking lilt as he patted out a small fire on his sleeve. “But then we’d have to finish this conversation at your next stop. Would you like to tell me where you’re going, or should I wait and follow the bread crumbs? Either way works for me.”
It was entirely possible that he was lying, but as Jermay had said, too many coincidences had piled up too quickly. Nye wasn’t at this hotel and in this doorway by accident. Something had drawn him here, and if he had a way to find us, then we needed to know.
“I told you!” Jermay whirled on Birch. “I told you it was him!”
Birch started to panic, knowing there was no explanation that would calm Jermay down with the warden standing so close. Thorny vines bled down the walls. Strange plants sprouted out of the carpet, probably new species he’d found in Klok’s databases while he was searching out painkillers—and if they were, they’d be deadly.
“Close, but not quite,” the warden said. He helped himself to a seat in our armchair. “You’ve got a mole, but it’s not my prodigal son.”
“I’m not your son,” Birch snapped.
“Semantics.”
“Superior genes.”
Warden Nye smiled again. Out of place. Quizzically proud.
The chair beneath him turned to grass and collapsed.
“I’ve learned a few tricks, too,” Birch said.
“That you have, and bravo, but you’ve got the same flaw as poor Penelope. You pull your punches when you shouldn’t, and you overlook the obvious when it’s right in front of you. I thought you circus types were trained better than that.”
He twitched his head at Xerxes, then cut his eyes back to me, gloating while he brushed himself off.
“Xerxes?” I asked.
“Just so. I was surprised you didn’t find anything when you were working on the old boy. Did you really think I didn’t know what you were doing?”
He’d let me work on Xerxes at the Center, knowing I planned to use him to escape?
“Turnabout, as they say, is fair play. I may not have your father’s golden touch, but I do know how to install spyware. Unfortunately, I may have been lax in securing it. I wasn’t expecting it to ever be in use outside my facility.”
“That’s how you’ve been tracking us?” Jermay asked. “Xerxes?”
“Me and a few others—call it a scavenger hunt. Penelope put on quite the show when you made your daring escape. That sort of thing doesn’t go unnoticed. You’re all on several acquisition lists . . . even you,” he told Jermay. “But the Celestine is the grand prize.”
“Is it possible?” I asked Klok, choosing to ignore Nye’s attempt to unsettle us. Having the Commission on our tails was nothing new.
“I checked for implanted tracking devices, not errant code. It’s possible.”
“Check him again.”
Klok knelt in front of Xerxes and cupped his hands around the gryphon’s throat. A distinct blue light shined out of his palms, signaling a scan. Xerxes fidgeted but couldn’t twist himself free.
“Someone has rewritten the golem’s base code, affecting his behavior. I thought the issue was technological. This is why I couldn’t repair it. I’m sorry.” He gave me a sad face. “I have disabled the code. The golem will no longer broadcast his location.”
I wanted to throw something, preferably at Nye. Preferably something that would knock him through the nearest window so I could see for myself if he was immune to the fall. It was his fault we had nowhere to hide. I must have been right about the Hollow blocking the signals while were underground. They were blocked again by the Harts and Palms with its Death Valley countermeasures. But on the Mile, Xerxes had been able to broadcast clearly, without interruption. Just like he was here.
“You’re the first one here, so you win the scavenger hunt, is that it?” I asked.
“Hardly. If I’d intended to bring you in, I wouldn’t be here alone. I came to give you a chance. This is the first time I’ve managed to make it to you before one of the others. And now that the trace has been disabled, the ones watching it will close in quickly, hoping to claim victory. I’d leave now, if I were you, and I wouldn’t exit at street level.”
The biggest problem with Warden Nye was his rationality. He kept a tig
ht lid on his emotions most of the time, and he could make nearly anything sound plausible by exploiting the calm in his voice. He never gave opinions—opinion implied passion and belief. He stated facts, even if they were fabricated.
We all knew that it wasn’t in character for the man to help, but we also knew how vehemently wardens could oppose one another. He could be here to spite a rival, and was most likely planning to take us into custody himself, no matter what he said.
“How do we know?” Birch asked. “How do we know you didn’t get sacked for losing the Center? Anyone can iron a Commission patch onto a shirt. Maybe they took your command along with your uniform, and you want to make them suffer by stealing Penn away.”
“That uniform is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, along with the command and everything else that fell with the Center. Or, to put it officially, that uniform never existed because there was no facility for it to exist within. I’ve been reassigned for the time being; my current position comes with a more casual dress code.”
He must have been placed in a public ground facility where the military look would cause too many questions. Polos and slacks made wardens look like grocery-store greeters or country-club dads waiting for a tee time.
“Arcineaux’s not on the bottom of the ocean,” Winnie broke in. “We saw him walking on dry land a week ago. Explain that, since I know for a fact I killed him.”
A subtle threat lay buried in her words. She wasn’t afraid to admit what she’d done, because she could do it again if she had to, and she wanted Nye to know that.
“That’s too long a story for the amount of time you have remaining to decide. Perhaps you should put it to a vote.”
Whether or not he was serious about others in the Commission coming to find us, our position had been compromised; leaving was the only option we had. Warden Nye made no move to follow us. He settled himself in to wait for whoever showed up after we were gone.
“Go on,” I instructed the others. “Fast as you can without drawing attention. Find a door with roof access, and we’ll leave that way.”
They hustled to other rooms in the suite to grab their things before heading out the main door. I went last, guarding the others just in case.
“Don’t think this is a favor,” I warned Nye. I refused to put myself into his debt, because we both knew I’d cave and pay him back if he called in the marker. Just like my father.
“Althea Dodge.” He timed the words so that I heard them at the exact moment I would have crossed the threshold. This was his favorite game, and like an idiot, I was playing by his rules. I turned around.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?” I asked.
“The favor you don’t owe me. Let’s just say it’s a name your sister Nimue should be used to hearing. Look her up. She’s not hard to find.”
I knew this trick. He’d toss out a tempting piece of bait, hoping to pull me into a confrontation or debate so I wouldn’t leave and he’d have the advantage in the next round. He wanted to make me angry, because experience told him that emotion left me flustered and sloppy. He thought I’d be easier to break.
I’d been running through one fire after another since the Center fell. Constant pressure had compacted and hardened the facets of my personality. I may have looked like the same weak teenager he’d manipulated before, but I was gemstone underneath, and I could show him what I was made of.
He’d already seen Flame, so maybe a bigger gesture was necessary.
Thanks to Nye, I knew how the mechanisms in his hands worked. I’d seen my father’s calculations. I knew how little it would take to overload them to the point that they would lock. I wouldn’t leave him helpless, but I could certainly give him a scare.
I sensed power lying dormant in the hotel’s walls. Wires and conduits, junctions and circuits all hidden away. Vibrating strings of a harp waiting to be played. I plucked one, and my body caught the tone.
Everything was a matter of harmony. Highs had to match the lows so that they flowed together. Conflicting currents could be coaxed and woven into cooperative patterns. I strummed another string and another in as little time as it took to think about getting it done.
Ebb and flow. Rise and fall. Energy never stopped moving so long as it had a clear path to travel. It drifted from the walls toward my fingers, where it dissipated like the fizzled smoke of a dud firework. The connection suddenly severed.
“No!” I spat, more tantrum than indignation.
“That’s happening a lot, is it?” Nye asked, prodding my temper in a more direct way now that he believed himself immune to it. “I’m assuming dear Magnus didn’t prepare you for that, either. Would you like to know what’s causing it?”
I shrieked. I growled. I made the kind of scene little girls make when they don’t get their way, determined to force my touch to reignite.
“You’re better than that,” Nye tsked. “And you’re running out of time. Perhaps you should pack up your toys and go home, since you’re in no condition to play with the big kids.”
“I don’t have a home!” I wailed. He’d succeeded in kindling my fury, but it wasn’t an advantage for either of us. I tried to rip the electricity off the lines to throw it at him all at once.
Those vibrating strings inside the walls began to thrum, all of them in conflict. All of them off pitch. The paint blackened where sparks spit from every socket plate at once. Light bulbs flickered, then exploded. The television came on and spun from one channel to the next in a whining blur.
I couldn’t stop it.
Sparks caught the couch and carpets. They raced up the draperies and across the tops of the windows. I was back in the Hollow, back in the train, unable to stop the burning.
Nye reached out and thumped me on the nose, exactly like Anise would have. It was an automatic, familiar, and very personal gesture that filled me with more dread than a dozen fully loaded Commission transports would have. Studying my act was one thing, but that was a secret off-switch for my temper that even my other sisters didn’t know.
The fires hiccupped, then raged back to life, bolstered by a sudden need to protect myself from being overexposed.
“Penn, what’s taking so—” Jermay choked on the question. He and Winnie had come back to find me.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I didn’t mean it,” I said. “I can’t pull it back!”
I couldn’t keep the monsters in their box. They fooled me, hiding in my own anger and using it to escape.
“Go!” Nye shoved me toward the door. The room’s sprinklers activated. “All of you, go!”
I was off-balance and stumbling, too horrified by what I’d done to stand straight. I ran toward the door and bounced myself off the frame. Winnie and Jermay pulled me the rest of the way, so that we bounded for the stairs together, only stalling long enough to pull the fire alarm beside the roof-access door.
Up we went and over the adjacent buildings. The flames tunneled into other units, visible through open windows. People spilled into the streets. Sirens started in the distance, soon to streak past on trucks with whirling lights.
“What were you thinking?” Jermay asked once we’d gone a block or two. “I mean, it’s definitely a distraction, but . . . what were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t! I was trying to short out Nye’s hands, and, well . . . BOOM!”
I’d set a building on fire. I’d committed a crime. I could have killed a hundred people who had nothing to do with me.
When we met up with Klok and Birch, Klok picked me up in a rib-bruising hug, shaking me slightly so that my legs swung.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I promise.”
He put me down and smacked me in the forehead with his palm.
“For being reckless with no exit strategy,” he typed.
“Okay. It happened, and we can’t do anything about it,” Winnie said. “All we can do is go from here. Where to?”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s got Wi-Fi,�
� I said.
I needed to run a search for Althea Dodge, and I needed to do it somewhere Nye had no authority.
CHAPTER 24
We couldn’t stay in another hotel. The Commission would be watching all of them for the next fifty miles, and so would Nye. There were no unlocked churches with confession closets for us to use as cover, and no helpful ferrymen masquerading as madams to direct us to safety. We did, however, have Birch, and he found us a rooftop garden above the public library where someone had begun building a greenhouse. The roof door also had a very cheap lock that was easy to break.
I was able to get inside and use one of the public computer terminals to look up the name Althea Dodge. She was one of the female wardens who had come to dinner at Nye’s Center. A potato-faced woman with shrewd, heavy eyes, she had to be the one I’d later heard divvying up my sisters among her peers. There were only two women there that night, and I knew what the other one looked and sounded like because she was the one who’d wanted to see me perform a trick.
Dodge had an exemplary public record by Commission reckoning, though she had barely any contact with the public at all. And she’d just gotten herself a promotion. No details provided, meaning it was the sort of post that couldn’t be mentioned online.
She had Nim, and I needed to know where that post was to find her. Warden Nye knew me well enough to be certain that pointing me toward Dodge would keep me on her trail, even if he would be right behind me, step for step. Unless I chose to continue on the path that led to Cyril Bledsoe.
How could I prioritize my father versus my sister? Which mission had the greater chance of success? Who needed me more?
If I followed Nye’s bread crumbs and they led me into a trap, I wouldn’t be able to help anyone. And if I put off finding Cyril, I risked losing my best shot at speaking to him, which meant I’d lose my best opportunity to find out what had really happened to my father. It killed me, but I put Nim aside and swore to myself it wasn’t because she’d never missed a chance to be awful to me.
