by L. J. Hatton
“What is it?” I asked. “If it’s the flowers, forget them. I don’t take any of Nye’s gestures seriously. Just leave them with the golems; Bijou likes to eat these cards, and Xerxes will make confetti out of the carnations.”
“Actually, I’m more concerned about the boy than the flowers. How long has he been with you?”
“Birch? A couple of months. He escaped from Nye’s Center with us, but you don’t have to worry about him, either.”
“Not him. The other one.”
“You mean the boy I asked about in the detainment area?”
His expression was puzzling now, like there was something simple I was missing. Maybe he’d somehow gotten news of the boy who brought Arcineaux back from my nightmares.
“I know he’s dangerous,” I told him, “but—”
“No,” Nagendra said. “Just listen for a minute. Winnie told me about the Centers and the Mile. She told me about the Hollow—how you found a grave.”
“We found Zavel’s top hat on the stones,” I said. He was obviously trying to lead me somewhere, but I couldn’t read the signs. “Jermay was devastated.”
“Penn, did Jermay tell you he made it to the Hollow before he was caught?”
“He was taken on the road with Winnie and Klok.”
He’d slipped through the rabbit hole that we’d hoped would take us both away from Nye and his men, but he and the others hadn’t made it far enough away.
Nagendra shook his head. “Jermay was taken at the Hollow with us. Rabbit holes are fickle unless you really know what you’re doing. Klok’s mass made his fall short. Winnie was carrying a passenger, which screwed up the calibration. Jermay was the only one whose device worked correctly. It took him to the road near the woods, but he got lost looking for the house. We’d sent most everyone on, but Zavel, Bruno, and I were waiting for stragglers; we found him.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay would have told me.”
He would have said it wasn’t safe to go back to the Hollow because it had already been raided.
“It wasn’t a full incursion, but there was a fight. Jermay fought, mainly to protect his father, and he fought hard. Zavel left his hat behind as a memorial, then he went with Bruno. I’m sorry, honey.” He reached out and patted my hand where it rested on the comforter.
Nagendra had never once in my entire life called me “honey,” even when I was a little girl. He’d called me plenty of other things, most of which strangers would be horrified to hear, but he didn’t use common endearments. He said they rang false.
“What are you saying?” I asked. “It wasn’t a grave?”
“It was.”
“But if Zavel left alive—”
“Penn, honey, we didn’t bury Zavel. We buried Jermay.”
I pulled my hand out from under Nagendra’s.
“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay was in Nye’s prison. I rescued him.”
Whoever they had buried had to be a pretender. Someone like Beryl or Greyor who could change his face at will. The Commission had sent someone to infiltrate the Hollow using the form of the one person who wouldn’t be expected to display any special ability beyond a few magic tricks.
“Zavel knew his own son,” Nagendra argued. “Whoever Warden Nye put into that cell, it wasn’t Jermay Baán. Nye’s tricky, and he’s smart. He could have—”
“No!” I snapped. “You’re wrong.”
Zavel knew his son, but I did, too. I grew up with him. I’d memorized his face and his movements. I knew the back of his hands like the back of my own, and I knew that the boy who’d been held at the Center was my Jermay because my Jermay was still alive. My Jermay had been grieving the loss of his father and fighting the desire to blame Birch for all of Nye’s crimes, because Birch was the only one he could reach. My Jermay was running down the hall of our hotel, celebrating because we’d reclaimed part of our family and he was finally secure enough to relax and act like a kid.
That was what my voice told me, but then I heard Winnie’s voice, so loud and so persuasive in my memory, reminding me that Nafiza’s words were never wrong. That even if she couldn’t interpret what she saw, she couldn’t stop it, and it always came to pass. Winnie was present at the end of the Mile, just like Nafiza had seen. Anise fell, because stones couldn’t fly. And there was a false heart, ready to betray. She’d spoken those words to me and repeated them to Jermay.
Why us if there wasn’t a reason?
Why hadn’t Klok told the others the truth of who he was? We could trust each other with our lives, so what made him hesitate?
“Everything okay?” Jermay asked, poking his head in the door as he ran by.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just a little off.”
“It’ll pass,” he said, and flashed me a lopsided smile before answering Winnie’s call to arms from the next room.
It was almost exactly the smile I remembered greeting me from the wings or the stage when we’d cross between acts.
Almost.
Not quite.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. J. Hatton is a Texan, born and raised. She sometimes refers to the towns she’s lived in by the movies filmed in them, and if she wasn’t working as a professional pretender, she’d likely be holed up in a lab somewhere doing genetics research.
