Chapter Twenty-Five
“I suppose it can’t be helped,” our mother says sourly as she pens yet another hand-written invitation. We are at breakfast, one big happy family, although their new best friend, Resnikov, is oddly absent from the table. Usually he doesn’t miss an opportunity to look good in front of our father by lavishing attention on us.
“Certainly it can,” says our father. He puts down his NewsFeed and grabs at the leather gloves sitting beside his plate like shiny black beetles.
Our mother casts a shrewd glance. “Just the other day Betts told me that the families are beginning to take a real shine to him. He’s been invited everywhere. Not to invite him will cause a stir.”
“We decide who is invited everywhere.”
“Yes, dear, but we already invited him in, haven’t we?”
Margot and I watch the fine verbal volleying between our parents and we trade signals, placing bets on who will win. Our usual vote would be our father. But in the case of social standing and etiquette, our mother is the cage match victor. Death or Society.
Our father glares. “We can just as easily rescind his standing.”
“Yes, Lukas, but not without people talking. He’s one of the wealthiest men in Dominion now, if not the State. Clearly a good businessman. And you put the security of your own daughters in his hands. If you back off now…I hesitate to say it but people might start to question our good judgment.”
Our father tightens his grip on a glove as the rest of us hold our breath. Under the silence is the wooden ticking of the clock in the hall. Each ticking second sounds like a mini-explosion. “Fine,” he says grudgingly, and we all remember to breathe.
Margot pinches her thigh under the table and rubs a circle there. Small victories. Storm will be invited to the Reveal. I flash her a quick grin. “Will Robbie Deakins and his parents be coming? We’re particularly concerned that someone our own age comes, as well,” she pipes up.
Our father curses under his breath. “That social-climbing monkey?”
“Father,” Margot scolds as our mother’s sharp voice rings out, “Lukas. Henry Deakins has been a true friend to us. Robbie and the girls have practically grown up together.” She stares at our father pointedly. “They’re on the list.”
Our father grabs his gloves and whips them across his palm once, twice, as he gets up from the table. “Girls,” he says. His smile is terrifying. “Your escort for the party will be Leo Resnikov. Everyone else will have to check with him before speaking to you or dancing with you.”
Margot gasps as our mother shoots our father an annoyed look. “Such a kind way of breaking it to them.”
“This has nothing to do with kindness. This is duty.” Our father leans over the table. “And they will do theirs,” he seethes and sails off for the day.
We wait until he’s out of earshot. “Mother?” Margot asks, trying to mask the rising note of panic in her voice. “What is he talking about?”
Our mother spans a hand across her pearls, holding them as though they have severed her neck. She hesitates, not at all like her, and won’t meet our eyes. “I didn’t want you to have to find out like that. But, your duty to your family requires that you show Mr. Resnikov a great deal of respect and favor. You will both be considered under escort by him.”
Margot gasps, her face turning an ugly shade of purple. Rage boils under her skin. “Our Reveal is going to be about some random business deal? We’re not your whores, Mother.”
A slap rings out. I reckon several seconds tick by before either Margot or I are lucid enough to comprehend what has happened. My flesh throbs, hot and stinging.
Patches of red dot our mother’s high cheekbones, too, as though she’s the one who’s been slapped. “You’ll keep your panties on until we advise you otherwise,” she seethes before turning on her heel and leaving.
“You all right?” I ask Margot. She stares back at me in wordless horror.
I stand up on shaky legs and move over to the small, OldTime mirror adorning the wall leading to the hallway. One of my cheeks is deathly pale. The other carries the livid red imprint of our mother’s hand.
I catch Margot’s reflection entering the mirror. Our eyes meet. Slowly, she puts a hand to her cheek, where I can feel the throbbing skin, where the mark should be.
But isn’t.
...
Margot meets me at the great wooden doors of the academy, and we stroll outside to wait for our ride. Outside there isn’t a single Laster, as though the streets have been swept clear. Shane steps forward as we come down the stairs of the school. He’s wearing a new white shirt with a round of ammo clipped around him, like a beauty pageant sash, looking as ugly as it comes: the nose that has been smashed and rebuilt so it tilts slightly left. A scar the length of an orange rind kisses the skin beneath his ear, like a kid’s drawing of a moon.
He glowers at us and nods before turning toward the street and completing his sweep. Other bodyguards flank the steps to perform the same task. He told us once that the Personals, as they’re known, look out for one another’s charges.
But they are staring out at nothing. The streets are empty and gray, charged with an eerie silence. “Where is everyone?” Margot asks, taking the words right out of my mouth.
Shane shakes his head. “Streets have got too quiet since the last attack.” He opens the door of the OldTime car and we slide onto the hard leather seats. He shuts us in, glaring about uneasily, before climbing in front and starting the car, muttering something ungentlemanly under his breath.
“What do you mean?” I press. “You mean they’re just all gone? All the Lasters have vanished?”
“Doubt it,” he answers wryly. “Probably just gone away to a preacher jamboree.” My skin shivers at the thought. “They’re around here somewhere,” he continues. Just not here. The words remain unspoken but it’s clear as day. Downtown Dominion has been abandoned.
“Why do you say that?”
He nods in the direction we’re driving. “That new tree that’s sprung up in Emerson Square. Some folks a’been leavin’ ribbons and such on it through the night. Putting up string cans. Scares the bejeezus out of the coons when they bang together.”
Beside me, Margot’s breath hitches, and I feel something like heat emanating from my sister. “Why would someone do that?”
“Not just a someone. Loads of someones, I reckon.”
“Can we go by it, Shane? Please?” Margot begs.
Shane grumbles but turns on his signal light. “There might not be anything to see,” he warns. “The Staters have been pulling stuff down as fast as it goes up,” he says, using the slang the mercs use to indicate the local policing force. From the way the mercs talk, we’ve gathered that the “Staters” are about one step up from pet rocks.
“Why?” I ask.
“’Cause they’re trying to figure out how to tear down the entire tree. But it all goes back up again the next night.”
We hear it well before we see it: tinny, hollow clapping that sounds a bit like the bells they ring when two Splicers marry. The tree has grown since the magic bombs were lobbed. At first we can’t see the top. The entire corner is dwarfed by the massive tree, rising at least five stories and eating up the entire width of the major intersection. But it’s much as Shane has described: the lowest branches are hung with tin cans dangling on strings, ropes of paper, colorful strings like a child’s version of a Christmas tree. A breeze kicks up and the cans knock and bang together, a symphony of bones.
Margot points to the paper strips that hang in thick icicles. “What are those?”
Shane stops the car. There’s nowhere to go under the shadow of the enormous tree. “Messages, I guess.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Prayers to get well. Prayers not to get sick.” He rubs a hand down a stubbled jaw.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a spot left of the tree. Shane doesn’t answer, but it’s just as well. I know what it is. I ju
st don’t want it to be true. We stare at one of the enormous blond stone office buildings, abandoned for years now. But on the side of the building someone has drawn two red circles, conjoined in the middle. The red paint sprawls twenty feet across, maybe ten feet high. A figure huddles underneath, knees drawn, hood pulled over his features.
As we stop, he looks up. The hood slips off, revealing the bony face of Father Wes’s boy. His boyish face has grown harder still, if that’s possible—or maybe it’s the dirt that makes it seem that way. He stares at the car as though he can see through the tinted windows before slowly, deliberately, rising to his feet. He makes some sort of gesture with his hands, interweaving his fingers until they are two circles, joined in the middle.
“We need to get out of here, Shane. Now.” I pluck at Shane’s shirt.
Shane doesn’t ask questions. He turns the ignition, and the car jumps to life. He guns the Mercedes backward, swerving into a lane before righting the car forward and hitting the gas. Still, the shadow from the massive tree swallows us for a good long time until we break free. The boy’s eyes haunt me for a long spell to come.
...
It’s hard to reconcile miraculous trees and True Borns with the mundane horror of dress fitting. I pose beside my sister in the sewing room of Madame Elise’s, stuck with so many pins we’re life-size voodoo dolls. It’s our final fitting before the big Reveal, just three days away. Our mother has become progressively grim.
She’s overseen every tiny detail of the event with the martial air of a true military mind. Cocktails at six, followed by a formal dinner at seven. At nine-thirty the ball will begin with our presentation. The Reveal will be at midnight, saving the best for last. Special, embossed invitations only. Of all Dominion’s elite, only one hundred families received the cream linen invitation. We thought the pressure was bad at school—our mother has been fending off attacks from her so-called friends who would do just about anything to wrangle a golden ticket to our party.
Make that Resnikov’s party.
“You’re about to become women.” She stares fondly at us in our party frocks, as though we are pieces of jewelry she can price at a glance. Our dresses are similar but not matching: Margot will wear a fitted emerald green sheath, sweeping to the floor. I will be in a sleeveless pale violet dress with a sweetheart neck, cinched at the waist and belling out to the floor in a grand sweep. I wonder what Jared would say if he could see me in this dress, then erase the thought as quickly as I can. I can’t afford to think about him, I remind myself, though he’s been popping into my head for days.
I wonder how anyone enjoys this primping, all just to hear whether you’ll live or die. Even though we’re luckier than most—at this point it seems unlikely to be a death sentence we’ll hear—dressing for the occasion feels like wrapping yourself in a winding sheet for burial. Oblivious, our mother fiddles with the buttons running about two inches up my back. “A bit tighter here,” she tells Elise. The woman nods a mouth full of pins at our mother. “You’re lucky, you know,” she continues, sounding almost wistful.
“Yes, Mother, we know,” Margot replies. Our mother’s eyes flash at the hint of rebellion in her tone.
“You are,” she repeats. Her hands snag the back of Margot’s hair, twisting it into a severe chignon. “Maybe something like this,” she murmurs, more to herself than us.
After all, what does it matter what we want? We have not been consulted in anything: not the dresses, nor the guest list. Not even the menu. We have been, as always, relegated to the sidelines like two chess pieces that will adorn a game table.
“It’s a big deal, the moment your future is Revealed.”
“What was your Reveal like, Mother?” I ask, trying to deflect attention away from Margot.
Our mother’s elegant, cold eyes meet her own reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Her full lips purse, making her cheekbones into hollows. “It was different in my day,” she says coyly. She stares at her reflection a beat longer before staking her eyes on my exquisitely tailored gown.
“How so?”
“For one thing, I didn’t have Russian counts courting me.”
“Is that what he’s doing? Courting us?”
“He’s an old man,” Margot raises her voice.
“He’s not an old man,” our mother fusses. “Should either of you have the opportunity to catch his eye, you’d be lucky. And what if you get the opportunity to go to Russia with him? Think of the opportunity,” she repeats, her face tight.
“Mother,” I say patiently, “we’re not going to Russia.”
“You might be,” she snaps back. Margot recoils. My stomach drops.
And in that moment I have the proof that our father and mother have cooked something up with Resnikov. They are—there’s no better word for it—selling us. One by one? Or have we been sold as a set?
I pour all the sugar I can into my next words. “Mother, people have been asking but I have no idea… What is Mr. Resnikov’s business?”
“Oh”—she waves a vague hand—“he’s a business man.”
“What kind of business?”
“A dabbler, if I remember correctly. He has a lot of land, obviously, so he’s into lumber. And pharmaceuticals, I think.”
Pharmaceuticals? I arch an eyebrow at Margot. She slides two fingers across the inner skin of her wrist as I watch. Us, she means. This has something to do with us, specifically. The Protocols. Our blood. Our DNA.
I try to mask the horror I feel, also shared from Margot to me, as we stare back at our mother. We need Dorian Raines. We need Storm. We need that witch.
I need Jared, I think desperately.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Margot stares moodily out at the sky through her bedroom window. It’s full light at half past eight in the morning, but not so you can tell. The air is heavy and thick, like curdling cream, as the sky turns the greenish black of a bruise. For the past two days the NewsFeed has been blaring warnings of a massive Flux storm headed our way. Looks like it will hit today of all days, the day of our party.
Extra mercs have been arriving for the past two days and have been busy setting up a secure perimeter. Through Shane we hear our father even broke down and solicited Storm’s advice on new security measures. Now I can almost hear the boots thudding overhead as the bought soldiers pace back and forth on their rounds. Our front gate has become as difficult to cross as the border between here and Europe. Two hold shotguns at the ready while a third checks the credentials of the man driving the delivery van and runs his thumb print through the human signature machine.
Shane also told us, much as he no doubt wishes he hadn’t, that there have been rumors. Rumor is, the Lasters are planning something against Dominion’s government although details have been vague on exactly what. Protest? Attack? There hasn’t been a full-scale attack on the government since the first wave of the Plague when our parents were children. The government retaliated by instituting martial law, which hasn’t been lifted since.
But by far, the Flux storm is the biggest concern. They’re predictable only in their unpredictability, these harsh-weather storms. They must have started before the Plague, but if they did, nobody cares. Now they are just another sign of our broken world, along with the omnipresent gray-white sky and the empty buildings, silent streets.
The last Flux storm ripped up the entire eastern tip of the city, demolished it with a mighty swipe of a funnel before dipping over the lake and drinking up the water, only to turn around and dump it on the still-smoking city. Lasters caught in the massive electrical fires drowned in seconds. The smell of charred and bloated flesh hung over the city for months afterward.
I rest my chin on Margot’s shoulder and squeeze her round the waist. “I reckon it will be nasty.”
“The storm? Yes, I bet,” Margot replies, distracted.
She’s been this way since the final fitting: lost in some dark train of thought I can’t follow. “Are you all right?” I sigh against her
neck and immediately feel the tickly shiver on my own.
Margot turns on me. “Stop asking me that, okay?”
“Mar, I just—”
“I know you’re just looking out for me, Lu. But I’m fine, okay? I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Mar, wait,” I call after her as she disappears into the bathroom. When she re-emerges, her hair is a shiny mass that floats over her shoulders. Her face is scrubbed clean and pink. And she’s donned a fancy pink-and-white-striped frock for breakfast.
“Think of this as the Last Supper,” she says, striking a glamour pose.
I giggle helplessly. “You look too good,” I tell her. “Resnikov won’t leave you alone.”
Something dark creeps along my sister’s face. “Yes, well. I always wanted to see Russia.”
“Don’t even.” I snort.
“Do they have a two-wife policy in Russia? We could marry him together.” She grins.
I burst out laughing. I laugh until my sides ache. “Please, stop.” But Margot has already sobered. Her eyes trail out the window again, and she moves toward it as if magnetically drawn.
“Do you think they’ll find her? The witch?”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “Does it matter now? We have so much else to worry about.”
“I don’t know.” Margot bites her lip as she turns back to me. “You know, it’s nothing like I expected today to be.”
The wrenching fear we’d been living with as we went through round after round of Protocols is gone. But along with that fear, our sense of certainty has also leaked away. If we’re not Lasters, or even Splicers, what will we be? What will our parents announce tonight in front of their special guests?
“We need to think of the end game,” I tell my sister. “They want us to go with Resnikov, so what will they tell us and the Circle?”
“That’s so calculating.” Margot frowns.
“So are they.”
Margot nods, but I can feel her unhappiness stretching between us. Her beautiful eyes, mirrors of my soul, stare into me. “If I were them, I’d tell the world we’re Lasters and send us away on one last trip. That way he gets both of us.”
True Born Page 22
