Suddenly, something odd, almost eerie caught my eye. A man—an old, wrinkled, elderly man, staring right at me from several yards away. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I went back to filling the second cup with sauce, but when I glanced up again, the man’s eyes were still in the exact same place. His entire body hadn’t moved even a millimeter.
I thought maybe he was just old and stuck in a wandering thought, but then he lifted his arm and pointed right at me. A hustle of people moved around us, but they were nothing but a blur. All of the man’s focus was centered directly on me without anyone else seeming to notice at all. He moved his finger away from my direction and pointed at something to his side that I couldn’t see, something inside a sales booth surrounded on all sides by thick fabric walls.
The strangest curiosity grew inside me, almost like I was being summoned, and my feet started to wander forward toward the man and the sales booth where he stood. When he saw me coming towards him, the elderly man nodded in my direction and disappeared around the corner.
When I lost sight of him, I started moving faster, feeling worried that I wouldn’t be able to find him, or the message he was trying to deliver. I finally reached the booth where the man had been standing, but stopped when I turned the corner to go inside. There he was, waiting for me. The booth was filled with black and white sketches and pencil drawings, every single one of them a portrait of the same face over and over again, a girl’s face. It almost looked like…my face.
The man took one of the smaller sketches in his hand and held it out toward me. “It’s you…” he finally wheezed. “Aurora.” A strange, bewildered gleam shone through his eyes as he said the word again. “Aurora.”
I shook my head in a panic. What was this? Why did I even follow the man here?
The man shuffled forward and grabbed my arm with shaky fingers, staring down at my wrist. “The mark with no end holds the key to the source,” he said in an almost worshipful tone. “The Aurora will harmonize the spheres.”
It was like Rayne’s delusional grandmother all over again, but only weirder and scarier. I pulled my arm away and stumbled backward.
“Aurora,” the man said, following after me, “Aurora…”
“No, I’m Sadie,” I cried out. “Not Aurora, Sadie…”
The old man shoved the sketch of the girl into my hand. “You must protect the key,” he continued urgently. “Harmonize the spheres, or all is lost.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, pulling anxiously away.
I turned my back quickly and pushed myself through the crowd of people, searching every face to find Jax. I had to find Jax. But I was disoriented, unable to remember which direction I had come from in the first place.
I spotted the food stand where we had waited in line, and for a moment I thought I could breathe. But as soon as I took another step forward, there was a man standing in front of me, blocking my path. It wasn’t the old man from before; it was a bigger, younger, stronger man, with a look of terrible gratification on his face. I tried to slip past him, but he shifted deliberately in my way.
“Sadie is it?” he said, clenching his grip around my elbow. The man looked at me with a diabolical smile. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”
10. ASH GETS A CELL MATE
A loud clank down the hall and the rustling of boots along the concrete dragged Ash away from his miserable sleep. It was probably sometime in the middle of the afternoon, but Ash didn’t care. He would sleep twenty-four hours a day if he could. In fact, he might as well sleep for the next two hundred years. He would do just about anything to escape the pain, anything to erase himself from the face of the planet, so he wouldn’t have to feel anymore. The more time he spent in unconscious oblivion the better.
Ash was nothing now, a ghost, an empty shell, a worthless piece of dirt.
He dragged his body upright unwillingly on the stiff prison bed, waiting to see who was coming down the concrete hallway to interrupt his self-pity. It had only been an hour or two since they cleared away his lunch tray, so it wasn’t food. He hoped they weren’t coming to force him outside for exercise again. He didn’t care about the sunlight anymore.
As the shuffle of feet grew closer, Ash could hear an extra set of footsteps. It still wasn’t enough to motivate him to stand. He did peer out of the corner of his eye to watch, though. The guard entered the dark basement room with another prisoner in his grasp, pushing the man forward toward the short line of metal cells, and when the dim light finally hit the man’s face, a flash of suppressed pain jolted back to the surface. The prisoner was Rayne.
Ash couldn’t bring himself to stand. Maybe it was the shame or the regret or even anger that held him back. All he could do was stare. Rayne eyed Ash right back with a steady stream of loathing as the guard escorted him right into the very next cell.
Now Ash couldn’t hide. He wished there were thicker walls to separate them, but all that stood between him and a big fat constant reminder of his guilt was a grid of open, iron bars, leaving Rayne the opportunity to glare at him all day and night.
Of course. Out of all the people in Banya…Rayne would be the one to walk through those doors. Suddenly, the irony of his new cellmate drove Ash to come apart at the hinges. A roar of deranged laughter burst from his gut at the sheer absurdity of it all. It was too perfect, exactly what he should have expected. The purpose of Ash’s life was obviously to endure torture, and now Rayne was there to make sure he got what he deserved.
Rayne glared back at him more fervently now, like steam rising up from the blood boiling through his veins.
“You don’t know how much I wish I had a camera right now,” Ash finally said, as his laughter shriveled to dry humor. He sunk back to the bed and leaned against the wall. “If there’s one thing I never thought I’d live to see, it’s Banya’s little sweetheart, come to join the heathens at the bottom of the sludge pit.”
Rayne turned his back and leaned forward, resting his arms through the gaps in the dark iron bars. “Just save it, Ash. The only reason I’m here, is because the Ambassador is stuck back in California trying to clean up the mess you created. As soon as he’s back, I’ll be walking out those doors, leaving you behind to wallow in your misery.”
Ash responded by laughing once under his breath.
“What?” Rayne demanded.
“Good idea,” Ash mocked. “You just go ahead and keep telling yourself that.”
Rayne turned his glare back in Ash’s direction. “I’ve been working with Hamlin for over ten years. I have no reason to doubt that he’ll come through for me.”
“You can believe what you want,” Ash said with a shrug, “but Hamlin’s got a lot at stake here. In the end…he’s going to do what’s best for him, not you. That’s just the way it is. People only care about themselves.”
“You know…” Rayne said. “It’s kind of sad…”
Ash folded his arms, trying to appear disinterested. “What is?”
“How pathetic you’ve become.”
Ash clenched his teeth. “I’m the pathetic one? I bet if Hamlin asked you straight out to take the fall for his mistakes, even if it meant spending the rest of your life in prison, you would do it without hesitation.”
“So what if I would?” Rayne challenged. “There’s a little something I like to call loyalty, Ash, something your little pea brain can’t seem to comprehend. Maybe you should try it sometime.”
Ash was too affected to answer, too angry, especially at himself.
“I mean, did our friendship ever mean anything to you?” Rayne went on. “I just…I can’t for the life of me figure out how you could agree to go along with your father’s sadistic scheming for even a minute. You knew what he was capable of. How could you drag Sadie and Leena into that?”
Ash closed his eyes, trying to shut out the truth, unable to allow Rayne the satisfaction of knowing he was right. He moved off the bed and came to the corner of his cell, moving so close to Rayn
e’s side that he could whisper through the gaps in the metal bars. “It’s almost painful to see how naïve you are, Rayne. You sit here and preach about loyalty, when you have absolutely no idea how in over your head you are. If you understood what you were really up against, you’d realize that there’s no point to any of this. You need to give Hamlin up and get out while you still can.”
Rayne’s face turned slowly as he shook his head. “Why am I not even a little surprised to hear you say that…”
Ash couldn’t help it; he had to look away. “You’re just going to have to accept it, Rayne,” he said, turning to retreat to the bed. “We can’t all be superheroes like you.”
11. ENCOUNTER
My feet hobbled up the stone steps, struggling to keep up, as the man dragged me toward the massive entrance of the Court of Ambassadors. My wrists ached where the cold metal handcuffs dug into my skin. I could feel Rayne’s phone buzzing in my pocket, over and over again. I wondered if Jax was trying to call me. My head jerked back to search the crowd behind me, hoping to find his face.
Was this the end of the line, my cover officially blown? Or was there a chance this guy secretly worked for my father, and the whole handcuff-thing was just to keep up appearances? But no one in Banya even knew who I was—except this guy apparently—and it seemed to me like we were actually attracting unwanted attention from onlookers, something I was sure my father would want to avoid.
The guy’s feet suddenly stopped only halfway up the steps as an attractive, middle-aged man approached from above. “Oh, Councilman Bennett,” the guy said nervously. “I wasn’t expecting to see you, sir.”
The name immediately caught my attention. Wasn’t that the same name Jax called his father earlier?
“What’s going on here?” the councilman asked. “Who is this woman?”
The guy swallowed. “Uh, her name is Sadie, sir. She’s under suspect of being involved with the Rayne Stevens incident. I have orders to bring her in for questioning.”
“I didn’t authorize this arrest,” the councilman said. “Get her out of those cuffs; you’re making a public scene. And can’t you see that you’re hurting the poor woman?”
“Forgive me, sir, I was just—”
“You were just going to hand over custody to me,” the councilman cut in.
The guy hesitated for only a second before he pulled out his keys and released my wrists from the handcuffs. Then he shrank away down the steps.
Councilman Bennett turned to me kindly. “You’ll have to forgive my associate. It seems that some people have lost all sense of civility these days.”
I nodded with half a smile, not sure what to say.
He extended his hand up toward the entrance of the building. “Why don’t you join me inside for a short chat, so we can get this all sorted out?” His pleasant tone sounded almost like an invitation, but I had a feeling a man in his position was used to getting what he wanted whether he asked nicely or not.
I looked up at the grand entrance of the building then glanced back at the crowd below, wondering if I should make a run for it, but figuring it would only make matters worse. As if sensing my hesitation, two men in suits appeared from the shadows on either side of us, making their presence known while holding back a few yards away.
“Shall we?” Councilman Bennett said. Without waiting for an answer, he placed his hand gently on my shoulder and escorted me up the steps.
Two massive front doors adorned with elaborate wood carvings appeared at the top of the steps. Councilman Bennett continued to lead me forward through a grand foyer that circled us with marble and ornate arched ceilings. I tried to conceal my interest in our surroundings, hoping it wasn’t completely obvious that I’d never been there before, and not wanting to give away the fact that I wanted to search every inch of the building to see if I could find Rayne. Of course, I doubted they kept their prisoners anywhere easy to find.
The foyer itself appeared to be open to the public, but as we approached an impressive double staircase at the far end of the large hall we had to pass through a security screening area with several guards. The councilman was admitted with just a nod of acknowledgement to one of the men on duty, but as I walked through the archway of metal, a sharp ringing noise from an alarm caused me to freeze in place.
A wave of fear seized through me. Were they going to search me? The Water Briolette I found at the Sacred Pool was still in my pocket, concealed by only a few layers of fabric. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I had to keep the stone safe; I had to keep it a secret.
The alarm blared for only a second before it went quiet again. The guard closest to me stepped forward to block my path. “All visitors must empty their pockets before entering,” he instructed. He took a small plastic bin from atop the security equipment and slid it across the table toward me.
I nodded with a nervous smile, trying not to focus on all the intimidating eyes staring down at me. I moved my hand slowly, cautiously down to my back pocket where I removed Rayne’s phone and placed it carefully into the plastic bin. Then I stared back at the guard without another move. He waved me forward. I held my breath and stepped back under the metal arch. I forced my right foot through the opening, just waiting for the sound of the alarm to ripple through my ears.
But there was nothing. When I finally realized that the air had remained quiet and I was successfully across to the other side without a sound, the guard was holding out a small paper ticket in my direction. “You can claim your belongings when you leave,” he said to me.
I grabbed the ticket and staggered away as fast as I could, reaching Councilman Bennett’s side in less than a second at the foot of the double staircase where he was waiting. The stone was safe…at least for now.
“Just a little further,” Councilman Bennett assured me as he directed me up the stairs. When we turned down a long corridor on the second floor, lined with plush red carpets and elegant paintings, I glanced back and noticed the men in dark suits still trailing us closely from behind. My palms grew more hot and clammy with each passing step, wondering what exactly I was headed for.
As I moved forward in silence, I couldn’t help but wonder where my father was during all of this. Jax said he spoke to him directly to confirm my mother was unharmed, which led me to believe that my father was unharmed too. So then, why wasn’t he here? Why were Rayne and I left here to figure things out on our own?
My heart sunk a little. Did my father leave me yet again? So soon? Did he come to my rescue only to abandon me all over again? Or was there a chance he was still caught in the middle of our fight from the day before, perhaps hunting Voss down like the criminal that he was?
Councilman Bennett opened a door for me just before we reached another corridor at the end of the hall, motioning for me to step inside. But just before I moved to follow, a group of men walked past the hallway along the far wall, causing me to pause and watch them pass by. I watched intently as several guards led the pack. Between them, a head of bright red hair caught my attention. I recognized Honeycutt immediately, Rayne’s friend that helped him break in at the Sacred Pool to save me. He turned his head briefly to nod with a reassuring smile, full of confidence, as if to tell me that everything was under control, at least with his side of the story. The interesting thing was, he didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me.
Councilman Bennett must have noticed me staring. “See someone you recognize?” he asked me.
I quickly shook my head, smiling nervously. “Um, no. I don’t think so.”
He nodded and motioned for me to enter the room. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was about to enter an interrogation room, with concrete walls and a window disguised as a mirror for someone to spy on us. But when I stepped inside, I found nothing more than a nicely decorated office, with a desk, computer, and shelves.
Councilman Bennett pulled up a chair for me and closed the door behind us. “So…Sadie…” he began. “That is your name, correct?”
I hesit
ated to answer right away, but I couldn’t see any way to change what the councilman already knew. I finally nodded in defeat.
The councilman settled into a large leather chair behind the desk. “The associate of mine you met outside seems to think you’re involved with Rayne Stevens in some way. Is this true?”
I couldn’t make myself answer even if I wanted to. My throat went dry as I stared back at him from across the desk.
“That’s okay,” Councilman Bennett offered. “Just take your time. There’s no crime in knowing someone, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not.”
It took everything I had to hold my composure, but I clamped my hands securely in my lap and stared up at him, hardly able to swallow, still not willing to open my mouth.
After an awkward pause, the councilman smiled at me warmly. “Well, why don’t I just do the talking, until you feel a little more comfortable?” He leaned forward against the desk. “Now, I’m not saying you do or don’t know Rayne Stevens, but if by chance you do…you should probably know that Mr. Stevens is in some serious trouble. I apprehended him myself earlier today, and the charges are quite severe.”
I cleared my throat, finally feeling the need to speak. “Um, do you mind telling me what he’s being charged with exactly?”
“Well, there are a handful of less severe charges, such as assaulting a government agent, for example, but those are hardly a concern for someone who could be facing a life-long sentence to exile for treason.”
My voice suddenly burst. “Treason?”
The councilman’s tone fell quiet, almost sympathetic. “Yes, well any act that could be considered a threat to Ambrosia’s survival, or foreign security, is a weighty affair. I’m told there is solid evidence that Mr. Stevens broke into the grounds of the Sacred Pool. As I’m sure you know, there is no other place more critical to our people’s survival. And I certainly don’t want to point fingers, but there’s been some talk floating around that Mr. Stevens wasn’t alone at the time of the breach, that there may have been a woman with him—a woman that he failed to document at the border…who must now be considered a possible threat to security…” His voice carried the words slowly towards me, like he was waiting for me to give myself away.
Ambrosia Shore (The Water Keepers, Book 3) Page 9
