Jamb (The Cornerstone Series)

by Misty Provencher

  “We are,” Milo gives me a squeeze while looking Garrett dead in the face. “We’ve got lipstick, from a cosmetologist who serviced A-list stars.”

  Teagan sneers. “What stars?”

  “Well, the lipstick I’ve got left was used on an up-and-coming star. She’s going to be huge.”

  “Huge? Who’s that?”

  “Stephanie Mabey. Only the people on the cutting edge know about her.”

  “What’s the color of her lipstick?”

  “It’s called Deadly Panic,” I add. “From her zombie line.”

  “Huh,” Teagan says, but I can tell by how hard she’s trying to stay casual that she wants the lipstick. Milo sees it too. He his eyes narrow shrewdly.

  “So what have you got to trade?”

  “We’ve got a teddy bear,” Garrett says. He wants to trade Willow. My brains whirs with what Addo told us, with how Sean got upset about the Cornerstone being transported in his little sister’s new bear. If Garrett wants to trade it, then the Cornerstone is probably in it and we’ve got to be sure to keep it out of The Fury’s clutches.

  And if the Cornerstone is in the bear, and Garrett wants me to have it, it means that he definitely hasn’t gone to The Fury. It means that this is all a show for Teagan and whoever else is watching and I have to suck it up.

  “I love teddy bears!” I squeal to Milo.

  But Teagan squeaks her disagreement. “That belongs to Miki, babe. We can’t trade that. It’s her only toy.”

  “I want to get her better toys than that sorry old, used bear,” Garrett says and Teagan beams. “Besides, that lipstick would look killer on you, babe.”

  “I’ll let you kiss it off me.” Teagan bats her lashes at him. “You’re the best, babe. You really are.”

  “The best,” I nod to Milo, as if I’m talking to him, but I hope Garrett knows what I mean. If he does, he doesn’t let on.

  “Give me the lipstick and I’ll drop off the bear.” Garrett holds out his hand, but Milo shakes his head with a slow grin.

  “That’s not how I do things. We can meet here again tomorrow and you can bring what you want to trade.”

  “Yeah, right. You’ll have traded it to someone else by then. I’ll stop by our room with it tonight.” Garrett says and my stomach jumps as his gaze passes over me. Teagan’s probably going to want to go back and stay with Grace, unless she brings the baby with her. But there’s a slight chance that Garrett will come alone to our room.

  “Fine,” Milo says and the second Garrett and Teagan are out of sight, I slide off Milo’s lap. The only thing I want to do is get back to our room and wait, and hope that Garrett comes to do the trade alone.

  ***

  Once we haul everything back to the room, Milo spends an hour searching the room from one end to the other. He did this before, when we first got here. He scours the floor and the ceiling, unscrewing switch plates and inspecting every inch of the bathroom for listening devices just like he did when we got here. He’s obsessed with the idea that there are cameras or microphones, although he’s said that The Fury are usually too distracted to finish any intricate wiring jobs. He’s still not taking chances and he does come up with one microphone taped behind the headboard, but it isn’t attached to anything. He dumps it out before he attaches the lock to the door.

  He’s staying busier than he needs to and it only takes a few minutes for me to realize he’s mad about something.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I say as he pushes the mattress off the box spring and begins to search for more wires. He shrugs, without looking at me

  “Nothing.”

  But I shake my head. “Something.”

  “Just go ahead and get ready to see Garrett.”

  “Ohhh.” There it is. “That’s why you’re mad at me? Because Garrett’s coming over here?”

  “I’m not mad,” he insists, but when I bend over and swish around in front of his face, he turns his head so he doesn’t have to make eye contact.

  “If you’re not mad, then why aren’t you looking at me?”

  He jumps up, shoving the mattress back in place, and levels a glare at me.

  “Just so you know, if Garrett and Teagan come together, there’s probably going to be a fight.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I drawl, stepping away. I don’t think it’s actually a fight if I just sink Teagan’s head in our toilet. I’ll make sure she never even sees me coming.

  “It’s the way a lot of private trades go down. They’ll come to our room, get inside and try to knock us out cold or kill us, so they can take whatever we have. The good thing is, we’re two, you know, against one.”

  “Garrett wouldn’t kill me,” I say, but I have to look away. I start straightening the covers on the bed. “If he tried, I’d kill him first.”

  “You know, you better watch it,” Milo says and I’m instantly annoyed by his tone. It’s a lot easier not to like Milo at all, knowing Garrett’s coming to see me. I move the bags of beans we looted from one end of the dresser to the other and think of Annabelle and Tommy, alone in their attic. Helpless kids. And my brain spirals back to Grace, helpless to have the mother she’s got. And then I think of Teagan and how she kissed Garrett. Milo’s annoying voice brings me back to the room, “Yeah, you better watch it.”

  “Watch what?”

  “You’re slipping, I think.” He unplugs the microwave and carries it into the bathroom, hiding it behind the shower curtain.

  “Slipping on what?” I move the beans back, but the bag tips and they spill out like beads, all over the floor. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re starting to act like one of us,” he says. I pick up the beans and then I stop moving what little crap we have around the room, tidying it all up to look nice for when Garrett gets here, and focus instead on lining Milo up in the crosshairs of my own glare. Milo, having finished hiding our microwave behind the holey shower curtain, grabs a spoon and the jar of peanut butter. He sticks the spoon into the jar like he’s spearing a shark. He lifts out a glob. Stares at it. “It’s easy to slip into the life. That’s why we’re so tempting.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do,” he says, dumping his glob back into the jar without taking a bite. He smacks the jar down on the dresser. “And you want to know what I don’t know? I don’t know how you could kiss me like that. You were into it. You sold me, and that means you’re forgetting why we’re here and what we’re doing. You’re buying the act. I felt it when you were watching Garrett kissing Teagan. When he flipped you off. You bought the act and you responded to it. You have to knock it off. Stop thinking about what’s happening between him and Teagan. You’re getting confused.”

  “You kissed me back,” I snap, “and it felt like you were into it. So who’s getting confused?”

  “I was…I am,” he says, his voice dropping off shamefully. “We both have to be careful, Nalena. We’ve got to keep reminding ourselves that none of this is real. This is all for show.”

  He sounds annoyed, sad, frustrated. Like as bad as I want what’s happened between Garrett and Teagan to be fake, Milo wants what’s happened between us to be real. I expected him to be able to keep things straight. No, it wasn’t even that honorable. The truth is that I was mad at Garrett and used Milo to get back at him. I’m a jerk.

  “I’m sorry, Milo…”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Just remember what we’re doing here.”

  “I’m trying.” It would be a lot easier to do, if I just got some sign from Garrett. But he convinces me, every second I see him with Teagan, that he’s fallen for her. What if he’s forgotten it’s all an act too? What’s going to remind him, if Milo’s hand on my thigh doesn’t do it? It killed me to see Garrett kissing Teagan, but he didn’t seem to care at all when I kissed Milo. And now I know, from everything Milo’s just said, that mine and Milo’s kiss was very convincing.

  “You’re doing it again,” Milo says. �
��You’re getting caught in The Fury spiral. You’re making it all about you.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “How would you know? You can’t read my mind.”

  I should probably tell you something. I whip around at the sound of Milo’s voice in my head. That can’t be. I must’ve gotten it wrong.

  “What did you say?” I ask. I keep my eyes on his mouth, waiting for his answer.

  When you’re furious, you really project. His voice is deep between my ears and his lips haven’t even twitched.

  But only the Addos can project telepathically.

  “Oh my God…” My words fade off as he puts a finger over my lips. His eyes flash.

  Be careful what you say, in case there are microphones I didn’t find. And I can’t keep talking this way. Projection can be like a homing devise and I don’t want to draw other Contego to me. Or to you, by accident.

  He shrugs. “Now you know.”

  But my brain is spinning with what I can’t believe I know. This is Milo. Mr. Black Sheep. How could he be an Addo? He’s got to be lying. This has got to be a trick. But I feel the magnetism, the pull to stay close and protect him. I’ve only felt that from the Addo and from Sean. I don’t think he could fake that. When I think back, I remember feeling a tinge of it when he found me, during the ambush at the hotel. But I haven’t felt it the same way I have when I was around Addo and Sean.

  “How are you hiding it?”

  He peers around the room and shakes his head. “I’m not hiding anything,” he says out loud, but he pulls me close. I tense, until his lips are near my ear.

  “When I confessed everything I knew about The Fury to the Addo, something happened. I received my sign.”

  I pull back and then draw him to me again. “You mean, the sign of the Contego.”

  “No, I was already Contego when I came to your Cura,” he murmurs. “But I told everyone I was Alo, so no one would think of me as a threat.

  “But I received the calling to the Addoship when I was with Addo Larry. He insisted we keep it secret and he taught me how to project my energies elsewhere, so none of the Contego would be compelled to protect me. We couldn’t take chances telling anyone. There was already a target on the Addo and he knew that the Moxes would probably be targeted too, so to secure the Addoship, he tutored me every time I was sent to him for blowing off my Alo duties. That’s why I blew them off as much as I could.

  “The Addo was trying to get me up to speed so I wouldn’t be killed before I could complete my training. The only other person that knew was Sean Reese. The Addo said that Sean was extremely trustworthy and when he told Sean about our plan, he volunteered to be a decoy before the Addo even had to ask. Sean became the fake Mox, and he and the Addo choreographed all kinds of things to make it look real.”

  I suck in a breath. “Like the telepathy. When he was presented as a Mox.”

  “Yup.”

  “But Sean did a Memory blessing at one of my mom’s storage sheds. It almost totaled me, but he did it, no problem.”

  “No, the Addo did it. Sean’s Simple,” Milo chuckles. “He can’t do any of it, but the Addo was projecting onto Sean, to make it look like Sean has abilities. We’ve both been doing that, so that Sean’s energy would feel real to everyone and the Contego would believe that he was their next Addo. And Sean is the best actor I’ve ever seen. We couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”

  Holy crap. I can’t believe it. I bought it all too, like a pile of knock-off perfume. Sean was never a Mox. It was all a hoax to cover up for Milo. It makes too much sense not to be true. There was never a Simple Addo in the history of the Ianua before. Because it was impossible. Because it still is. It was also why Sean could take a week off to be bound to Teagan, instead of continuing his training that was so uber necessary to all of us. And why he could marry someone else that was Simple. It all makes sense. Sean would never hesitate to be a decoy. He would do anything for his family and the community that Sean couldn’t fit into, but still loved.

  “But Sean’s not here now,” I say. “How are you keeping all the Contego away? And me? I’m around you all the time.”

  “It’s not easy. I’ve been working hard to suppress it. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been constantly projecting in tiny spurts, kind of spreading it around and transferring it off to anyone who walks past me. I’ve kept it so diluted, no one’s caught on.”

  I think about it a minute, trying to cover all the corners and make sure there’s not some backdoor to his story. I feel like a big dope for not knowing he was doing it. But I don’t want to be an even bigger dope and find out he’s fooling me somehow now. “So why did you come to our Cura? Why didn’t you train under your own Addo?”

  “Things were going bad in my Cura. I knew someone was starting to organize The Fury and I knew my Cura was part of it somehow. But I didn’t know how much. When your dad left my Aunt Ignatia, she made her final trip right off the deep end. I woke up with her gun in my face, so I left her too.

  “Our Cura was already staying down here, in the Cache. Once I was here, I knew things were getting seriously bad, so I only stayed for a few weeks. I went to Van, and asked him if he could get me into his Cura. I told him it was because of a girl, because if my Cura found out I said anything about what was going on, I knew they’d kill me before I got a foot out the door.

  “I didn’t tell Van I was Contego either, because I didn’t want to stand out as any more of a freak than I already do. But he knew I was a black sheep and a major risk and he still talked to Addo Larry for me.

  “That’s a big reason why I’m here. Van. If The Fury haven’t killed him and they have him here someplace, I need to get him out. I’ve got to save him, like he saved me.”

  My brains feel like they just jumped off a skyscraper. Milo’s going to be an Addo. Milo. And weirder than anything else, I know he’s telling me the truth. I can feel it.

  I stick my hand in my pocket and touch the corner of Mark’s map. I pull it out and unfold it.

  “I think there is something on Mark’s map that might help us find Van.”

  “You think so?” Milo ducks in to look more closely. “It didn’t look like anything to me but a really messy sketch of the Cache.”

  “It’s what he wrote on it.” I hold up the paper so my fingernail underlines Mark’s words, but Milo still looks confused. He reads the words.

  “Who’s where?”

  I repeat the words slowly, dropping my voice to barely a whisper, and when he still looks confused, I add, “Nok, Nok? The Veritas that the Addo was staying with, in the bunker under the hotel. He escaped into the tunnels, but Addo Chad said The Fury were all over the tunnels and that they would catch him. But this map that Mark gave us, I’m pretty sure it’s a clue that Nok’s here someplace. And if we can find him, maybe Van and Trig are with him.”

  “I hope that’s what it means.”

  “Me too.” I flip the paper over to the map side. Milo studies it with me. “Do you see anything else that doesn’t look right? There could be more. Maybe where they’re hiding Nok?”

  I watch Milo’s eyes move over the paper. His brow hikes.

  “This,” he points to a wall at the furthest end of the drawing. The last large room in the Cache. “This line looks funny, but it could just be a mistake. It looks like he erased something there.”

  But the line does look funny, now that he’s pointed it out. Or maybe it’s just familiar. I squint at the paper trying to place it. On one hand, it just looks like a warped wall of a large room and on the other…it’s something. I just can’t figure out what.

  “What’s that room used for?”

  Still staring at the paper, Milo shrugs. “It was a car garage. Hasn’t been used since we’ve been here, though.”

  “You can get cars down here?”

  He points to the wide, lightly drawn wall at the far end. “This was a ramp, but we closed it up. Last I heard, everybody was talkin
g about sealing it up, to make sure no one drove into the walls by accident and knocked out a chunk.”

  “Why are they so worried about that? They don’t seem to care about wrecking everything else around here.”

  “Because the spirits from the Jamb are in the walls throughout the Cache. There is an extra, empty layer between the inside wall and the outer one. The Veritas used to grow Manga inside the walls to block the constant communication and energies from coming in, but we removed all the Manga and used it to coat the walls, so we could trap all the spirits inside them. The walls are so thick inside the Cache, nothing can break through them. But, in the garage, the walls are thin near the ramp. If a car drove into them, it could break a piece off and the spirits would escape.”

  Sean told me how the Veritas grow the Manga to block the world’s communication from their dwellings. I doubt they ever thought of how it could be used against the world, to trap the spirits.

  “All of the walls are connected to the Jamb? How many spirits can this place hold?”

  “I don’t know how you would count them.” Milo brushes a finger from one end of the map to the other. “But the Cache is enormous and we plan to keep jamming in the spirits until there aren’t any left. We are planning on shutting down the Ianua completely, Nalena. One Cache at a time.”

  I back up, my shoulders hitting the wall. I turn sideways, sliding my ear against the cold, level plaster. I close my eyes and listen, trying to will my mother’s voice to the other side, but all I hear is Milo.

  “It’s too insulated to hear them in here. The only place you can really hear anything is in the entrance hall.”

  “Can’t we just drill a hole in the wall?”

  “Sure,” he says, rolling his tongue in his cheek. “If you have a drill as long as a couch. And even then, how are your blessing skills? All those souls need to be blessed or they could be sucked up in another Cache.”

  “I can’t.” Addo gave me a crack at it, outside one of my mother’s storage sheds that was packed with Memories. I had to collect all the voices in my head in order to bless them, but I only got about a quarter in and it felt like my skull was going to explode. It was the same time that Sean did the blessing, with the Addo standing right behind him, pulling all the strings to make it look like Sean was actually doing it. And Sean was so believable, I bought the whole thing, like a mountain of cheap nail polish.