BEING IN LOVE IS A VERY STRANGE THING. Your thoughts constantly drift towards this other person, no matter what you’re doing. You could be reaching for a glass in the cupboard or brushing your teeth or listening to someone tell a story, and your mind will just start drifting towards their face, their hair, the way they smell, wondering what they’ll wear, and what they’ll say the next time they see you. And on top of the constant dream state you’re in, your stomach feels like it’s connected to a bungee cord, and it bounces and bounces around for hours until it finally lodges itself next to your heart.
That’s how I’ve felt since the first day I met Sarah Hart. I can be training with Sam or trying to find my shoes in the back of our SUV, and the thought of Sarah’s face and her lips and ivory skin take over me. I can be giving directions from the backseat and still be one hundred percent focused on the way it feels when the top of Sarah’s head rests just under my chin. And I can be surrounded by twenty Mogs, my palms just starting to light up, and I’ll be analyzing every line of conversation from Thanksgiving dinner at Sarah’s.
But what’s even more insane is that as we drive the speed limit towards Paradise at nine o’clock at night, as we drive right towards Sarah and her blond hair and blue eyes, I’m also thinking about Six. I’m thinking about the way she smells, the way she looks in her training outfits, how we almost kissed back in Florida. My stomach also hurts because of Six. Not only because of her, but because of the fact my best friend also has a crush on her. I need to buy some antacids the next time we stop.
While Sam drives we debate Henri’s letter and talk about how cool Sam’s dad is for not only helping the people of Lorien but also for giving Sam a riddle to find the transmitter device in case anything were to happen to him. And still I’m going back and forth between Sarah and Six in my head.
We’re two hours from Paradise when Six asks, “But what if it’s nothing, though? I mean, what if there’s nothing down in that well but some weird birthday present or anything else but the transmitter. We’re risking a lot, like a lot a lot, by showing up in Paradise like this.”
“Trust me,” Sam says. He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel and turns up the stereo. “I’ve never been so certain of anything in my entire life. And I get straight As, thank you very much.”
I think the Mogadorians are there waiting, in far greater numbers than what we faced in Florida, watching everything that might lead them to us. And if I’m going to be honest with myself, the only reason I’m willing to take this risk is because of the possibility of seeing Sarah.
I lean forward in the backseat and pat Sam’s right shoulder. “Sam, no matter what happens with that well and sundial, Six and I owe you big-time for what your dad did for us. But I really, really, really, really hope that it leads to a transmitter.”
“Don’t worry,” Sam says.
Highway lights come and go. Bernie Kosar’s floppy ears fall from the edge of the seat as he sleeps. I’m nervous about seeing Sarah. Nervous about being so close to Six.
“Hey, Sam?” I ask. “You wanna play a game?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What do you think Six’s Earth name is?”
Six whips her head over her shoulder, her raven hair slapping her right cheek, and she frowns at me in mock anger.
“She has one?” Sam laughs.
“Just guess,” I say.
“Yeah, Sam,” Six says. “Guess.”
“Um, Stryker?”
I laugh so hard Bernie Kosar jumps up to look out the nearest window.
“Stryker?” Six yells.
“Not Stryker, then? Okay, okay. I don’t know, something like Persia or Eagle or . . .”
“Eagle?” Six yells. “Why would I be Eagle?”
“You’re such a badass, you know.” Sam laughs. “I just figured you would be like a Starfire or like Thunder Clap or something really badassy.”
“Exactly!” I shout. “That’s totally what I thought, too!”
“So what is it then?” he asks.
Six crosses her arms and looks out the passenger-side window. “I’m not telling you until you make a real guess with a real girl’s name. Eagle, Sam? Give me some credit.”
“What? I’d name myself Eagle if I had the chance,” Sam says. “Eagle Goode. That sounds pretty awesome, right?”
“It sounds like a brand of cheese,” Six says. We all laugh at that.
“Okay. Uh, Rachel?” Sam says. “Britney?”
“Ew, yuck,” she says.
“Fine. Rebecca? Claire? Oh, I know. Beverly.”
“You are insane.” Six laughs. She punches Sam’s thigh, and he howls and rubs at it dramatically. He hits her back, a couple of knuckles on her left bicep, and she feigns severe pain.
“Her name is Maren Elizabeth,” I say. “Maren Elizabeth.”
“Aw, you gave it away,” he says. “I was going with Maren Elizabeth next.”
“Yeah, right,” she says.
“No, I was, I was! Maren Elizabeth’s pretty cool. Do you want us to start calling you that? Four goes by John, right Four?”
I scratch Bernie Kosar’s head. I don’t think I could get used to calling him Hadley, but maybe I could get used to calling Six Maren Elizabeth. “I think you should take on a human name,” I say. “If not Maren Elizabeth, then something else. I mean, at least for when we’re in front of strangers.”
Everyone grows silent, and I reach behind me into the Chest for the velvet bag holding Lorien’s solar system. I set the six planets and the sun in my palm and watch them hover and glow to life. As the planets begin to orbit their sun, I find that I am able to dim the brightness of their glow with my mind. I intentionally lose myself in them, successfully forgetting just for a few moments that I might be seeing Sarah soon.
Six turns to look at the faint solar system that floats in front of my chest, and then she finally says, “I don’t know; I still like the name Six. Maren Elizabeth was when I was a different person, and right now Six just feels right. It can be short for something if someone asks.”
Sam looks over. “For what? Sixty?”
I set out seven mugs and a kettle on the stove. While waiting for the water to boil, I crush three of the pills I stole from Héctor’s mother into a fine powder with the rounded back side of a metal spoon. Ella stands beside me watching as she always does when it’s my turn to make the Sisters’ nightly tea.
“What are you doin’?” she asks.
“Something I’m probably going to regret,” I say. “But something I have to do.”
Ella flattens a piece of crumpled paper on the table and places the tip of her pencil on it. Immediately she’s drawing a perfect picture of the seven teacups I’ve lined up. From what I can get out of her, she met with a couple in Sister Lucia’s office who said they had “a lot of love to give.” I’m not sure how long the meeting lasted, but Ella says they’re coming back tomorrow. I know what it means and I pour the boiling water from the kettle as slowly as I can, trying to prolong my time with her.
“Ella? How often do you think about your parents?” I ask.
Her brown eyes grow wide. “Today?”
“Sure. Today, or any other day?”
“I don’t know . . .” She trails off. After a pause, she adds, “A million times?”
I bend down to hug her, and I don’t know if it’s because of how sorry I feel for her or how sorry I feel for myself. My parents are dead, too. The victims of a war I’m supposed to continue someday.
I scoop the crushed pills into Adelina’s teacup, regretting that I’ve resorted to drugging her. There’s no other choice. She can stand by and wait for death if that’s what she chooses, but I refuse to give up or to go down without a fight, without doing everything within my power to survive.
With the tray teetering in my hands, I leave Ella at the table and make my rounds. One by one I hand the tea out around the orphanage, and when I’m ushered into the Sisters’ quarters to deliver Adelina her tea, I carefully shove her cup towards the front edge. She takes it with a polite nod. “Sister Camila is feeling ill this evening and I have been asked to sleep in the children’s quarters tonight for her.”
“Okay,” I say. As I think about the possibilities of Adelina and me being in the same room tonight, I watch her take a long sip from her teacup. I can’t tell if I just made a huge mistake or helped my cause immensely.
“I will see you soon then,” she says. Then she winks at me. I’m taken aback, almost dropping the two remaining cups from my tray to the floor.
“O-okay,” I stutter.
When curfew comes a half hour later, nobody falls asleep right away, and instead many girls whisper to one another in the dark. I lift my head every few minutes to look at Adelina lying on her bed across the room. Her wink has left me confused.
Ten more minutes pass. I can tell most everyone is still awake, including Adelina. She’s usually quick to fall asleep when she’s on duty, so the fact that she’s still up tells me that she’s also waiting for everyone in the room to fall asleep. Now I think her wink definitely meant she wanted to resume our conversation. The room falls silent, and I wait before I lift my head. Adelina hasn’t moved in the last half hour, so I move the left legs of her bed off the ground and tip her slightly. Suddenly she raises her left arm above her like a white flag of surrender, and she points to the doorway.
I toss the covers aside, stand, then tiptoe from the room. When I reach the hall I slink a few paces into the shadows, holding my breath, hoping this isn’t some sort of trap Adelina and Sister Dora have set up. After thirty seconds, Adelina enters the hallway. Her walk is labored and she sways from side to side.
“Come with me,” I whisper, taking her hand. I haven’t held her hand in years, and it brings back the memory of us huddling together on the boat to Finland, when I was sick and she was strong. We were once so close you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between us. Now the mere touch of her hand feels alien.
“I’m so tired,” Adelina confesses as we climb to the second floor; we’re halfway to the north wing and the belfry protected by the padlock. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I do. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“You can’t carry me.”
“Not with my arms,” I say.
She’s too tired to argue. I focus on her feet and legs, and a few seconds later I’ve lifted Adelina off the floor and begin to float her down the dusty corridors. We pass the ancient statues cut into the rock wall and enter the narrower hallway in silence. I worry that she’s fallen asleep, but then she says, “I can’t believe you’re using telekinesis to fly an old lady like me down the hall. Where are we going?”
“I had to hide it,” I whisper. “We’re almost there, I promise.”
I unlock the padlock and it falls from the oak door’s handle, and soon I’m following a floating Adelina up the stone stairway that circles around the north tower leading to the belfry. I can hear Legacy faintly meowing from the top.
I open the door to the belfry and set Adelina gently down next to the Chest. She props her left arm up on the Chest lid and leans her head against it; I can see she has just about lost her battle with the pills, and I’m angry with myself now for tricking her. Legacy climbs into her lap and licks her right hand. “How is there a cat in here?” she mumbles.
“Don’t ask. Listen, Adelina, you’re almost completely asleep, and I need you to open the Chest with me before you are, okay?”
“I don’t think I have . . .”
“Have what?” I ask.
“Have it in me right now, Marina.” Her eyes are closed.
“Yes, you do.”
“Put your hand on the Chest’s lock. Put my hand on the other side.”
I press my palm against the side of the lock and it feels warm. I use telekinesis to pull her right hand away from Legacy’s tongue and onto the other side of the lock. She interlocks her fingers with mine. A second passes. The lock snaps open.
“Uh, guys? Something is, uh, something’s totally happening back here.” The seven orbs that hover in front of my chest in the backseat of the SUV are speeding up, and I can no longer control them. It gets so bright that I have to cover my eyes.
“Hey, hey! Dude, cut it out!” Sam barks. “I’m trying to drive up here.”
“I don’t know what’s going on!”
“Pull over!” Six yells.
Sam rips the vehicle onto the shoulder of the road and slams on the brakes, stone and gravel crunching and pinging us. The six planets and one sun dim in brightness, and the planets start to whip around the sun at such a rate that it’s hard to focus on any single one. With each orbit the planets are absorbed into the sun until it’s the size of a basketball. The new globe rotates as though on an axis, and then it produces a flash of light so bright that I’m momentarily blinded. It slowly dims, and sections of its surface raise and recede until what’s left behind is a perfect replica of Earth itself, all seven continents, all seven seas.
“Is that . . . ?” Sam asks. “That looks like Earth.”
The planet spins near my head, and on its third or fourth rotation I see a small pinprick of pulsing light.
“Do you guys see that little light?” I ask. “Look at Europe.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam says. He waits for another rotation and then squints. “I would say that’s in what? Spain or Portugal? Can someone reach the laptop? Hurry.”
With my eyes still on the globe and the tiny pulsing light, I crash my hand around behind me until I find the laptop. I hand it to Six, who hands it Sam. He looks up at the globe hovering in the backseat, types and looks up. “Well, it’s definitely in Spain, and it looks to be close to . . . Well, the closest city seems to be a place called León. But that’s, that’s slightly off. We’re looking at the Picos de Europa Mountains for sure. Anyone ever heard of them?”
“Definitely not,” I say.
“Me neither,” Six says.
“Is that maybe our ship?” I ask.
“No way, not in Spain. Well, at least I highly doubt it,” she says. “I mean, if it is our ship then why would it just start glowing now, showing us where it is? That wouldn’t make any sense. Besides, you’ve looked at these things how many times?”
“A dozen,” I say. “Maybe more.”
Sam hugs his headrest and raises his eyebrows. “Right. So it’s as if something just activated it.”
Six and I look at each other.
“It could definitely be one of the others,” Sam says.
“Could be,” Six says. “Or it could be a trap.” She looks at Sam. “Has there been any suspicious news from Spain?”
He shakes his head. “Not as of five hours ago. But I’ll check again right now.” He starts typing on the keyboard.
“Before you do that, let’s get off the main road before someone notices there’s a glowing planet of Earth floating in the car,” I say. “We’re pretty damn close to Paradise, remember?”
Adelina snores and I feel guilty, but for the first time in my life I see the Inheritance I should have received years ago. Rocks and gems of different colors, different sizes and shapes. A pair of dark gloves and a pair of dark glasses, both made of materials I’ve never seen before. There’s a small tree branch with the bark pared away, and under that there is an odd circular device with a glass lens and floating needle not unlike a compass. But it’s a glowing red crystal that has me most intrigued. Once I look at it I can’t look away, and I slowly reach down and take it in my hand; it’s warm and tingly in my palm. For a brief second the red light brightens, and then it fades and begins to slowly pulse at the same rate I breathe.
The crystal grows hotter, brighter, and it begins to emit a low hum. I panic, nervous that one of my Legacies has activated a Loric grenade. “Adelina!” I yell. “Wake up! Wake up, please!”
She furrows her brow and her snoring intensifies.
With my free hand I shake her shoulder. “Adelina!”
I shake her harder, and as I do I drop the crystal. It bounces hard on the belfry’s stone floor and rolls towards the doorway. As it falls from the first stair to the second, the red light stops pulsing. As it falls from the second stair to the third, it stops glowing altogether. And as it falls to the fourth stair, I chase after it.
Sam zips us down a dark dirt road. The globe continues to whir in my face. The tiny pulsing light continues to try to tell us something. We come to a stop, and Sam kills the engine and lights.
“So, I’m thinking it’s one of you guys,” Sam says, turning around. “It’s another number. And that number is in Spain.”
“We have no way of knowing that,” Six says.
Sam nods at the globe. “Okay, look. You guys were meant to stay apart from one another when you first arrived, right? That’s how it worked. You all go off in hiding until your Legacies develop and you train and everything. And then what? Then you get together and you fight together. So this light right here, maybe that’s a signal to get together, or more likely, it’s a distress signal from one of the remaining numbers. Or, guys, maybe Number Five or Number Nine just opened up their Chest for the first time, and because we have this thing running at the same time, we can communicate.”
“Maybe they see we’re in Ohio, then?” I ask.
“Shit. Maybe. Possibly. But seriously, think about it. If the Elders were going to give you all this stuff in your Chests, then they’d give you something to communicate with each other. Right? Maybe we just unlocked the key somehow, and we’ve got the location of someone who needs our help,” he says.
“Or maybe one of the others is getting tortured and they’re being forced to contact us and it’s a trap,” Six says.
Just as I’m about to agree, the edges of Earth grow fuzzy and then the entire globe vibrates with a female voice that says, “Adelina! ¡Despierta! ¡Despierta, por favor! Adelina!”
I’m about to yell back, but the globe suddenly shrinks, re-forms into the seven orbs and returns to normal.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What just happened?” I ask.
“I’d say the signal has been cut,” Sam says.
“Who was that girl? And who’s Adelina?” Six asks.
I catch the stone after it bounces off the ninth stair, but no matter what I do it doesn’t glow like it did before. I shake it in my palm. I blow on it. I set it in Adelina’s open hand. It doesn’t change from its new faint blue color, and I’m worried I broke it. I carefully set it back inside the Chest and pick up the short tree branch.
With a deep breath, I stick the branch out one of the two windows and I concentrate on the opposite end. There’s a bit of a magnetic force happening; but before I can really test it or figure it out, I hear the oak door at the bottom of the tower creak open.