17
I RETRACED MY STEPS BACK to the reception hall and found the right set of plain pine stairs leading down into the basement, which looked as majestic and well decorated as the main floor. It was all hand-carved wood and oak, mahogany floors, golden rims, Persian rugs, and silver doorknobs. There weren’t as many people down here—a few drifting patrons, a couple of catering staff. Even asking one for directions, I wasn’t sure if I’d find the right room until I came to a set of double doors around a corner—guarded. A single security guard had been stationed next to the doors. I ducked out of his sight.
“Crane, checkpoint twelve, all clear,” he said into his comm—that is, until he saw me rounding the corner.
“What are you doing here?” He looked shocked to see me. Maybe a little excited. He was a young guy, and he didn’t quite have that stone-cold security glare down like some of his colleagues. But whatever excitement had flashed in his eyes passed quickly. He tilted his chin to the side as if he were about to speak into his communication device again.
“Wait!” I said, putting up a hand to stop him. “Um, this is Blackwell’s study, right?”
“It is.” He adjusted the wire around his neck leading up to his ear.
Why guard the study? There wasn’t anyone around. I checked behind me to make sure. This particular corridor was empty. I hadn’t seen any other security guards except at major exits. The only reason Blackwell would keep someone here was to keep others out.
“Are . . . you lost, Ms. Finley?”
I fidgeted a bit at the sound of my name. I’d probably never get used to people just knowing it. “I was told to get something out of Blackwell’s study.”
“Sorry, no one’s allowed in. Not even you.”
“It’s Sect orders,” I pushed.
“Sorry,” he said again. “But . . . now that you’re here . . .” He scratched the back of his head sheepishly, trying to avoid my eyes until he reached into his pocket and pulled out a napkin. “I don’t have a pen, but . . .”
He had to be joking. “You want my autograph?” I gaped at his expectant hands.
“It’s not for me. It’s for my little sister,” he said quickly, shaking the napkin at me. “Please?”
“If I sign this, will you let me in?”
When he answered with an awkward, noncommittal shrug, I sighed and took a pen out of my bag. “Who do I make it out to?”
“Steven.”
I looked at him.
“It’s short for Stephanie.”
“Of course it is.” I signed my name, discreetly stealing a second look down the hallway to make sure it was clear. “Is this okay?” I handed it back to him.
His whole face lit up as he took it from me, holding it up as if he had to inspect the ink to make sure it was real. “This is lovely, thanks! Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never really met a celebrity before.”
“Oh, it’s no problem! Glad to do it.”
But the moment I started to move past him, he put up his hand to stop me again.
“Sorry, no one’s allowed in.”
“Are you kidding me?” I complained with a groan. Then I checked behind me one last time. “Fine, then. Plan B.”
Plan B was hitting him really hard on the back of his neck. I was fast, too fast for him to react. He went down, but I grabbed him before he could make a sound and dragged him into the study. Don’t get caught, Chae Rin had said. Well, that was out of the question now. Maybe I could bribe Crane into silence with another autograph once he woke up. At any rate, all the security guards would have to check in, which meant I didn’t have much time in here.
The study was a musty, oval-shaped delicacy of books; one long mahogany case curved around about half the structure as if it’d been built especially for this room. Beautiful nineteenth-century portraits of old people hung around the room. A lavish rug lined the wooden floor, but there were only a few sitting chairs in the room: a couple by the left sections of bookcase, one behind the large desk where the bookcase ended, and a maroon-and-brown patterned settee in front of the fireplace by the right wall. But the main piece of the study had to be the statue at the room’s center—another woman with a pearl, carved in white stone. The smooth groove representing her eyes felt somehow hollow and knowing. She was just like the other two.
No, not quite like the others. Each of the statues had been a little different, their hand positions and body poses slightly unique. This one curved her arms inward, hugging the pearl to her chest as if to protect what was hers. Blackwell sure had strange taste in décor.
Crane was out cold, but he wouldn’t be forever. I’d have to think of some excuse once he did wake up, but for now I had to find that Castor Volume. The rest I’d figure out later.
After dragging his body inside a closet of smoking jackets, I put my phone on vibrate so no sudden rings would give me away. Then I started to search the books on the shelves.
“Okay, here we go.” I scanned the bookshelf, tracing my fingers down the spines of first editions to check names. Blackwell did have the Volumes in his study. A couple of them were missing from the shelves, but thankfully, the first volume was here. The giant tome was as heavy as it looked, so big I had to carry it in the crook of my arms. The pages were thin and slippery. Hundreds of them. There was no way I’d get through all of this in time.
“Thanks, Belle.” I rubbed the back of my neck because the band was never not itchy.
I set the book down on the desk. Then, dropping my bag to the floor, I plopped into Blackwell’s chair with a heavy thump and a heavier sigh. Hard to believe Castor had originally written all this by hand. Where to start? My fingers touched the dark blue velvet binding gently before flipping through the first pages.
“Wait . . .” The red ribbon attached to the book set off where Blackwell had read last, right? Carefully, so as to not lose the exact page, I flipped pages until I reached the separation. “Okay, what’s this about?”
Egbaland, 1878.
One of the domestic servants, Omotola, the natives called her, stole a valuable jewel from one of the many properties of Madam Tinubu, the Iyalode of this land. I offered my services to the slave trader to retrieve her, but in truth, I was more interested in the other properties the girl possessed.
After hearing the stories of hurricanes tearing through fields in one moment and disappearing the next, of a girl dancing through the trees as if carried by the skies, I was sure she was one of the special girls—like the one I found in Beijing three years ago. Indeed, Tinubu surely had realized as well that there was something magical about the girl. She would never allow me to keep her. But, displaying the inscrutable countenance of the shrewd businesswoman she was, she offered me a trade instead: If I helped her to bring her servant, she would reveal to me the secret methods with which she has kept her home safe from the nightmares plaguing the outskirts of her city. A treasure she has buried somewhere deep under the earth.
“A treasure buried in the earth,” I repeated. What could she possibly bury that would keep phantoms away?
Indeed, as my travels have long shown, the nightmares stretched even as far as these lands. There were not many of them yet—a needed morsel of comfort in those days of uncertainty. It was the same as in the other lands. The phantoms’ sudden appearance on English soil thirteen years ago was but a temporary moment of terror. Then, after a year of recovery, they began appearing again. I had thought, after witnessing the horror in York, that the beasts would quickly overrun the world, destroying mankind. However, according to my observations, as well as the information I have received from the colonies, the phantoms attack only limitedly, at certain times, in certain areas. The attacks I had documented never lasted more than one hour. They would disappear. It was as if something was holding them back. As if they were, despite their devastating power, simply part of someone’s monstrous experiment—or the cruel game of a terrible god.
It was similar to what I had learned in school. The phantoms only appeared in 1865, but there weren’t too many attacks at first. They grew more frequent and widespread over time. It had given humanity a chance to survive in those early days when the technology wasn’t so good, a chance to fight back, a chance to advance and to plan even as people were killed and uprooted. I remember June had to do some billboard project on Nikola Tesla’s prototype antiphantom device for a science fair once. Super crude, but society had managed to build from it. Problem was that as the tech got better, the phantom attacks only grew more frequent, more widespread, until things became what they were now. And they weren’t going away.
But those early devices were about electromagnetic impulses and other sciencey garbage I didn’t get. This Tinubu woman had a “treasure” buried under the earth. How was that possible?
If it wasn’t science, it was magic. But what kind of magic?
The British Crown had exhausted many of her resources learning about the dark beasts that roared death into the wind. But the people here had found a curious thing: Tinubu’s treasure. If I could bring both it and the girl with me back to Britain to study, it would only be in service to the Crown and the Sect.
I was surprised to see so many black markings on the page. I expected Blackwell would be the type to want to keep everything pristine and unblemished, but he’d circled the words “curious thing” and written the word “safe?” in the margins.
“What’s safe?” I whispered, and kept reading.
But was it indeed some buried contraption protecting Tinubu’s people from the dangers that raged outside? In my travels, I had found places such as these. Places of the purest calm. Of silence. Places where the very air was rich with the promise of heaven’s blessings. Here in Egbaland, I felt that same heavy air. The moment I stepped foot on these lands I knew it was the same as before. The same as those lands.
“Places of the purest calm.” If I closed my eyes I could imagine it. No, I could remember it. Calm that felt like clean silence all around you. But what Castor was referring to couldn’t have been the same as what I’d felt in Pastor Charles’s cellar. Could it? Pastor Charles didn’t know the cellar’s secrets. It was the traveling religious sect that had created it, and they’d never told him how. Was I just jumping to conclusions?
His spiel about phantoms and spirits hadn’t left my mind since we’d first met him in the church, but I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The cellar itself simply felt like it had more cylithium in it than you’d expect. That was the simpler explanation, not all this craziness about the universe, cosmic connections, life, death, and fate. But still, it was incredibly strange. Feeling calm and safe in a cylithium-rich area. How?
Blackwell was curious about it too. He underlined “those lands,” but wrote nothing next to it.
The door creaked. Oh god, did I not lock it? Ducking behind the desk was my first reflex, and a stupid one, because it wouldn’t take much effort to find me crouched here. It was too late to change my mind, though, because whoever it was had already entered the room. I held my breath, flinching at each footstep. Poor Crane was still safely inside the closet. As long as whoever it was didn’t come near this corner of the room, I wouldn’t be stuck in the awkward position of having to explain why I was breaking, entering, snooping, and hiding.
But it looked like I wouldn’t have to. I could hear the footsteps retreating, and the following soft click of the double doors.
Then . . . nothing. Whoever it was had left.
I waited for a minute more, listening until I was comforted enough by the silence to pop back out from under Blackwell’s desk.
“Hi!” Rhys waved at me from the other side of the desk.
My heart jumped into my throat as I stumbled back and nearly fell over Blackwell’s chair. Rhys leaned over the desk and, after catching me by the wrist, pulled me upright.
“Wh-what,” I breathed, my throat still tight. “What—”
“—am I doing here?” Rhys held up his phone. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
“I put my phone on vibrate.” I picked up my bag. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t hear it.”
He’d clearly cooled off since the time I’d last seen him. Rhys looked around the study, then at the open book on the desk. “What are you doing here?” He slid the book around so he could read the words. “The Castor Volumes?”
“Just doing a little studying. Since I was bored.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, come on.” I leaned over the desk. “Is this the face of a liar?”
I figured he’d argue some more. I wasn’t expecting him to grab my chin gently, turning my face left and right as he inspected it. His fingers were slightly calloused; I could feel them scratch delicately against my skin. Warm.
“All right, I believe you.” He let me go with a little smile.
“Huh?”
He shrugged. “You’re neurotic and adorable. How can I not believe you?”
“Oh . . . g-good,” I said, trying to ignore the fluttering in my chest. I cleared my throat. “How did you even know I was here?”
“My mother told me.”
“Your . . .” The beautiful woman I’d found outside with a strange penchant for cryptic behavior. “She’s your mother?” No wonder her face was so familiar. Rhys certainly had some of the strong features I recognized in his father, but he’d received his gentle beauty from his mother. That was clear now.
“Yeah. She lost her wedding ring. I’m supposed to be looking for it. She’s the director’s wife, after all. Gotta have her ring, I guess.” Though he looked a little annoyed, his face softened as he spoke about his mother. It was a stark contrast to how I’d seen him around his father; not too surprising given what I’d just learned about the man.
My heart dropped at the thought. I fidgeted awkwardly. “Did you . . . did you want something from me?”
Rhys slid a hand through his messy black hair as he looked away from me. “Well, first I thought I should apologize about what happened back there. Brendan and I . . . We have our issues, but it’s not something you should have to worry about.”
“No, it’s okay.”
He watched me self-consciously from the corner of his eye. I didn’t know how to approach the subject of his father, or if he even wanted me to. It felt intrusive to bring it up.
“I also wanted to apologize for what my father said to you,” he said, surprising me.
“It’s all right.” I shut the Castor Volume discreetly, making sure the red ribbon was in its original position between the thin pages. “You don’t have to apologize for someone else’s actions.”
“I guess the problem is I have trouble apologizing for my own.”
I lowered my head, clutching my bag closer to me. I knew there was a chance that the sadness in his eyes wasn’t just because of his family. That he was haunted by more than just his past in Greenland. But I’d already chosen not to believe that he could have murdered his own friend. I just had to stick to that. My legs twitched as he came around the desk, but this time I didn’t back away from him. And when he grabbed my hand, I didn’t pull it away.
“Maia,” he started, his voice strained as if the pressure of his words would break him, “about what Vasily said—”
“Before you say anything,” I said quickly, “listen to me first.”
The room was quiet. I let that moment of silence pass between us because I needed the time to steel my nerves, to decide whether or not I was going to ask the question that had been burning me from the inside since that night in France. “I don’t know how I feel about you,” I said instead. And it was true.
“Do you hate me?”
When Rhys suddenly asked, I looked up at him, shocked. “What?”
“I’m sure you’ve figured out that I’m not as . . . as entirely normal as I may have made myself seem when I met you.”
“I never thought you were normal.” When I noticed my lips had twisted into a wry grin, I hid it away guiltily. “And I . . . kind of like that. Not like I’m normal either.”
Rhys’s flicker of a sad grin told me he understood. “I’ve had a . . . weird life. Like you. It’s like I told you that night on the train: Sometimes the Sect can feel like this unstoppable force. Once you’re with them. All you have . . . all you are is because of them. Even when you’re desperate to be more.”
Desperate. I’d felt Natalya’s agony as she scratched at the barriers of my mind, trying fiercely to climb back inside my body. The agents and the Effigies alike: We were all chained to the same wall.
“I understand,” I offered, and that alone brought a tinge of wetness to his eyes. Someone understood him, even with the secrets he’d locked up inside himself so he could show the world his other face. Someone was willing to understand. I didn’t think two words could mean so much to him, but it wasn’t difficult to see why they did. We were both just kids, after all—kids struggling under the weight of impossible legacies.
“But you’re innocent. Maybe that’s why I . . .” He swallowed, lowering his eyes. “So if you don’t know how to feel about me, I’d never blame you for that. But please don’t hate me.” He’d kept his voice as calm as he could, but he couldn’t hide the anguish of his plea. “That’s all I ask. You don’t have to like me. You never have to fall for me either.”
There was a strange twinge in his voice as he whispered it. I could see his eyes reddening, his lips curling into each other, trying to hold in whatever emotions threatened to spill out. I fidgeted. Rhys’s grip held me in place, but I didn’t try that hard to pull it away in the first place. Maybe I liked his touch a little too much.
“No matter what happens . . . please never hate me. Promise me you’ll never hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I whispered, and, pulling my wrist out of his grip, I pushed him gently against Blackwell’s desk, cupped his face, and kissed him.
I hadn’t actually kissed anyone before. Even before my family died and left me an orphan, I was a shut-in, preferring the sanctity of my laptop over other people. It scared me to feel his arms rough around my waist, but this kiss had been boiling up inside me for too long. Natalya could watch and seethe for all I cared as Rhys deepened the kiss. I needed to make things clear in my own mind.
It didn’t.
I mean, it was wonderful. The warmth of his lips spread down the length of me from the inside, quickening my pulse, tightening my whole body, but it didn’t give me clarity. It only made it that much harder to get. I pulled away from him, turning away quickly while I tried to calm the rise and fall of my chest.
“Maia . . . ,” he whispered.
I had to be honest. I had to confront him. . . .
But I couldn’t.
“I’m a coward,” I said. To him. To myself. Or maybe to Natalya. “I’m seriously messed up. I really am.” If it weren’t for the neck-band, I was sure I’d be able to hear her yelling at me, furious. Or laughing. “I keep saying I want to know, but the truth is . . .”
The truth was I didn’t. I didn’t want to know. Because I liked him. I hated myself for it. I angled my body away from Rhys, my hand finding the table.
“I don’t like how I feel around you.” Shame crawled up my bones as I thought of Belle night after night on the terrace of our dorm, staring at her blank canvas with lost eyes. The first time I ever saw her there, she’d told me that none of us were heroes. Wouldn’t she have thought differently if Natalya were still alive? It was Natalya’s death that had broken her. “I don’t understand what this is,” I said. “I don’t like that it’s happening. I’m not here and I’m not there. I feel like I’m everywhere at once. You’re wrong: I’m not innocent, Rhys. I’m totally messed up.”
I looked at his large hand trembling at his side and thought back to all those painful days I spent buckling under the weight of a destiny I never asked for. Thrown into the chaos of a battle I didn’t know how to fight. No uncle, no home.
“But you were always there.” I gazed up at him. “Even when you didn’t have to be. You were there for me.”
And if I knew the truth, and it was what I feared, then he wouldn’t be anymore.
“Maia . . .”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted with a helpless shrug. “I’m scared to do anything. I’m scared of what could happen. What . . . what should I do, Rhys?”
A shiver went through me as he touched the side of my face, lightly, in that vulnerable space just below my ear, his fingers brushing up against my thick curls. And as his fingers lingered there, I held my breath.
The door creaked. Rhys’s hand dropped from my neck as Blackwell entered the study. His mild surprise gave way to amusement as he saw us standing behind his desk. He’d be more amused to find the security guard trapped in the closet. Poor Crane.
“Far be it from me to get in the way of a secret tryst between two lovers, but . . .”
My teeth glued shut as Blackwell’s gaze trickled down to the book on the desk he’d left empty. Pressing my bag protectively against my hip, I started thinking up excuses.
“Sorry, I took her down here,” Rhys said. “We needed a place to be alone.”
My breath hitched as Rhys wrapped a strong arm around my waist and pulled me to his side, almost possessively. I was assuming that was supposed to be code for “a place to make out.” Which we kind of had. Rhys really made sure to sell it too, his body curving toward me, his hand hard against my hip. I was definitely selling it with the way my face flushed and my head shyly dipped. Though that wasn’t an act.
“Aidan, what would your father think?” Blackwell folded his arms and stepped slowly toward us. “It’s not like you to do such things. Especially when you’re here on duty.”
“Not my fault your party’s boring.”
“Sorry, we won’t do it again.” Grabbing his wrist, I pulled him away from the desk. “We’re going now.”
Blackwell’s eyes never left me as I scurried out of his study with Rhys in tow.
• • •
“Are you okay?” Rhys asked once we were back upstairs in the hallway with the other patrons. Probably because I was tugging at the stupid band around my itching neck.
“Yeah, sorry. Hey, do you think you can you get me out of here?”
Blackwell was going to find Crane in the closet tucked underneath all his smoking jackets. If he didn’t, someone else would. I didn’t have an excuse for that. “Like, can you drive me back to the facility?”
It didn’t take Rhys more than a second to surmise the situation. Without asking questions, he nodded. “We can take my brother’s car. Just stay here while I get his keys.”
He disappeared back into the reception hall. I waited in a corner, avoiding the stares of the patrons in their little circles, peering over one another’s shoulders to make sure it was me before whispering to each other. Really. For a bunch of high-powered politicians and businesspeople, the way they conducted themselves was startlingly similar to the kind of stuff I saw at Ashford’s last school dance.
“Ms. Finley,” a reporter said, walking up to me. Damn it. I should have waited outside. “I’m Jonathan Headey from the Sun. Do you have a minute for a quick interview?”
“Well, I—”
“Sorry, but we’d like Ms. Finley to come with us.”
The security guard had spoken politely enough, despite his intimidating frame, but his partner had shoved the reporter aside rather roughly.
Crane’s revenge. Blackwell had found me out. I was done for.
One grabbed my arm and pulled me along, though I shot one last frantic look toward the reception hall. I didn’t suppose I could just set him on fire without anybody noticing.
“Blackwell sent you, right?” I asked as we squeezed through dignitaries. “Hey, stop!” I pulled myself out of his grip and stopped in my tracks. “I asked you a question.”
“Blackwell didn’t send us,” said the taller one.
It was hard to gather anything from either of their faces since both guards were wearing shades.
“Then what’s this about?”
“It’s Mrs. Prince,” one said. “The director’s wife would like to see you inside Mr. Blackwell’s office. It’s an urgent matter. Please come with us.”
Rhys’s mom? Curious, I followed them through the corridors until the patrons and reporters thinned out and we were standing alone outside a lonely door at the end of a hall.
My phone vibrated against my hip. It was Rhys.
“Miss,” a guard said before I could answer it, putting his hand on my phone. “If you please? We’re here. This really is urgent.”
I looked at the two men towering above me and wondered how much effort it would take to knock them both out if this turned out to be some kind of trap. If Blackwell really was waiting to try something behind the doors, I knew I could take him easily, but he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try with all the people running around the house.
Discreetly, I answered the call, but only after I’d placed my phone back in my bag. “So this is Blackwell’s office in the east wing?” I spoke loudly enough for Rhys to hear, but restrained myself so I still sounded natural. “Mrs. Prince is really waiting for me in here? Are you guys sure?”
“Yes,” one replied after an annoyed grunt.
I slipped my hand back out without turning my phone off, leaving my bag slightly open so it could pick up any surrounding sound. It was a precaution—one they didn’t notice.
The shorter security guard knocked on the door. “Ma’am, she’s arrived.”
“Maia?”
I heard the woman’s voice call for me through the door, but something was wrong. It was less a call than a whimper, a pleading question suddenly muffled into silence.
Whipping around to glare at the security agents, I burst inside the room. Mrs. Prince was inside Blackwell’s darkly lit office, standing behind the large wooden desk that shimmered in the moonlight streaming from the grand, arched window behind it.
And next to her was the tiny red-haired server girl I’d bumped into earlier, holding a gun to Mrs. Prince’s temple. With her other hand, she held a finger to her lips.
“We’re going to do this quietly, sweetie,” she said in an accent she hadn’t had before. Australian. This voice I recognized. “Or you’ll see Mrs. Naomi’s brains splattered across all this fine furniture.”