18
NAOMI. NATALYA’S NAOMI? I LOOKED at the woman, who was deathly still, though her eyes screamed for help.
A rough push from one of the security guards sent me stumbling farther inside the room. The other shut and locked the door behind him with a soft click. Quickly, I lifted my arms, feeling the heat rush through them.
“Nuh-uh-uh! Hands down.” The server waved her finger at me. “No powers. Neither of us wants things to get messy here.”
“Jessie, right?” I said. She looked completely different from the picture I’d seen on the screen, but I couldn’t forget that mocking, singsong tone.
“Ooh? Did Aidan tell you about me? I’m touched that he remembers me.”
“Aidan,” Naomi hissed quickly. “Tell Aidan—”
Jessie’s hand covered the woman’s mouth. “Qui-et, please.”
Discreetly, I lowered my gaze, checking my bag to make sure it was still open, picking up the sound.
“Jessie Stone, right?” I repeated as loudly as I could without arousing suspicion. “Yeah, I saw your picture once. Kind of a different girl when you were thirteen.”
“I got a little work done in my off time. Wanted to look pretty for my big comeback, you know. I haven’t seen Aidan in so long.” She leaned in, pressing her gun closer to her victim’s temple. “What else did he tell you about me?”
“That you’re a psychopath.”
“Really?”
“No, but I can gather. Otherwise, why would you have a gun to his mother’s head?”
I shifted slightly, feeling my open bag swivel against my hips as Jessie giggled. “You talk tough. Ain’t too bright, though.” Her wild eyes traced a path down my face to my neck before rubbing the back of her own.
The security guards stood almost perfectly still, like soldiers waiting for orders. “Jessie, it’s getting late, and they still haven’t called,” one said. “He should be out by now.”
“Yeah, I know that, Anderson. Damn it,” she cursed, glaring at her pants pocket. “What the hell is the holdup?”
“What exactly do you want from me?” I gripped the bag’s chain around my shoulder. My feet itched to launch me forward, but Jessie’s finger was too firmly on the trigger of her gun. “Just let Mrs. Prince go!”
“Can’t do that. She’s my insurance. See, you’re supposed to come with us—me and Vasily, I mean. We’re takin’ you to Saul.”
Back when they’d ambushed us the first time in the tunnels, Jessie had tried to get that giant monstrosity to capture me too—no, it wasn’t a monstrosity. It was a person. Or it used to be. Alex. I felt a slight chill shudder through my bones.
“Even with the ring, he’s very busy, you know. Prepping for something hella big. Can’t do everything himself. There’s a plan in place. It’s all about the timing, see? Now it’s time for you to come with us.”
“The problem with that plan,” I said, my voice shaking, “is that Vasily’s still in jail, currently being tortured by a crazy guy dressed like a doctor.”
Jessie sighed. “Seems like. I thought I’d get confirmation by now. Once I did, it’d be easier to take you out of here.”
“Confirmation of what?”
Jessie only shrugged. “But since I haven’t heard anything, I’m taking matters into my own hands.” She cocked the gun. “Now come with me. Very quiet. Or we’ll both have fun watching Mommy’s gray matter fly.”
Rhys’s mother gasped against Jessie’s hand as the girl pushed the gun hard against her skull. Jessie’s eyes were alight with joy and malice.
My trembling fingers curled around my dress. “You wouldn’t.”
The shot was muted thanks to the silencer on the barrel. I was frozen, my mind still working out what had happened, when one of the security guards behind me crumpled to the ground. The other guard looked horrified enough to retch as Jessie rather innocently shrugged and placed the gun back on Naomi’s temple.
“Let’s try this again,” she said. “Come with me. Quietly. I won’t say it again.”
Naomi squeezed her eyes shut, breathing in slowly to keep herself calm. I couldn’t stall anymore. But before I could get my foot off the floor, I heard something rolling into the room behind me.
“What the . . .” The guard stepped to the side to avoid them. They were three metal balls, tiny enough to slip underneath the door, like children’s marbles.
Jessie tilted her head. “What’s that?”
Click. The light that battered the room blinded me for a moment. I covered my eyes, doubling over as the doors busted open. The crack of a fist against bone, the shudder of a body slamming against the wall.
“Hold it!”
It had taken only a moment. The flash was gone, and when my eyes readjusted, Rhys was next to me, holding his gun up at the unhinged girl still pointing a gun at his mother’s head. Brendan shut the door, moving the other guard’s limp body next to the one Jessie had killed.
“She’s crazy,” I hissed, rubbing my eyes.
Rhys kept his gun level. “Yeah, I know.”
Jessie positively lit up at the sight of him. Her body twitched slightly as if she couldn’t contain it. “Hi, Aidan!” She didn’t seem to mind or even notice when Brendan cocked his gun in her direction. “I always said I wanted to meet your mom, remember?”
It was incredible. One minute she seemed determined to kill him and the next she looked as if she wanted to kiss him.
Rhys didn’t move. “I remember.”
“You promised you’d take me. But then, you promised a lot of dumb shit that didn’t end up happening, didn’t you?” Her hand clasped tighter around Naomi’s mouth. “Well, I’m here now,” she sang. “I’m alive, Aidan. Aren’t you surprised? Don’t I look pretty now? The surgeries turned out great, didn’t they?”
“Let my mother go,” Rhys ordered her calmly. “You’re surrounded.”
He nodded at the window behind her, and in the darkness I could see a figure moving, a gun glinting.
“Director Prince Senior is managing things outside. Nobody is any the wiser and we’d like to keep it that way.” Brendan followed suit in training his revolver on Jessie. “It’s over, Ms. Stone. Slide your gun to me and come with us—quietly. Let’s not disturb the people here.”
“It’s over . . . ?” Jessie was enjoying this. She stifled a laugh. “Gonna take me in, huh?”
“Don’t worry.” Brendan smirked. “You’ll be with your friend Vasily in the Hole.”
A shadow passed over her porcelain face. “There’s only one Devil’s Hole.”
It was slight, but I caught it: the twitch of Rhys’s hand, just as Jessie’s pants pocket vibrated.
“Oh, good!” Her eyes were back to shining again. “Finally!”
She lowered her gun, pushing Naomi forward with a shove to the back of her head.
“Mom!” Rhys and Brendan cried at the same time, though neither lowered his gun.
As Jessie began rubbing her neck again, I grabbed Naomi’s trembling hand, pulling her behind me. “You can have this, too!” said Jessie. “You’ve been looking for it, right?”
She slipped her hand into her pocket and threw something small and glittering at the floor. A wedding band. Naomi’s? I didn’t know what she was up to, or how petty theft featured into Saul’s grand plan, but whatever was going on ended now.
“Brendan’s right.” I lifted my right hand, ready to fight. “It’s over. You’re outgunned. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, you got one right. I am outgunned.” In a show of surrender, Jessie bent low and slid the gun right to my feet. “We’ll see about the other thing.”
Shutting her eyes, Jessie breathed deeply, lowering her head.
“Mom, go,” said Rhys, inching toward Jessie carefully. “Go find Dad.”
“Wait, Aidan.” Naomi lifted her hand up. “Something’s not right. She’s—”
Someone stirred behind us.
Someone dead.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, my chest heaving. Rhys and Brendan whipped around, training the gun at the dead security agent with the tiny hole dripping blood out of his head. His corpse was suddenly rising to its feet, his eyes rolling back.
“What the hell?” Brendan yelled. “What . . . what?”
They shot at him, several rounds each splitting the air. The guard twitched and jerked but kept stumbling forward. The same as in the tunnels. Jessie . . . Jessie was—
“Maia. Look at me.”
I turned back around to find Jessie holding up a tiny black phone—the one I’d almost picked up for her in that hallway. It stopped buzzing.
“Listen” was all she said before she clicked the button.
That noise . . . sounds like interference. . . .
That was the last thought I had. My mind went blank.
The door burst open.
“What’s going on in here? Naomi?”
Blackwell. I didn’t register the terror in his eyes as he saw the guns, the dead security guard lurching toward two freaked-out agents and their equally spooked mother. But then, I didn’t register much of anything at all.
The interference. Its hellish screeching tore through my brain as I picked up the gun at my feet and shot Blackwell in the stomach.
“Maia!”
It was a bad shot, or maybe Blackwell didn’t react quickly enough. It hit the left side of his gut. Gasping in pain, he fell back against the doorframe.
People were yelling various things I didn’t care about. There was a shot through the window that shattered the glass and hit Jessie’s shoulder. I took care of the agent who fired the bullet, swinging my arms fast, letting the flames dash across his face. Now he was screaming.
The back of my neck was burning. It was out of control now. But my feet carried me away nonetheless, as fast as I could run in heels, my gun still in my hands, even when Rhys yelled at me to stop. Jessie and I were out the broken window, my dress tearing a bit from the shards of glass. Together we ran down the grassy courtyard off the cobbled path.
“It’s not so bad, right? You get used to it.” As we trampled flowers underfoot, Jessie panted and giggled like the adrenaline had made her delirious. “Mine’s Grunewald’s very latest model.”
Grune . . . wald . . . The name echoed in the vacant chamber of my mind.
“They put it in all us ‘silent kids.’ Doesn’t need a trigger ’cause it’s always working. It even helps me mask my frequency as long as it doesn’t degrade. But yours is an earlier model, a one-shot activation. Doesn’t work that good. It’s definitely gonna crap out soon, so we gotta do this fast.”
“Stop!” Rhys’s voice, tense from the chase, called out to us in the night.
We were heading toward the river bordering the south end of the estate. A shot rang out. Jessie lost control of her body and crashed into mine, pushing us both down to the floor. She’d been hit. Her right leg was bleeding just above her knee.
Grabbing the gun from me, she rolled over onto her left hip and pointed the weapon at Rhys. I looked from one to the other, from Jessie to Rhys, both their guns trained on each other under the moonlight. But I felt nothing. My body was cold, hollow, my mind blissfully clean except for the lingering echo skidding across the surface of my consciousness: Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs.
The command I’d been given.
“Maia, come with me.” Rhys reached to me with his free hand still wrapped in its sling. “Please.”
Despite the pain, Jessie laughed at him. “Nah, that ain’t happening.”
“Shut up,” Rhys said. “Or next time, I’ll take a kneecap.”
“Mm, sexy.” Jessy gave him a wry grin before turning to me. “We need to go. Vasily’s waiting for us.”
“Vasily?” Rhys spat. “What have you done? What the hell is going on?”
With her gun still aimed at him, Jessie pulled out her black phone. “I was waiting for a call and I got it. It’s confirmed.”
I barely twitched in response.
“He gave you a signal.” Rhys inched closer to us, his feet making no noise against the dewy grass.
“You didn’t think Vasily of all people would stay locked up for long, did you?”
“Who helped him?” Rhys crushed a posy underfoot.
“Who didn’t?” Jessie laughed. “There’s more of us than you realize. You really suck at picking sides.”
The two stared each other down in the night, and something inside me was screaming for me to get ahold of myself, but my knees stayed helplessly pinned to the grass.
“Life really isn’t fair, isn’t it?” Jessie said. “All those years ago . . . we all went through it in that fucked-up facility—those insane training sessions, those ‘psych evals’ that felt more like torture. You were the one who said we could be free. You made me think we’d all escape together. Escape the Sect.” Her voice, for the first time, swelled with a kind of childish hope, immature and fragile. It didn’t last. “But everything went wrong. We followed you, but only you got to live. And what did you do but go right back to the Sect?” Her long red hair swept the air like a pendulum as she shook her head violently. “Unlike me and Vasily, you had Mommy and Daddy to go back to. People to protect you. You escaped one cage and dragged your own sorry ass right back into another. Ever the dutiful son.” She smirked. “You’ll never be free.”
“And are you free, Jessie?”
Jessie rubbed the back of her neck with a trembling hand. I couldn’t tell if she’d even meant to or not. “Maia,” she said suddenly, and it was like my body shook awake. “Remember what the little voice in the phone told you. We gotta go.”
Yes. At all costs.
I stood.
“Maia?” Rhys lowered his gun, his eyes narrowing as a hint of fear crawled into his features.
At all costs.
Balls of flame exploded at Rhys’s feet like little bombs. Rhys jumped and dove to avoid them, rushing toward me every opportunity he got, but I didn’t stop hurling fire at him. Jessie’s unhinged laughter screeched over the chaos as she dragged herself up and balanced herself on her good leg.
“Kill him!” She goaded me, too excited at the mayhem of flames to bother shooting at him herself. “Kill him now!”
I was trying. The dull pain throbbed at the back of my neck, the steel band rubbing against my skin as if aching to crush my windpipe. Listen to Jessie. Escape with her at all costs. I was trying.
“Maia, wake up! Fight it!” Rhys cried before I sent a wall of flame crackling up at his feet. He jumped, but too late—he cried out in pain as the fire licked his leg.
A hard twinge in my chest, a sudden chill rushing through me. All these curious sensations my mind couldn’t grasp as Rhys hit the ground hard, rolling on the grass to put the flame out.
Maia . . .
Maia . . .
Are you listening . . . ?
She was humming a melody I’d heard too many times before on those terrifying nights.
Her voice . . . Natalya’s voice.
I told you. . . . You let them cage you. . . . You trust too easily. . . .
“What are you doing? Kill him! Hurry,” Jessie ordered because my hands had frozen in the air.
My arms wavered, caught between falling limp and staying firm. My attacks stopped. What was I doing?
Its hold on you is getting weaker . . . If we work together . . . if we share this battle, we can overcome it completely. . . . For just today, for just a second . . . Maia, let me take you. . . .
There were too many voices in my head: one telling me to kill Rhys and the other telling me to kill myself.
I can’t do it alone. Let me out. . . . Let us . . . help each other. . . .
“Maia.” Rhys tried to struggle back to his feet, but his unwieldy legs collapsed beneath him and he fell back. He gripped the soil, dirt collecting in his fingernails as he let out a haggard sigh and looked up at me. “Please come back. Come back to me.”
Painfully, slowly, my lips pried apart. “Rhys . . .” But that was all I could manage.
“Fuck, forget it!” Jessie raised her gun.
And that was the trigger. I released the mental defenses I’d desperately been holding on to, and just like that, a new power filled me. Natalya. Two energies connecting within one form. The power overwhelmed everything else in me, shorting out the command, the white noise that had been dulling my mind. With the force of two Effigies, I stomped on Jessie’s hand, pinning it to the dirt. She gasped in pain, but she was strong too; she managed to slip her hand out from under the pressure. While she dragged herself away, my fingers curled around the steel band on my neck, and with a grunt, I tore it off.
“Shit,” I heard Jessie swear. One could never underestimate the power of adrenaline. Despite the pain from her gunshot wound, Jessie dragged herself to her feet and began running as fast as she could to the river alone. And I was about to go after her. That was the plan. But . . .
It was as if a tidal wave had drowned me. Two energies suddenly torn out of balance.
I should have known.
This was never going to be a partnership.
“No, stop!” I doubled over, grabbing my head with both hands. “Stop . . . stop!”
I was . . .
I . . . I . . .
. . . . . . I . . . . . .
Air filled my lungs. Sweet and dense. I was alive again. Back into this body.
I was alive.
“Maia? Maia, what’s going on?”
That voice.
Quietly, I turned my head.
And saw him.
Feeble. Burned.
Kneeling in front of me.
The hilt of my sword formed first from the elegant dance of flames, that cool, familiar grip. The tip was last, buried in the grass. The cold sensation that tingled through the skin. That horrid wildness I’d been taught to suppress my whole life now quivered through my bones.
“Aidan,” I whispered.
Aidan heard the girl’s voice but knew immediately that it wasn’t Maia who’d spoken. For one passing moment, his arms were limp at his sides. He sat still, helpless—that is, until the panic finally settled in. His skin paled. His body shook. The fear of death gripped him.
“Oh god,” he breathed. “Oh god.”
What must it have felt like for him to see the large, beautiful eyes he loved wet with bloodlust? I could hear her screaming, fighting inside her own mind. It wouldn’t take long for her to return.
But this wouldn’t take long either.
Aidan was already leaning back, his wide, terrified eyes locked on my sword as I raised it high above my head. Zhar-Ptitsa. He knew its name.
“It’s okay.” Tears streamed down his cheeks—and strangely, tears streamed down mine as I aimed to murder the man I’d once called a friend. “It’s okay. Do it. Do it, Natalya.”
My hands shook above me.
“But . . . I didn’t want to.” The words trembled out of him as the tears wetted his lips. “I didn’t—you have to know that. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I hesitated. Why was I hesitating? Why?
“Maia?”
“Agent Rhys! Ms. Finley!”
“Aidan!”
“Aidan! Oh god, Aidan!”
Figures were rushing toward us. Agents. I recognized some of them. Director Prince’s eldest son, Brendan Prince, was among them and—Naomi. She was barefoot, running toward us with her high-heeled shoes in her hand, but she stopped the moment she saw me, saw the sword I lifted.
“I did everything I was asked,” I called out over the noise. “I did everything, but you . . .” I lowered my arms, the tip of my sword touching softly against the ground before my hands started to shake. “You . . . Why didn’t you protect me?”
I fell to my knees as Zhar-Ptitsa faded into embers that brushed past my body and fluttered with the wind into the moonlit night. My time was up. She was coming.
Closing my eyes, I let the darkness take me.
• • •
The story was that an anti-Sect gunman had infiltrated the estate looking to murder Blackwell. Blackwell’s wounded body and the shattered windows were proof enough, though it didn’t stop questions from being asked. Dignitaries left the fund-raiser quickly while journalists scurried to put together their news reports.
I sat on the front steps of Blackwell’s estate, my dress torn in places, my body wet with sweat as I watched the ambulance take Rhys to the nearest hospital for his burns.
Rhys.
“Natalya,” I whispered as the bright sirens disappeared into the night. “You . . . weren’t lying to me after all.”
Each word plummeted to the floor like a stone. I had to fight to keep from following them. My limbs felt weak, my mind blank but for the memory of Rhys pleading for death at Natalya’s hand.
I was wrong about everything.
I touched my lips, lips that had touched his, my fingers trembling. Liars and traitors were everywhere. I was surrounded by them. Brendan had taken the shattered steel neck-band in as evidence, and I was to be sent to the London facility immediately to check out the back of my neck. But even though I needed to know what had happened to me, I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t run away either. I couldn’t hide. What could I do?
I lowered my head into my hands as soon as I felt the tears budding.
“Maia.”
Lifting it again, I looked down the line of parked cars in front of the estate. Naomi called me from the back of a sleek black Rolls-Royce. She waved at me to come over.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Prince?” I asked once I finally reached her.
The window was down, but she kept the door open. That didn’t mean I felt welcome coming forward. Naomi sat rigidly in the backseat, her long, sleek black hair draping down her chest like a blanket.
“Somewhat. I’m still shaken.”
I could see that. Her pale hands trembled against her lap.
Did she know? About Rhys?
“Mrs. Prince . . .” I looked around, making sure nobody could hear me, and lowered my voice. “The last time I scried, Natalya told me to talk to you. She gave me your name specifically.”
“She did.” It was something between a statement and a question.
“What Natalya said to you earlier . . .”
Naomi’s bottom lip curled inward. “Yes. Come inside.”
I hesitated but eventually listened. Whatever Natalya blamed her for, she’d sent me to Naomi for a reason. The woman shifted over to make room. Once I was inside, she rolled up the tinted windows. We were alone.
“Please tell me you know something.” I gripped the back of the passenger seat. “What the hell is going on here? Saul is out there. Jessie said something big is gonna happen. And he’s got people helping him, soldiers with abilities like him, like us, but I don’t know who the hell I’m supposed to trust anymore.” My eyes watered as I thought about Rhys, our kiss. The burning sensation still hadn’t quite disappeared from the back of my neck. “The Sect—”
“Can’t be trusted,” Naomi finished quietly. She kept her expression calm as she looked up at me, but she couldn’t bury the urgency in her eyes.
I frowned, studying her carefully. “Who are you?”
Her features were stone as she answered. “A member of the High Council of the Sect,” she said. “From one of the so-called Seven Houses.”
“Seven Houses . . .” I pressed my back against the door. A member of the Council. Suddenly, I realized why her voice sounded familiar. She’d spoken that day in the cathedral when Blackwell had made me pledge allegiance to a broken institution on my knees like a servant. Hers was the only voice of reason, of kindness, among those that filled the hall with jeers.
“So your husband’s the director of a Sect division while you’re from some family dynasty of Council members?” With one director son and another son who was a murderer. A derisive laugh almost escaped my throat. Interesting family.
“No. There’s no dynasty,” Naomi corrected. “The ‘Seven Houses’ moniker is a red herring for secrecy’s sake. Council members are elected into their positions, though there are some—very few—exceptions. . . .”
Naomi twisted her wedding band around her middle finger as if by habit. “Something is happening . . . within the Council and within the Sect. Saul, the terrorist. Those soldiers. They’re all a part of it. That woman Jessie was right. Something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it.” She looked at me. “And you girls, you Effigies. You have to help me stop it.”
My mouth dried, and my body began trembling. I didn’t want to show how scared I was, but I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking when I asked, “How?”
“Not here.” She flicked her head toward the window behind me. An agent had just walked out of the front doors of Blackwell’s mansion holding a set of car keys. “We can’t use phones, either. It’s too dangerous. I bought Natalya’s home in Madrid. Nobody knows, not even my husband. In exactly four days at sundown, meet me there, but make sure you’re alone. I’ll tell you everything. I’m sure you’ve been waiting too, haven’t you? For the truth.”
The truth. Yes. Ever since I first saw Natalya die in front of me. Ever since her parents warned me against the Sect in Argentina. If I had any chance in hell of stopping Saul for good, I needed to know how. But remembering the anguish crushing Natalya from the inside, remembering her pain as she stared at the woman through my eyes. It was the pain of betrayal.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“I understand your hesitation.” Naomi must have seen my hesitation. “And it’s up to you to decide one way or another. I’m just afraid this will all go too far before we can stop it. But before you go”—her hand firmly seized mine the moment I moved for the door—“there’s one thing I need to tell you. I want to be honest with you before you choose to move forward with this.”
“What is it?”
The driver came closer.
“Natalya’s death . . . My son was just the gun. And he . . . he is who he is because of the sins of his parents. Because I was too weak to protect him.” Naomi’s features pinched as she struggled against a sudden well of tears that never fell. She blinked them away. “He was the gun. But a trigger can’t pull itself.”
There was no hesitation as she stared back at me, as she held me in place with little more than a confession.
“Though I didn’t order her death, Natalya’s blood is on my hands.” Her words hung in the silent air. I hadn’t realized my mouth was open until I heard my own breath shuddering out of me. “Knowing that, if you still want to stop Saul, come and find me in Madrid.”
I opened my door the moment the driver arrived. And I watched quietly as Naomi’s car took her from the estate into the dead of night.