20
WE ARRIVED IN TORONTO FOR the teen Viewers’ Choice Awards at noon, just seven hours before the street party–style event was supposed to start. They had already blocked off Queen Street and were setting up the barricades behind which all those shrieking fans would be having camera-friendly meltdowns.
Me and June had watched (well, streamed) the party every year as the mostly American pop stars, models, and anyone with a semipopular social media account marched down the red carpet–covered street and begged for attention. Always amusing.
But now that I would be joining the parade of self-absorbed celebrities basking in the adulation, I was too preoccupied and paranoid to let any of it sink in. Under the unforgiving sun, I kept peering around as we hopped out of the Sect van and entered the expensive hotel, scanning the crowds of Effigy fans that had gathered there for Jessie and her personal army of zombies. All I saw were signs, tears, and flashing camera phones.
Which introduced another set of problems. There wasn’t a single moment I wasn’t surrounded by people: hotel staff begging for autographs, coordinators for the event explaining where we needed to go and when, and Lake’s agent—a slightly flabby, mousy British man with a black goatee to match the color of his suit and pants—running around yelling at everyone, trying to make sure Lake had the best press to cover up the fact that her single had been delayed again and her fans were starting online petitions.
“It’s not my fault!” Lake whined at her phone as we entered our hotel suite, not that there was anyone on the other end. She was glaring at the disgruntled comments from Swans because they’d just started a thread on the Doll Soldiers forum for the sole purpose of utterly dragging her to the ends of the Earth. “You wankers try to promote a single when you’re fighting monsters and terrorists at the same bloody time!”
Admittedly, she was probably just on edge because the four members of GBD, her old girl group, had already arrived at their hotel a few blocks away surrounded by a crowd of rabid fans. The videos were all over the internet.
I cast a wary glance at our hair and makeup team setting up shop in our hotel suite before pulling Lake into the empty bedroom. “He’s here, right? Uncle Nathan?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Room four thirty-two. And he’s Mr. Caldwell now.” Laughing, she called Belle over.
“And you got the drive?” I asked Belle after she shut the door.
Belle nodded, patting her jeans pocket.
“While we’re being skull and bones, take a look at this.” Lake slid off her brown knapsack and pulled out the cigar box we’d found under Belle’s floorboard.
I peeked around her shoulder to take a closer look. “You brought that here?”
“Yeah . . . well, you know, with everything happening, I’ve been a bit antsy about keeping stuff like that in the dorm.”
“Good to see you’ve come prepared,” I said, impressed.
“Bloody right, I’m prepared.” Lake pulled a pair of shades out of her bag and gave it to me, then plucked the ones from the top of her head and passed them to Belle. “Now, you two be careful once you leave this room. There are probably fans and reporters sneaking about.”
Belle and I nodded and started off.
“Oi, where are you lot going?” Lake’s agent lowered his phone and stopped yelling into it for long enough to see us leaving. “You’re supposed to be getting your makeup done—”
“Never you mind, Henry. They’ll be back. Just going for a short walk,” said Lake.
“Yes. Walk. I like walking. I want to go too.” Chae Rin rose out of her chair like a ghost, but the hairdresser pushed her back down again.
I shut the door behind me, the commotion muffled behind wood. Belle and I donned our shades as we entered the elevator. I had my hood up covering my hair, pulling the strings so it covered a good portion of my face. Belle was less obvious, letting her uncombed hair loose as if she looked somehow less glamorous and recognizable in a pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt.
“This will be your first time seeing your uncle in a while, yes?” she said as she pressed the fourth-floor button. We’d have to go down from the twentieth.
“Yeah.”
It was the first time he would see me as Maia Finley, the fire Effigy. He’d learned about it on the news with everyone else because I couldn’t muster up enough courage to tell him before I was thrown into battle. I should have faced him. But I was a coward then.
And now.
I looked up at Belle, who leaned against the elevator wall, her arms folded as she waited.
“Maia.” Belle’s quizzical eyes narrowed as she noticed the slight trembling of my hands, even when I clasped them together and buried them behind my back. “What’s going on?”
A few days ago, when I was at the hospital, watching Rhys, I’d noticed certain sights that were now etched into my memory. Like the sliver of light escaping through the curtains kissing his face. The quiet innocence softening his features, as if sleep had mercifully taken from them all the guilt and grief. He’d rested as if he were finally at peace, the peace he’d begged Natalya to give him. Natalya, whom he’d betrayed.
Both mother and son.
“Naomi Prince, Rhys’s mother, is a member of the Council.”
At this, Belle’s eyebrows rose. “What?”
“Not only that, but she asked me to meet her alone in Madrid in four days, which was three days ago, so, like, tomorrow. At sundown. Natalya’s old apartment. I wasn’t sure if I should tell you guys because she asked me to come alone.”
Belle pulled off her shades, and I wished she hadn’t. She could never hide the vulnerability in her eyes when it came to her mentor. “Why there? What does she want to tell you?”
“The truth. About Natalya’s death.”
The elevator’s gears shifted in the walls behind us. A silent shadow passed over Belle’s face, though she made no change of expression. “Why would she know?”
My lips felt heavy as I parted them to speak, but before I could, the elevator door opened at the fourth floor. The bellboy looked impatient as he waited for us to scurry out. Dipping our heads low, we left.
“Room four thirty-two,” Belle said when we stopped at the door. The moment stretched out, long and painful, as she knocked. What was I going to say to my uncle? What could I—
The door opened. I didn’t need to see more than a few strands of his limp brown hair before I slammed the door the rest of the way open and jumped on him. With my arms wrapped around his scrawny neck, I was bawling before his back hit the ground.
“Maia.” My uncle’s voice. My family. My blood.
He was laughing. Teary-eyed, I lifted my head off his chest just to make sure of it. His youthful face flowered into a grin too childish for his thirty years.
“It’s only been two months.” He showed all his teeth as he laughed, sweetly, happily, because he was just as ecstatic to see me. It was just the two of us, after all, since the day his dead older brother’s only surviving daughter had arrived at his New York apartment looking for a place to sleep.
My body shook as we both sat up, and a fresh wave of tears spilled out as both his hands crushed my cheeks together. I could feel Belle awkwardly maneuvering around us, trying to shut the door. “Sorry,” I said, and moved. We weren’t exactly being stealthy.
Uncle Nathan let go of me. “After the hotel was attacked in New York—”
“I know, I know. I wanted to call you, but—”
“Yeah, the Sect. Don’t worry, I’m up to date. Well, on most of it. I’ve read enough headlines to fill in the rest.”
We stared at each other, and that’s when I noticed what I didn’t before: the weight he’d lost. He’d already been a thin guy, but though his face had kept most of its vibrancy, it’d slimmed down too much for me to ignore, his skin matte and dry. And the circles under his eyes . . .
“You haven’t been sleeping.” Just like after Dad died.
Uncle Nathan’s hands stayed around my face, but his grip had slacked to the point where I could only feel the rough touch of his fingers. “I’m so sorry” was all he said.
It was his turn. The tears began to leak out one by one before he swiped his face quickly. “Maia, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from this.”
A thousand words passed between us in silence. His hands fell onto his lap as we considered which to speak out loud.
“Hey!” I tapped his shoulder. “Look what I can do!”
I sat back, sliding from him a little in case something went wrong. Then I snapped my fingers. The tiniest flame erupted at the tip of my thumb, flickering gently in the air.
Uncle Nathan laughed in amazement. “Look at you! You’re a little lighter!”
“There’s other stuff too!” I stood up excitedly, but Belle gripped my shoulder before I could get too carried away.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “Mr. Finley, my name is—”
“Belle Rousseau. Of course I know.” He jumped to his feet to shake her hand, a little too fast like he always did when he was nervous. “It’s an honor to meet you. Wow, Maia, you’ve really upgraded your list of friends.”
“Yeah, from zero to a positive whole number.”
Belle seemed a little taken aback and—maybe? Was it my imagination?—shy. Shy at the word “friend.” Her cheeks were a little redder, but it might have been a trick of the light.
“We’ve asked you here for a specific purpose,” she said.
“Yeah, the agent of one of the other Effigies—Lake? He called me and said you guys would explain. I don’t know, I could barely understand what he was saying—he just kind of barked stuff at me and hung up.”
Grabbing his hand, I helped him up. “I’ll fill in everything now.”
It took some time to put everything out there. Saul being at large, he knew about. But he didn’t know about the mysterious soldier with the mark at the back of his neck. Jessie, who could control the dead with her thoughts. The mind control. The flash drive. When I told him about that, Belle handed it to him.
“Are you okay?” Urgently, he pulled me by the arm and swept back my hair to check my neck. “It’s still red. God. Maia, if I’d known you were going through all this . . .”
“You couldn’t have done anything anyway,” I said with a shrug.
Running his hand through his hair, he turned and started across the room. “I’ve never heard of nanotechnology that advanced.” He sat in a chair by the curtain-drawn window and set up his laptop on the table, pushing away a little tray of milk and sugar for coffee. “But none of this surprises me. Development firms around the world have been looking for a way to reproduce Effigy-like abilities. And I suppose they’d also need to come up with a method to control them.”
I walked behind him. “Why?”
“Why else? For defense. For war.” He looked at the drive. “When I was at Caltech, I heard whispers of a program jointly developed by DARPA and another defense subcontractor. That guy you mentioned, Grunewald? His name definitely came up.”
“DARPA?” I furrowed my brows, confused.
“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.” He pushed up the lid of his laptop and clicked it on. “An agency within America’s Department of Defense.”
“What are they working on?” asked Belle.
“Were,” Uncle Nathan corrected. “I mean, it was years ago, after the Seattle Siege. An entire American city reduced to ashes by phantoms—of course the government was spooked enough to try different things. A black project. But the Senate axed it, I guess.”
He shoved the flash drive into his laptop and, for a moment, only stared very seriously at the empty black screen that popped up, sitting back in his chair with his fingers clasped.
“If this is even close to being similar to what I think this could be . . . then, Maia, you’ve stepped into some serious crap here.” He sighed. “Well, I guess I’m right in it with you.”
“Sorry.” My hand tightened its grip on the back of his chair. “Effigy or not, I’m still just some dumb kid asking you to do my homework for me.”
As he turned to look up at me, his lips quirked into a lopsided grin. “Well, the stakes are a bit higher this time around. There are worse things than getting a call from your principal.”
I watched him get out of his chair, stretching his arms above his head. “I didn’t want you to get roped into this.”
“No, you did the right thing coming to me.” His expression darkened as he lowered his voice almost instinctively. “If what you’re saying about the Sect is true, then you can’t trust them with this. We don’t know how many people inside and outside the organization are working with Saul. We don’t know how big this could really be, or how many people like Jessie are out there. Maia . . .” He grabbed my hand. “I strongly suggest you don’t go back to London.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Lake had sent me a text to hurry back, because apparently it was getting harder to keep her agent from sending out a search-and-rescue team.
“Well, I’ll leave you to break into the Sect’s or the American government’s or whoever’s secrets. Hopefully, you can find something out about those freaks who keep trying to kidnap me. Meanwhile, I have to go get ready so we can present the award for Male Hottie of the Year.” I paused. “My life is weird.”
“No kidding.” Uncle Nathan smirked. “You guys go ahead. I’ll stay here, pour myself some coffee, and work on this.” He cracked his knuckles. “Though, to be honest, I haven’t done any serious hacking since college.”
“Make sure you keep out of sight,” warned Belle.
“Sure.” He reached for the empty coffeepot next to his laptop and paused. “Heh. It’s kinda like a spy movie, isn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Uncle. Just like a spy movie.”
“Good luck,” Belle said, and we left him to the drive.