by Sean Easley
“How do you plan on finding him?” she asks.
I untie Nico’s coin from my neck and unstring it from the necklace, tucking the string into the unbound pocket of the have-sack. “Now that I understand how to follow bonds with an icon better, I can use his coin and the suit together to guide me to him. The bond between us should draw the suit to him, the same way your coin drew Queenie to find you. And the admiral said this place’s magic is connected to lost things. It’s like . . . the lost and found of the world, so I think that’ll help.”
“You’re using different magics together.”
“Something like that.” I infuse Nico’s coin and pop it into the suit’s breast pocket alongside mine. The suit crackles, and sure enough, I can feel a magnetic tug pulling me down the road. “It’s that way.”
Cass turns the back of her chair toward me. “Hop on then.”
“Huh?”
“We’re in a hurry, right?” She flicks a lever on her chair, and a small, foot-wide platform drops down from the rear. “Grab on and hold tight.”
• • •
Cass’s icon-bound chair zooms—hair-raisingly, eye-wateringly fast—down the twisting roads of the Nightvine, just barely managing to dodge the massive mounds of junk scattered sporadically throughout. I clutch the have-sack tightly under my arm to keep from losing it. Any minute now I expect to go flying because Cass’s wheel hit an unfortunately placed pile of car keys.
• • •
The bits of the Nightvine I’ve explored zip by in a blur as I cling tight to the handles, feet planted on the platform. In mere minutes we leave the last of my arrows behind, and with them, all sense of familiarity. It gives me a new perspective on how wild and expansive the place is. This massive plant has been growing for centuries in this hazy, green twilight.
We round a bend in the vine, and her chair lifts up on two wheels.
I jerk in the opposite direction to counterbalance us back to the road. “Slow down!” I shout over the wind roaring in my ears.
“Why?” She weaves to avoid hitting a half-buried Volkswagen. “Did you get a new direction from the coin?”
“No, but if you’re not careful, we’re going to get blown off the edge!”
“We’ll be fine!”
I focus on the sensations in the suit, anticipating the next few branching paths, letting Nico’s coin guide us. The vine is thicker here, and the path is wider than before, clearer, and just as endless. Thank goodness Cass’s chair doesn’t require fuel, or we’d probably run out of gas soon.
“Turn,” I direct, and Cass angles the chair down the next slope.
She motions to something up ahead. “What is that?”
A thick, spherical mass about ten feet in diameter hangs off the edge of the Nightvine. It’s surface is rough and wrinkly, like a coconut, or an avocado.
Or like the wall in Stripe’s gallery.
“I think it’s a fruit,” I guess. A couple of stray cats lie sleeping next to the stem sprouting from its top.
“Actually,” Cass says, “I’m pretty sure it’s a drupe.”
“What’s a drupe?”
“A kind of fruit with a skin and a fleshy part and a pit in the center. Like peaches, and coconuts. Think it’s important?”
Admiral Dare said the Nightvine’s fruit sustained her when she was lost here. These must be what she meant. I don’t feel a tug toward this giant coconut thing—just the draw of the binding to continue down the vine.
“No,” I say, “but I think we’re getting closer.”
The farther we ride, the more the vines around us change. Those here aren’t as green as the ones closer to the Hotel. Dark brown tendrils curl through them. Even the sky has a sickly, grayish cast to it.
Then I notice the buds. Not the bright, lime-colored clusters that grow at the veils. No, these blossoms all bloom a deep indigo, like the flower in mirror-Nico’s lapel, and at the garden party, and the one the MC wore on the trip to the EFS Roanoke. They’re choking out the Nightvine, leaving the green blossoms withered, same as in the gallery.
The tug on my suit draws us to one of the larger drupes—a misshapen, barn-size monstrosity hanging from an overhead vine to rest on the road. There’s no mistaking it; the pull is like a magnet ready to snap into place.
I hop off Cass’s chair, legs wobbly and numb from our bouncy ride, and rest my palm on the fibrous hull of the drupe.
“Is he inside that thing?” Cass asks.
I walk around it, taking it in from every angle. “I’m not sure. If he is, I don’t know how we’ll get him out.” The vines here are almost exclusively the dark brown ones. Thick clusters of deep blue flowers bloom across the ground, the tips of their petals black as if singed by fire.
The drupe’s not a perfect ball—more oblong, like some misshapen eggplant-coconut hybrid that deformed as it grew against the road. A smattering of junk lies scattered beneath it. Some of the half-buried items catch my eye—a dusty oil painting of some old white guy on a horse, and . . . is that a medieval gauntlet?
“Oh, wow.” I drop to my knees and pick through the junk, lifting each item to examine it. “A rusty sword, a cracked vase, and these journals . . . You know what this is?”
Cass nods gravely. “This stuff came from the gallery.”
“This thing is connected to that wall where Nico disappeared. Which means there’s a veil here. Or maybe . . .” I scan the dozens of other drupes hanging in the distance. “Maybe the drupes are all veils, growing on the vine. The veils are how the Nightvine finds lost things and claims them as its own.”
“Okay,” Cass says, “does that mean the Nightvine used this drupe to collect Nico, too?”
“Let’s break into it and find out.”
Of course, finding a way into the drupe turns out to be a lot harder than it sounds. I don the metal gauntlet we found in the dirt and try digging my fingers into the fruit’s woody surface, but I can’t get any leverage. I even try piercing the skin with the sword, but the blade breaks—actually snaps in two—when I put my weight into it.
“Calm down there, muscle man,” Cass says, and laughs.
“Something’s not right,” I say, still piecing it all together. “Nico’s been missing a couple of months, but he’s been sending messages out somehow. How does that work?”
“The cats,” she replies. “They can pass through those veil things, right?”
“But how did they get to him in the first place? They came to us through the blossom clusters, but these blue flowers aren’t tied to the veils. I’d need Nightvine blooms to get inside, if there even is an inside. Unless . . .” I search for a handhold in the drupe’s rough surface and try lifting myself up. The ridges seem strong enough to support my weight. “I need to climb up top. Stay here.”
When I reach the top of the drupe, I find what I’m looking for—a large patch of yellow-green blossoms, bursting forth at the stem. And lying in the midst of the flowers is Queenie, stretching a full-force yawn.
“Hey, kitty-kitty,” I say, rubbing the scruff between her shoulder blades. She flares her toes and rolls onto her back to nuzzle my hand. “How’d you get here?” Then I realize. “You’ve just been waiting for me to find him, haven’t you?”
She gives me a questioning look.
“I don’t know what happened to Sana,” I tell her. “Though, knowing her, she’s probably safely back at the Hotel by now, telling Agapios everything.”
Queenie lays her head on the drupe, purring loudly. It’s almost as if she understands me.
“Who are you talking to up there?” Cass calls up.
“No one.” I grip the stem near the flowers, and the seam between the stem and the drupe peels free just like the veils, revealing pale green light inside. “I found a way in.”
“Be careful!” she shouts back, and I know she means it. We may tease each other and fight, but deep down we both care about the other a lot. We always will.
I lift the veil and drop inside.
27
The Bonds of Friendship
I land in a crouch on the squishy, luminescent floor and look up to find myself face-to-face with none other than my blood-brother, Nico Flores.
At least, I think it’s him. The boy before me looks so different in this hazy, lime-colored light. He’s hunched, skinny—malnourished, even—with dark, sunken eyes a little too wild to belong to my friend.
“You’re here,” I say, wiping my hands and taking a step toward him. He’s dressed like the rest of the Hoppers—tweed vest, white button-up, brown pants with suspenders—only, the clothes are filthy and hang off him like he’s a kid playing dress-up. His lips are chapped and peeling, and his hair is longer, slicked and shiny and curling off his neck. “What happened to you?”
The wall behind him matches the ones in the Museum gallery, a gaudy display of Stripe’s trophies. The look in Nico’s eyes is similar to those trophies. Worn. Tarnished.
He shuffles back, stumbling as if it’s all he can do to stay upright.
“You should have come sooner,” he says.
I adjust the have-sack on my shoulder and take in the rest of our surroundings. While the wall behind him matches the missing portion of Stripe’s gallery, the rest of the wall curves around us like the interior of an oblong globe. It has a smooth, wet texture, the color of a kiwi. The flesh inside the fruit glows softly, illuminating the small space.
Black veins have wound from the Museum wall into the drupe’s pale flesh where the two meet, leaving the seam between them rotten and oozing. A bookcase that was once filled with leather-bound journals has been emptied, and the journals are strewn across the bit of carpet that fades into the glowing husk.
“You should have come sooner,” Nico says again, this time with more urgency. His voice is dry, like he hasn’t spoken in weeks.
It’s only then that I notice the thing clenched in his fist. A sliver. He grips the wooden spike like a dagger, flexing his fingers around the pommel. His hands are covered with tiny red pinpricks.
“A lot could’ve been different if you’d come when I called,” he says. “If you’d listened. But I can’t count on anyone but myself. I know that now.”
This isn’t the Nico I know. There’s a cynical sneer in his voice that reminds me of Stripe. But still . . . he seems to remember something about me.
I take a step closer. “Nico, do you know who I am?”
“You’re the one who abandoned me.”
He brandishes the sliver and jabs it in my direction. It’s a quick motion for someone who looks so weak, and catches me off guard, but I manage to jump back just in time.
“Wait. It’s me,” I plead. “It’s Cam. I didn’t abandon you.”
“You’re the one I’m bound to,” he breathes, and swipes again. My waistcoat tugs my torso to the side, out of the path of his sliver. “I waited for you. I was supposed to be able to depend on you. You must not be a very good brother.”
I back away, struggling to understand. If he’s been here all this time, waiting for someone to find him, why send all the pranks?
The cats weren’t a prank though; they were a cry for help. Cass figured that much out. Those pricks on his hands . . . He used our blood bond to send the cats to the Hotel—the four of clubs for Cass, the queen of hearts for me. But why make us guess? Why not just tell us where he was?
I’m missing something. Nico couldn’t pass through the veils—that much is clear. But I can. I see the blossoms because the Nightvine bonded to me. He’s been here, so why didn’t it bond to him too? And what about all the other hotel fiascos? The chef’s pans, the oozing fountain, the broken elevators . . . and that taunting reflection . . .
“Nico, we need to get you out of here,” I say. “You need food, water. I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll figure this out. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not okay!” he roars. “We’re too late. We lost. You lost.”
It’s as if he’s talking around what he really wants to say. As if . . .
As if there’s a secret that’s protecting itself.
And then I feel it, lurking on the edge of my awareness, lingering like an afterimage from a camera flash—the remnants of a bond.
Stripe. He’s here, listening. Watching us.
I circle the room, pulling out Mom’s key, willing it to help me see what I’m missing. The key warms, drawing my gaze to a nearby glass case, and the object inside it.
It’s a stick—no, a branch—nearly four feet long, displayed like an ancient sword in an exhibit. Caustic oil dribbles from the wood. I know that oily substance; it’s the same sickness that’s been affecting the Vesima tree. Diseased vines coil around the pedestal, joining with the stick and blooming with wilted indigo flowers. I can sense its magic, like the magnetic tug that drew me to Nico, only in reverse. I want to get away from it as fast as I can.
“Stripe left something behind,” Nico hisses, angling the sliver toward my chest.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“The Blight. It was the heart of Stripe’s House. Not like other House hearts, though. A bit of magic that Stripe broke off from himself.” He stares into its streams of tar. “I thought I could contain it. When I realized what it was doing, it was too late. I tried to get rid of it, but the magic backfired and I ended up here.”
He was trying to fight back.
“I understand it better now, though.” There’s a storm in Nico’s eyes as he raises the sliver toward me. “The Blight is the heart of my House now. I won’t let you take it away from me.”
He races for me, sliver raised.
My suit tightens around my limbs, pulling me out of the way.
“Stop,” I shout. “I’m here to help!”
“You don’t care about us,” he snarls. “The Blight was right—you want to own the Museum and the Hotel. You want to control everything.”
He strikes again, and this time my coattails reach around to block him, and knock his sliver off its mark.
I scurry around the glass case, putting his precious branch between us. I’ve never seen him angry like this. “I’m only here for you, Nico. I promise. I don’t want your house. I’m here to save you.”
“I don’t need saving. Not anymore.”
The suit bends and dodges and blocks, keeping me just out of his reach as he attacks again and again. His scowl grows deeper with each miss.
“Stripe’s influencing you! You’re not yourself.”
Nico wheezes, struggling for breath. “Stripe . . . has . . . no hold . . . on me.”
“It’s this place,” I say, taking an unnaturally long step out of the way. “The Blight is changing you. Shaping you.”
“Making me stronger,” he growls. “The Blight gives me what I need.”
“And what is that you need? To hurt me?”
“To own it all,” he screams, “before he takes it from us!”
With his next strike he stumbles, gulping air and clutching his side.
He motions to the pile of journals at the foot of the bookshelf. “See those?” he huffs. “They’re his. A catalogue of his deeds. I’ve read every word. All the civilizations that Stripe has brought to their knees, all the powerful people he’s humbled . . . he’s magnificent, Cam. My father, the Conqueror of Nations.”
Hearing him call Stripe his father forms a lump in my throat. “Nico—”
“He’s going to possess it all. Soon he’s going to take the world away from us because he thinks we don’t deserve it. He’ll beat everyone in the end.” Nico pushes to his feet, eyes glistening with hunger. “Everyone except us. You and me, brother, forever in perpetuity. We beat him once—think what we could do together.”
My eyes widen. Part of him does remember. The memories are in there. Only, they’re hidden. Concealed.
That means I can still reach him.
“We can take Stripe’s plans and make them our own,” Nico continues. “We can have the Hotel and the Museum. All the great House
s. We could break the fundamental bonds, and become whatever we want to be. Stripe won’t be able to own the world if we take it for ourselves first.”
I shake my head. “The Nico I met last year knew better than that. That Nico beat Stripe because he found compassion to balance out his ambition. He trusted people—trusted me—and we saved each other.”
“Don’t you see?” Nico urges. “We could be powerful together.”
I pull Nico’s coin from my breast pocket, and the binding on my suit fades. If I’m right, and the sliver pricks on Nico’s hands mean what I think they mean, there’s still one thing I can do.
“Maybe you’re right,” I tell him. “Or maybe I should just take it all for myself instead.”
Nico snarls and lunges, rage in his eyes.
And this time, I let him.
His sliver pierces my shoulder, and the world inside the drupe stills. But there’s no scream, no magical weight crumpling me up like a sheet of paper. I was right. The sliver’s magic doesn’t work here.
But the coin’s magic does.
I grab Nico’s wrist, wrench the sliver out of his grip, and force his hand into a handshake, the coin pressed between our palms.
He tries to pull away, but I hold tight as Nico’s memories flow back into him. The memories I made while carrying it are transferred too.
There’s something else hiding on the edge of his mind. A scribbled shadow haunts him, fogging his thoughts, concealing pieces of him from himself. No, I won’t let what Stripe left behind hurt the real Nico.
Still gripping his palm—the coin clasped between us—I pull out Mom’s topscrew and instinctively drive it toward the back of Nico’s hand. As key meets skin, a keyhole forms there on his hand. A magical flash of silvery foam oozes out, allowing the key to push through his hand, right through the center of the coin, and pass painlessly through my palm and out the other side.
A buzz of electric current races up my arm. Every hair stands on end as the key’s magic binds us with the coin.
Nico’s eyes lock on mine. There’s fear in that look.
And then—the coin between us, the key connecting us—I turn the topscrew.