by G. P. Ching
“You’re not human.”
“Human? Yes, of course I’m human, but I’m also a Soulkeeper.”
“To fight evil…” Finn babbled. It still sounded made up.
“I work for God,” she said.
“You work for God. Like you talk to him and stuff?”
“No, silly—”
“That’s a relief because that sounded insane.”
“I talk to his messenger, an angel named Gabriel. God is too busy.”
Finn’s lips parted. “I don’t know what I should say here. That’s the craziest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I’m sure it’s a lot to take in. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”
“It’s just so unexpected. Like, number one, you’re saying you know firsthand there is a God and that His existence isn’t a bunch of baloney.”
Hope wiped her face with the back of her arm. “Believe what you want to believe. What’s true is true. What isn’t, isn’t.” She shrugged. “Tell yourself a story. That’s what most people do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not going to sell you more baloney.”
Hands on his hips, Finn’s gaze traveled over Hope’s bloody shoulder to the tiger’s body on the trail. “It’s moving.” He pointed at the contorting orange fur.
Hope shuffled to his side. “Oh crap. This was why I couldn’t kill it, Finn. When it got close to me, I could tell…”
“Tell what?
“It had a soul.” Bones snapped and muscles roiled under the tiger’s fur. The back legs straightened, the abdomen hollowed out. When the process was finished, a human body lay in the dirt, a male with brown hair and a bloody gash in the back of his head.
Finn backed up a few steps feeling disoriented.
Hope said, “Aerial kids fly. Pyro kids burn. Resilience kids toughen. And menagerie kids… they shift. Amuke can change which animals are in the cage because they aren’t animals at all.”
Finn’s gaze darted to Hope. He pointed a finger at the boy. “Did he change back because he’s…?”
“Dead? No. He’s alive.”
“How do you know? Shouldn’t we check his pulse or something?”
“I can hear his heart beating.”
“You can hear—” Finn shook his head.
“We should get out of here. I’m sure the rest of the troupe can’t be far behind, and when this guy wakes up, he’s not going to be happy.” Hope took off at a jog.
“Wait!” Finn ran after her, navigating the winding trail, always five steps behind. She was fast, exceptionally fast. Even flying he could barely keep up. She only stopped when they reached the base of the mountain and then, only because she had to.
A dense, impenetrable fog hovered where the path drove sharply upward. A swarm of black birds—he couldn’t tell if they were ravens or crows in the darkness—circled above their heads, cawing and flapping above the thick, cloudy white.
“At least we know why it’s called Murder Mountain.” Hope took his hand and set foot on the trail, blindly leading the way.
“Why?”
“A group of crows is called a murder.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. And it appears this mountain is infested with them.” The slope was steep enough that Hope used her hands to feel her way along the path.
“Let me see if I can get above it.” Finn coasted straight up. He broke the cloud of fog and aimed for a patch of trail farther up the mountain. “Follow my voice.”
“Stay there,” she called back. A few minutes later, she caught up to him.
“Should I do it again?”
She nodded. They climbed for the better part of an hour until the side of the mountain opened. Along the deep plateau that cut into the dirt and stone, a thick green pasture surrounded a lake of a blue color that seemed lit from within beneath the fog.
Hope stopped and pulled the napkin map from her back pocket. “Lake Azure.”
“I thought this supposed friend said they’d find us on the mountain?” Finn rested his hands on his hips, completely exhausted.
“That’s what the note said, but the stranger left it over a week ago.” Hope scanned the foggy beach of the lake, her head stopping when her eyes caught on a humanoid figure watching them from the fog.
“Stay where you are. Don’t move a muscle,” a woman’s voice said.
Finn bristled. He knew that voice. When the figure stepped into the moonlight, his reaction proved warranted. Ms. D’s rheumy eyes stared at him from beneath wild gray hair.
“We just—” Finn started, digging through his mind for an excuse to be out of their room in the middle of the night. Hope didn’t even bother.
Ms. D adjusted one of the layered shawls on her shoulders. “I know exactly why you are here, boy. I sent for you. I left you the note. I am the friend you came to meet.”
37
Duplicity
Finn stared at Ms. D as if he could wring an explanation from her by will alone.
“It’s not safe to talk here,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led them around the lake, toward the side of the mountain. Pausing on the gritty, pebbled bank, she raised her thumb and forefinger to her lips and whistled. Finn heard a splash come from the center of the lake but couldn’t see the source due to the fog hanging over the water. Moments later, the winding body of a crocodile neared the bank.
Finn and Hope backed away as the reptile crawled onto shore, its eyes locking onto the two of them. Seemingly unconcerned, Ms. D waited patiently as a shiver ran the length of the crocodile’s body. Its bones and muscles bunched and stretched under leathery skin. Curling on its side, the crocodile coiled its tail around its head, and when it unraveled again, the beast was no longer a crocodile.
“Paul!” Finn gasped.
The boy was naked, chest down in the stones. “Would you mind?”
Finn turned his back as did Hope.
“Okay.”
When Finn turned back around, Paul had dressed and was sitting in a wheelchair. He hadn’t noticed either clothes or chair before, but the thick fog made it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction.
“I don’t understand. I just saw you yesterday at school. What happened to your legs?” Hope asked.
By way of response, he gestured in the direction Ms. D moved and rolled his chair down the path after her. Finn nudged Hope’s elbow, raising an eyebrow, but she simply shrugged. Nothing was said until they were safely within the confines of a cave in the side of the mountain. Paul parked his chair next to a small fire in the homey interior chamber.
“It is said this cave was built by the indigenous people of this island. It has excellent living conditions and certain magical properties,” Ms. D said. “I’ve enhanced those properties to ensure our safety and privacy.”
“What gives? Why lure us all the way out here? What couldn’t you tell us at school?” Finn asked.
Ms. D crossed to a pitcher of water and poured it into a large porcelain basin. She set it down between Finn and Hope and handed them a small stack of towels. “For the blood,” she said.
Finn had almost forgotten they were both covered in Hope’s blood. He submerged his hands and rubbed them together under the water. Hope dipped a towel in and started cleaning up.
Adjusting her shawl, Ms. D sat down on an upholstered chair that had no business being in a cave. “The people at your school who look like Paul and me are not us. The Paul you know is not this Paul, and you and I have never met before.”
Finn dropped the towel he was holding and darted a glance toward Hope, who was equally shocked. He looked back to Paul and Ms. D.
“Don’t you remember seeing me on the edge of the wood, Finn?” Paul said, stroking a scar on his lip.
Finn opened his mouth to acknowledge the incident but couldn’t find the words. The mere thought that the tortured thing he’d seen outside his window had actually been Paul filled him with a
crushing guilt.
Paul’s gaze traveled to the fire. “I don’t blame you. There was nothing you could have done.”
“You’ve been here since then?” Hope asked.
“Yes,” Paul said softly, staring into the fire. “When there is an incident at the school, Ravenguard, Applegate, and those… things, hunt you like an animal. I’d be dead if Ms. D hadn’t rescued me.”
“So, is Amanda here too?” Hope asked.
Ms. D shook her head. “I tried to save her, but she wouldn’t trust me. She ran in the opposite direction. We don’t know what happened to her, but the clowns have replaced her just as they’ve replaced Paul and me.”
Hope stopped washing. “What do you mean, replaced, exactly? Is it some sort of illusion?”
“The clowns are not human,” Paul said.
Ms. D warmed her hands over the fire. “The only way I can explain about the clowns is to tell you the story of how I came to know of their true intentions. A year ago, during the last spring performance, there was an accident. A boy fell to his death right in front of me, close enough for me to hear the snap of his neck breaking. Once the curtain closed, the clowns moved in to clean up the body and the blood. That’s when I discovered their chilling secret.”
“What did you see?” Finn asked.
“I saw the boy standing among the clowns. The exact same boy, who I’d just watched break his neck, whose body was hoisted on the shoulders of the clowns. He stared at me from backstage in the way the clowns do, expressionless. And I realized that it was the boy, but it wasn’t. There had been signs before this. Children punished by Ravenguard and Applegate experienced drastic personality changes, but we always thought it was due to the method of their punishment. That day, I learned the clowns were replacing students with doppelgängers. And after some further investigation, I now know they are clones, biologically equivalent to the students but inhabited by the creatures we call clowns.”
Finn fidgeted, his chair suddenly uncomfortable, his skin contracting as goose bumps broke out across his arms. “They took Wendy’s blood and your hair, Hope,” he said. “That’s what they were doing in the laboratory under the school. They were cloning you.”
“You saw them?” Paul asked.
“I-I followed one of them after it took Hope’s hair. They have a hive under the school with these… tubes. I thought the clones were dead bodies.”
Hope grimaced. “But why? If they wanted us all dead, they could have done it on the first day. And why inhabit a bunch of teenagers?”
“The clowns are killing the students and replacing them, but that’s not all they are doing. The hive is feeding on the souls of their victims,” Ms. D said. “When the clown came for the boy who died, it reached inside his chest and extracted pure light. I watched the creature ingest it.”
“Ate it? You’re sure?” Hope asked.
“You never forget a thing like that,” Ms. D said. “There’s more to this, though, than simple nourishment. While I was still headmistress, I was privy to how Ravenguard and Applegate decided whom to invite to Revelations. They wouldn’t have told you this, but in my office are genealogy charts dating back hundreds of years. Everyone who is invited to Revelations is a descendant from one of those charts. I never understood why. Now I believe the clowns are replacing the students in the outside world.”
Hope buried her face in her hands. Finn understood. It was a lot to process.
“But why just Paul and Amanda? Why not all of us?” Finn asked.
“We think that the longer you are here on this island, the easier the clowns find it to inhabit your body. Take Amanda for example. They replaced her on the first day, and it was weeks before she could appear human. Paul’s clone took slightly less time. Still, they made sure to room them together. It takes months for a clone to develop into a passable human boy or girl, and the longer they can observe you, the longer they can sample your essence, the better the results. Over the years, hundreds of these clones have gone home with unsuspecting parents. Model citizens.”
Finn’s stomach clenched at her description. “Model citizens. That’s how the stranger who started the fire in my school described himself. He framed me.”
Hope rubbed small circles over her temples. “What in the hell are they?”
“I don’t know what the clowns are, but they’ve been here for as long as Revelations has existed.” Ms. D stroked her chin thoughtfully. “We used to think they were harmless, a beneficial organism.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Hope said, spreading her hands.
There were several things about this conversation Finn didn’t understand, but he listened anyway.
“They told us that students become instructors, instructors become enchanters or magicians, and an enchanter or magician can become the performance architect. Why did the clowns replace you with a clone? Why didn’t they promote Theodor or Juliette?”
Ms. D smiled a wicked, vengeful smile. “Because they can’t. I have to die for Theodor or Juliette to take my place, and as you can see, I haven’t cooperated.”
38
Rules, Provisos
You were the enchanter before Juliette,” Hope said, remembering the poster in the library.
“I was. When the previous headmistress decided to move on, she trained me for the role and left the island. She died days later, and that is when I was transformed to this.” She gestured toward her face. “You see, the island stops the aging process. If I was still an enchanter, I’d look as young as Juliette. They could have named someone else to the position, but the process of becoming the performance architect, of aging into the role, would never occur, and that, dear friends, would mean they would not inherit my power. My clone has it only because its body is an exact copy of mine.”
“That’s why you can’t leave the island,” Hope said. “You’ll age and die.”
Ms. D nodded. “Smart girl. They hunt for me every night, you know. Without magic, I’d be dead by now. Ravenguard and Applegate are expert huntsmen.”
“You invited us here for a reason,” Hope said. “What do you want? Why us?”
“We’ve been watching you. I’ve never seen two students adapt as quickly as you. With your help on the inside, Paul and I might be able to save the others. Without you, we’re doomed.”
Hope stood and paced before the fire, rubbing the palms of her hands together in slow circles. “This is bigger than Revelations,” she said slowly. “And there’s someone else whose help we need.”
Ms. D squinted skeptically. “Who?”
Hope leveled her gaze on the fire and clutched her triquetra pendant. “Messenger, I call upon thee.”
Instantly, the cave filled with light that coalesced into a dark-haired angel with piercing blue eyes and fluffy white wings. Gabriel turned in place, eyeing each of them before facing Hope. He filled the cave with a sunny glow.
“How can I help you, Daughter of Angels?”
Ms. D’s eyes widened. “When I copied the symbol from your necklace onto my note, I had no idea it meant something more. I simply wanted both of you to come together. What are you, Hope Laudner, to command angels?”
Finn stuttered, “Sh-she’s a Soulkeeper.” As if that explained everything.
Hope reached out to steady Finn before he fell off his stool. “I know this must be overwhelming for all of you,” Hope said, “but I can explain.”
“Overwhelming? Overwhelmed was what I felt when I saw you die and come back to life,” Finn said. “It would take twenty years for the light from ‘overwhelmed’ to reach my planet right now.”
While the others stared at the angel in varying states of shock, Hope relayed to Gabriel what she’d learned about the clowns. “They’re ingesting souls and taking over the lives of students. What do you think they are?”
Gabriel scratched the stubble on his jaw. “You say they’ve been here for a century?” he asked Ms. D.
“Y-yes. At least since 1934. Maybe longer.”
Her eyes raked over him, no doubt registering how unangel-like Gabriel’s appearance was aside from the glow and the wings. At the moment, he was dressed in cargo pants and a waffle weave shirt.
“And there are the same number today as when you first arrived?” Gabriel asked her.
“I believe so. More, if anything.”
“That means they reproduce. They replace the ones who become clones. They can’t be watchers. Fallen angels do not reproduce.”
“Some kind of demon?” Hope asked.
“It’s possible.” Gabriel paced. “Normally, demons cannot survive outside of Hell but they may be using the cloned bodies of the students as a kind of vessel, a human spacesuit.”
“They can survive here because of the star,” Finn said.
Everyone’s attention refocused on him.
“The fallen star under the school. It’s what gives this island its power,” Finn said. “The clowns’ hive is built around it. I saw it myself.”
Gabriel paused, stroking his chin thoughtfully. He turned to Ms. D, his brow furrowed in thought. “Victoria, how is it you came to this place? Did you come here on your own, or were you invited?”
She shifted, her gaze settling on the fire. “Oh yes, we were invited, Theodor and I. But there is more to the story than that.”
39
Berlin 1934
Well past dusk, in the smoke-filled dressing room of the Kade Ko Kabbarett, Victoria Duvall adjusted the straps on her costume, a formfitting black leotard embellished with layers of lace from chest to thigh. It was conservative by Kabbarett standards. Over the last three years, as the German economy had come to a screeching halt, she’d watched her fellow singers and dancers cut and re-sew their costumes in designs meant to bare as much as could be bared. It wasn’t vanity but hunger that drove the change. German soldiers were apt to tip a revealed shoulder over a talented voice.