“But why?” Ruby asked, the words emerging thickly. “Why go to all this trouble?”
“Why?” London said, but there was an edge to his voice now. “I guess your new friends didn’t tell you the whole story.”
“Otis and Daisy?” Simon asked, and Ruby pictured the note she’d slipped through the door of the garage, just one line—Gone to Chicago—but more than enough to tell the whole story, if only Daisy had found it.
Please, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut. Please let her have found it.
London was watching them with an unreadable expression, his forehead creased in thought. After a moment, he lifted his hand and hit a button on his phone. Seconds later, the door opened with a click that made both Ruby and Simon jump.
“Summer,” said London, his voice oddly bright. “May we have some tea and lemonade?”
In the doorway, the receptionist from out front had appeared, and Ruby could see that she was practically trembling. When their eyes met, she looked quickly away.
“Yes, of course, sir,” she said, then stepped out again, shutting the door behind her.
London sat back with a satisfied expression. “I figured some refreshments might be in order,” he said. “After all, this is a rather long story.”
“What is?” Simon asked, and London closed his eyes.
“The one about how Otis Gray killed my sister.”
twenty-six
IT TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES for the tea to be poured, the office quiet but for the low hum of the air-conditioning. London stirred the pot with such a civilized calm that by the time he handed over her mug, Ruby’s hand was shaking. The words he’d spoken had completely unnerved her, and they continued to rattle around in her head, filling the weighty silence.
Otis had killed someone.
It didn’t seem possible. As she cupped the mug in both hands, she pictured his face, the kindness she’d so often seen in his gray eyes. She thought of the way he’d spoken to her in the hospital that day, the stark relief she’d felt when he’d reappeared with Daisy at the lake.
But there was a distance to him, too, a sense that even when he was with them, he was also somehow entirely on his own. And what did she really even know about him, anyway? That he’d once been a great Tracker of rookie Storm Makers. That he disagreed with London’s philosophy. But where had he been all these years, since he’d fallen away from the Society? What if what London had said was true? What if it turned out that Otis had been on the run for something as unimaginable as killing someone? Ruby had been so quick to trust him, to convince Simon of it, too. But what if she’d been wrong after all?
London’s eyes met hers, as if he could read her thoughts. When he was finished pouring the last cup of tea, he set the pot down—the noise loud in the quiet room—and sat back in his chair. As he went to take a sip, he flinched at the temperature, and then quickly bent his head to blow on it. To their surprise, what emerged was a puff of crystallized air that seemed to hover above the mug for a moment, creating a thin sheen of ice on top of the hot liquid. Steam rose off it in a cloud before quickly disappearing.
London raised the cup to his lips once more, and this time, he smiled. “Much better,” he said with a nod. “Now, to Otis. I suppose, since you’ve chosen to throw your lot in with him, that you’re at least aware that we used to be best friends?”
Ruby sat very still, but Simon managed to shake his head.
“And you must know that he used to be married to my sister?”
Again, neither of the twins spoke. Ruby adjusted her grip on the mug.
“And, because he’s your mentor—because he’s taken it upon himself to insert himself into something that he has no business being involved in—he probably also told you that almost five years ago, during a forest fire that he’d been called in to prevent, he—stupidly, dangerously, and against every rule we have—brought along my non–Storm Maker sister, who was killed by the flames because she couldn’t protect herself?”
There was a long silence, in which Ruby held her breath. London was studying them from across the desk with an odd look in his eyes; where there should be sadness and grief, there was only a burning anger. In the tightness of his mouth, the flintiness of his eyes, there was a kind of seething, and this was more frightening than all the rest of it.
Ruby swallowed hard. “Why?” she asked. “Why would Otis bring her?”
“Because,” London said, setting his cup down hard on the desk, “she was his wife.”
Whatever last scraps of calm had been holding him together now seemed to snap entirely, and he stood up and placed his hands on the table, his knuckles going white.
“He was my best friend, and she was his wife,” he repeated, his voice choked. “And she died in a fire that was his job to prevent, in a place where she wasn’t supposed to be.” He banged a palm against the desk, rattling the china cups, rippling the tea in its pot. “Because he was always a hotshot. He always thought he was the best, that he could get away with anything.”
Ruby and Simon sat frozen as London whirled around, stepping up close to the photographs on the wall, so close they must have been nothing but a blur to him.
“But he didn’t get away with that,” he said, his head bent. “And he’s not finished paying for it yet.”
Ruby had the sudden and ridiculous urge to comfort him then, as he stood there with his shoulders hunched, the pain in his voice breaking through all the anger. She tried to picture what had happened that day, a blazing fire and a helpless woman, smoke thick as fog and Otis trying to keep it all back like it was something that could be stopped. But as horrible as it was—and it was horrible; it was heartwrenching and awful—Ruby knew deep down that it was more than that: It was reckless.
No wonder London hated him.
No wonder Otis had disappeared.
There were so many questions crowding Ruby’s head that she wasn’t even sure where to begin: Why had Otis let his wife come with him that day if he knew he might not be able to protect her? Why did he hate London so much, when it was London who had every right to be angry with him? How could they let so many other people get hurt, let so many other tragedies occur, all because of an old grudge? And what did Simon have to do with all this?
But before she could ask anything, Simon spoke up.
“I don’t get it,” he said, and when London turned around again, his face was composed.
“What?” he asked, his voice like ice.
“She died in a fire…” Simon began, then trailed off.
Behind the desk, London stiffened.
“So wouldn’t you want to be the guy who stops fires now?” Simon asked, sitting forward so that the tea sloshed in his cup. “I mean, instead of making all these other disasters, wouldn’t you want to be the one to stop them? So that other people don’t get hurt that way, too? Sort of in honor of your sister?”
London’s eyes snapped up at this. “In honor of my sister?”
Simon nodded, but less certainly now.
“In honor of my sister,” London repeated, but this time his voice was low, and it was almost as if he found this funny. He turned back to the photos and his voice drifted behind him. “I’ve found another way to honor my sister,” he said. “My own sort of anniversary.”
“A disaster on every solstice,” Ruby said, having found her voice again. “We know what you’ve been doing.”
London laughed, a high, thin sound. “I wouldn’t give yourself too much credit,” he said, spinning around again, motioning to the frames on the wall. “I haven’t exactly made a secret of it.”
“But why?” Ruby couldn’t help asking. She’d set her teacup on the desk and was now gripping the edges of the chair, her hands sweaty, her muscles tense. She felt like she was in the middle of some kind of riddle, and she couldn’t quite see her way to the answer.
“She died on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year,” London said, stepping out from behind the desk to pace around the edges
of the room, lingering near the bookshelves. “So I decided to work my way back up to this day—the grand finale, if you will. One disaster each year. And I started with New Orleans, as a tribute to our friend Otis. What better way to begin than to cause a massive hurricane in his hometown?”
Ruby’s eyes trailed over to the photo of the devastation, the city underwater, the roads turned to rivers, and she shuddered.
“And then the next year, the blizzard in Boston, which is where Sophie and Otis met,” he said, half turning to face them. “They were in college there together, before either of us flared up. We all were.” He began to walk again, his eyes very far away. “And then last year, the earthquake in Colorado. Which is, of course, where they got married. Seemed only fitting.”
“And this year?” Ruby asked, her stomach churning. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
“This year?” London said, crossing the room to stand in between the two chairs where Simon and Ruby sat, so that they had to swivel to look at him. Framed by the lights from the ceiling above, his face looked almost ghostly, and a thin smile formed on his lips. “This year is fire, of course.”
twenty-seven
RUBY FOUND A CRACK IN THE CEILING, a spidery little thread of a thing, and she fixed her eyes on that as London spoke, because it was easier that way; it was easier not to have to watch his coal-black eyes, or see the photographs on the wall, evidence of his even blacker heart. It was easier to pretend none of this was happening, none of it at all.
Every now and then, she blinked back the tears that kept threatening to spill over, but other than that, her face remained unchanged; blank and unmoving and entirely numb.
Because the things London was saying were almost too big to imagine, even in spite of all the other too-big-to-imagine things that had happened over the past week and a half.
He told them about the drought back home, how he’d ordered it earlier in the summer, even before he knew about Simon. He told them how the land was now primed to burn, a sprawling tinderbox just waiting to ignite—not just there, but in other places, too: in Texas and in Florida, in Arizona and in Iowa. And, of course, in California, where it had all started, where his sister had died, turning a promising young Storm Maker into this: a man twisted by grief and bent on revenge; a man willing to kill so many others just to make himself feel less powerless.
“A hurricane in New Orleans,” he was saying, as Ruby eyed the ceiling with an intensity that matched her fear, that echoed the whiteness of her knuckles and the trembling of her fingers, “a hurricane in New Orleans is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned.”
Beside her, Ruby could hear Simon’s leg bobbing, a nervous habit that sounded loud in the quiet room, but still she kept her eyes trained on the ceiling.
“That first one was all me, though,” London continued. “I hadn’t gathered enough of a following for anything too elaborate yet. And though I did have some help the past couple of years, with the blizzard and the earthquake, I needed to build up to this last one. I needed the whole Society on board for the grand finale.”
“So why do you need me?” Simon asked, a challenge in his voice.
Ruby was busy wondering whether Otis knew about this, and if so, why he’d wasted the past few days trying to help Simon make it drizzle, when he should have been down here putting a stop to everything. But as Simon spoke, she finally lowered her chin, letting the crack on the ceiling out of her sight, and she gazed across the desk at London, who was watching her levelly, his hands clasped in front of him.
“I don’t need you,” he said. “At least not yet. You came to me, remember?”
Ruby felt her cheeks flush at this, because it was true, and it was hard now to remember the logic, to recall why it had seemed like a good idea to agree to Simon’s plan in the first place.
But here they were.
“Of course, I was going to be needing Simon soon enough for a little physics experiment, of sorts, anyway,” he said. “So you’re not entirely off base. But the two things are unrelated.”
“What two things?” Ruby asked, but even as she did, London’s eyes drifted to the wall behind her; when she swiveled to follow his gaze, she saw only a clock. There were the usual three arrows—the steady hour hand, the faithful minute hand, and a second hand that thrummed as fast as Ruby’s own heart—but the outer rim was decorated with degrees rather than numbers, an N where the twelve should be, an S to mark the six.
It looked, she realized, like a compass.
And all at once, she understood what London was planning to do with Simon, why he needed him so badly despite his lack of weather skills, why Otis was trying so hard to protect him.
She knew.
It was clear that London had seen the light go on behind her eyes, that flicker of recognition, because he smiled a slow-blooming smile.
“You’re smarter than you first appear,” he said. “So is that how it works? Your brother gets all the power and you get all the brains?”
“What is he talking about?” Simon asked, turning to Ruby, his eyes wide with confusion.
London laughed. “You’re not exactly the prodigy everyone thinks you are,” he said, then shook his head. “But no matter. As long as they keep thinking that, it doesn’t make a difference.” He raised his eyes and regarded Simon for a long moment. “You do at least know what a physics experiment is, don’t you?”
Simon frowned at him, unsure how to answer this.
“Stop it,” Ruby said. But neither of them so much as blinked; London was still waiting, and Simon wasn’t saying anything, and so after a moment, she sighed. “It’s a method of investigating a principle of physics.”
“Very good,” London said. “And let me guess which one of you can tell me what sort of instrument determines direction relative to the Earth’s magnetic poles?”
Ruby felt a prickle along the back of her neck, and her throat suddenly felt too tight, because now she knew for sure.
The silence lengthened as Simon squirmed in his chair and London leaned forward, but all Ruby could think was that she was right.
And she wished more than anything that she wasn’t.
London lifted his hand, and then, as if swatting a fly, he brought it down hard against the cherry-colored desk, causing a pile of papers at one end to shift toward the edge.
“What,” he began, his words measured, “is the answer?”
Ruby took a deep breath. “A compass,” she whispered, and London beamed at her.
“Exactly right,” he said, his eyes sliding over to Simon. “A compass. And in which direction does a compass point?”
“North?” Simon ventured, and London banged his fist against the desk again, causing the whole thing to quiver this time.
“Wrong!” London shouted. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Ruby looked frantically at Simon, who was scrambling to his feet. As soon as he was out of the chair, London stood, too, moving around the desk in a smooth motion, sleek and quick as a cat. In her struggle to get up, Ruby knocked over her chair, and she tripped backward on it, barely managing to stay on her feet. A moment later, she felt London’s hand—cool as ice—on the back of her neck, and with his other hand gripping Simon, he began pushing them toward the door.
“The compass does not always point north,” he continued. “It points to the one who is meant to be Chairman. And every day of every week for the past four years, it has pointed at me.”
“So?” Simon practically spat, and the question caused London to pause long enough for Ruby to twist out of his grasp. Simon’s head was bowed, London’s grip still like a yoke around his neck, but to their surprise, London dropped his hand, and Simon was able to duck away, too. They stood there like that, the twins with their backs to the door, London’s arms at his sides, the three of them simply watching one another.
“So,” London said, “my time will be up soon. No Chairman has ever held the position for more than four years.”
“But y
ou’re not ready to step down,” Ruby guessed, and when he nodded, she shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’ve broken every other rule. Why not this one?”
“This one,” he said, “has been a little bit trickier to get around.”
“But you’ve found a way.”
“I have indeed,” he said. “Which is where Simon comes in.”
Ruby watched as Simon walked right up to London, his mouth set in a thin line of determination. “You want to use me,” he said. “You want to rig the compass, make me the next Chairman, so that you can control me and keep doing all these awful things.”
“Everyone thinks you’re the next great Storm Maker. And they believe what they want to believe,” London said airily, stepping around Simon as if he were nothing more than an inconvenient obstacle in the road.
“I’m not helping you,” Simon said. “I’m not.”
Even though she’d known this, even though she’d been so certain, it still shocked Ruby to hear it said aloud, to see her brother—with his knobby knees and too-big T-shirt, his spiky hair out of place—standing there announcing to this man that he would not be pushed into being some kind of puppet, that he would not be used in this way, that he would not become the Chairman of the Society of Storm Makers for the wrong reasons.
She looked from London to Simon, who were locked in an even stare, and thought desperately of Otis and Daisy, the question pulsing through her head over and over again, like a ticker, like a heartbeat: Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?
“I’m sorry to disagree,” London said, still focused on Simon. “But you’re just wasting my time now, and we have things to do.”
He raised his hand and then, with a flick of his wrist, brought it down again. Ruby’s mouth fell open as she watched her brother drop to the floor with a cry of pain. He rolled onto his side and grabbed hold of first one foot, then the other, howling as he did, and Ruby slid onto the carpet beside him, unsure what to do.
The Storm Makers Page 15