Alizarin Crimson

by Erica Millard

  “I will. All you have to do is join us.”

  “I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to help you or anyone else find the Aveum.”

  Dune definitely shouldn’t get some crazy-powerful magical object. But that didn’t mean that I wanted Leslie to have it either.

  “She’s hiding something,” a lady in a leather jacket said.

  Without thinking, I glanced at my backpack. It was enough.

  “Hiding something?” Dune grabbed my backpack and started rummaging through it. “Is it possible you’ve already found where the Aveum is hidden?”

  “There’s nothing in there but my art books and clothes,” I said as nonchalantly as I could, but my voice shook.

  She drew out my notebook. “How very interesting.”

  “That’s mine!” I lunged for it but one of the other Talents grabbed my wrists and dragged me backwards.

  She thumbed through the book. “My, my, you have been busy, haven’t you?” She stopped suddenly, flipped back a few pages, and gazed at something I couldn’t see. “So you do know where to find the Aveum.” Her voice was deadly quiet.

  “No—I don’t even know what the Aveum is supposed to do, let alone where to find it.”

  She threw the book on the table with a slap, and I flinched.

  The three interlocking, crescent-moons.

  “Those are just doodles.” I felt sick.

  “How stupid do you think I am? You just happened to have a page full of ‘doodles’ that are the symbol of the Aveum, a symbol that few people would see and understand.”

  The disappointment was a crushing weight. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I’d been pinning all the hopes of my sanity on finding Van Gogh’s words, in finding Prism. But Prism didn’t hold instructions on how to control all color. It was the way to find the Aveum.

  And Dune held the key in her hand.

  “Where is the Aveum, Aya? Where is it?” Dune screamed.

  “I . . . I don’t know.” And I didn’t.

  Dune jumped to the balls of her feet. “We can’t allow the Aveum to fall into anyone else’s hands, Aya. If you’re not with us, then there’s nothing else to be done.” She nodded to the woman standing next to her, and she took two steps forward.

  Maybe she assumed since I did so little the last time we met that I could do nothing, but now I wasn’t going to hold back. She couldn’t get the Aveum.

  In a swift motion, I pushed against the red in all the bodies around me. The man and woman stumbled backward and hit the wall. The boom was deafening as I forced the red pigment to explode out from the paint can and wrap around the Aolians’ wrists like handcuffs, chaining them in place. And then I embraced the red that called to me.

  Tiny specks of red rushed toward me and turned to clouds of crimson vapor. One Aolian was between the red and me. He screamed as the red tried to get to me through him. It climbed up the skin on his face and arms and he fell to the ground, clawing at his flesh to get it out. Blood oozed wherever the mist touched him.

  The red hit my bloodstream and saturated my vision. The power was a drug—exhilarating, terrifying, painful. The pure red pigments absorbed into my skin, and I forced the red that still clung to the paint cans into a long staff, held together only by the red. I swung it around my head and the tip scraped along Dune’s jaw. She flinched back in pain, and behind her the four tiny basement windows shattered.

  In those few seconds, I grabbed my notebook, shoved it into my bag, and threw it over my shoulder. A page slipped out and hit the floor, but there was no time to pick it up.

  “Two can play at that game,” Dune said smiling. Instead of falling to the ground, the glass pooled in the air, and snaked its way into her hands. The glass formed a long, thin whip with a vicious, serrated point on the end. The fluid liquid glass looked as lovely as water falling from a fountain. My weapon was suddenly crude and rudimentary.

  Dune snapped her whip forward and I was barely able to block it. I quickly rearranged the staff in my hand to form a more solid mass that would enable me to block Dune’s attack.

  Dune flung out her whip again, and I only managed to bring up my staff before it sliced into the skin below my collarbone. The table sat between Dune and me, and at first I didn’t understand when it began to move.

  No, it didn’t move—it grew.

  Only one other Talent aside from Dune remained unscathed.

  Limbs sprouted from the tabletop’s edge and tried to wind around my wrists, but with the same move I used to get away from Liam, I did a backward handspring. The table legs grew roots that moved toward me, covering the floor. I backed into a corner.

  I couldn’t fight both Dune and tree-controlling girl. The others Aolians in the room wouldn’t stay incapacitated for long.

  I needed out.

  But that blasted table was between me and the door, and the roots were spreading all over the floor. Dune flicked out her whip and snatched the red staff out of my hands. Would they kill me now, or hold out in hopes that I’d help them find the Aveum?

  Dune laughed. “See how powerful you could be if you joined us?” Dune threw her whip up into the air, and it separated into a hundred deadly glass arrows. She held up her hand and with a flicking motion of her fingers, one arrow shot forward and hit the wall directly above my head.

  “Call back your weeds,” Dune said to the woman next to her.

  The roots and branches stopped growing where they stood. With another flick, two more arrows shot toward me and hit the wall on either side of my face. The shattered remnants cut the skin on my hands as they fell to the ground.

  “Now you’re just playing with me,” I said.

  Dune laughed again. “I wish I could keep you around just to remind me of your father.” But then her expression turned to hate, and she raised both her hands up to either side of her head, palms facing me. Each of the blades spun and fixated on me.

  “Dune, we need her!” screamed the man still chained to the wall.

  Yep, I was dead.

  A hazy red mist still hung in the air. I had control of it, even though I hadn’t realized it. I reached deep inside and gathered all the red in the room into that place in my mind. The red began to spin like backward ocean-waves that crashed from the floor to the ceiling and back again, encompassing the whole room. Dune saw, but she ignored it. Maybe she didn’t realize that someone aside from her could also be strong.

  She flung her arms forward, and the arrows followed her movement. They zipped across the room, all converging on where I stood. But my red was already in motion and the glass interrupted its pattern. Every particle of red the glass touched clung to the clear surfaces.

  When the arrows were only a few feet from me I pushed against them with the red, and they followed my waves up along the ceiling and backwards to the other side of the room. Dune realized what I’d done just in time to throw the glass back up into the ceiling before it impaled her friends.

  In that split second of their distraction, I gathered the red to me. I pushed myself off the wall and leapt. I used the circular motion of the red mist to buoy me up and over the tree limbs still moving in the center of the room.

  “Dune, there!” yelled the other female Aolian who was still chained to the wall, as the red mist carried me over the table, tree girl, and her.

  But I couldn’t fly, and my own body weight was too hard to hold up. I crashed to the ground and did a tuck and roll so I didn’t land on my head.

  “Get her!” Dune screamed.

  I didn’t bother to check whether or not the door was locked. I forced the red particles to attach themselves to the door and then to expand out, like a bomb detonating from the inside.

  They were all so shocked they didn’t follow me, and I stopped in the doorway. I gathered all the remaining red into a ball in the center of the room. With all the energy I had still inside me, I forced the ball to explode outward. The red erupted and hit the walls and ceiling, and the whole building shook from the i
mpact.

  I ran.

  I didn’t know or care where I was going as long as it was away. I ran six blocks before I stopped to catch my breath.

  A police car with siren blazing flew the way I’d just come. How much damage had I caused in the building?

  Where was I? Nothing looked familiar. I jerked my phone out of my backpack and dialed my aunt’s number. No answer. I tried four more times. It was after five, and she would be doing prep if she was at the restaurant. She never answered her phone when she was working.

  I was alone, and in that moment the fear I wasn’t able to feel before bubbled to the surface, and tears seeped down my cheeks. I kept moving, trying to blend in with the people around me.

  Why was this happening?

  I hit a number on my contacts list.

  “Hey, Aya,” Liam said.

  “Liam,” I couldn’t keep the sobbing out of my voice, “I need your help.”

  “What’s wrong?” His voice was worried but strong, and it made me feel better.

  “Can you come get me?”

  “Of course, where are you?”

  I found the nearest street sign and gave him the intersection.

  “I know exactly where you are. Don’t move. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  I ducked into a coffee shop so I wasn’t out on the street in case Dune tried to find me. She’d made it clear that my life was forfeit.

  Soon Liam’s orange Jeep pulled up to the curb outside, and he craned his neck in search of me. I sprinted to his car and jumped in the passenger-side door.

  “Are you okay?” Liam’s face was full of concern. “What’s going on?”

  The last Colorist had the Aveum. If I needed any more proof, the symbol was of the Aveum. I jerked my notebook out of my bag and flipped through it. The clue, with the map was gone.

  “She has it,” I whispered. “Liam, she has it!”

  “Who has what?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Can you take me to the airport?”

  “The airport? Aya, seriously, what’s going on?”

  “Actually, do you remember where my aunt lives? I need to stop there to grab a few things before I go.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just drive to my aunt’s house.”

  Liam slammed on the brakes, and pulled into an empty parking spot by the side of the street.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  Liam turned to face me. “I’m not moving until you tell me what’s going on.”

  I thought about jumping out of the car, which was stupid. This was too dangerous for him, but a huge part of me was so sick of being alone.

  “I got attacked this afternoon.”

  “Attacked? By whom?”

  I couldn’t tell the whole truth, so I settled for a tiny piece. “Some people that used to work with my dad, at least I think they used to. They want me to find something.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aya, you’re not making any sense. Where are you going?”

  “I’m flying to Paris, tonight.”

  26

  I’m setting myself in advance, out of my own conviction, the requirement of spending at least a year in Paris mainly drawing from nude and plaster casts. For the rest, let’s do whatsoever our hand finds to do in the way of painting.

  —Vincent van Gogh

  Liam’s eyes widened, and his expression was horrified. “Paris! You can’t be serious.”

  “There’s something there that I need to find.”

  “But you just said you didn’t know where your dad hid something.”

  “What I am going to find wasn’t hidden by my dad. It was hidden by Van Gogh.” My words were quiet, and for a moment I tried to hear them as a non-Aolian would. For all my worrying about the color driving me mad, I certainly sounded crazy now.

  “I don’t think you should go.” His voice was pleading. “Why don’t you go stay at your Aunt’s house, or at that mansion? Please don’t, Aya. Please—stay away from there.”

  “Liam, I have to go. I won’t be safe either way, and if I don’t go, no one else will be either.”

  Liam stared at me for a few moments before he pulled out into the traffic and then up to the curb in front of my aunt’s apartment.

  “Just wait here.” I scrambled out the door. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” I sprinted up the five flights of stairs, and my hand shook as I tried to put the key in the door. Once inside I grabbed the one thing that was essential for my trip: my passport. I already had my clothes and my notebook. If I needed anything else, I’d just buy it on the way.

  “Okay, all set,” I said as I jumped back into Liam’s car.

  I stared out the window, not paying attention to where we were going. Liam stopped in front of a high-rise apartment, and it took me a minute to recognize it as his.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “You’re not the only one going to Paris tonight,” Liam said.

  “Wait!” But he’d already closed the door and disappeared into the lobby.

  It didn’t take long for him to return with a black backpack slung over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything as he took off down the road.

  “What makes you think you’re coming to Paris with me?” I asked.

  “It’s the only course of action that makes sense.” Liam kept his eyes on the road, weaving in and out of traffic.

  “Did you not hear what I said? These people are dangerous.”

  Liam was silent for ten whole seconds, then his words spilled out. “You’ve never been to Paris—I have. You don’t speak French—I do. You might not know it, but I might be handy to have around.” He took a deep breath. “And believe it or not, I care about you. The idea of someone hurting you makes me sick. And whatever it is you are trying to find, I don’t want you to have to do it alone. And I want to be with you.”

  I had a million reasons why he shouldn’t come, but instead I said, “I want to be with you, too.”

  And there was nothing more to be said. Liam parked his car in the extended stay parking at the airport, and we bought tickets on the first available flight to Paris. Luckily, there was an overnight flight leaving within the hour. I tried to buy Liam’s ticket, but he insisted on purchasing his own. I was glad, not for the first time, for the debit card my aunt had given me. I stopped by the bank in the airport and withdrew a thousand dollars’ worth of euros. I didn’t know what kind of records Dune had access to, but I didn’t want to have multiple transactions on my card to let her know exactly where I was. Cash was safest.

  Liam’s phone rang as we waited in the terminal. “Hold on, it’s my dad. Yes, sir.” He glanced at me and stood. “Yeah, I’m just with Aya. Well . . .” Liam took a few steps and his voice disappeared into the noise of the airport. When he came back ten minutes later, he held a paper bag and two bottles of water in his hands. “You hungry?”

  “Starving,” I said.

  He handed me the bag and I found two fresh cranberry-orange scones in bakery paper inside. “Yum.” I gave him one. “What did your dad say?”

  “He just wanted to know where I was.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth—I’m going to Paris with you.”

  “You told him? Was he pissed?”

  “He was strangely okay with it.”

  We boarded our plane when it was time. The flight was packed, but Liam had convinced the lady at the counter to reserve two seats together with me by the window. I pushed up the shade to peer outside. The sun touched the western horizon, and orange clouds spread across the now-purple sky as our plane took off. The adrenalin and excitement of the day burned out, leaving me hollow and exhausted. And scared and apprehensive.

  Would I find the Aveum? No, for some reason, I didn’t think so. The page I’d found was ripped out of a book written about color. Prism existed.

  One by one the r
eading lights around us flicked off. People either settled in to go to sleep or put on noise-cancelling headphones to watch the movie screens built into each seat.

  Liam leaned toward me, and his arm brushed my long sleeve shirt.

  “Tell me what your life was like before you came to New York to be a painting prodigy,” he said.

  I laughed, relieved to talk about something normal. “I hope no one expects me to be that.”

  “No, really, tell me about what you do when you’re not here.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well, it’s summer so my mom isn’t teaching school right now. Most nights we stay up late, with me painting and my mom playing the cello. At night we open all the windows and let the cool mountain breeze filter through the house . . . .”

  Even though people surrounded us, it felt like there was a tiny pocket of space and time where only Liam and I existed. We talked for hours about his family and mine, what we liked to do, and what we wanted to be. He told me funny stories about him and Ryker as children, and I told him the crazy places we’d off-roaded in Montana. For that space of time, the rest of the world didn’t exist. In this plane, Dune could not find me, and maybe for a moment I could be me.

  Eventually the day caught up with me, and I slipped into the unconscious.

  “We are beginning our decent into Paris,” the pilot said over the intercom, rousing me from my sleep.

  I was leaning against Liam’s shoulder, and I snapped my head back. “Sorry,” I mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

  Liam looked confused, and he tipped his head to one side as he looked at me. “I didn’t mind. I like having you so near.”

  As the wheels touched down on the tarmac, that magic bubble of time and space that contained only Liam and me burst, and a trickle of fear crept up my spine.

  “I just realized I had eight hours to come up with some kind of plan for what to do next, and I didn’t do it,” I said.

  “That’s okay. We have the whole train ride into the city to come up with a plan.”

  “Good thing I have you around,” I said as Liam easily navigated the French-only kiosk to buy us one-way tickets into Paris and a few metro tickets in case we needed them.