by Carter Roy
“Technically, not anymore,” Dawkins said. “You need the past tense: was.”
“How could you not tell me? You’re my best friends.”
“Greta, you know perfectly well why they couldn’t tell you,” her dad said.
“That whole Pures-can’t-know-what-they-are rule—I know!” Greta said. “But Ronan, if I found out something like that, you’d be the first person I’d go to with the secret.”
“That makes no sense, honey,” Mr. Sustermann said.
“No, it makes perfect sense,” I said. “You’re right, Greta. I’m sorry.”
Greta nodded. “I forgive you. And thanks for stopping whatever it is they were going to do. What were they going to do, anyway?”
Dawkins fluttered his hand at her. “Oh, a typical bit of Bend Sinister tomfoolery. Why dwell on it? Instead, let’s get off this windy pile of bricks and find ourselves some breakfast.”
“I could eat my way through some pancakes,” Sammy said. “And eggs. And I wouldn’t say no to bacon.”
“Samuel,” Dawkins said, “you’re singing my tune.”
“Food would be nice,” Greta mumbled. “And sleep, too. But didn’t Ronan’s big mouth just set into motion the end of the world as we know it?”
“Thanks a lot!” I said.
“I’ve got to call ’em like I see ’em,” Greta said.
Ogabe said, “It’s true: Ronan did just dispel the soul of one of the thirty-six Pure, so once again, the world is off-kilter.”
“Terrific,” I said, and put my head in my hands. “Because of me, the world is messed up again.”
“But it’s not so simple as all that,” Ogabe finished.
“Why not?” my mom asked.
“Because this has never happened before,” Ogabe said. “No one has ever ‘woken up’ a Pure before.”
“So does this mean I don’t have a soul anymore?” Greta asked.
“You still have your soul, Greta,” Ogabe explained. “But the overlay of purity you’d carried is no longer part of you. Before, your example and mere presence subconsciously influenced those around you to be better people. And now …” He flipped his hands up and shrugged.
“Now what?” Greta asked.
“You’re just a regular person.”
“That’s okay with me,” Greta said. “I’d rather be a regular person, if I had to choose.”
“So what happened to her Pure soul?” I asked.
“That is the great mystery!” Ogabe said. “How does a Pure soul behave when it has been woken up like this? Does it wait for reincarnation, like the souls of Pures who have been murdered before their time? Or is it immediately reborn back into the world as part of another person?”
“I guess there’s no easy way to find out,” I said.
“On the contrary,” Ogabe said, “the Grand Architect can gather a quorum of the Blood Guard, and that group can project the Spangled Globe. It reveals the locations of the thirty-six Pure.”
“You guys mention this architect person a lot—who is she?” I asked.
“Used to be a she,” Diz said, looking at Ogabe, “but the title was passed on, and now it’s a he.”
“While you four were taking part in the Glass Gauntlet,” Ogabe said, “I was helping the Grand Architect of the Guard pass out of this life. She gave her responsibilities to me—along with the history of the Guard, a knowledge of its lore, and an ability to pinpoint Pure souls wherever they may be around the world.”
“That’s this Spangled Globe thing you mentioned?” Greta asked. “So when are you going to do that?”
“Tonight,” Ogabe said. “Thanks to the events that have transpired here in New York City, we have as large a grouping of Blood Guard as has been together since the 1970s—more than enough people to project a clear vision of the Globe.”
“So maybe I didn’t doom the world after all,” I said. “I got lucky.”
“Come on.” Sammy rolled his eyes. “We all got lucky. We did this together.”
“Sure,” Greta agreed. “Lucky us.”
CHAPTER 24
THE SPANGLED GLOBE
That night, the Blood Guard gathered in Madison Square Garden.
“Let me guess,” I asked Dawkins, “a retired Blood Guard works as a janitor here.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Dawkins said, using a flashlight to light our way down the steep concrete stairs toward the floor.
“So maybe a retired Blood Guard owns the place?” Sammy suggested, his head pivoting around nonstop. “It’s big!”
“I only wish we had members with such resources,” Dawkins said. “No, we chose this site because there are no events tonight and we needed a large, private space.”
“Then how’d we get in?” I asked.
“Let’s just say that no doors can withstand the Sustermann father-daughter lockpicking team.”
Descending the stairs in front of us were Agatha, Greta, and her parents. Her mom still seemed a little stunned by everything Mr. Sustermann had told her, but they’d come here together, and when I looked at them, they were holding hands.
I’d been to the arena only once before, to see a basketball game with my dad, and the building had been brightly lit and filled with people. This time, we’d left the lights off, and there were only about forty of us.
I knew six of the Blood Guard—Dawkins, my mom, Mr. Sustermann, Ogabe, Diz, and the old lady from Wilson Peak whom everyone called the McDermott—but the rest looked like they’d just wandered in from the street. There was an Asian man in a chef’s apron, a nun, a construction worker, two firemen, a woman who looked like a fashion model, and an old lady who looked like a grandma. There were three women in business suits, and just as many guys in those full-body coveralls like the custodians wear at school. And there were others, more than I could take in. A few of the Guard seemed to know each other, but mostly they just stood alone, waiting for Ogabe to tell them what to do.
Dawkins steered us to a row of seats where Agatha and Greta’s mom were already sitting. “Normally, this is a very secret procedure,” he said, “but you lot know so much already that there’s no point keeping you in the dark.” He turned his flashlight off. “So to speak.”
“What’s going to happen?” Sammy asked as Dawkins flipped it back on.
“The forty of us will stand in a big circle, and we will raise our Verity Glasses to our foreheads,” Dawkins said, tapping his index finger against his skull.
“The sigil!” I said. Each of the Blood Guard, I knew, bore a mark on his or her forehead invisible to the naked eye, a tiny knot of eternal flames that curled up and wound around each other. It was only through a Verity Glass that the sigil could be seen.
“Exactly,” Dawkins said. “The sigil flame not only marks a Guard’s purity of purpose. It also functions as a light source—one that can project an image through the Verity Glass.”
“Of this Spangled Globe thing?” Greta asked. “So why do you need all these people?”
“Because the projection from a single sigil isn’t sharp enough for the Grand Architect to read. Each Guard possesses the entire image, but in a blurry, out-of-focus form. It is only when enough are projected together that the image gains clarity. As you will see.”
It sounded a lot like how the Bend Sinister’s Perceptor worked, combining the “pure sight” of many people to make the Pures of the world visible. But unlike the Perceptor, no one was going to have to sacrifice anything to create the Spangled Globe, I thought, remembering those empty bodies Dawkins and Mathilde had found in the glassworks.
Ogabe called out to him. “We’re almost ready, Jack.”
“Excellent! If you all will excuse me,” he said, then went and joined the group. They looked very small and far away in the dark of the arena.
“You’re free to do whatever you want now, Greta,” I said, looking past her at her mom and Agatha. “You can ditch the Blood Guard and just go back to your old life.”
She frowned. “What makes
you think I want to go back to my old life? What if this is what I want to do?”
“But you’re not a Pure anymore,” Sammy said. “You don’t have to worry about the Bend Sinister coming after you.”
“Sammy, I didn’t join the Blood Guard because I was a Pure. I did it because I admired the people in it, and because I believed they do good in the world. I still believe that.”
“And now that you’re not a Pure,” I said, “it’ll make it a lot easier for all of us. For starters, we won’t have to keep lying to you.”
“Or let you win things just because you’re special,” Sammy added.
“That’s a lie,” Greta said. “You guys never let me win anything. Don’t try to make excuses now. And don’t call me special.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, “you win. We won’t talk about how special you are.”
She slugged me, but I just laughed, so she slugged me again.
“Guys,” Sammy said, pointing. “They’re starting.”
The forty Blood Guard held hands and formed a big circle with Ogabe in the center. The whole time they were doing this, he was speaking, chanting, working through some sort of incantation. And then one by one, the Guard raised their Verity Glasses to their foreheads where the sigil invisibly burned.
And in the air over Ogabe’s head, a sphere woven of violet light appeared. It was sixty feet across, fuzzy, and dim. But as each new Guard raised his or her Verity Glass, it grew brighter and clearer.
“It’s the earth,” Sammy whispered.
When the number of Guard projecting the image topped twenty, the continents were clearly visible; after twenty-five, we could make out the raggedy edges of coastlines, the dark dots of island chains; when all of the Blood Guard had joined in the projection, it was like looking at the planet from space.
And then Ogabe added his own Verity Glass to the projection, and the flames began to appear.
They were small—like the flame from Dawkins’ Zippo, only burning white-hot—and brighter than the globe itself. And I couldn’t be sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say there were thirty-five.
Using his free hand, Ogabe reached up into the air and began turning the sphere, throwing his fingers wide and making it bigger so that he could zoom in on each tiny flame.
I think he was identifying each of them.
He paused and looked out at me.
“Ronan,” he said. “Come join us.”
“Me?” I said, reaching up and touching my Verity Glass where it once again hung from a chain under my shirt. “But I’m not a Blood Guard.” Was I?
“And yet you bear the sigil,” Ogabe said.
I reached up and touched my head, like I’d be able to feel it.
“Something must have changed up there on that bridge,” Ogabe said, “because the sign is there that you are one of us. And right now, we could really use your help.”
“Get up there, Ronan,” Sammy said.
“Don’t worry,” Greta said. “We’ll still be here when you’re done.”
As I walked up to the ring of Blood Guard, it widened, creating a space between my mom on one side and Dawkins on the other.
“Stop dawdling,” Dawkins said. “If I hold this pose much longer, I’m going to get a crick in my neck.”
My mom reached out with one hand and squeezed my arm.
I copied them, resting my Verity Glass against my forehead and staring up at the glowing sphere of light above us.
And maybe it was the addition of my lens, or maybe it was just chance, but right at that moment, a new flame flared into existence somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
“There!” Dawkins said, pointing.
“Wow,” I breathed, watching the tiny flower of white light twist and curl upon itself. I glanced over at Sammy sitting next to Greta, but they were staring over my head, at the Spangled Globe. I felt proud of myself for the first time in a long while. Greta was still here, and so was I, and the spinning world above me was still in balance.
It doesn’t get much better than this, I thought.
Ogabe turned the globe in his hands, zoomed in, and considered the flame. He looked down at me and smiled, then beamed at all of us. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new Pure. Welcome to the world, little one!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For details about Monsieur Vidocq and Paris of the mid-nineteenth century, I am indebted to Graham Robb’s superb history of the city, The Parisians. Just about every story in his book is more fantastical than the one I concocted in The Blazing Bridge. Better yet, the stories are real.
All the folks mentioned here have been enormously kind and generous during the creation of this novel, and listing them seems a paltry way of expressing my gratitude. Nonetheless, my heartfelt thanks to:
The Fluffy Pink Unicorn Preservation Society: Nicholas Tedesco, Will Hoffman, Jean-Luc Tessier, Yael Fishman, Hannah Ott, and Sophia Kalandros.
Dennelle Catlett, Deborah Bass, Timony Korbar, Tanya Ross-Hughes, and Katrina Damkoehler at Amazon/Two Lions helped this book and the two before it shine both literally (by giving the books lovely jackets) and figuratively (by promoting the novels to readers everywhere).
Thanks to Vivienne To’s stunning artwork, this book and the previous two are beautiful to look at and to hold. The Blood Guard are very lucky that she lent her talents to the series.
Editor in chief Kelsey Skea. She always makes time for her authors, and is, it turns out, one of the two lions the imprint is named after.
Editor Melanie Kroupa must certainly be the other one, because there is no other way to explain her bottomless patience and lionlike dedication to this book and series.
Robin Benjamin stepped in at the last minute to carry the book over the finish line, and I am beyond grateful for her kind attention and help.
Genevieve Herr, Emily Lamm, Stephanie Thwaites, and Sam Smith of Scholastic UK are exactly the sort of international allies one dreams of having watch your back. (Genevieve especially is good in a knife fight.)
Ted Malawer is a giddy wit, sounding board, and idea generator, and also a friend. His help, as well as that of Dan Bennett and Bruce Coville, has been, as usual, invaluable.
Beth Ziemacki and Georgiana D., for everything, always.
CARTER ROY worked some three-dozen jobs ranging from movie theater projectionist to delivery truck driver before finally ending up as an editor for a major publisher, where he edited hundreds of books before leaving to write. The author of The Blood Guard and The Glass Gauntlet, he is also an award-winning short-story writer. He lives in New York City and can be found at www.carterroybooks.com.
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2017
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2017
Copyright © The Inkhouse, 2017
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eISBN 978 1407 13701 8
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