Scheme

by Jennifer Sommersby

  “That’s such a weird thing to say. Would you really be able to pick him up and throw him? Like, seriously? How would that help us?” Mmmm, these painkillers are nice.

  “Keep her away from sharp objects and anything magical. I’d like to get to Porto Torres in one piece,” Xavier says. I hear the crinkling of paper as he wads up the used medical supplies. I have no idea where he’s going to put all that blood-soaked stuff if he wants to keep Keller in the dark. “I’ll be back in an hour. Keller likes to talk, so no need to raise suspicion if we can avoid it.”

  “Keller should shave his mustache . . . I’ll bet food gets stuck in all that fuzz . . .” I feel like I’m floating above my body. It’s not a terrible feeling, to be honest.

  “Don’t let her out of this room.” Xavier clicks the door closed behind him.

  Henry scoots next to my head on the skinny bunk, his hand resting on my shivering shoulder.

  I look up at him, trying to stay above the pleasant numbness. “Did you . . . ?”

  “I got it. I got what we needed,” he says.

  And although I have no idea when Henry was able to work his magic via Xavier’s skin, I bob my head gratefully and let the rocking of the boat and the chemicals in my veins wash me out to sea.

  “Promise you won’t leave me, Henry.”

  “I promise.” He kisses my forehead again. “Sleep.”

  My arm burns so badly. And I smell . . . lavender?

  “Mom . . . ?” I don’t want to open my eyes. They hurt too much. But I smile. Lavender means Delia is near. “I miss you, Momma.”

  The lavender gets stronger. Someone is rubbing it into my temples. “That feels nice. Thank you. You always know how to fix stuff.”

  “Gen . . . it’s Henry. And Xavier. Can you open your eyes? You need to drink some water.”

  It hurts, but my lids part. “Where’s my mother? Where is Delia?”

  “She’s not here right now,” Xavier says. “Genevieve, I need you to bear with me for a second and not scream. We have to stop this bleeding. Can you work with me? Can you stay quiet?”

  I nod. I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. I’m being quiet. I’m being a good girl, aren’t I?

  And then the stinging begins again, and I of course scream, and Henry’s hand clamps over my mouth. I sit up abruptly, dislodging a clump of dried, white star-shaped flowers with straggly roots that I think were tucked into my bra strap.

  “What in the hell are you doing? That hurts!”

  “No more painkillers for her,” Xavier says. “She doesn’t listen to directions stoned or sober.”

  I look down at my arm, still bleeding way more than it should be. Xavier is squeezing a fresh lemon over my arm.

  “Lemon juice is a styptic. Nothing else is working,” Xavier explains. He hands Henry the lemon. “Keep squeezing. Up and down the wound. Every last drop. I only have two lemons until we reach land.”

  “I’ll bleed to death if this keeps up,” I say.

  “Your mother was always very dramatic too,” he says.

  I jab a finger in his face. “Not a word about Delia,” I hiss. Xavier ignores me, picks up the bunch of dried flowers, and rewraps them in what looks like silk. He then tapes them to my sternum with Band-Aids.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s edelweiss. It will provide protection against blades,” he says. “Like the one she is using to cut you.”

  “You believe that? A dried plant can stop this?” I say, easing back against the bunk.

  Xavier glares at me. “Have you a better idea? I’m doing my best with what I’ve got. It might help you to say a quick prayer to Gula if you want this all to go away.”

  I’ve heard Delia use that name before—a Mesopotamian healing goddess—but my mother wasn’t spiritual in a theistic way. She said her plants were the deities she relied upon.

  Xavier digs into his black duffel and pulls out a plastic food storage container. From inside, he pulls green feathery stems that almost look like fern. “Yarrow,” he says. “Helps with clotting.”

  “Delia used yarrow,” I say.

  “This is hers. From her plants in Nutesh’s greenhouses. He keeps us all supplied.” I’ve seen Nutesh’s greenhouse. It’s awesome to think that my mother’s plants—and in turn, my mother—was around me the whole time, and I didn’t even know it.

  I angle my head so I can watch Xavier. Once Henry has extracted every last drop from the lemon, Xavier quickly moves to set the delicate green fronds along the wound. “The lemon appears to be working,” he says, drizzling aloe gel over the yarrow. He then points to a roll of gauze.

  “That’s the last one,” Henry says.

  “We’re about two hours from Porto Torres,” Xavier says. “I’ll see if I can get more there.”

  Henry sits me up and holds a cold canteen against my lips. I don’t realize how thirsty I am until I taste the water.

  “She’s still very warm,” Henry says.

  “Advil. That’s all I’ve got for now. It’s been long enough since she had the narcotic.” Xavier reaches into my medical kit and then tosses Henry a small white bottle. “Two capsules should do it.” Henry pours out the brick-red tablets into my palm; I swallow them down.

  “You know a lot of medical stuff,” I say.

  “I’ve had good teachers,” Xavier says, almost under his breath. His teachers . . . Nutesh? My mother?

  “Does Keller know anything? I’m sorry I keep screaming. It just really hurts.”

  “Keller is fine. For now.”

  “That wad of money will keep him quiet, right?” I ask. Xavier lifts an eyebrow at me as he wraps my wounded forearm in gauze to hold the feathery yarrow stems in place.

  “You’re nosy.”

  “I’m observant.”

  He snorts. “This is all I can do until we reach land. Henry will get you something to eat. You have to keep your strength up, and you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “Nothing a raw steak won’t fix,” I say. Xavier doesn’t smile but again wads up and stuffs away more blood-soaked towels he’s probably going to have to pay Keller back for.

  “You’ll need a fresh shirt once we know the situation is under control. The fewer questions,” he says, nodding his chin toward the door, “the better.”

  Xavier leaves and Henry helps me scooch up against the cabin wall and rest my bandaged forearm on a towel over my thigh.

  “Any better?” he asks.

  “A bit. The lemon juice still stings.” Gingerly, I lift my forearm off the towel, afraid to upset Xavier’s handiwork and restart the bloodbath. “Growing up, I used to beg Delia for a sister,” I say. “How ironic.”

  “I don’t think anyone would want Aveline as a sister,” he says. “I’m really sorry, Gen.”

  “I don’t understand how this is happening. How is she doing it?”

  “Xavier thinks she must have something of yours. He said that when someone uses black magic like this—like what’s happened to Baby—the person doing it probably has something that belongs to you, and she’s using it as part of the ritual.”

  “I suppose she’s had plenty of opportunity to go into my trailer, and Baby’s for that matter, and get whatever she needed.” I stop before telling Henry about Vi’s text—that Aveline is in Oregon.

  “The next Guardian,” he whispers. “The plan is to meet him in Pompeii, at the ruined city.”

  I sit up straighter. “Are you serious?”

  Henry presses a finger against his pursed lips. “The circus we’re supposed to be going to—it looks like it’s underground?”

  “Leave it to Xavier to find us the weirdest circus ever.”

  “If we do this,” Henry whispers, “we’re on our own. We won’t have any protection from Xavier or the La Vérité people. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Hmm. I dunno. We should ask Thierry what he thinks about that,” I say.

  Henry looks down at his hands.

  “They used us as
bait, Henry. That’s all we are right now. As long as we are with Xavier, people are going to keep dying. It would be better if we could just get the piece and then move on to the next stop.”

  “So we will be on the run from not only Xavier, but all of my father’s followers too? We don’t know where we’re going, Genevieve—”

  “We’re going to Naples.”

  “Yes, but then what?”

  “Did you not see the next stop after that?”

  “Izmir, in Turkey. But that’s all I was able to get,” he says. “I agree that continuing on with Xavier is dangerous. I agree that him not sharing his plans with us is dangerous. All of this—dangerous. But we cannot get ourselves to Babylon. We can’t get visas to get into the country or hire a car to drive us south from Kurdistan to Babylon. We need my grandfather’s help. We simply cannot do this on our own,” he says.

  I don’t want to admit that he’s right. Of course, he is. Even if we slip out of Xavier’s grasp and get what we need from the other two Guardians, there’s no way we can get into Iraq on our own.

  Head back against the bouncing boat, I stare at the underside of the top bunk, thinking through the pain in my arm, searching for a workable plan.

  I sit up, careful to keep the towel over my chest so I don’t flash Henry. “Grab my backpack,” I say. This could backfire, but it’s all I’ve got right now.

  Henry drops my pack onto my bed, and I scavenge through it with my good arm. My hand locked around the wadded socks, I pull them out and hand them to Henry.

  “Socks? Does this mean I’m a free elf?”

  “I would be a lot happier if we were going to Hogwarts and not the Temple of Doom,” I say, watching Henry as he realizes there’s a shape in the black cotton bundle. He pulls out the phone and looks at me, worry and confusion all at once.

  “It’s Baby’s. I took it before we left. We can use it for GPS and whatever else we need—it’s a secure way for us to get in touch with Nutesh. I had to take it—”

  “Genevieve, what have you done?” He drops the phone on the bed and looks over his shoulder toward the still-shut cabin door.

  “It was a calculated risk. I keep the phone off. It’s not detectable if it’s off, right?”

  He’s shaking his head. “We don’t know if this phone has a tracking device in it.”

  “It’s Baby’s. I can’t imagine he’d have a tracking device in his phone.”

  “You need to get rid of it. Have you made any calls? Any texts?” We lock eyes. “Oh, dear god, you have.”

  “Aveline is in Oregon. She’s with Violet and Ash and everyone. I had to know the elephants were safe, that my family is safe—”

  Henry bounds from the bunk and paces the short distance between the tiny bathroom and end wall. “I can’t believe you kept this from me.”

  “They’re my family, Henry. I had to know!”

  “And what about me? Am I not your family now too? You have put all of us in danger with this!”

  “It’s a phone, not a nuclear weapon,” I say.

  Henry drops to his knees next to the bed. “At the crappy motel in SeaTac, when Baby dug the tracking device out of my shoulder—I didn’t know it was there, Genevieve. I didn’t know until Baby made a cut in my skin and dug it out.” He jabs a finger in the direction of the phone. “That device, if it’s from Nutesh, is absolutely going to have a tracking unit in it. If Baby were to get separated from us, Nutesh would be able to track him. Don’t you see why this is dangerous?”

  “No one knows I took it.”

  “Of course they do! Nutesh will know! And if he can track it, so can Lucian. You might as well send up flares.”

  “Henry, we need a way to communicate with the outside world.”

  “So we buy a burner phone!” He throws a hand to his head, his fingers looking for the cowlick that is no longer there. He then grabs the phone and claws at its back cover.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Please—I need to be able to keep in touch with Violet. Aveline is in Eaglefern, with my animals!” Henry peels the heavy-duty phone case off and pops the back from the phone. He examines its guts, his face turning white as he turns the unit so I can see it.

  A blinking red light, no bigger than a grain of rice, sits nice and cozy among the phone’s circuitry, right above the battery.

  “But the phone is off . . . what’s the light coming from?”

  Without another word, Henry kneels on my bed and unlatches the handle on the sleek, arrow-shaped window. Before I can protest, he throws the phone out into the Mediterranean, slides the window closed, and climbs off the bed.

  He pauses, his face sad. “We will not make it through this if we at least can’t be honest with each other.”

  Henry then turns and leaves, the stateroom door quietly closing behind him.

  24

  “WE’RE NEARING PORTO TORRES,” HENRY SAYS, COMING IN AND SITTING on the bed. He presses the backs of his fingers against my forehead. “You’re still feverish.”

  “I’m fine. I need a shirt,” I say.

  Henry digs through his own pack and gives me one of his. “The sleeves should be looser. Might feel better against your arm,” he says. It does.

  “I’m sorry I got so angry,” he says, resting his hand on head. “I’m just scared.”

  “I’m scared too.”

  “Promise me—no more secrets.”

  I scoot closer and nuzzle Henry’s cheek with my nose. “No more secrets,” I say. He turns his head and kisses me.

  “Are you feeling strong enough to commandeer this vessel?” he says.

  “Aye-aye, captain. Let’s commandeer the shit out of this vessel.”

  When I move out into the main cabin, Henry is on the couch edge, like a cat about to pounce. We wait as the boat glides into the marina, stops at the fuel station, and then finally quiets in a moorage space, the calm water under us a welcome reprieve from the bounce over the last twelve hours.

  The main cabin door opens at the top of the narrow staircase, flooding us with late-afternoon sunshine. Xavier steps halfway down. “We’re fueled up. I’m going onshore to see about replenishing our medical supplies.” He nods toward my arm. “Everything under control?”

  “She’s much improved,” Henry says.

  “Is Keller staying here?” I say, hoping my nerves don’t show through my voice.

  “He’s going in to pick something up. Should only be half hour, hour at most. Stay below deck. When we get back, we’re out to sea again.”

  “How much longer? Until Naples,” I ask.

  “Six, seven hours. It will be very late when we arrive so as soon as we dock, we’re moving.”

  “X, you comin’, man? There’s a cold one with my name on it at le osteria,” Keller interrupts.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” Xavier says, climbing the three short stairs and shutting the door behind him.

  We watch through the narrow side windows as they walk down the wooden dock toward the port. Henry offers me a hand up the stairs—I’m definitely feeling the effects of Aveline’s dark dealings, but now is not the time for weakness.

  As soon as we lose visual of Xavier and Keller, we move upstairs. Henry jumps onto the dock to untie, and then we move into the cockpit.

  “How hard can it be? Like a car, right?” I point at the gear shift, the gas gauge, the odometer, more to reassure myself than anything—I don’t know what the other gauges mean, but let’s hope we won’t need to know.

  “He took the key fob to start the engine,” Henry says.

  “I figured he would.” I kneel and place a hand over the ignition button, careful to not let out too much electrical charge—last thing we need is for me to fry everything.

  The boat purrs to life.

  “Man, you are handy to have around,” Henry says. He’s already standing at the wheel, and when he eases the boat out of the slip and into the water, I realize he’s done th
is before. “We had boats.”

  “You didn’t mention that before,” I say, bracing against the front console. “It’s a rich-people thing, I’m guessing?”

  Henry smirks. “Something like that,” he says, one hand on the wheel, his other typing onto the touchscreen GPS embedded in the dash. “Watch behind. Let’s hope they’re far enough into the port they won’t see us.”

  We slide out of the marina unnoticed. Henry obeys the speed-limit buoys, and when the Mediterranean opens before us, he throws the boat forward and we’re back to cruising speed within just a few seconds.

  It’s way more fun up here than tucked below in the state-room where you can’t see anything. The sapphire-blue water is wide before us, the pristine, late-afternoon sky above its perfect match. “It doesn’t even look real,” I say.

  I settle into the built-in sectional and watch the Mediterranean stretch out endlessly, the boat gliding like a skater on ice. I hope we’ll put enough distance between us and Porto Torres before Xavier and Keller discover we’re gone. The boat surely has a tracking device on it—hell, even Cece’s crappy Toyota had an anti-theft system installed—and this is a multimillion-dollar boat, without doubt.

  But I’m less worried about Keller and Xavier tracking us—they know we’re going to Naples—and more worried about what Xavier will do if he catches up to us.

  Then again, what’s he going to do—ground me?

  I find a crappy paperback and read aloud to Henry as day turns to night. Who knew Keller was into romance novels? It’s a pleasant diversion, and it makes me laugh when Henry blushes over the naughty bits.

  The GPS beeps. “We’re almost there,” Henry says.

  “Already?” I jerk to sitting, instantly regretting the sudden movement. I sit up and look out the cockpit windows behind us. “No pursuits. Are we overly lucky here?”

  “We need every bit of luck we can score.”

  “Xavier’s gonna be pissed.”

  Henry chuckles. “I think that’s probably a fair estimation of his current emotional state.”