Scheme

by Jennifer Sommersby

  If we destroy these books, will it change us, this couple forced together by circumstance and shared terror?

  Who are we singularly—and together—without the AVRAKEDAVRA? Who is Genevieve without her healing hands? Who is Henry without his facility with memory?

  But with the AVRAKEDAVRA, our lives are in danger. Forever. There is no “normal” as long as these books are allowed to survive.

  If I give Henry that moment to sway me, to try to convince me we can do great things and live in our own bubble on the fringes of reality, then we are no better than the monsters hunting us.

  I must stay focused on the mission objective. I will have to take my chances that the nonmagical Genevieve and Henry will still love each other after the books are ash on the Babylonian wind.

  “If you’re good for a second, I need to reorganize my bag and see what medical stuff we have left. Xavier made a mess of it on the boat.”

  Henry waves me to it, so I turn from him and dump out my backpack, except the AVRAKEDAVRA. I’m glad to find an unexpected gauze roll at the bottom as well as two foil packets of antibacterial ointment. I zip everything into the proper medical kit—I have six doses of antibiotics left before I’ll have to use Henry’s—and then I swallow two ibuprofen with one of the waters Maria left us. The fever rages on, and it’s wearing me out.

  Out of the corner of my eye, the top card of Delia’s hand-painted deck catches my attention. These cards—my mom was a talented artist, in addition to her magical abilities with plants—she made them during her many inpatient stays when the Etemmu would get to be too much and no one, except Baby and me, knew what was really happening. The cards are one of the few things I have left of her—they are the story of her past. They’re beautiful and precious to me.

  This top card has a purple iris on a white background (the purple iris is Lucian’s sigil), the top third framed by the bloodred banner with golden writing etched into the banner’s fabric. There’s an identical painting to this one hanging in a detailed mural in Lucian’s study at their estate in Eaglefern. I saw it when I went snooping where I shouldn’t have been, but where I also discovered Lucian’s AVRAKEDAVRA resting in its secure glass case.

  As I stare at the iris card, the writing in the painting moves, like it’s trying to reshape itself.

  I blink and blink. Maybe the fever is higher than I thought.

  No. The gold lettering is vibrating on the card.

  “What the . . .” I push my other stuff aside and pick up the stack, untying the leather lace that holds it together. I spread the cards out on the rough green-and-gray wool blanket, placing them in a square. The cards closest to my back-pack—to the AVRAKEDAVRA—their images are dancing.

  The delicate vines around the card borders twist softly, circling the card’s rectangular borders in an endless loop. The scenes portrayed on the card fronts look animated: Delia on horseback where the horse is actually galloping, the faces of healers and friends, including Alicia, Baby, and who I now recognize as Xavier, castles and estates and dank dungeons and even the Seine River snaking along, birds flying above a ziggurat, trees swaying in a heavy forest . . .

  But it’s the vines around the edges. They’re reshaping themselves—into letters?

  A buzzing noise brushes my ear. Unconsciously, I swipe at it, a trained response from constantly whisking away flies that follow the circus like groupies. But then the buzzing gets louder. I look around me, breath short, terrified this is some new manifestation by the Etemmu, but when I move my head closer to my pack, the buzzing intensifies.

  The insistent sound is coming from the backpack—from the AVRAKEDAVRA.

  “Do you hear that?” Henry asks.

  I double-check that our main door is bolted, and then I slide the text out of its compartment. When the book is on the bed next to the cards, the artwork moves in a frenzy, and then the book, all by itself, opens.

  “What is going on?” Henry asks, closing the short distance between us.

  “Are the images moving for you too?”

  Henry nods.

  “Thank the gods. I thought I was losing my mind.”

  “But what is it?”

  “No idea.” The drawings on the left page the book opened itself to are exquisitely detailed. Like looking at a Gray’s Anatomy (the anatomical illustrations book, not the TV show)—it depicts a wound and then various plants drawn in seed, sprout, and full-grown form. I recognize the yarrow, but I can’t read the language written in perfect script throughout.

  Across the top of both open pages, words have been written in a golden ink. “Any idea what language that is?” I ask Henry.

  He’s shaking his head. “It doesn’t quite look like Hebrew. Maybe Aramaic?”

  On the right-side page, the author has drawn an inverted triangular amulet using a word with eleven characters. With every subsequent line, a character drops off, until the final line contains only a solitary letter. The ten pictures surrounding the inverted triangle show a sick person, a healer, family members caring for the patient, offerings of food and fruit to the ailing. On the tenth drawing, it shows the ill person standing straight and tall with his back to a river and throwing the amulet over his shoulder.

  “This amulet—it looks sort of like the inverted triangle and circle symbol. This must be the healing ritual the AVRAKEDAVRA was based upon,” I say.

  “But why are the pictures on the cards moving?” Henry points to them, still animated where they rest on the blanket.

  A knock hits the door and I’m not sure who startles harder.

  “Hide it!” Henry whisper-yells. He zips to the table and grabs his knife, but as he’s tiptoeing toward the door, the spring-loaded blade open and ready for business, an envelope slides under the one-inch gap between door and floor. I drop onto my belly to watch for feet or a shadow on the other side, sure that if a bad guy is here for us, a flimsy wooden hostel door will not keep him or her out, even with both locks thrown.

  Henry points anxiously toward the bunk; I right myself and bury the text under the blanket and pillow, scooping the cards into a pile and wrapping them in one of my new lost-and-found shirts before burying the deck in the backpack.

  We don’t move for at least ten minutes, me on one knee near the bunks, my own knife drawn, electricity coursing hot through my hands, Henry against the wall near the door, ready to strike if someone bursts through.

  When it’s clear no one is coming in after us, Henry quickly bends and picks up the envelope. He stretches it toward me, silent as the grave. When we hear excited conversation walk past our door, we freeze.

  Nothing more than fellow hostel guests.

  Henry tries the doorknob—still locked. He nods, and I nod in response, a silent agreement that it’s safe to move again. He slides onto the bunk next to me as I hold the business-sized envelope in my hands.

  “Put gloves on before you open it,” he says. “For safety.”

  I do and then slide my finger under the sealed edge, holding my breath against what could come flying out at me. Instead of an Etemmu or other nasty surprise, though, it’s an entry ticket from Napoli Sotterranea for Circo della regina.

  “One ticket?” I ask, turning it over. Words have been scratched onto the back.

  “Pompeii, 3 a.m. Porta Marina. I am the Guardian you seek. ˜G.”

  27

  HOWEVER THE ALLEGED GUARDIAN FOUND US, IT’S FREAKY ENOUGH FOR Henry and me to pack up, write Maria a brief note of thanks, and sneak out a rear entrance, our faces and heads obscured by hats and sunglasses, our hearts beating out of our chests.

  Our half-baked plan to draw out the Guardian worked, but we can’t risk staying at Maria’s one more second. We find accommodation in another hostel a few blocks over and sequester ourselves in our room, studying a map of Pompeii and surrounding areas picked up from a rack of touristy brochures. The note on the Sotterranea ticket said Porta Marina, which is one of the three entrances into the walled city of Pompeii. Henry finds it on the ca
rtoonish map. Plus, the venue matches the info Henry pulled out of Xavier’s head, so at least this part seems true.

  But—the grounds at Pompeii aren’t open for visitors at three in the morning, which leads us to one of two arguments: 1. The Guardian is legit and has arranged for our meeting to happen in a location where no one will be in the dead of night, a smart move; 2. This is a setup and we’re walking into an ambush.

  I’m not going to admit this to Henry, but I’m definitely doubting my earlier bravado about ditching Xavier.

  “It says here that Pompeii is heavily haunted. Maybe the benevolent spirits will keep us safe.” Henry winks, sprawled on his bunk. I think he’s joking, but the idea of being surrounded by the ghosts of more than two thousand people who died when Vesuvius blew its top kind of creeps me out.

  Especially when my sworn enemies are allegedly in control of the souls in the Afterlife.

  Though we’re wired on enough caffeine and pastry sugar to take down a bull, once we have our plan of action, we try sleeping, both of us tossing and turning until the phone alarm goes off just after midnight. The smart, legal way to get to Pompeii would be to hire a taxi. But we’re not necessarily smart, or legal.

  So we will be hot-wiring a car instead.

  Just another little circus-kid trick I can share with my posh, sheltered Henry.

  But finding a car without a bazillion people hanging out nearby proves more difficult than we expected, especially in a part of the city where mopeds and scooters outnumber humans, and citizens stay up way past a North American bedtime to eat, drink, and socialize. We need a vehicle that looks reliable, but not flashy. Considering we’re going to abandon it outside the grounds at Pompeii, we don’t need to attract any unwanted attention.

  We zero in on a suitable candidate but bypass it because the lights of the closest villa are on with people visible through the window. We find another car that might work but the model is too old so when I try to zap the electrical system through the handle to unlock it, I leave only a scorch mark and the door doesn’t budge.

  Panic prickles through me, but then Henry spots a lone black Fiat up ahead, sitting under a burned-out streetlight.

  “Might work,” I say. Fate is on our side as the driver’s side door is unlocked, and the ignition is push button, like the one on Keller’s boat.

  Surge of energy through my index finger, and the little sweetie comes alive.

  “You’re getting the hang of that,” Henry says. “Maybe a future in grand larceny for you?”

  “This is like cheating. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to pull wires from the steering column and show you how to really steal a car.”

  “There’s always tomorrow,” he says, smiling as he pops open the paper map across his lap and the dashboard.

  With me behind the wheel, Henry navigates with both his phone’s GPS and a paper map when the cell signal drops. We weave out of the maze of streets and find the freeway that’ll take us southeast toward Pompeii.

  “If this Guardian named ‘G’ is for real and we get the piece, we’re going to need to get in touch with Nutesh.” I check the car’s rearview and side mirrors obsessively, watching the headlights behind and around us for a possible tail. “We’ve done Spain and Italy. He said Turkey was next. What’s the name of the city you plucked out of Xavier’s head?”

  “Izmir,” Henry says. “In the greenhouse, Nutesh said air transport could be arranged. We will call him, explain the circumstances—”

  “Oh, I’m sure Xavier has taken care of that.”

  “And as yet, we have no idea where Xavier is or when he’ll show up again, so the plan is we call Nutesh, arrange a pickup, and we go to Izmir.”

  “And when we’re there, what, do we put on another show like the one we did here?” I ask.

  “Why not? It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Violet will be so jealous that we’re YouTube famous without her,” I joke, even though I know there’s nothing funny about any of this. Call it a coping mechanism because racing along the Italian freeway, it goes without saying that we are way out of our depth.

  When we finally reach the neighborhood where the ruins of Pompeii are nestled—thank goodness we left as early as we did because we totally got lost when our phones decided to stop connecting—I’m happy to see the street leading toward our entrance quiet and free of pedestrians. Henry points for me to park alongside a tall stone wall. Full, fragrant trees and bougainvillea sway and rustle over the wall’s edge. The ever-present buzz of scooters drifts from the small city behind us, even at this incredibly late hour, but so far, none seem to be interested in the quiet ruins at two thirty in the morning.

  The person calling themselves “G” said to be here at three, but now we have a few minutes to squeeze between the buildings and watch to see if we were followed. I follow Henry down the darkened street, marked with the occasional crosswalk and worn white and yellow stripes indicating parking spots, our steps lit with wide-set street lamps and Henry’s flashlight. Closed businesses flank the right side of the road—looks like tour guide and souvenir shops as well as maybe a restaurant and a caffè separated by decorative metal railings. Knee-height rectangular planters with thriving plants sit along the sidewalk.

  The closer we move to the entrance, the quieter it gets, the only sound the occasional breeze stirring the trees and squawking birds either out for a late night or anticipating the sunrise in just a few hours.

  Sure enough, the entrance to the ruins rises before us, a proper modern welcome center of white and gray concrete, spiked black fencing, and silver lettering announcing itself: Scavi di Pompei / Porta Marina.

  A flashlight up ahead, behind a locked gate, flashes once.

  We freeze.

  It flashes again.

  Henry flashes twice in return.

  And then the gate opens. We step through, pausing in front of a man who might actually dwarf Baby, dressed in a white button-down and dark-wash jeans under a mid-thigh, black leather duster, his face in need of a shave. “The key to good is found in truth,” he says, his English heavily accented. He pulls a key out from under his shirt.

  Relief shudders through me. I pull out my own key and repeat his greeting, kissing the key before replacing it under my layers.

  “Where is Xavier?” he asks.

  “It’s just us. I’m Genevieve; this is Henry.”

  The man nods and offers a gloved hand to each of us. “Pietro. Come,” he says, gesturing behind him. “Gaetano awaits.”

  We fall into step with Pietro, walking through the modern parts of the site, past a quiet information center and glassed-in ticket booth, and down a few wide, paved steps and toward our first glimpse of the ruins. We hop the closed ticket turnstiles, and Henry clasps my left hand, his firm grip reminding me that my carved forearm, though no longer hemorrhaging, is still a serious problem.

  The paved walkway is bordered by railings and well-manicured shrubbery at first, but then the smooth concrete is exchanged for the large-stone roadway of antiquity. The ruins are quiet, and eerily beautiful. Because it’s so dark, we’re only given brief glimpses of the damaged buildings as we come upon them, uplit by evenly spaced floodlights, the space green with grass as well as palm and other trees. We head up a very steep stone walkway flanked by modern-day metal railings bolted into the stone. Ahead are two arches but Pietro is no tour guide.

  The chilled and seemingly endless arched tunnel empties onto a longish stone street bordered by a towering stone and brick wall on the right, delicate pillars encased in metal exoskeletons and gated courtyards and ruins of what might have been homes on the left. A small marker notes our location: “REG VII / INS VII.”

  Though the road is flanked by sidewalks, we’re walking down the center of the stone street. The rocks have been smoothed by centuries of wear, the effects of being buried by volcanic material, and now the millions of tourist feet that plod through on an annual basis. Strategically placed across the road are large flat bould
ers set about a foot apart—ancient crosswalks, perhaps?—as well as large rocks along the wall that maybe were for resting. It looks weird to see the addition of garbage and recycle bins, but time stops for no man.

  Someone should remind Lucian of that.

  The brick-and-stone walls, now on both sides, extend to the block’s end and the road leads directly to a huge open rectangular space (about the size of a football field) bordered by tall, capital-topped columns. At the western end, we can see the twinkling lights of a city against the shadow of a slumbering Mount Vesuvius. An imposing bronze sculpture of a centaur holding a spear sits on a tall brick pedestal directly ahead of us, and when our Italian guide’s flashlight hits it, a shiver runs down my spine. The air here feels heavy.

  Pietro speaks barely above a whisper, his voice gravelly. “The Forum. Center of life for Pompeians. Gaetano will be here. One moment.”

  We stand next to the centaur sculpture and wait. Pietro points as he speaks. “Down there, the Granary. Artifacts and plaster castings of Pompeians who died in Vesuvius. Molto sacro,” Pietro says. Very sacred.

  When Pietro unbuttons his leather coat, my heart skips a beat at the very large weapon hanging in a hip holster. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by seeing this. Not everyone has Tasers built in to their hands.

  Pietro tells Henry to kill his flashlight and then moves around the side of the centaur, hand at his belt. Henry’s grip on me tightens.

  When instead of a gunshot, we hear a pleasant greeting and the sound of patted backs, Henry and I both exhale with relief. Pietro reappears at the front of the sculpture pedestal, waving us forward. “Come,” he says. “Gaetano is here.”

  We step out from the centaur’s shadow and are greeted by the man from Henry’s memory. He smiles politely, but his lips quiver with the effort. I’m guessing he’s as nervous as we are.

  “I am Gaetano. It is a pleasure to meet you both,” he says. “You had a clever, and dangerous, way of making contact with me. I expected it to be Xavier to make the arrangements.”