The uncertainty of what will come next—if Sevda will murder us all and take the books, or if she’s true to her word—lies like a fog around us. But then Sevda wipes her tears from her cheeks and pulls Henry to standing so she can embrace him again, and the tension in Xavier’s body melts. Henry hugs her back, but tentatively, his creased brow expressing his confusion clearer than any words could.
“You must rest. Xavier and I have much to do—La Vérité can be activated with a few hours’ notice, so let us get busy with that, shall we? Sofi will have food for us, and then we will prepare for our visit to Tanrilar Sirk. It really is beautiful, I will admit—if possible, we should arrive early to take in the sights. As yet, you are still children, and children need to smile too.” Sevda unlocks the door and pulls it open.
Xavier steps closer and lowers his voice. “You look like you’re about to blow something up.”
“Probably because I am.” I need to get rid of the electrical energy in my hands without an audience, and without catching anything on fire.
Sevda shows us to another room, this one comfortably appointed with twin beds and a huge bathroom, yet more marble and glass. I can’t imagine how much time Sofi spends cleaning all the shiny surfaces in this apartment. “You can freshen up and rest here,” she says, quietly moving down the hall and back into the main living area.
Xavier steps into the bedroom with Henry and me.
“What the hell was that?” I whisper.
He’s shaking his head, looking at the floor. “I . . . I honestly do not know.”
“How long have you known this woman? How could you not know she was a Dmitri?” I want to be sensitive to Henry in the aftermath of such shocking news—I know exactly how it feels to learn about a mystery sibling—but this is a major red flag that Xavier, of all people, didn’t know Sevda’s lineage.
We are sitting ducks, locked in an apartment in a foreign city of Dagan loyalists by a woman alleging a familial tie to Henry who may or may not be preparing to kill us and steal our books to give to Dagan.
Xavier pushes his fingers into his eyes.
I turn to Henry. “Did Alicia not show you this? How the hell can you both not know?”
No one has an answer.
Henry sits on the bed, his head in his hands, staring at the floor.
A waft of burned fabric floats up from my clenched hands. Upon opening them, I’ve singed holes in my gloves.
“I need to phone Nutesh,” Xavier says quietly.
“Ya think?”
“Do not move your eyes from those bags,” he says. “If you must nap or piss, take turns.”
“What about Lucas?” I ask. “They seem very friendly with one another, he and Sevda—Xavier, are we cornered here? Have we been double-crossed?” Xavier wasn’t at the compound in Croix-Mare when Mathieu held a gun to the back of Henry’s head. Mathieu who smiled and ate dinner with us and pretended we were allies.
“If she were dangerous, Alicia would’ve shown me,” Henry says.
“But how could she? You heard Sevda—she has gifts in the art of concealment. Why has Alicia shown you nothing about her at all? Is she here, Henry? Can you talk to her? Why am I the only one freaking the fuck out about this?”
Xavier closes the space between us. “You are not the only one,” he hisses, “but cooler heads prevail. Nothing can be set in motion without that third piece of the key, not to mention they don’t have Nutesh’s AVRAKEDAVRA—if their plan is to take the books, they’re certainly not going to make a move until after we meet with Mazhar. He won’t relinquish that piece to anyone but you.”
“Unless she meets with Mazhar claiming she is serving as our proxy and collects the piece!” I say.
“No. He wouldn’t do that. He won’t release anything until he sees me. Until he sees you.”
“Or unless she murders him and takes what she wants. Maybe we’re just the bait to draw him out,” I whisper fiercely. “Xavier, I want to believe you—I really do—but this is not the wrench I was expecting at this stage in the game. We made it through Pompeii, but what if our luck is running out? Can we survive another ambush?”
I’m trying not to panic, but the fact that we are not running out of this place right this second, guns drawn, is absolutely nuts.
“Genevieve,” Henry says, nodding at my hands. They are fully smoking now. And they burn like they’re on fire. Probably because they are.
“Help her before she burns us to the ground,” Xavier says to Henry. “Do not leave this room. Do you understand?”
Henry stands and cups a hand under my elbow. He and Xavier exchange nods, and then we’re moving into the bathroom, Xavier rushing from the room to make the call that will, I hope, shed some light on what the hell is happening.
The bathroom is wall-to-wall mirrors, above the long counter that houses double sinks and on the wall behind us. Our joint reflections go on for infinity, the light from narrow windows just below the wall-to-ceiling intersection bouncing on and on in the glass forever.
Henry throws open the faucet and eases my hands under the cold water.
“Gahhhhh... oh my god, this hurts . . . ,” I growl, trying to catch my breath, eyes clenched closed against the smell of burning fabric and skin. “Grab the medical kit. I’m going to need sterile tweezers and gauze and some aloe.” The water flowing from the sleek silver faucet stings like a bitch but at least it helps loosen some of the glove material seared into the tender skin of my palms.
Henry returns quickly with medical supplies, leaning against the counter with a fresh pair of tweezers in hand. “What can I do?” he asks.
Our eyes meet in the mirror. “I don’t even know, Henry. As if the carved-up arm weren’t enough to deal with.” I peel as much of the gloves off as I can with my blistering fingertips, biting my lip so I don’t yell, and then take the tweezers from him. “I’ve got this. You need a moment. Maybe a breath of fresh air, if that’s even possible in this place.”
“I have a sister. A half sister,” he says. I turn the faucet off; the ventilation fan in the ceiling whirrs quietly.
“You do. Weird way to find out,” I say. “Alicia gave you no clue? No indication?”
He shakes his head.
“You can ask her about it though, right?”
“Yes.” He unwraps some gauze pads and gives them to me, one at a time.
“Sevda said she’s gifted with concealment. What, like she can make herself invisible?”
“If she’s from Belshunu’s line—from the Death text line—concealment might be a useful skill,” Henry says. “She must know how to keep herself hidden, to warp the truth so no one ever learns what it is.”
I swallow hard. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about, Henry.”
He nods. “I’m going to see about that fresh air.” He kisses my temple and walks out, closing the door behind him.
I manage to pluck off the rest of the glove fabric, teeth clenched as it takes skin with it, disgusted that this so-called “gift” continues to cause me so much damage. I won’t be sad to be rid of it.
But “concealment”—I need to know what that means specific to Sevda. Xavier can change his outward appearance. Is she the same? No—her magic has to be stronger, if she’s truly of Lucian’s blood. If it is, how can we ever know if she is who she says she is, especially after I swore she was Aveline when we disembarked?
Or did Aveline just project herself through my eyes onto Sevda?
God, I’m so tired. I don’t know what I believe anymore. I just want this to all be over.
I dab at the raw open skin, and then coat the new wounds with Hélène’s fortified aloe. The fragrant smell is at once overridden, its tickle in my nose sending an instant tremor through me. I close my eyes and hold my breath against it.
If I can’t smell it, it’s not here.
Etemmu.
“You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real,” I chant, the smell growing stronger. I don’t dare open my eyes. I can’t bear to see
the howling black horror, the legion of spiders, reflected in so many mirrors. My Life text is in the other room; I can’t fight the Etemmu without the book’s help.
“‘Once upon a time, there lived a young girl with hair like the sun’s fire, feet like the wind, and hands that enchanted even the lowliest sufferer.’”
The line from my mother’s story.
“You’re not real. You’re not real,” I say again, stronger this time, willing it to be true.
“Ohhhh, but I am,” the voice hisses as a hand grabs the back of my hair, forcing my eyes open. Staring back at me in the prism of mirrors is Aveline Darrow, but not just one face—a thousand malevolent grins, her ice-blue eyes alight with the pain she’s about to inflict. “I warned you what would happen to your family if you crossed me.” She moves closer, her lips almost touching my ear.
“I’ll bet you didn’t know that our brilliant mother was also a clever murderess in her day? She was once renowned for her cultivation of the most potent castor bean plants.” I struggle against her grip but instantly regret it. An explosion of pain blasts through me, dropping me to my knees, my chin impacting the marble counter on my way down, causing me to bite through my tongue.
And then I’m flat on my back, oppressive weight on top of me, her hands tight around my neck, choking off the putrid air that surrounds us. “Nothing says tea party like French cookies and ricin. The police will find your prints all over that tea set . . . if I don’t finish the job myself, I know a dashing trapezist back in Oregon who would love to wrap his strong fingers around your pretty. Little. Neck.”
I gurgle on blood from my lacerated tongue through a barrage of muffled screams—soon made louder by the excruciating physical pain at the cellular level as Aveline’s ability to command a body’s internal workings tears me apart.
“Violet begged for death at the end, just like you will.”
And then through the front of my shirt, Aveline drags her pearl-handled blade, carving into my flesh like she’s trying to reach my heart. I try to struggle against her, but she’s so much stronger than I am and her abilities mean I’m not in control of my body.
I can’t be the hero of my own story when I am out-gunned at every turn.
As I feel consciousness drifting away, the bathroom door splinters open and at once the weight is lifted, leaving me choking on blood and spit. I gasp, desperate for one clean breath. Xavier throws Aveline against the wall, her body smashing the mirror behind as she slumps to the floor; just as quickly, Sevda is there, a knife at Aveline’s neck.
But it’s not Aveline at all.
It’s Sofi, the housekeeper, her crumpled figure smiling like she’s just won the lottery, blood from the top of her head spilling down her face, staining her teeth and lips. She coughs and then spits onto the floor. “Dagan is coming for you all. And you, you duplicitous monster,” she reaches up and digs her claws into Sevda’s arm, “Aveline Darrow will see you dead before this is over, and the rightful heir will take her place—”
Her words are cut off with one fast slice of Sevda’s blade. Sofi’s grimace fades, the fierce taunting in her eyes frozen forever. As she flops over and her life essence cascades like water over a dam onto the pristine floor, Sevda falls back onto her butt, reaching for one of the snow-white towels hanging on the warming rack above her. She wipes Sofi’s blood from the steel, as if cleaning a knife after slicing into her dinner, and then slides it back into its sheath under her black pant leg.
I’m shaking so hard, my teeth chatter in my skull.
There isn’t enough therapy in the world to erase this madness.
Sofi is dead. Sevda killed her. In front of me.
Every time I think things can’t get any worse, they always do.
“Get her cleaned up,” Sevda says to Xavier and Henry as she stands and wipes Sofi’s blood from her hands. “We need to do something with the body.” She exhales, her own body and face rigid, and stomps out of the room.
35
IF XAVIER AND SEVDA DON’T STOP YELLING AT ONE ANOTHER, DAGAN’S entire loyalist army will find us and storm the building before we can throw towels down to soak up Sofi’s blood.
Henry does what he can to help, starting with a crash course in first aid. My tongue is too swollen to swallow pills at the moment, so painkillers in the muscle it is. Aveline—or Sofi—inflicted a tremendous amount of damage in a very short time. On top of the charred hands of my own doing, the initial fall and impact with the marble counter broke my right front tooth, basically in half, and I bit nasty holes in my tongue—so much for solid food for the next week. My muscles hurt like I’ve done a ten-hour workout on the silks and been trampled by Gertrude. The bleeding has renewed, oozing through the ongoing infection in my left arm from Aveline’s earlier handiwork. And the new carving in my chest...
Well, that is a pretty sight indeed.
Over my sternum, carved into the flesh just below the collarbone and into sensitive breast tissue, I now have an inverted triangle overlying the circle—just like the wound that festered and killed my fifth-great-grandfather Udish, when he died in Delia’s arms that day in the field outside the medieval settlement.
Aveline’s vicious words echo in my ears as I sit on the bed, letting Henry do what he can, per my instructions, to treat this latest assault. It hurts like hell—all of it, on every level—but I’m too tired to cry.
Violet begged for death at the end, just like you will.
She’s probably not wrong.
I probably will beg for death.
But not until I take her with me.
“It would be quite convenient if you could heal yourself,” Henry says, trying out a sympathetic smile as he packs antibiotic ointment into the curves and lines opened in my skin. I don’t even have the energy to be embarrassed that I’m sitting here in my bra and yet another pair of blood-covered cargo pants in front of Henry. “That pain medicine helping at all?”
“Hardly. Did Hélène not send anything stronger?”
“No . . . I’m guessing they’re worried about us not being on our toes.”
“I was awake and perfectly unmedicated and yet it did nothing to prevent Aveline from getting to me,” I say. “Doesn’t Xavier have a flask lying around here?”
Henry looks at me pitifully as I suck in against a painful swipe of cotton swab. “Sorry. Almost done.” I walk him through taping sterile gauze over my new wounds.
“I thought Xavier’s carving was working,” Henry says.
“His what?”
“Remember the carving he was doing at the cabin in Spain?” I pause, thinking back. “He told me it was a figurine of Aveline. After we ditched him, he burned it with her hair and an herb. Thyme, I think he said. Apparently, it’s a Mesopotamian ritual effective against witchcraft.”
“He did that?”
“It’s supposed to keep you safe from the Etemmu. And from Aveline.”
“It didn’t work.”
Henry crumples up the medical wrappers and sits next to me, barely touching me with his shoulder. “He did it because he wants to help. We need you, Genevieve. And even if you don’t believe it, he loves you.”
“Where did he get Aveline’s hair?”
“I didn’t ask,” Henry whispers. “But it’s probably safe to assume he’s had it with him for a while.”
I revisit the vision of Xavier confronting my mother in that quaint cabin, of a tiny Aveline curled in her blankets. Before all this deception and treachery ruined their lives.
“You should thank him,” Henry says.
I lock eyes with Henry, my throbbing jaw painfully clenched against words I don’t want to fall out of my mouth. But they do. “Thank him? It’s almost as if you didn’t just bandage me up. Again.”
“Gen—”
“Do we have any clean shirts left?”
Henry nods. I don’t want to talk anymore. I especially don’t want to talk about how grateful I should be that my biological father carved a tiny piece of wood to
try and stave off yet another attack from his daughter.
Henry finds me a shirt and helps me slide into it. He sits again. “I don’t think we should do this meeting with the La Vérité members. After this?” He points at my new injuries. “It’s too dangerous.”
I turn to face him. Every movement is a poke with a hellfire-red branding iron. “Seriously? Henry, is there something you know that you’re not telling us? Hey, Alicia, are you here? Do you have intel about tomorrow? Did you know Aveline was coming for me?” My voice sounds weird as it bounces off the walls and hits me with the full force of my anger.
“Genevieve, that’s not how it works. You know that...”
“Right. Memories only. No fortune-telling. I get it,” I say, easing back onto the bed. “This plan will work. This plan has to work. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Sevda and Lucas interrupt us, announcing their entry with little more than a knock. They walk through to the bathroom—Lucas has what I think might be a body bag under his arm—and Sevda carries a bucket with bleach and industrial-strength paper towels. The smell of cigarette wafts down the hall after them—guessing Xavier isn’t going to help with the cleaning party.
Henry tries to get me to look away, but I can’t. Together they hoist Sofi’s body into the bag, zip her up, and then wrap her in a secondary black tarp that Lucas duct tapes into place. I can’t imagine where they’re going to put her now—that is so clearly a body.
Lucas scoops it up like it weighs no more than a pillow. “I’ll be right back to help with this,” he says to Sevda and then exits.
I stand and walk across the room, pausing just outside the bathroom’s open doorway. “What will you do with her?”
“Better not to ask.”
I watch Sevda, not bothering an offer to help because even if I wanted to, I can’t. I’m in so much pain, just walking over here has winded me. Sevda looks up from where she’s crouched on the floor, sopping up human blood and mirror shards. “Please. Go rest. Don’t watch me do this. You’ve seen enough.” She urges me backward without touching me, closing the bathroom door between us.
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