“This is wrong,” I say.
“Stay where you are,” Sevda warns.
I turn to Xavier. “I have to help these people. Look at them—they feel cheated. They came here for help, not a pat on the wrist.”
“Genevieve...”
I don’t care what Sevda is hissing at me through my earpiece—my mother would be disgusted if she saw all these sick people and we did nothing to help.
In one swift move, I yank off my green scarf and push through the small crowd that has gathered in the center of the tent. Before anyone can grab me, I’m on the dais—Doria’s eyes about pop out of her head. The woman standing at the front of the line is holding a baby with a terrible burn on its face.
“What happened?” I ask. The woman speaks; I look to Doria to translate.
“She said the child pulled a pot of boiling oil off the stove. The doctors don’t think she will live.”
“How old is she? The little girl?”
Doria asks the woman, who looks between me and my stand-in. In fact, a lot of people in the line are noticing that they’re seeing double. “Two.”
“I can help you,” I say. Xavier growls in my ear to stand down, but I pluck the earpiece free and let it dangle from my collar.
I can’t help anyone if I can’t concentrate.
“Doria, I need you to go get me something to drink—tea is fine but add a lot of sugar to it. Can you hurry?” Her eyes widen with confusion. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay, I promise.” She nods and stands. I turn to Jakub and speak quietly next to his ear. “You should stay up here with me. If I start to fall or faint, please help Doria give me the tea. I need sugar between healings.”
As my translator goes to fetch tea, I indicate to the woman what I need her to do with her baby. She obliges, lying the child on a huge pillow along the dais front. The murmur in the tent has quieted, and I know all eyes are on me.
This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever done.
I slide off my gloves and close my eyes, pulling from that white-hot star in the back of my head. My hands on the child, I heal the burns, the underlying tissue, the damage to her left eye blinded by the oil, the marbled skin on the top of her head.
You could hear a pin drop.
And then the mother is wailing as the restored child sits up on her own and starts crying when she sees all the people staring at her. The baby is scared, but she’s very much alive, and her mother can’t stop kissing the back of my hands and thanking me.
A cheer erupts in the tent, followed by a pause as everyone kneels, their keys out, heads bowed. The woman speaks, and Doria translates: “Thank you, Beloved Delia, for giving the world this great gift.” I feel like my heart is going to burst out of my chest—these people loved my mother too. And I had no idea she had so many friends in so many places.
In that moment, looking at this beautiful group of people in every size, color, and shape, my swelling pride for the important work my mother did is rivaled only by one other emotion: guilt. Who am I to undo this magic? Who am I to deny these people the hope that they can live free of pain, to go forth and do good for others, for this world?
Am I making the wrong choice?
The woman strokes my arm one last time before clutching her daughter and stepping off the dais. Quiet and orderly, the line reforms. The La Vérité members shake my hand, touch my face, touch the top of my head—a few even crouch and touch my feet—and so many have quick anecdotes about my mother that Doria thankfully translates.
By this point, it’s clear I’ve disobeyed orders, so Xavier has stepped in to provide sugared tea, allowing me to help those who present with injuries and illness. Due to a lack of time and personal energy, I can’t fix the really complex stuff, like cancer, but my efforts will buy the sufferers a little time.
As I wait for the next of my mother’s followers to step toward the dais, Xavier tucks my earpiece back into place. “Don’t remove it again,” he says. “After the woman in the red coat, we’re leaving. We have what we need.”
I stare at him. The piece? He nods.
I wish I could help every single one of these people, but I’m sweaty and shaky. My wounds are on fire under the layers of gauze, and stars of exhaustion twinkle in my peripheral vision. I almost cry when I see one of the soldiers has returned with a cold Coke.
An announcer’s voice takes over the speakers that blare through the grounds, and judging by the uptick in the live music coming from the main tent, the show must be starting. Sevda steps to the front of the tent and again, I can’t understand what she’s saying, but the grateful smiles on the faces around us tell me we’re among friends.
Jakub moves off the dais, making room for Henry and Xavier to help me from my seat. I don’t realize how depleted I am until I try to stand.
“You should not have done that,” Xavier says. “I cannot carry you out of here. It will give us away.”
“I just need a second.”
We move to the eastern side of the tent again. Henry hands me a napkin with dates and baklava. “Eat. You’re white as a ghost.”
“I feel like a ghost.” I chew as fast as my sore mouth with allow, my back to the crowd so I can replenish my energy and not faint in front of everyone.
Midbite, I freeze as the fetor of decay floats past. There’s a small yelp behind us, followed by a scream. I spin just as Jakub falls face first onto the ground, convulsing, his face purpling and foam forming around his lips. Chaos erupts in the tent, but before we can escape, something brushes my cheek and leaves a stinging laceration behind. The stench is so strong now, those urgent calories I just consumed surge upward in my throat.
Xavier and Lucas move into position on each side of me, and my feet are hardly touching the ground as we tear through the back of the tent, Henry right behind, Sevda and a line of other soldiers forming a barricade around us as we move south across the park. I turn my head to see Doria running to catch up with us, and then she freezes and falls, overcome with the same convulsions that took Jakub down moments ago.
“Help her!”
“Keep running!” Xavier screams.
“Do not stop!”
Just before I turn away, a woman staring at Doria’s seizing form is overcome. She looks up at me, stunned, and then collapses.
“Go!Go !Go !” Sevda yells.
Judging by the screams and toppling bodies all around us now, whoever is in control of this terrible magic is targeting anything that moves. There’s nothing to hide behind—how can a person hide from what they cannot see? A panicked clot of scattering circusgoers on the grass ahead of us is making it impossible to run any faster.
There are no words to describe the horror of watching helplessly as people are picked off, collapsing into seizure, some screaming, some silent, all of them wearing grimaces of torment as their bodies betray them.
I know what this is.
Sevda tumbles and falls in front of us, her body jerking uncontrollably, the whites of her fixed-open eyes filling with blood as her jaw clenches to the point of cracking. “Nooooooo!” Lucas hollers. He lets go of me and races back to pick her up, throwing her over his shoulder, a feat made near impossible because of her thrashing body. Xavier shoves me behind him; another soldier steps in to take Lucas’s place, but a woman in front of us falls. I don’t adjust course fast enough and I trip over her body, landing awkwardly on my infected left arm. I feel the bones give, followed by the blinding flash of pain that steals my breath.
Henry jerks me back to my feet. “Cars ahead! Run!”
My left arm tucked tight against my midsection, we skip-hop through the hysterical crowd, jumping over bodies, some motionless, some in the grips of gruesome convulsions. Ahead are two of the three black SUVs screaming toward us down the street from where they were staging, horns blaring, lights flashing. The first SUV screeches to a halt. We run awkwardly toward it, bent in half in a vain attempt to not get hit by whatever invisible assailant is responsible for so much pain.
Another soldier falls.
And then Xavier, stiff as a board as he hits the ground face-first, his body convulsing wildly, an unearthly howl sneaking out between clenched teeth. Just like with Sevda, I watch as blood fills the whites of his eyes.
A sinister voice in my head: “I will take him from you, just as he was taken from me. I will take them all.”
“Get out of my heaaaaad!” I scream, and then Henry’s by my side as we scramble to get Xavier off the ground.
Lucas yanks open the door and tosses a still-jerking Sevda into the SUV’s third row. Henry and I struggle to get Xavier’s writhing form into the car—the driver leans over the front seat and tugs Xavier’s shoulders so we can clamber in after him.
Out of our original party who went into the tent, we’re all that’s left.
Doors barely closed, the driver burns the tires against the cold asphalt, flips a U-turn, and tears out of the area, away from the horror of people being knocked down like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.
“Genevieve, please, help her,” Lucas begs between gasps from the back seat, but I’m exhausted to the absolute limits. Sevda’s deafening screams echo off the car’s interior, lessening the farther away we get. Henry and I are squeezed on the floor between the front and second row of seats as Xavier’s seizing form slowly relaxes.
“What was that? What just happened?” Henry asks, raw fear wrinkling his forehead.
“Aveline . . . it was Aveline,” I say, defeated. I warned Nutesh—I warned him what she can do. I had no idea she could do it to so many people, at the same time, with such deadly effect. And why attack innocents? I thought they said Lucian wouldn’t risk something like that.
There isn’t much help I can offer Sevda, or Xavier, while we’re racing through the streets of Izmir, unsure if we’re being pursued or if we’ll be run off the road at any moment. We’ve lost our escort SUVs somewhere in the maze of streets; emergency vehicles scream past and around us heading toward the circus grounds.
Instead, I rub a soothing hand over Xavier’s unconscious brow, whispering that everything will be okay, that we’ll get help soon. “Please stay with me. Don’t let her win,” I whisper.
“Genevieve, please.” Lucas grabs the back of the second row of seats.
“I can’t do anything until we stop. Just keep her calm. Tell her she’ll be okay.” My voice is barely audible. My heart pulses in my left arm instead of my chest and my eyes struggle to stay open. “My arm . . .I can’t help her yet.”
Lucas’s quiet comforts helps Sevda to finally settle. My ears ring in the absence of her cries. But it’s short-lived as Sevda comes around, a renewed panic in her voice.
“I can’t see.
I can’t see!”
“Sevda, honey, you’re safe. It’s me. It’s Lucas. Everything’s okay. We got out.”
“I can’t see!” she wails again. She struggles against him, hands flailing to orient herself. The grisly damage in her eyes, the blown capillaries in her face, and bruising around her jaw—so much injury in so little time. And I don’t know if I can fix that, not if it was Aveline’s handiwork.
“What’s going on? Why can’t she see?”
I don’t have any answers for Lucas, or Sevda, right now.
I flop hard against the door and lean closer to the seat so my forehead touches Xavier’s. “Stay with me... stay with me... don’t let go . . . we have so much more to talk about,” I whisper to him.
“Xavier? Where is Xavier?”
“He’s here. He’s still out,” I say quietly, brushing a curl off his forehead. But as if he knows we’re talking about him, his eyes pop open, the ice-blue irises a macabre contrast against so much blood in what should be white. He coughs once, and then he’s coughing so hard, he can’t catch his breath.
“Henry, we have to sit him up.” Henry moves to adjust Xavier to sitting, but it’s no use. The coughs have taken over. His eyes bug out, strained with exertion as he coughs to the point of near vomiting. I grab my discarded headscarf from earlier and shove it against his mouth. He takes it, but when he pulls it away, it’s soaked with blood.
Xavier begs for air between coughs. “The last piece... to the key?” I look at Henry, his eyes as wide as mine. “Sevda?”
“She’s alive.”
“The key?” he asks again, his chest spasming with bloodied coughs.
Lucas looks around him, around Sevda, on the floor of their row. The color drains out of his face as he shakes his head no. “We must’ve lost it when we were hit.”
“Fuck,” Xavier mutters, dropping his head into his hands.
I stifle a sob into my sleeve—we were so close. And Aveline got in the way, just like she promised she would.
Xavier’s coughs start again, breaking the stunned silence in the SUV. “Xavier—” His face strains with exertion as coughed-up blood coats his lips.
And then his eyes roll back in his head.
37
“DRIVER, HURRY!” I SCREAM. I’VE POSITIONED MYSELF UNDER XAVIER’S torso to keep him on his side so he won’t choke to death on his own blood, but he’s in and out of consciousness, and now the bluing of his face and wheeze in his throat tells me he can’t breathe. I’ve heard the same wheeze and gurgle in the crew members Delia treated for asthma or terrible colds.
“Henry, help me!” Painfully, I slide out from under Xavier. We lie him across the bench seat, pulling at his jacket. Henry un-Velcros the body armor over Xavier’s chest, slides me a pair of scissors from the medical kit, and holds taut the fabric so I can slice up the front of Xavier’s shirt with my still-functioning right hand.
“Oh no . . .” I balance myself on my bent legs against the front seats. Xavier’s formerly olive skin is a patchwork of dark purple and red, mottled and angry. He looks like he’s been trampled by horses.
“Is that blood? Under his skin?” Henry asks quietly. I nod.
“She tore him apart. Henry... I can’t . . . I’m not strong enough.”
“Genevieve, put your hands over his heart,” Henry says sternly. “Just keep his heart beating until we can get on the plane.” Moving my left arm almost does me in, but I need both hands for this job, fracture or no.
The sun is near setting, but as we scream into Çiğli Air Base, the plane is waiting for us. We screech to a halt in front of the hangar and Nutesh emerges from the metal building—I swear to everything holy, it’s like seeing an angel descend from above.
Surrounded by his ever-present security—and my Montague!—they throw open our doors. Lucas is out with Sevda in his arms, yelling at the soldiers to help with Xavier.
“If I move my hands, he dies. It was Aveline... I warned Nutesh...”
Montague nods curtly and barks commands at two of the guards. They ease Xavier across the seat as Montague supports his head; Henry holds Xavier’s legs together so he doesn’t slide off the seat.
“Geneviève, keep your hands in place, if you’re able,” Nutesh says. I don’t feel like I can, but I also know that the intense waves of nausea buffeting through me are an indication of how severe the damage is.
I cannot let go.
Henry exits the other side, runs around the SUV, and with a supportive arm around my waist, he helps me walk without tripping alongside Xavier’s body as we climb the jet’s stairs. We rush Xavier into the rear cabin, onto the huge bed. Nutesh throws more orders at his soldiers; the side of the plane is sealed as he strips away his black jacket and rolls his sleeves, preparing to undertake the healing I’m unable to accomplish on my own.
“Geneviève, I can see you are hurt yourself, but if you could keep focused on his heart while I repair the damage inside, we might save him yet. Everyone else, buckle up!” he commands.
I slide onto my knees next to the bed, right arm stretched so that my hand is firm over Xavier’s still-beating heart. Nutesh braces himself against the rear wall as the aircraft picks up momentum. He rubs his hands together and closes his eyes, placing his splayed fing
ers over the horrific bruising in Xavier’s chest. Xavier jerks under the influence, but I can feel the healing energy coursing through him, the increase in his heartbeat under my own beat-up hand, the calming breaths Nutesh pushes through him and, by default, into me, offering a small respite from the pain in my infected and broken left arm.
Nutesh moves through Xavier’s upper body, front and back, the terrible purpling dissipating under his hands. So much damage in so little time . . . My face burns with the memory of all those innocent people falling.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Why would she do this?”
“Focus on Xavier,” Nutesh says.
“His chest is so bad. I didn’t know until we took off his vest. He doesn’t complain.”
“Because he’s seen so much worse.”
“We didn’t get the third piece, Nutesh.”
He nods, as if he is not surprised, and concentrates on his work.
The plane banks hard, making it that much more difficult to stay focused on what I’m doing.
“Genevieve . . .” Xavier’s voice is so soft. I look up at his face, consumed with relief that he’s looking back at me, his face pinking up. “Thank you.” He reaches to take my hand from his chest. “Thank you.”
Nutesh sits on the bed next to Xavier, outstretched arm against the headboard for balance, his face flushed, forehead sweaty. “Welcome back, Monsieur Darrow.”
I can’t cry. Not yet. If one tear escapes, they all will.
“How many made it out?” Xavier asks.
“You, Henry, Lucas, me, Sevda... she can’t see, but she’s alive.”
“We are going to fix everyone,” Nutesh says, standing as the plane levels out. “And then we are going to discuss how to open a temple without a key.”
38
NUTESH HEALS ME FIRST AFTER XAVIER—YET EVEN AFTER HE KNITS MY LEFT arm back together, the infected carving remains, and perhaps might even be worse. The new laceration on my face—from the Etemmu—it won’t heal either, but Nutesh is able to at least suture it closed and stop the bleeding. He scolds me gently that the healing I did at Tanrilar Sirk drew from my body’s reserves. “Your mother would be proud of you, but sometimes you just have to say no, Geneviève.”
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