Scheme

by Jennifer Sommersby

  Aveline reaches into her pack and pulls out Henry’s sketchbook.

  The one we left on the rooftop patio at Şivan’s.

  “Henry, I must say, these are really lovely. I especially like the ones of me with my dear circus friends. Who knew you were so talented and clever? And wow, you guys have had some adventures lately.” Aveline then steps in behind Ash, also blindfolded, and holds the open book in front of him. “Ash, my sweet, look at how cute we are—oh wait, you can’t. Silly me!”

  She tosses the sketchbook away; it skitters across the sandy floor and hits the crumbling bricks at the base of the far wall. She then places both hands on Ash’s shoulders. Under the cloth over his eyes, his left cheek mottled and bruised, his white, short-sleeved shirt soaked in dried blood. He’s definitely in the worst shape of the three. Aveline runs a pointed finger over Ash’s tattoo; he groans under her touch, the skin immediately red and angry. “Ash, my beautiful boy, guess who is here to rescue you? Too bad she wasn’t there for poor Violette.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

  “Not sitting on your knees like that, you won’t,” Aveline mocks. She reaches into her unzipped jacket pocket and pulls out the third piece of the temple key. “I think this is what you were looking for back in Izmir, is it not? Man, you guys did not plan for contingencies at all. I didn’t get the final toll from that circus, but it was a lot. Shame on you. And now, this,” she purrs, pulling the blindfold off Ash’s face.

  He hollers in agony, his bound body wracked with shudders.

  I yelp, a mixture of horror and pain and the consuming need to discharge the energy running through me. Henry reaches to help me up, but Aveline moves like lightning, behind me, hand gripping my short hair, yanking my head back so I have to look at what she’s done.

  “What’s a trapezist with only one eye?” she whispers in my ear. Ash sobs, slobber and blood dripping off his chin.

  “Ash, I’m so sorry . . . Ash . . . please, it’s Geni. I’m so sorry,” I say through strangled cries.

  I move my right arm backward, trying to find Aveline’s leg, but she knocks me forward. “You’d be wise to keep those hands away from me, ma soeur chérie.” And then her knee is in my back and she’s pulling off my pack and tying my wrists together. I howl, the pain in my left arm and chest blurring my vision. She yanks me up on my feet, dragging me over to the firepit at the far end of the temple, behind Hélène, Lucas, and Ash, and knocks me down to my throbbing knees again.

  “If anyone moves to help her, I will stop her heart. Are we clear?” No one says anything. She unzips my pack and pulls out the Life text, holding it reverently in front of her. “All of this carnage, all of these years—if our darling mother had just given me what was mine in the first place, so much trouble could have been avoided. Mon dieu, what a stupid, selfish, willful woman she was.” Aveline kisses the front of the book and sets it on the brickwork before digging through my pack again. “Ah-ha! Piece number two!” She sets the key piece onto the front of the Life text. I can feel its pull, even with three feet separating us.

  Aveline then turns toward everyone else. Lucian stands next to Hélène with his arms crossed, his face displeased, as if he’s not enjoying my sister’s theatrics.

  “Nutesh, if you would please present the text in your possession? No funny business. Just bring it over, set it down, and step away. I will get enough blood from your grandson to cover for you.”

  Nutesh, without taking his eyes off his beloved wife, slides his pack from his shoulders. He pulls the Death text out of its protective pocket. I watch Lucian as this happens, his eyes like Othello’s when I move closer with his food bin.

  Nutesh carries the book in front of him, murmuring words of comfort to Ash as he passes my friend. “It will be over soon, son,” he says. He then sets the text on the firepit edge, gives me a solid nod of his head, and moves back to his prior position.

  “Okay, young Henry, you’re up.”

  “Father, please.” Henry looks at Lucian, ignoring Aveline’s directive. “You won. We’ll give you everything you want—please, just let them go. You don’t need them anymore. You will have the texts, you can perform your ritual and go back to your own time—just let everyone free so we can spend our last moments together.”

  I need him to keep talking. Maybe they won’t notice the smell of the rope burning behind my back.

  Lucian stares at his son, his eyes softening for a moment. “Henry, your text. Please.”

  “Do you really think Aveline is going to let you have the books? Dad . . . I’m begging you.”

  I’ve never heard Henry call Lucian Dad.

  Don’t look back. Don’t look at me.

  A thin line of smoke coils from my conjoined hands. The rope loosens...

  Aveline lifts an arm toward Henry, as if she’s about to work her pain on him, but Lucian shoots her an evil glare and shakes his head. Henry locks eyes with me, a tear running down his face, and slides out of his backpack.

  “I tried to be a good son,” he says, unzipping the book’s compartment. “I really did. I tried to learn from you. I looked up to you, Father.” He pulls the book out. “I can see now that was a mistake.”

  Snap.

  The rope burns through.

  My hands are free and fully charged.

  The Memory book tucked in his arm, as if he were carrying an algebra text, Henry moves quickly and sets the book on the firepit edge, next to its siblings.

  Aveline steps in and with more care than I’d expect, she places the other key pieces onto the corresponding books. But then the wickedness returns to her eyes as she holds a knife under Henry’s chin.

  “Your hand, if you please.” She yanks off his glove. “Just a few drops, you beautiful, potent boy. An heir of two families. I should keep you for myself. You will be wasted on my sister.” She flashes me a nasty look before slicing a gash into Henry’s palm and drizzling his blood over both the Memory and Death texts.

  “You’re up next, sis,” she says to me.

  “Come and get it,” I growl. Immediately the fire in my carved arm intensifies.

  Aveline leans down and whispers in my ear. “Once this is over and the books are mine, I will kill Henry’s daddy and then carve your Ash into pieces, and you will watch.” She grabs onto my left arm. “Aww, look at you, clever girl. Burned through your rope. Tsk-tsk.”

  She yanks my arm unnecessarily hard, her thumb digging into the festering wounds, but I can’t fight against her, the pain too much as it rips through me. My clenched teeth grind, and Aveline laughs that she doesn’t have to cut me again because my arm is already bleeding enough for a lifetime of rituals.

  She jerks me forward and squeezes, my blood sullying the leather cover of the Life text.

  This is it. She has everything she needs.

  She shoves me backward next to Henry, and turns away from us.

  He looks down at me. I smile at him drunkenly, my consciousness hanging on by a gossamer thread.

  “Are you up for a game of cards?” I say. He replies with a sly smile of his own, removes his remaining glove, and flattens his hand lovingly against my bare neck. But it’s not affection he’s giving me—it’s the incantation from Delia’s playing cards, shoved right into the front of my head, a reminder of what we can do before anyone else gets in the way.

  Sevda shimmers into form and takes my left hand just as Henry crouches, grabs my other outstretched hand, and slams his bloodied palm onto the ground.

  Around us explodes into a tempest of sound, memory, and people.

  So many people.

  Henry and Sevda and I hold on to one another as hard as we can. I throw all the electricity I have through both of them; Sevda shimmers our bodies so we aren’t wholly visible; Henry conjures the past around us, like a film on fast forward with the volume at ten. The temple walls disappear and we’re surrounded by the lush greenery that once gave the Fertile Crescent its name, the endless humanity mo
ving produce and animals in and out of the massive city walls, children screaming, soldiers marching past Nebuchadnezzar II’s palace, carts pulled by beasts of burden, donkeys braying, birds screeching overhead.

  And slowly, the crowd around us begins to build. Ghosts—tens, then hundreds, then as far as the eye can see.

  But a gathering in front of us, a middle-aged man and a younger version of himself, a woman with crinkles around the corners of her eyes and gray strands in her long, black wavy hair, a collection of children, including a handsome young boy of about four—Lucian’s carbon copy—and a tiny baby with a shock of brown curls on her head, wrapped in a woven cloth in the arms of a stunningly beautiful woman standing nearer to the front—it’s this that pulls Lucian from behind us.

  He sinks to his knees, hands outstretched. Through the raging memory storm swirling around us, his voice is clear as a bell in our ears: “Tammuz... Ningal . . .” he says, reaching toward his dead children. “I’ve missed you so . . .” His whole body shakes with emotion. He stands, reaches for the oldest man standing there. “Belshunu. Father.” Though his hands go through their bodies, like mist, he still tries to touch them. Belshunu speaks to his son, but we can’t hear it.

  And just as quickly, the happy scene begins to crumble as blistering pain rockets through me, into Henry, into Sevda—our connection means I can feel what Aveline is throwing at us times three. Their agony is mine, and our voices, our screams, meld into one as we work to hang onto the blur of memories that will give someone outside of us a moment to act, to disable Aveline so we can let go and complete the Undoing.

  Lucian, however, is transfixed, communing with his dead family, smiling when they smile, promising he will see them again soon. As if in slow motion, he turns to look at us, his truest smile and tear-soaked face the only thing I can see in my tunnel vision. My throat is on fire from screaming and straining against Aveline’s assault, but I must hold on.

  I cannot let go. I cannot give up.

  There are three of us—three true heirs—and only one of her.

  A slight tilt of my head proves that she’s slowly figuring this out, her clawed hands red and angry, her face contorted and near purple from her efforts, teeth bared in a banshee’s screech. Our shimmer falters and we are fully visible again; Henry wobbles next to me, nearly breaking contact. The memory tempest flickers—he’s running out of steam.

  “Henrrryyyyyy!” I scream. “Hold ooooon!”

  And then the light clicks on in Aveline’s eyes. Henry is running this show.

  If she can stop him, she can stop the storm.

  She latches onto his right forearm with both her hands, her focus drawn specifically to him, though the torrent that buffets through Henry’s whole body transmits down the line, through me, into Sevda. She drops like a stone, and stars pop in my peripheral vision like Fourth of July sparklers.

  Hang on, Genevieve.

  I open my eyes, painfully. “Mom . . .” She stands in front of me, just like she did in the mausoleum back in Portland, still in her circus regalia from the night she died, her hair a halo of fire. Alicia is with her, glowing like the heart of a star.

  “Hang on, my beautiful little bird.”

  “Help us. Help us, Mom, please.”

  “You are my brave, fierce girl. Finish this.

  You are the only one who can.”

  “I love you, Momma. I love you so much,” I say, sobbing.

  “I love you too. Put to rest what I could not. I will always be near, even if you can’t see me. I promise. You are my Vérité, Genevieve. Finish this and go home. Take care of our family. Take care of Baby and Henry and Xavier and Ash and all of them. They will need you, as you will need them.”

  “I can’t ... I can’t go on without you.”

  “You’ve already proven that you can. I will love you forever.” My mom’s energy then blows through me, pushing me to fight harder.

  I have to take care of our family.

  My free arm moves as if through setting concrete, but I lift it high enough to flatten my hand atop the Life text, its energy surging through me but doing little to counter the horrors Aveline never seems to run out of.

  Aveline’s screams ricochet off the Ninmakh walls—she knows what I’m doing.

  Through my mother’s ethereal glow, Lucian stands and looks at Henry. When his eyes soften and his palm flattens against his heart, I realize he’s seen Alicia too.

  He then turns back to his ghostly family, his hand outstretched as they reach for him. He smiles, sadness and resolve etched in his sharp features, but also—clarity, eyes wide, blinking fast, like he’s seeing a sunrise for the first time.

  And I know this is the end.

  “Hennnnrrryyyyyyy!” My voice bounces off the inside of my head.

  Lucian reaches into his black boot. In three long strides across the temple floor, he’s behind his son.

  The silver of his drawn blade shines against the flicker of the sun in the bright memoryscape still playing around us, as if on a 360-degree movie screen.

  And then Aveline’s mouth goes wide and her hands release Henry’s arm, stopping the stream of torture as she slides to the ground, the light disappearing from her ice-blue eyes.

  Lucian’s killed her. Not Henry, but Aveline.

  “Son ... let go,” Lucian says. “It’s over. Let go.” His voice is slow, as if speaking underwater.

  “Genevieve, I love you forever. Take care of our family,” Delia says again.

  Just as Henry falls onto his side, unconscious.

  45

  I’M FLAT ON MY BACK, BARELY ABLE TO FIND THE ENERGY TO BREATHE LET alone sit up and see what’s left of the family around me.

  Eyes open. We’re still in the temple. Has it only been a few seconds? Were they not able to transport me back to France blissfully asleep so this nightmare can finally be over?

  “Henry?”

  “Here, Gen. I’m okay.” He’s trying to sit up. Everywhere around us, blood.

  My hands are completely trashed—ruptured blisters, layers of peeling skin. I’m missing more than half my fingernails.

  I muscle myself upright and spin toward the firepit. The books aren’t burning. I didn’t finish the incantation.

  And Nutesh is standing before them, his expression distant, his smile one I’ve not seen on him before.

  Something’s not right.

  Xavier’s earlier words echo in my head. You can’t trust anyone.

  No, no, no, we did not come all this way for Nutesh to take control of all three books.

  “Xavier . . .” Behind me, Andrew is awake and moving toward my father, still bloodied and unconscious in the corner.

  I stand and stumble toward Nutesh. “So much good in these books, young Geneviève. We could do so much good with them.” Slowly, I turn my head to Henry and signal for help.

  “You have already done so much good, Nutesh.” Despite the rawness of my palms and fingers, I wrap my hand around his. “Go to Hélène. She needs you.”

  “Hélène . . .” Nutesh speaks as if in a trance, his head turning slowly toward his wife where she sits pained and exhausted on her chair.

  Sevda shimmers into full view beside me and crumples just as Henry steps in next to his grandfather.

  “Let us finish this, Nutesh,” I whisper. “Let us finish it before Lucian does.” Nutesh stares at me, tears cleaning tracks in the dirt on his face. He nods, looks to Henry, and then shuffles across the temple toward Hélène.

  Upon saying his name, Lucian’s anguished sobs become louder. I’m shocked to see him crouched against the opposite wall, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.

  Montague has freed Lucas and is slicing through the zip ties on Ash’s wrists, but he’s slumped over in his chair. I want to go to him, to heal him while I still have the ability, but I can’t.

  I cannot risk another second of Lucian, or Nutesh, near all three of these books, at the source of their original magic.

  “I hav
e to finish the prayer.”

  The keys are in place, the blood and Euphrates water have been spilled, and the three heirs are present.

  I reach out my hands, one each to Sevda and Henry. We circle the firepit, and I recite the incantation again, with Henry’s help. My voice is as loud as I can make it. I just hope it’s loud enough for the books to hear me, for the magic to realize it’s time to go home:

  “Come forward, ašipu, bow your head before Mother

  Gula, Lady of Life, daughter of Anu,

  Restore the health of the deadly sick and bestow long

  life

  In the great healing temple of E-gal-Makh.

  Bring forth your magic to Babylon,

  In the walls of Ninmakh

  We take this magic from your breast, belet balati,

  Lady of Health,

  She Who Makes the Broken Whole Again,

  Speak our blessing,

  Rid us of our blindness,

  We are bound unto you,

  Forever until the Undoing.”

  The words hang in the air like ghosts. We move the books into the bottom of the firepit. Henry takes his knife from his boot, pops open the butt end, pulls out the matches, and drizzles the fragrant fraxinella oil over the texts.

  And then Lucian is beside us, his hand outstretched, his reddened face and glassy eyes saying what his mouth does not. Henry gingerly places a match into his father’s palm.

  “The key to good is found in truth,” Lucian says.

  He then looks around at all of us, stopping for a long beat on Henry, his eyes clearer than I’ve ever seen them, his features softer. It looks like the weight of the world has been shed from his shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry, my son. I’m sorry to have been so blinded by my sorrow, by Aveline’s ambitions,” he says.

  With a single strike against the rough surface of the fire-pit brick, the match lights.

  He throws it onto the books, and as promised, they burn hot and fast.

  One minute of blue flame erases 2,400 years of history.