Embolden

by Syrie James

  When she arrived at the theater, however, she found Alec waiting for her, the director on stage moving a wooden box into place to act as a temporary set, and … Erica, sitting in the front row. Which was strange, since the scene only included Arthur and Guinevere.

  “What’s Erica doing here?” Claire whispered to Alec as she dropped into a fifth row seat beside him.

  Before he could reply, Mrs. Donnelly said: “Claire, Alec, please join me on stage. Erica, thank you for coming.”

  Erica nodded. “Happy to be here.”

  As Claire and Alec darted on stage, the director explained, “I received your email, Claire. And though I understand that emergencies do happen, I don’t want the production put in such an awkward position again. So I’ve cast Erica as your understudy. She’ll be observing your rehearsals so she can learn the part, and—just to be clear—if there are any more unplanned absences, you’ll be dropped from the play, and the part will be hers.”

  Claire felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. She darted a glance at Erica, who was busily studying her script. Claire’s face felt red as she nodded mutely. Nobody else had an understudy. Clearly, Ms. Donnelly didn’t trust Claire at all. Which was so unfair. None of this was her fault. She had been kidnapped! If only there were some way to explain that!

  It was hard for Claire to concentrate at first. There was so much bullshit clouding her mind: a possibly lying boyfriend, a missing Grigori father, an invisible Watcher and a pseudo-Vampire both breathing down her neck, and on top if it all, a grueling need to turn herself into a lethal weapon. Not to mention that Erica was sitting in the audience watching Claire’s every move. And taking notes.

  After a while, though, she found herself caught up in the script, and she began to let all of that slip away and enjoy the moment. No longer was she a half angel with this host of problems, but instead a royal bride whose only worry was whether or not she could love the man she was marrying. Alec, in turn, was a charming young king, and it was a treat to hear him speak with a flawless, cultured British accent, instead of his usual Scottish brogue.

  When rehearsal was over, while Alec stayed behind to help Ms. Donnelly move the temporary set pieces back into the wings, Claire caught up to Erica in the theater lobby.

  “Hey! I just wanted to say—I know it blows to be an understudy—all work and no glory. And I’m so sorry I’ve put you in that position.”

  Erica paused near the lobby doors, seemingly considering her response. “Yeah, well. I won’t put a voodoo curse on you.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Claire smiled, relieved that Erica didn’t seem angry. “Alec told me that you were really good on Friday.”

  Erica shrugged. “Where were you, anyway?”

  Claire checked to make sure that the lobby was empty of other people. “Do you want the version I gave Ms. Donnelly, or the truth?”

  “The truth, obviously.”

  Lowering her voice, Claire admitted, “I was abducted.”

  “Abducted? What? By who?” Erica looked shocked.

  The memory of that tense afternoon was so vivid, it made Claire feel sick to her stomach every time she thought of it. “Celeste, Javed, and Rico,” she replied quietly. “They grabbed me when I was up in the village—”

  “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  “Sort of. They took me to their boss, who tried to recruit me way harder than Celeste ever has. In exchange for doing some sort of favor for them, he said he would tell me where my father is. Which was so tempting! I said no, of course, but—”

  “What could you possibly do for them?” Erica asked.

  “I don’t know. Help them win the lottery? One thing’s for sure, no matter what they ask, I’m not brainwashing anyone.”

  Erica stared at her. “Wait, what? Brainwashing?”

  “Oh, crap, I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you any of this.” Claire sighed, then continued softly, “Remember when Vincent said I probably got a second power from my dad? And he was really afraid of it? Well, I’ve figured it out. If I concentrate, I can persuade people to do stuff just by thinking it while I talk to them.”

  Erica’s eyes widened in stunned disbelief. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I’ve tested it a couple of times. I had to use it to trick Zachariah so he wouldn’t arrest Alec. But the whole thing’s become a total nightmare”—Claire glanced over her shoulder to ensure that Alec hadn’t emerged yet from the auditorium, and continued—“because I haven’t told Alec I’ve been practicing, and meanwhile, I’m pretty sure he’s lying to me. I think he’s somehow messing with the Fallen boss who had me kidnapped—who’s like a freaking vampire! So now I’m trying to learn martial arts to—”

  “Whoa whoa, slow down,” Erica interrupted. “I mean, wow.” Her eyes seemed to have glazed over, and not because of Claire’s mind-control power. Abruptly, Erica reached into her pocket and glanced at her cell phone, then said, “Shit, Gabby’s sent me like five messages. We have a study date, and I’m late.”

  “You two have a study date?” Claire asked.

  “Yeah, who would have thought? But she’s not as bad as her friends. She actually asks how I’m doing once in a while instead of just talking at me.”

  That put a lump in Claire’s throat. Like I’ve been doing to you now, she thought. Aloud, all she could manage was, “Sorry.”

  Erica shrugged. Without another word, she turned and sped out of the lobby.

  Sudden tears stung Claire’s eyes as she stood there, watching her friend disappear. Once, Erica would have been there for her, every step of the way. Claire had tried so hard to recapture that, but instead she’d made things even worse.

  “You killed it in there today,” Alec said, suddenly appearing beside her.

  Claire quickly wiped her eyes. “Not out here I didn’t.”

  School, homework, and rehearsals took every minute of the following week, giving Claire little time to worry about the Erica situation.

  Claire and Alec trained again that weekend, focusing on throws and tackles. She left the sessions a little more confident that she could defend herself (at least against a human attacker), but less comfortable with Alec. They hardly talked about anything except the training the entire time. Claire didn’t know if it was because he was just focusing or if he felt the need to focus hard so he wouldn’t inadvertently blurt out something he’d prefer not to share.

  All this tension was driving Claire crazy. At the same time, she feared that if the truth came out, it would be even more disastrous. She and Alec had never had a fight before, and Claire didn’t want to tempt fate by starting one. Once their trust was broken, she worried that it could never be fixed.

  February started with a roar. A weather front brought heavy rain for a few days, which really sucked at a school whose corridors, lockers, and eating areas were almost all outdoors. Students scurried to class beneath umbrellas that threatened to blow inside out in the wind, and either crowded inside the steamy cafeteria during lunch and breaks, or huddled in areas underneath dripping overhangs.

  That Wednesday evening, Claire finished her homework early and, miraculously, had a free moment to herself. She instinctively picked up the phone to call Alec, then stopped herself.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a couple of hours with nothing scheduled or planned. The mystery about her father was never far from her mind, but she hadn’t had a chance to do anything about it in ages. Helena, despite all the new tidbits Claire had fed her, hadn’t turned up any further information.

  Maybe it was time to try something more conventional.

  Malcolm hadn’t given Claire anything concrete to go on. But her grandmother had: her dad had been outside a Cleveland courtroom on a summer day about four or five years ago.

  Claire started by browsing the Cleveland Public Courthouse website. She found the Public Case A
ccess System, where you could search for cases and actually view information regarding case participants and events. The problem was, she didn’t have a name or case number, and the closest thing she had to a date was the season (summer) and a possible year.

  She tried Googling everything she could think of.

  Nothing came up.

  Claire drummed her fingers on the desktop in frustration. Then she thought, why bang her head against a wall when she could enlist an expert?

  She saw that Brian was online and opened a video chat. Brian’s face instantly appeared on screen. “What up, CB?”

  He was lying on his stomach on his bed, a bag of snack crackers in his hands.

  “Hey, Bri. I need a favor.”

  “Can it wait? There are all these PC games on an awesome flash sale—”

  “It’s important,” Claire interrupted. “Can I steal you away for a little while? I’ve hit a dead end in the search for my dad, and you are so much better at this than I am.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere. Go on.”

  She told him what she knew.

  “Huh,” Brian commented when she’d finished. “Sounds like it was a high-profile case, so there should be info out there. Did you say your dad was surrounded by a bunch of reporters?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Helena saw.”

  “Let’s try that angle, then, and hope we can narrow it down. Maybe a newspaper or a blog posted something. If we’re lucky, they’ll have snapped his photo on the way out the door.”

  For the next hour or so, she and Brian trolled the web, focusing on noteworthy cases in Cleveland from that time period. Whenever Brian found an interesting lead, he’d send Claire the link, and vice versa.

  Finally, Brian said: “Hey, take a look at this URL. Is it him?”

  She opened the link he sent. It was an article from a Cleveland newspaper with a photo of a red-haired man leaving the courthouse, security guards (or bodyguards?) holding his arms on both sides. A bunch of reporters were shoving microphones in the man’s face. The caption under the photo read: “Frank Churchill leaving the courthouse after surprise testimony.”

  Claire’s heart leapt with excitement. “That’s totally him! But with a different name, and red hair like Helena said.”

  The news report was entitled “Deputy Mayor Arnstein Acquitted of Embezzlement Charges.” Brian read from the article: “It should have been an open-and-shut case, complained Prosecutor Giletti. David Arnstein is personally responsible for embezzling millions from school system funds.”

  The article explained how a star witness, Frank Churchill, had been brought in at the last minute with testimony that convinced the jury of the defendant’s innocence.

  “Holy crap,” Claire said. “So that’s what the Fallen are using my dad for?”

  “Well, if I were a criminal network with access to a guy who could brainwash an entire jury, he’d be the best witness ever.”

  “Wow.” Claire sat back in her chair. “This explains so much. Now we know why they’re drugging my dad. There’s no way he’d help the Fallen like that otherwise.”

  “I enlarged the picture, but I can’t tell if the security guards are wearing those earbuds you talked about.”

  “You can bet they are.” She sighed. “This is so awful. This case was five years ago, but it’s probably been happening on a regular basis for sixteen years! What do we do?”

  Brian thought for a moment. “Well, we could—” His phone rang. “Hold on.” He scrambled away from the computer. “Hey foxy,” Claire heard him say. Then he added, “Wait up a sec.” Leaning back into view, Brian whispered, “To be continued?”

  Claire gave him a thumbs-up and ended the video chat, trying to hide her disappointment. She and Brian had just been getting somewhere, but now he’d switched to thinking with his other brain.

  Even though they’d discovered what the Fallen had been doing with her dad all this time, it still felt like a dead end. How would it help her find out where he was today?

  She decided to try one last thing: a search using the name “Frank Churchill.” All it turned up, though, were zillions of references to a character in a Jane Austen novel. Claire shook her head. The Fallen had picked a great way to bury any reference to the alias they’d used for her dad. And she suspected they’d give him a new name every time he took the witness stand.

  Checking the time, Claire confirmed it was too late to tell Helena and her mom about what she and Brian had just discovered. That would have to wait until morning. Which was just as well, since her eyes were growing droopy. Settling on her pillow, Claire’s attention was caught by the blue-and-silver bracelet on her nightstand. A reminder of when things had been so open and honest between her and Alec.

  She considered texting Alec so she could at least tell someone the good news.

  But strangely, she didn’t feel like it. As Claire drifted off, she pondered why. Was it just the fatigue talking? Or something worse?

  A sudden, cold question snapped Claire awake again. Were her suspicions making her fall out of love with Alec?

  twenty-three

  Claire sat on the floor, tucked into a corner of the theater lobby before rehearsal, trying to squeeze in a few minutes of calculus homework. It was Friday after school, and Alec had insisted on heading up to the village solo to grab food for them, since her last trip there had been such a fiasco.

  She hadn’t voiced her late-night fears to Alec, hoping it could be chalked up to temporary insanity. But her head was still swimming with worries about their relationship. Struggling to concentrate, Claire was just finishing a set of problems when Ms. Donnelly walked in with Mrs. Travers, the theater-tech teacher in charge of building sets.

  “I’m so frustrated,” Ms. Donnelly commented as they strolled across the lobby toward their shared office. “I just found the most incredible costumes at Sony’s wardrobe department. They’re even willing to rent out their collection of armor from an Arthurian movie they made.”

  “Armor? That would be fabulous,” Mrs. Travers replied.

  “But it’s expensive. With our budget, we’re stuck with West Coast Costumes again.”

  “The stuff they had for Sound of Music was great.”

  “Yes, but West Coast’s medieval collection is old and ugly, and they don’t have enough stock for the entire chorus. We’ll have to schlep up to the valley and scrounge for whatever else we can find. Meanwhile, Sony Studios has stunning gowns for Guinevere, velvet tunics for Arthur and the knights, and two dozen white gowns for The Merry Month of May number. It would be perfect.”

  “Have you asked Dr. Grant? Maybe he’ll give us additional funding.”

  “I tried. No dice. He says they need the money for the basketball team.”

  Mrs. Travers sighed. “It’s always about sports with him. You need to cast him in a role someday, then you’ll get all the money you could ever wish for.”

  “It’ll have to be Damn Yankees. I can’t think of another sports musical,” Ms. Donnelly replied.

  “Great! He can play the Devil!” The two teachers laughed as they disappeared down the hall.

  Claire chewed on the end of her pencil, mulling over what she’d just heard, a thought brewing in her mind. Something that would be an excellent distraction from all the worries weighing her down. The Performing Arts department at Emerson was always getting shortchanged in the budget. She’d heard Mr. Lang complain about it in Concert Singers, too.

  How amazing would it be to rent movie-studio-quality costumes and armor for their production of Camelot? Ms. Donnelly had sounded so disappointed that she couldn’t make it happen. But, Claire realized, she might be able to. All she had to do was try to persuade Dr. Grant to give them the money.

  Doing so, though, would mean defying Helena’s direct order never to use that power, except in a life-or-death emergency.

/>   This wasn’t exactly life-or-death. Or an emergency. It was just costumes.

  But it would make such a difference for the play! The thought of wearing stunning gowns onstage, of seeing Alec in a velvet tunic and all the knights in armor, was too appealing to resist. Where was the harm, really, if she used her power just one more time? Helena had promised, after all, not to watch Claire’s every move anymore. So she’d never find out.

  Leaving her backpack in the lobby, Claire raced out of the theater building and up to the administration offices, hoping that Dr. Grant hadn’t left for the day. She charged into the reception area and approached Mrs. Shapiro, the efficient, perfectly coiffed woman behind the front desk.

  “Hi,” Claire said breathlessly. “Is Dr. Grant still here?”

  “Yes he is,” Mrs. Shapiro replied, “but he’s just leaving. Is there any way I can help you?”

  “Has he forgotten about my appointment?” Claire said in dismay.

  Mrs. Shapiro checked her computer. “I don’t see any—”

  Go right in, Claire thought at her, concentrating on all the tension in her gut. He’s expecting you. Go right in. Aloud, she uttered, “Are you sure?”

  Invisible energy thrummed between them, and Mrs. Shapiro’s eyes glazed over slightly. “Oh, um—he’s expecting you. Go right in.”

  “Thank you.” Claire grinned and hurried past her into the inner office.

  A lanky man with thinning gray hair and a neatly trimmed mustache was standing behind the huge mahogany desk, slipping papers into his leather laptop bag. He glanced up in surprise as she entered.

  “Dr. Grant! I’m so glad I caught you.”

  He gave her a half smile, as if trying to place her. “I’m sorry, I was just leaving, Miss … ?”

  “Claire Brennan.”

  “Oh right, from the scaffolding incident.”

  What a weird thing to be remembered for. Though his comment about the accident last fall did give her the perfect opening. “Yes,” she nodded. “Speaking of which, I wanted to say how grateful everyone in the theater department is for the lobby renovations you did. But now, the dramatic arts need your help. I’m here on behalf of the entire cast of Camelot, to request an increase in the costume budget.”