by Shaye Easton
A little while later, I feel a tap on my shoulder and find that Rand has emerged from the crowd. “Come with me,” he says. “The Ring wants to meet you.”
He starts off and I hurry after him, the crowd tugging me this way and that as I squeeze through. “I thought that’s what I was doing,” I say, catching up to him. “I thought this was the Ring.”
“These are the Ring’s Summoners. Not the same thing.”
We venture further into the depths of the crowd and I quickly come to realise we’re headed for the far end of the room—for the stage. A bunch of nerves shiver through my gut. I’ve built up this image in my mind of the Ring as these stern, imposing dictator types. I see them with hard gazes and unsmiling faces, dressed formally and in grey. I can’t picture them as anything other than people who dislike me. And even though I know I was invited here, I still worry they’ll question my presence or kick me out.
Suddenly, the crowd around us thins and peters out. We’ve reached the shore. The seats on the stage are still empty, but a handful of people are milling about in front of them, talking softly and watching the room.
Now, these people definitely don’t look normal. They look otherworldly.
“Elodie,” Rand says, and their heads swing our way in unison. There are five of them, one for each chair on the stage. “This is Melissa.”
The woman in the centre steps forward, tilting her head ever so slightly to one side. She’s dressed in a grey floor-length coat and a white blouse tucked into high-waisted black leather pants. Her skin is golden brown, emphasis on the gold. It almost seems to shimmer, an illusion you can see if you’re not looking for it, but that breaks as soon as you start to focus. She has her waist-length raven hair draped over one shoulder, and if she wasn’t already an intimidating figure, she wears a pair of black boots that have her towering over me.
I swallow.
“Melissa Croft,” Elodie says, her voice like silk on the air. When she says my name, it’s not like she’s addressing me, more like she’s testing how the words taste on her tongue. She takes another step forward, and I realise she’s sizing me up, examining my appearance and god knows what else. “I have to admit, you’re not what I expected.” She frowns. “Blue eyes.”
“She’s not herself,” Rand reminds.
“Of course. Though I would have thought the Darkening would transition with her.” I take this to mean the black eyes everyone in the room seems to possess, with me as the notable exception. “How are you, Melissa?”
The way she asks it, anyone would think I’d suffered through a major tragedy. And maybe I have, if you can consider one’s entire life a tragedy. But we’ve never met before and she knows nothing about me, certainly not enough to be expressing so much sympathy.
The intensity of her dark gaze is getting to me. “I’m okay.”
Elodie nods, appeased. “As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I’m Elodie Mora, Commander of the Ring. It’s good to officially meet you.”
There’s a question on the tip of my tongue about her use of the word officially. But when I go to ask it, all that comes out is, “You too.”
“You do know,” she says, “you’re about to cause quite a lot of drama for us.” She means the war, of course. If I weren’t so intimidated by her, I’d roll my eyes. It’s hard to be serious about something so distant and disparate to anything I’ve ever experienced.
Rand is looking at me weirdly. I realise Elodie is waiting on me to reply.
“Um. Sorry about that.”
She smiles, close-lipped. “There’s no need to apologise. Not yet, anyway,” she adds, dark eyes flashing with warning. In them, I glimpse her bad side and I decide very quickly that it’s something I never want to see.
The flash fades. The moment moves on. “But let me introduce you to everyone,” she says, and steps to the side. “Melissa, meet our ruling body: Georgia Witness, Ander Alvarez, Jonathan Huntley, and Davion Eller.”
They’re each imposing and unearthly and eye-catching in their own right, but my gaze snags on one in particular, and I freeze.
Elodie goes on, unaware. “Davion and yourself actually share an important connection, which I’ve no doubt you’re unaware of. His sister is, in fact, Kathryn Falconer. Which makes him—”
“Your uncle,” Davion says smoothly, stepping forward with a smile.
And it’s him.
It’s him, it’s him, it’s him.
My face drops. My heart thunders. My fear tears through my blood.
He’s standing right before me. The man from my nightmare turned memory. The black suit from my dream turned vision. The one who swapped me.
The one who started all of this in the first place.
“It’s been a long time,” Black Suit says, still smiling, his voice smooth as honey. “Welcome back.”
Chapter Nineteen
I recoil, stumbling backwards, unable to control myself. My fear is in my blood. It’s a beating on my skin. It’s a plaster on my face, hardening, suffocating.
“Get away from me,” I splutter.
Davion steps back, hands raised. The expression on his face is faultless: a convincing cocktail of confusion and surprise and hurt.
“Melissa, what’s wrong?” Rand asks me. But I can’t focus on his question any more than I can tear my eyes away from Davion. It’s like my entire world has narrowed; it has become just him and me. It’s become a nightmare I can’t wake from.
“It’s you,” I say. “It’s you.”
“Take some deep breaths,” Elodie says. “You need to explain to us what’s going on.”
Black Suit is in the Ring. He’s in charge. And he’s my uncle.
How do I explain something that doesn’t make any sense?
“Melissa,” Davion says carefully, “if I’ve offended you in any way, I apologise. I don’t know what I could have done, seeing as we just—”
“You destroyed my life.”
His eyes go wide. “I’m sorry?”
Rand frowns at me, concern flickering in his dark gaze. Elodie appears intrigued. “Where would you get such a ridiculous notion?”
“I remember,” I say, nodding at him. I’ll stare him down all day if I have to. Anything to crack his perfect and innocent veneer. “I was a kid and you locked me in a dark room and stole me from my body.”
“Melissa, not to sound—but…that was a long time ago. Are you sure it was me?”
He’s so damn good.
I’m not afraid anymore. I’m furious. “You swapped me. You gave me this disease. You ruined my life. And then—then you tried to kill me. And that part was not a long time ago. It was last week.”
“I think you have him confused with someone else,” Elodie says, looking between us. “The man who attacked you is behind bars.”
I laugh bitterly. “No, he isn’t. Davion got him out. Right before he ordered the same man to put me out of the picture, by any means. Ring any bells, Uncle Davion?”
He shakes his head, horrified. I could strangle him.
“How do you know this?” Elodie asks. Rand has stepped back, like he thinks crazy is contagious. But Elodie is dead serious. She’s listening to me as if my every word is gospel.
I know I have the winning card even before I deal it. When I do, I make sure to emphasise every word. “Because I saw it in a vision.”
No one thinks I’m crazy anymore. In fact, all of them, including Davion, are looking at me like I’m Christ risen from the dead. “The Final Prophet,” Elodie breathes. “It truly is you.”
The final what? I roll with it. “Well, as the Final Prophet, believe me when I tell you: Davion here is an underwalker. And he’s plotting against me at this very moment.”
“An underwalker!” Davion laughs. “Elodie, please tell me you don’t believe this crap.”
“I have to take her seriously, Davion. Visions don’t lie.”
“But people do. They make mistakes. They misremember things. This girl has clearly confused me with s
omeone else!”
The room is suddenly quieter than I remember it. The people around us have stopped talking to watch the drama unfold, and all the attention makes me want to dissolve into dust.
Elodie meets my eyes. “Is there any chance you could be wrong about this? Is there even the smallest fraction of doubt?”
I take a deep breath and stare right back. “No.”
“I’m not listening to this,” Davion announces, tearing past us. “I will not stand here and be accused of—”
“Davion!” Elodie’s eyes narrow with warning. “You forget where you are. No decision has been made, and none will be made without facts. This will go to trial before it goes to persecution.”
“But it will go to persecution, is what you’re saying. You believe her.”
“I believe she’s telling us her truth. But that doesn’t necessarily make it the truth.”
Davion is livid, and when he directs all his heat at me, I know that it’s about way more than just my accusation. He’s too angry, too riled up. He may be related to me by blood, but that’s no obstacle in the way of his hatred. It stems deep. And I don’t understand it at all.
“I take it back,” he spits. “You are not welcome here.”
And then he vanishes.
***
I stand in shock for a while, my heart racing, my breathing coming fast. Hearing about powers is completely different from seeing them. It’s one thing to accept they exist; it’s another to experience them firsthand.
I mean, he just evaporated.
Once my heart and breathing calms, Rand explains Davion’s power of teleportation, and Elodie assures me she’ll get to the bottom of the situation. He’s got them convinced there’s a mistake – that I made a mistake. But I didn’t make a mistake, and he hasn’t convinced me of it.
He’s a liar. And an attempted murderer. And maybe even a real murderer . . . honestly, who knows?
The remaining four Ring members take their seats on the platform and everyone falls quiet for the convention to begin. I quickly discover that convention really means news broadcast. Each Ring member takes their turn updating the crowd on recent developments. It seems they each preside over a different area of government: overwalker feuds, human relations, law-breaking, and war strategy. The fifth category is underwalker relations, and after Elodie tells the crowd that Davion won’t be here to present any updates in that department, she explains the commotion prior to the meeting.
The openness catches me off guard. I’m used to a world that hides things. I’m used to secrets and lies and deception. If this was a human government, the leader would have played the turmoil off as nothing. But Elodie is brutally honest. She explains every detail.
Which includes singling me out, putting me on display for everyone to gawk at. She mentions again that I’m the Final Prophet, a term I’m still unfamiliar with. She goes on and on about being ready and prepared for what’s to come. “It’s a new dawn,” she says. “And with it comes great change.”
She singles out a few dozen Summoners, doling out orders like candy on Halloween. It amazes me that she knows everyone by name, and even beyond that, she knows who they are. Every order is given to the man or woman most suited for the job. And everything is done out in the open, in front of everyone. No secrets.
The transparency is almost at the point of being too good to be true. It only serves to convince me of the opposite: that there is, in fact, some deep, dark secret lurking behind every word. If I could feel the cold, I’m sure I’d feel an unnerving chill in my bones.
After a few more orders, the entire thing becomes a lengthy session of Q&A. It goes on for one more slow, tedious hour, and then it’s over. People start filing out, others milling around to chat a little while longer. I stand near the front and search the room. Rand’s gone off to talk, and Caden is still MIA.
Elodie sidles up next to me and watches the crowd. “There’s something I want you to do for me, Melissa,” she says, voice hushed. The numbers in front of us are growing smaller by the minute, but I still can’t see Caden. “I need to know what you see in your visions. There’s something big coming and you’re going to be a crucial part of it. I need you to help us. To join us, if you’re willing.”
It’s one of several million-dollar questions. Do I join the overwalkers? Do I help them? Do I let myself be drawn into this world of spectres and powers and ghosts?
The answer to all is I don’t know. It’s been three weeks since I discovered I was swapped, and only a little over two since learning I was a spectre. And while I may be able to accept it, I can only do so when I keep it at the periphery of my life. I fear if I say yes, if I let myself become a part of their world, it’ll be too much, too soon. At the moment I’m holding desperately onto any remnants of normalcy, focusing on the day-to-day, the routine, the dull reality I’ve grown up in. I can’t let that go. Not yet.
“I won’t join you,” I tell her, “but I can help you. Until I’m ready to…be a part of all this. If I’m ever ready.”
Elodie hums in understanding. “A non-binding contract. I can work with that. As I understand it, you’ve already had one vision. Would you be willing to describe it to me?”
“Now?”
She nods. “In as much detail as possible.”
I sigh. Well, I guess it couldn’t hurt. I relay the vision to her, describing the location, describing the men, switching out ‘Black Suit’ for Davion’s name, repeating their conversation, word for word.
When I’m finished, Elodie thanks me. If I’ve said anything to pique her interest, it doesn’t show on her face. “If you have any future visions, or if you simply need someone to talk to, you can contact me on this number.” She hands me a blank business card with a phone number printed neatly across the front. After a moment, I pocket it. “I’m trusting you to do this for me. All I can say to motivate you is, even if something in a vision seems irrelevant to you, it’s imperative that I know about. Winning something like this—a feud, a battle, a war—comes down to the details. A seemingly irrelevant detail in one of your visions could decide whether overwalkers or underwalkers come out victorious. And we already know you’re destined to end the war, one way or another.”
I nod numbly. It’s all way too enormous right now: the war, the prophecy, the danger. It hasn’t completely hit me that these are all real. At the moment, they’re just words. Who knows? The war may never happen. I feel like I’m agreeing to something flimsy and elusive, a fortune that may or may not be a fraud.
“Stay safe, kid. I hope to hear from you soon.”
She starts off for the crowd. “Wait,” I say abruptly. “Caden, he—you told him to approach me?”
“We told him to keep an eye on you, yes. Caden was the candidate best suited for the job: he’s your age, and he lives near your school. We had him transfer almost immediately.”
“So you could claim me.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that. Your mother, Kathryn, is an overwalker. You were always going to be one of us. And growing up as a normal human, well, it just made sense that you’d choose us over underwalkers, who despise humanity.”
“And Caden was happy to help?”
“Of course. Although things did get a bit tricky down the track.”
“Tricky?”
Elodie smiles. “When you’re working with Caden, you can only expect so much. A couple of days in, he started to object to our orders. We were very nearly going to step in, but luckily the situation resolved itself.”
“When you say objected to orders, what orders are you talking about?”
“We ordered him to keep his distance. We demanded him not to tell you about spectres or the Ring. He told us very little when we asked him for an update. And then, of course, we instructed him to bring you in for memory erasure, which he objected to rather strongly.”
I blink. “You wanted my memories erased?” I can’t believe how cavalier she’s being. This is her policy of transparency, finally
backfiring.
“Just your memories of anything supernatural. We wanted to keep you out of this for as long as possible. I suppose you have Caden to thank for you being here right now. If anyone else had been in charge of the assignment, you’d be at home, unaware of this world.”
I watch Elodie walks into the dwindling crowd, oblivious to my horror. As I do, I finally spot Caden in the far corner. A mixed bag of emotions flares up inside me when I see him. Hurt and anger. Understanding and respect. I push it all aside and cross the room to where he talks with a couple Summoners. “Caden.”
His eyes cut to me, then back. “Excuse me,” he says. “It was nice talking to you.”
Caden gestures for me to follow him, stopping by one of the windows. “You think Davion is an underwalker. Melissa, he’s your—”
“My uncle, I know. But he was in my vision, in my memories. It was him.”
Caden shakes his head. “I leave you alone for one hour and you go and create a scandal.”
“He’s the one who created it. I just let everyone know. You do believe me, right?”
“I don’t want to. Davion, he’s…he’s a part of the Ring. If you’re right and he’s an underwalker, we stand no chance. All the things he knows about us… He knows every plan, every strategy, everything.”
“I am right.”
Caden runs a hand over his face. “Okay, well, we should get going. I’m sure you’ve got…homework to do.”
He’s giving me space and time to deal with everything, like I asked him to. But I don’t know if I want it anymore.
I meet his eyes. “Yeah, I suppose.” I shake my head. “I mean, I’ve got heaps.”
He turns to go, but I grab his sleeve. “Caden. Rand and Elodie, they told me what you did. How you went against orders to tell me everything. How you stopped them from erasing my memories. I just… Thank you. I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you.”