Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  I sat up in the backseat, thankful for the ice pack Rhys had given me. Gingerly, I lowered it from my throbbing temple. Even as my body ached, I still couldn’t forget Chae Rin’s tears. We’d both exchanged some pretty vicious words, but I knew all too well that I’d gone too far.

  Don’t I have the right to choose that for myself?

  Chae Rin’s own words. I should have noticed the desperation behind them.

  Everything had always seemed so much cooler from behind my laptop screen.

  “Not only do we need to find a way to convince Chae Rin to come with us, but we also need to get that ring,” Rhys said from the front seat as the ice pack dripped in my hands. “The question is how.” He rubbed his forehead. “I already broke protocol back there with the assault and all, so I can’t just bust in and grab it. But getting a team down here would take too damn long.”

  His phone buzzed, and he stared at it. “Vasily . . . ?” he whispered.

  “What is it?” I leaned to look over his shoulder.

  The text was just three simple words:

  Time’s up. Sorry.

  And a smiley face.

  The two of us stared at the glowing screen in silence.

  I threw down the ice pack. “I’m going to see Chae Rin again.”

  “Right now?”

  “Something tells me I don’t want to see that guy taking things into his own hands. I can reach her. I have to try.”

  I leapt out of the car and took off back to the circus tent. Rhys followed close behind.

  As we approached, I could hear the audience screaming from the lobby.

  “What’s going on?” This wasn’t the kind of delighted terror I’d heard yesterday.

  Rhys sped into the arena first, but held out his arm to stop me the moment I’d entered the darkness after him.

  “Vasily,” he hissed.

  A flush of heat emptied from my skin. Vasily stood behind the terrified ringmaster, holding a knife to his throat.

  “Vasily!” Rhys started down the steps. “What are you doing?”

  It didn’t seem like Vasily could hear his name being called out over the pandemonium. Perhaps he simply sensed us, because he looked up and saw us barreling down the steps. He mouthed two words. His grin stretched, sharp as his knife. Then off came Guillaume’s ring.

  Along with Guillaume’s finger.

  “Oh god!” I steadied myself on the railing as the ringmaster screeched in pain.

  Smoke shot out of the spigots along the center stage, preprogrammed to liven the performance with bright hues. Each stream lit the phantom’s tank a different color.

  Vasily slipped the ring off the bloody finger, tossing the latter behind him with a troubling lack of concern.

  “Vasily!” Rhys went for him but stopped, his eyes fixed on the tank.

  Vasily didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. With his remorseless gaze still on us, he stepped back, his hands in his pockets, just as a fresh stream of smoke fired from the spigots, enveloping the stage. His grin vanished last into the thick mist.

  Rhys spun around. “Get everyone out!”

  But why? Vasily would come back. He had the ring now. He’d come back.

  Vasily was a Sect agent, and he’d just succeeded in taking the ring into Sect custody. That was good for us. He had to come back. He wouldn’t just . . .

  My legs felt weak. He wouldn’t just . . .

  Leave.

  The phantom stirred violently in its tank.

  “Get out!” Rhys ran to the ringmaster just as the phantom’s long body crashed out of its cage, splitting through funnels of steam as it began its rampage.

  Too many bodies made for the exit at once. To avoid the stampede, I climbed onto an empty seat just as the phantom blitzed past. As patrons dove to the ground, I shielded my head, but peeked up out of some morbid sense of curiosity; the phantom’s torso slithered overhead, bone and smoke and flesh close enough to whip the curls from my face from the sheer force alone.

  “Rhys,” I shouted, but I couldn’t see him anymore. “Rhys!” I staggered off the chair and into the stairway.

  The phantom shot through the ceiling, crashing through to the open air. I screamed as debris from the rafters began plummeting to the ground.

  A wooden beam had been shaken loose. Falling backward onto the hard ground, I watched it hurtle toward me before shutting my eyes.

  I heard the collision before I felt the pressure reverberating through the floor.

  Chae Rin had one foot firm on the step behind her to keep her steady, and though she held the beam in place, the impact had clearly broken one of her hands. She cried out in pain, grunting as she threw the beam off to the side.

  “Chae Rin!” I scrambled to my feet. “Where did you—are you okay?”

  Soot tarnished the silver of Chae Rin’s leotard and only half of her face was done up in the heavy makeup meant for her performance. Too shocked to respond, she turned, her cloudy eyes wandering across the turmoil in a befuddled haze.

  “Dad? Mom?” I could hear her speak beneath the din. “Eomma?!”

  I grabbed her arm. “Chae Rin, I—”

  “Get people out!” Chae Rin looked frantic. “Go!”

  I didn’t need telling twice. As Chae Rin ran off to look for her family, I did whatever I could to get people out of the arena, hauling them off the ground and helping those who couldn’t move on their own, like the old man whose brittle limbs stopped him from hobbling up the stairs as quickly as I would have liked.

  “Oh god, help! Someone help!” a voice cried down below.

  I grabbed a guy who was shuttling past and pulled him to me. “Help him,” I ordered, and as he took the old man’s arm, I ran toward the voice.

  In the middle of a row of seats, a teenage boy was trying to lift debris that had fallen on a woman’s legs. But the phantom had just burst back into the crumbling arena. They were both running out of time.

  Chae Rin reached them first. Flipping the broken rafter off with ease, she crouched down next to the screaming, crying woman.

  I hopped over the row of seats to get to them. “Is she okay?”

  Clenching her teeth to silence her cries, the woman shook her head. Her right leg was broken, but she was alive.

  As she whimpered, the boy stared up at Chae Rin through his square glasses. “You,” he breathed. “You’re an Effigy!”

  It amazed me to see him possessed by awe despite the horror and chaos around him. That was the effect Effigies were supposed to have.

  Chae Rin had noticed too. Her fingers clinched around the seat behind her, parted lips frozen as she stood fixed by it: his naked, unflinching faith.

  “It’s coming,” the woman cried, screaming as the phantom made for us.

  Without missing a beat, Chae Rin raised her hands; a wall of stone rose with them. It sloped upward, forcing the phantom to follow its curve back around, away from the group.

  She’d bought us time.

  “Help her up,” she ordered me.

  Slinging the woman’s arm around my neck, I dragged her to the stairway with the boy following close behind. I whipped around just in time to see the phantom make for Chae Rin. It was as if it recognized her, the girl who’d ridden it like a mechanical bull for profit. It rushed toward her, jaws gaping.

  “Yeah, come get it.” Chae Rin jumped onto a seat and, with a flip that could only be executed by an expert high-wire artist, grabbed hold of her former partner by grasping one of the exposed bones with her good hand.

  It went wild, jerking violently and trying unsuccessfully to fling her off until finally changing course with a devastating roar.

  I held my breath. It was coming for us.

  The floor groaned, shifted, and then finally cracked apart as a pillar of stone exploded out from underneath the chairs. With the single thrust, the jagged edge pierced the phantom’s neck, stopping it brutally in its tracks.

  Chae Rin let out a heavy sigh and slid off its twitching body with
a dull thud.

  The phantom was dead.

  • • •

  A brigade of ambulances were parked outside Le Cirque de Minuit, their personnel tending to the damage. Chae Rin sat on the hood of a police car in her running jacket, batting away an EMT’s hand when he tried to tend to the bloody tear on her forehead.

  “He’s just trying to help,” I said with an exhausted, halfhearted chuckle.

  “I’m fine.” Chae Rin let her long hair out of its bun, shaking it loose with a hand. “Effigies heal fast, remember,” she added with a sly glance meant for me.

  Shaking my head, I took a seat next to her, pleasantly surprised when Chae Rin shifted to give me room. But for a long time, I couldn’t speak. Maybe I’d never get used to it: the stretchers, the destruction, the mess of injured innocents still too shocked to comprehend what was happening around them.

  It had to end.

  “I know,” Chae Rin spoke up before I could say a word. “I already know. You still want me to come with, don’t you?”

  She picked at the bandage wrapped around her broken hand.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked. “Are they okay?”

  Chae Rin laughed. “Didn’t come. I just got their text.” She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket, flipping it over. “Good thing. I don’t know how I would have explained all that.”

  As she dumped her phone back into her pocket with a nonchalant smirk, I thought of the childlike terror in her eyes while she searched for her family in the arena.

  “You know that ring.” Chae Rin gripped her knees. “It was Natalya’s.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Natalya herself had tried to tell me that, in her memory. That’s what it was, right? Slowly, it was starting to come together, but it was so surreal, too surreal to even comprehend. That I’d seen into the consciousness of the legendary Effigy . . . that a dead girl could communicate with me from inside me. It shook me more than I dared to let on.

  “I took it from her the last time I saw her. And, uh . . . a bunch of other stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know! It was stupid!” Chae Rin rested her head against her good hand. “I was pissed off and I needed money, so I pawned some of her stuff, but the ring . . . I knew there was something off about it, but like an idiot, I ended up giving it to the manager.”

  “He wanted the ring specifically?”

  “I don’t think he knew what it did. He probably figured it out afterward. But he’s a greedy bastard, and anyone can tell it’s worth a lot. He said he’d let me be part of the troupe if I gave it to him. I know it’s messed up. I wasn’t thinking. I just . . . ugh.” She went quiet.

  I just nodded. As far as mistakes went, I knew too well that there were worse ones she could have committed. What concerned me more was the ring itself, which was now in the hands of a psycho agent who maybe never was on our side to begin with. Natalya’s ring—but where had Natalya gotten it?

  “From one screwup to another, we could really use your help,” I said. “Just one mission. And once it’s all done—”

  “If we survive—”

  “—you can go back to the circus—”

  “If it reopens.” Chae Rin sighed. “But I guess I don’t really have a leg to stand on here.” She gazed out over the crowds. “No sense in letting someone else clean up my mess.”

  I straightened up as Chae Rin hopped off the car. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying give me a second to pack.” Without turning, she waved her hand in a temporary farewell before disappearing into the crowd.

  Sweet relief. I stepped onto the ground trying very hard not to pump my fists in the air in front of a crowd of overworked EMTs and injured audience members who most likely would have found it incredibly inappropriate. I’d completed my first mission. Maybe it could have gone a little more smoothly and with a little less carnage, but at least I wouldn’t go back to Belle empty-handed. That was worth the bruises.

  “Rhys!” I’d just seen him slip out from behind a group of EMTs. At first he didn’t notice me. He lowered his phone from his ear, frustration still fresh on his face. After I called out again, he finally saw me standing there and came forward. Once he reached me, he grabbed my arms and pulled me forward, checking for wounds.

  “You all right? Wait.” He stopped. “Are you laughing? At me?”

  At the very least I was giggling. “You remind me of my grandma.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Just without the Jamaican accent.”

  Still, there was something kind of deeply pleasant about the sheepish smile playing on his lips as the tenseness in his features slowly eased away. The way he was looking at me, the easy way his eyes held mine . . . ’Course, that wasn’t something I could exactly admit.

  Quickly, I looked down, shuffling my feet. “Chae Rin’s coming along.”

  “I thought she would. Good job.”

  “Well, the phantom did all the work. What about Vasily?”

  “Gone.”

  “Shouldn’t we go after him?”

  “That’s what I thought, but I’ve been told not to.” Rhys’s features darkened. “Everything’s under control, they said. He’s on his way back to the European Division headquarters in London with the ring. He’s even reported in.”

  “Reported in,” I repeated incredulously. “Oh well, great to know he hasn’t gone rogue or something. So did he also tell the Sect about how he almost got us all killed?”

  “I’m sure it wouldn’t make a difference if he did. Vasily’s not exactly a regular agent. He doesn’t answer to the official channels of authority.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rhys didn’t elaborate. He’d become silent, grim, but it all vanished with a deep sigh as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Anyway, we have other orders. Once Chae Rin’s ready, we’ll leave for Argentina.”

  I blinked, stupefied as he pulled out his car keys. “Argentina?”

  “That’s right.” Rhys spun them around his finger. “Pack your sunscreen.”

  CHAE RIN GRABBED A MAGAZINE off the rack at one of the airport convenience stores and tossed it to me. Blinking, I drew it to my face.

  The painfully gorgeous girl on the cover beamed at the camera, her lips frozen in a soundless laugh, her dewy, exquisite skin coated in fresh makeup. It was honestly unreal how pretty she was.

  I lowered the magazine. “Have you . . . ever met her?”

  “Lake?” As we stepped onto one of the moving sidewalks, Chae Rin pushed her rather large identity-veiling shades up her nose. “’Course not. What, you think all us Effigies meet twice a week for book club or something?”

  I didn’t even want to imagine what kind of horror that would entail.

  Behind us, Rhys leaned against the railing, thumbing through one of those Spanish dictionaries for tourists. “One Effigy’s a singer-model; the other’s a circus performer.” He flipped a page. “Mild-mannered high school student sounds a bit dull in comparison, doesn’t it?”

  The term “singer” might have been pushing it for Lake. I personally never thought she was that impressive, even back when she was on that British talent show years ago, but I would never say that on the internet. Not anymore. Lake’s psychotic fans were always watching.

  “Not a fan of her?” Lowering his book, Rhys peered at me quizzically. “I thought you were a general-purpose Effigy fangirl.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been sneering at the cover. As Chae Rin snorted, I relaxed my face and shifted awkwardly. Even as a fangirl, I had standards. Chae Rin had at least tried to fulfill her duties. Lake barely finished training and rarely went on missions. Health reasons or something. Didn’t stop the photo shoots. “Swans,” of course, made up all kinds of excuses, as crazy fans do.

  “Listen to this: ‘From Girl Group Outcast to Solo Supergirl!!!’” I read the cover with all the fake enthusiasm the number of exclamation marks implied, and then flipped through the magazine until I reached
the full-page spread. Lake posed cheerfully in a vibrant pastel dress showing off her gloriously long, pencil-stick legs. But what I noticed first was the red superhero mask strapped to her face. Her brown eyes gleamed shamelessly from the eyeholes.

  I pointed to it. “Doesn’t this bother you?”

  Chae Rin took the magazine for a closer look. “What, you mean how she’s using being an Effigy as a marketing concept?” She shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first. Hell, even my Effigy-ness helped boost ticket sales at the circus.”

  “Okay.” I tried again. “But doesn’t it bother you that she gets to flake on missions? I mean, I get that Effigies can live their lives in between missions, but does she ever do anything Effigy-oriented? The only time I hear about her is when she’s promoting herself or hanging out with some soulless reality TV star.”

  “Depends on how many missions you get called for and how frequently,” replied Chae Rin. “I never had much time until I got suspended, but from what I know, Lake isn’t exactly your go-to Effigy. Last I heard, she had some kind of a breakdown in Milan a while back, so the Sect put her on temporary hiatus.”

  Rhys flipped a page of his book. “Her parents got involved. And lawyers. The whole deal.”

  Chae Rin laughed. “Guess not everyone’s cut out for monsters, blood, and death. At least she’s making the most of her time off.”

  I frowned. A breakdown? This was my first time hearing about it.

  “Anyway, what’s it to you?” After Chae Rin tossed the magazine back to me, I distinctly heard her add under her breath: “So damn judgey, god.”

  • • •

  Since exhaustion was really the only thing keeping my flight terror at bay, I welcomed it. We all had plenty of time to sleep on the nearly fifteen-hour nonstop jet flight to Sierra de la Ventana. The Sect had built the headquarters for their South American Division somewhere along the foot of the looming mountain range.

  Argentina was unbearably hot, as expected. I already had my sweatshirt tied around my waist as I sat at the back of the black van with Chae Rin, my clammy, sweaty skin roasting beneath the heat of the early-morning sun.

  I peered out my window at the rugged Argentinean terrain.

  This was crazy. The farthest I’d ever traveled was Kingston to visit family. Now here I was in a whole other part of the world, breathing in the clear air, snapping pictures of the golden sunflower fields with my phone. I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if not for the dull whisper of dread reminding me that this wasn’t a vacation.