Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  Sibyl stood at the front of the room. “Cheryl, play the video again, please.”

  There it was again. I couldn’t believe it, but I couldn’t look away, either. It was actually weirdly badass: me plummeting through the air, a swell of power, a miraculous escape from certain death at the last minute. Surreal. If it were another Effigy, I would almost certainly have tried to steal the video so I could edit it, set it to some awesome rock music, and put it up online.

  Cheryl played the video one more time. Just as the long weapon began forming in my hands, Sibyl told her to pause it.

  “This,” Sibyl said, with one hand clasping the chair in front of her, “is a result of your psychic abilities. The same all Effigies have.”

  Sibyl, despite her youth, bore a faint resemblance to my philosophy teacher—not at all in appearance, since Mr. Strom was a rather bloated elderly white male with a comb-over. It was the no-nonsense, rapid delivery, the rigid posture and humorless glare, as if I’d get a ruler over the hands if I was caught daydreaming.

  “The creation and manipulation of a classical element is just one of three psychic techniques Effigies possess. The second . . .” Sibyl pointed at the screen. “Summoning.”

  “I showed you once,” Belle said from across the table. “At the hotel.”

  That felt like lifetimes ago. I remembered the icy breeze prickling the hairs on my skin as Belle called forth that glorious sword. The kind that could have belonged to an honor-bound eighteenth-century aristocrat. How could I forget its beauty, the moonlight and snowflakes dancing across the blade? Or how awesome Belle looked as she turned it against Saul?

  It’s the sign of a fully developed Effigy, Belle had told me back then. For Natalya, this was everything. . . .

  “There’s a reason you’re called the Four Swords,” Sibyl said. “Over the years, we’ve found that technically every Effigy is capable of it—”

  Chae Rin lifted her hand. “I can’t.”

  “—given extensive psychological training and mental discipline.”

  “Oh.” She went back to filing her nails.

  “Probably why I can’t either,” Lake mumbled. “Which kind of sucks. I want a sword too.”

  Chae Rin scoffed. “You barely even finished training.”

  “S-so?” Lake shot back, scandalized.

  “So you’re kind of useless.”

  “Excuse me!” Needless to say, her voice was not so mumbly anymore. “I can do some things, you know. Loads of things, actually.”

  “Huh. Too bad holding a note isn’t one of them.”

  “Wow,” I said, but I covered my mouth the second Lake trained her doe eyes on me.

  Sibyl cleared her throat. “That means ‘stop,’” she clarified. We did.

  “I have one question.” I swiped my hair off my forehead. “If this is something you can do only after extensive training, then why could I do it?”

  “’Cause you’re special,” sang Chae Rin, just barely audible.

  “Maia, you told Belle something before leaving New York, didn’t you?” Sibyl was the only one who’d left her seat empty. Maybe she thought better on her feet. “You told her that after Saul kissed you, you saw a memory.”

  Memory. Like the one I’d seen in Quebec. But as I thought back to that terrifying scene in Brooklyn, as I revisited the dream Saul had forced on me as he held me against the hotel window, I knew right away that the memory wasn’t Natalya’s. The girl in the vision, the décor . . . Everything had seemed as if it was from another century.

  “You told me that after the memory, you heard a girl’s voice,” Belle continued. “And names. Can you recall them now?”

  I could. “Alice.” The girl in the study. “And . . . Nick.” The name Saul fell to.

  “Even after an Effigy dies,” Sibyl said, “she never really leaves. A part of her psyche lingers on inside the mind of the next in her line.”

  Not just Natalya. Marian. It was the name Saul kept calling me, as if I were a mere vessel for a girl who’d lived long ago.

  As per usual, it was a lot to take in. You’d think I’d get used to that by now. I propped my elbows up against the desk and laid my head in my hands. “How do you even know all this?”

  Cheryl the assistant perked up like that one eager kid in class endlessly searching for ways to prove her critical acuity. “It’s actually something we’ve discovered over the years based on personal accounts of the Effigies we’ve worked with,” she explained. “Given the data we’ve gathered, we’ve found that each new Effigy should have the ability to search through echoes of the memories passed on by all the previous in her line. Think of it as having several past lives. Of course, the memories of the last Effigy would be the freshest.”

  Like Natalya.

  I stifled a shudder as Cheryl adjusted her tiny rectangle glasses over her sharp-pointed nose and continued.

  “We’ve also found that an Effigy’s ability to enter this state is somehow related to their summoning aptitude, though there isn’t enough evidence yet to hypothesize possible reasons.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

  “She’s saying that the memory thing and the weapon thing are connected, and they don’t know why yet,” Lake clarified, adding, “What?” when she found both me and Chae Rin staring at her with raised eyebrows. “So I’m a celebrity—doesn’t mean I’m entirely daft, yeah?”

  “Usually it takes years.” Belle closed her eyes. “Years to achieve the discipline necessary to hear the voices. To open that first door and enter the first memory. Your intimate contact with Saul might have triggered something, forcing you across the threshold. Perhaps it’s made passage through the psyches easier.”

  Forced by a kiss. Gross.

  “But it wasn’t Natalya’s memory I saw,” I said. “It was someone else’s. I think it was a girl named Marian. When the girl in the memory looked up, she called me that name. The same name Saul kept calling me.”

  It was the same in both Marian and Natalya’s memories: Both times it was as if my mind had slipped into their bodies. Both times I could only see through their eyes as they moved.

  Being imprisoned inside someone else’s flesh wasn’t a pleasant feeling, to say the least.

  “Marian.” As Sibyl tilted her head to think, her long black ponytail brushed her peplum lapel. “Truthfully, we don’t have records of all the Effigies to have ever existed, but, as you’ve suggested, it’s more than likely that this Saul has some kind of a connection with her. This is the conclusion we came to based on Belle’s reports on the Brooklyn attack, and this is exactly why we need you involved in this operation.”

  At Sibyl’s wordless request, Cheryl clicked the remote, bringing up a map of a city.

  “There’s been an abnormal increase recently in the illegal trafficking activity through the Dead Zones of northeastern Argentina,” said Sibyl. “It’s forced the government to fortify security along each route, including all suspected urban checkpoints. This includes the Chacarita district of Buenos Aires.”

  Cheryl zoomed into the neighborhood. “If it weren’t for the increased surveillance over the past five years, we may never have noticed.”

  An impatient Chae Rin tapped her file against the tips of her nails. “Noticed what?”

  Cheryl clicked through surveillance photos. Despite the different dates, each picture captured the same basic scene: a hooded young man in a cemetery, hands in his trench coat pockets, alone in front of a grave.

  “The photos go back five years,” said Sibyl. “Every year on the same day in January, always at nine in the morning.”

  I leaned forward. Some of the photos were at different angles, and some of those angles revealed the silver locks of hair peeking out from underneath the hood. “That’s him?”

  “Yes. At Chacarita’s British Cemetery, always at the same grave: Louis Hudson, born 1850 and died 1883.”

  “And do we know what the connection to Saul is?” Belle asked.

  “N
o, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it against him. That’s where you come in, Maia.”

  The sound of my name was like hammer against steel. I knew I couldn’t avoid asking. “What do you need me to do?”

  Sibyl finally sat down, drawing her face close to her clasped fingers. “About six months before she died, Natalya expressed concern that she was being stalked.”

  I thought I saw Belle go rigid at the opposite side of the table, but I kept my eyes on Sibyl.

  “But we could never find him. She tried to confront him in Frankfurt four months ago, but according to her, he vanished right when she’d cornered him. The phantom attack on the city started later that afternoon.”

  “Saul.” I imagined him smirking as he followed Natalya through the narrow streets. “Then you’ve known about him?”

  “We knew almost nothing about a shadow Natalya wasn’t even sure she’d seen.” Sibyl shifted in her seat to cross her legs. “Certainly not enough to go on.”

  “She never told me about any of this. . . .” Belle’s whisper, though soft, still demanded an answer, but Sibyl didn’t give it.

  “It isn’t just you, Maia,” Sibyl continued. “If Saul approached both you and Natalya, we have enough reason to believe that it’s the Effigy in your line he’s truly after. The one whose memories you have access to.”

  Lowering my head, I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He said he needed to ask me a question. He was desperate to talk to Marian.”

  “And we’ll use that. Maia, in one hour you’ll record a video asking Saul to meet at the cemetery, at the ‘usual time,’” said Sibyl. “The key is to say enough to make him think you’ve recovered enough of Marian’s memories that you’ll be useful to him. Using what we know about the grave might help in that regard.”

  “The thing is, Maia,” Cheryl added, “we can’t know where Saul is right now. The message you record will have to be broadcast around the world. The only way we make sure it’ll be picked up by international news sources—”

  “Is if you announce yourself as the next Effigy.”

  Sibyl had said it so simply. No flourish, no drama. Not a single indication that she realized just how thoroughly this one act would change my life. Sibyl looked at me with the arrogant calm of a high-ranking agent who knew her word was law.

  It was always going to come to this. Sooner or later. I’d had several chances to tell Uncle Nathan, and I’d run away each and every single time. Now he was going to see my confession played across every major news station in the world.

  “Oh, come on,” scoffed Chae Rin. “Do you know how many girls have been putting videos online claiming to be the next Effigy? No one’s even paying attention anymore. And from what I can tell, Maia can barely spark a flame, so how are we going to convince international media to take her video seriously?”

  “Oh, they’ll take it seriously,” Sibyl said. “Because we’ll be the ones giving it to them. An official gift from the Sect. Only the public can’t know that. We’ll tell our contacts to say that the video was sent anonymously so Saul thinks that Maia’s acting on her own. He won’t expect us. Once you draw Saul to the mission site, our troops will strike. You girls will need to be prepared, too.”

  I felt Lake’s tentative hand on my shoulder. A considerate gesture, and I welcomed it, but it still didn’t stop my head from spinning. This was it. It was do or die. Only problem was the latter was more likely.

  I bit my lip. I could do this. I could, right?

  After a deep breath, I turned to Sibyl. “What if he doesn’t even come?”

  “He’ll come,” Sibyl said. “Who knows how long he’s been after Marian? He’ll come and you’ll be there.”

  • • •

  I waited in a cold, dark room. I’d already called Uncle Nathan a few times to try to make things right, but it was no use. He wasn’t answering. That was it, then. My big, deep dark secret, and he wasn’t going to hear it from me. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own.

  They’d powdered my face, changed my clothes, and combed my bird’s nest of a hair mane as well as they could to get me ready for the world. I wasn’t ready, of course, but no way was I going to admit that.

  June’d been born my older sister by a difference of only three minutes, so how was it that we’d turned out so different? We were both nerds, but while I kept my geekery well hidden within the labyrinthine secrecy of my laptop, June never hid. She’d had this pair of goggles she’d wear, even at school, until she got dinged for dress code violations. She’d go to conventions, dye her hair pink, and dress up in pseudo-Victorian outfits. She’d make fake laser guns out of bottles and show them off at the mall to her friends. She’d hold her head high, higher at the sound of vicious mocking.

  She was strong. Fearless. More than me. Even though we had the same face.

  Under the lonely light of a hanging lamp, I laid my head back against my chair and shut my eyes. Bright speckles broke the monotony of darkness behind my lids, and out of the interplay of light and dark came June’s face, full of life and defiance just as I remembered it.

  Back in New York there were so many people I couldn’t save. Even right now, I could still hear that woman pleading for help in the elevator as it collapsed, plummeting down the shoot, taking her frail body down with it along with her screams. . . .

  The beginnings of a sob scraped my throat, but I banished it through sheer will alone, rubbing my eyes dry. Back at the hotel, I’d asked Belle to make me better. This mission was my chance. My chance to save people. To make something of myself. To make up for everything.

  “So don’t be scared,” I whispered to myself, willing my pulse to slow to its regular rhythm.

  I could do this. I could be an Effigy. Uncle Nathan, the kids in school, the whole world. Soon they’d know it too.

  The whole world.

  The door creaked open and Rhys walked in. I hastily stood from my seat, straightening the sleeves of the white blouse Sibyl had brought in for me to wear. It was a bit simple, but Sibyl had insisted on neutrality. This was my global debut as an Effigy. Couldn’t give the wrong impression. Jokingly, I’d asked if I could write my own theme song and have it play in the background during the video. Nobody had laughed.

  “Rhys.” I rested a hand on the chair’s smooth metal. “Are they finally ready?”

  “Yeah.” He ran his fingers through his messy hair. “They’re done setting up. Looks like you’re set for your worldwide debut. Sadly, I couldn’t get anyone on that theme song, though.”

  My laughter was a little too high-pitched for what was essentially a B-level joke. “Yeah, the theme song! Right, right.” I turned. “Well, the Sect can only do so much, I guess.”

  If I hadn’t turned away from him, I probably would have seen a very confused Rhys staring back at me.

  “Maia?”

  “Sorry.” I shook my head. “I’m okay.” I flashed a smile too obviously fake to be convincing. “I’m okay. Really. I mean, I’m not scared or anything,” I added quickly. “I mean . . . if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Silence. I gripped the chair. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t.

  Rhys stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You know . . . even if there were no crisis,” he said, “there’s a protocol for finding new Effigies. They’re usually taken for at least two years and trained for duty. They can’t really hide. A media circus is pretty inevitable.”

  The secret would have come out sooner or later, was what he was trying to say.

  “I know,” I said.

  “So?” With measured steps, Rhys walked up to me. “Are you really okay?”

  His expression was soft and sweet with kindness. I soaked it in, in spite of myself. One by one, the knots in my chest loosened. I could breathe.

  “Maia . . . I can’t imagine how you feel right now. I was raised in this. You weren’t.” He reached out to touch my shoulder before pausing. “Honestly, I wish you had more of a choice. I’m sorry you don’t.”

&nbs
p; A choice. The universe had a choice. It picked me. Me, after Natalya Filipova. Me over June. And now everyone would know. They’d know who I was, what I was, where I lived, what kind of grades I had in school, how my family had died. They’d expect me to save them, and if I didn’t? Public skewering in the media. Hate threads in forums.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s okay,” I said, surprising even myself. I straightened up and peered into his dark eyes until I was sure I looked as defiant as June would have been. “I told you before. I’m . . . I’m not scared. I can do this. I know I can.”

  Rhys considered me for a moment. “You sure?” He asked it as if he was testing me. “No turning back.”

  “But that was always obvious, wasn’t it?” And I gave him a real smile this time, one that matched the determination in my steady voice. “So. Let’s do this, Agent Rhys. Make me a star.”

  • • •

  Lights. Cameras.

  “Hello. My name is Maia Finley.” I followed the script to the letter, keeping my face soft and natural, but determined, just like they told me. “And I’m the new fire Effigy. The next after Natalya Filipova.”

  I swallowed, thinking of Uncle Nathan.

  “It’s okay if you don’t believe me, because this message isn’t for you. It’s for Saul. Saul.” I breathed. “I know. I did what you told me and I remembered. About Marian, the girl I was. About Nick . . . who loved her,” I added, remembering Saul’s mocking words at the hotel. “About Alice. And the answer to the question you wanted to ask me. I’m ready to talk. So meet me at Louis’s grave. Tomorrow, Monday. At the usual time. Let’s meet, so we can finally finish this. Please.”

  “MAIA, STAY ALERT.” RHYS’S VOICE was scratchy through my earpiece. “It’s already past the meeting time. Saul can show up any minute.”

  For security purposes, I was never told where Rhys, the rest of the troops, or even the other Effigies were, just in case my eyes flitted to their positions and gave them away. With a rose in hand, I focused instead on the gravestone in front of me: the mysterious Louis Hudson’s. Whoever this guy was, his existence had given us the leverage we needed to launch our trap.