Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  I hopped off the bed to see the screen. One of the first hits was a short clip of an interview Belle had done four years ago, when she was barely fifteen years old. It looked familiar, but then I’d seen so much Belle-related media throughout my years as a shameless fangirl I could barely keep it all straight anymore.

  Lake clicked the link. It was a press conference the Sect had called to announce that Belle would be part of the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in France—a mind-blowing personal request from the country’s own president.

  “Belle,” said one very eager reporter in the room, “tell me: What do you think your family would say if they could see you now?”

  Belle frowned. Even as a kid, her glare could freeze hell. “Family?” In her mouth it sounded like a swear word.

  “U-uh. Yes.” I couldn’t blame the guy for looking nervous. “At your foster home?”

  Belle scoffed. “Ah, la maison du merde. I don’t live there anymore, so luckily I don’t have to care what they’d say.”

  “Ouch,” said Lake.

  “That’s right. I almost forgot!” I slapped my forehead. “She made a few headlines in France with that one. I read about it a long time ago.”

  “She was adopted or something, wasn’t she? Sounds like she’s got some major issues about it.”

  Clearly. “Floorboards . . . Natalya must have put something underneath the floorboards of Belle’s old foster home. She grew up near Paris, didn’t she? I mean, where else, right?”

  After crossing the room, I reached into my drawer, under a pile of loose papers, and pulled out the skeleton key. As the string dangled from my middle finger, I gave Lake a deadly serious look. “We need to get into that foster home. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Looks like.” Lake tapped her bottom lip with her index finger. “And lucky for you, I might have a way to do it.”

  • • •

  “A field trip?” Cheryl looked up from Lake’s detailed proposal, unimpressed, if her bespectacled scowl was any indication. “Maia’s in the middle of training.”

  “We know that, right, Maia?”

  After a nudge from Lake, I nodded very quickly.

  Cheryl leaned back in her office chair. “And we’re in the middle of dealing with an international terrorist, which will likely require some kind of involvement from, again, Maia.”

  “We know that, too.” Lake patted my shoulder. “Quite the little star, isn’t she?”

  “And you want us to travel all the way to Paris for a photoshoot?”

  “I already got my agent to set it all up. I’ve worked with Teen Vogue before. They’re positively salivating at the opportunity to get all four of us. All four Effigies!”

  “You’ve already set it up? You should have checked with us first!” Cheryl gave a very disapproving cluck of her tongue—very schoolmarmy despite being relatively young-ish. “I just don’t know if it’s appropriate.”

  Lake leaned over Cheryl’s desk and plucked the multipage, hastily stapled, typo-ridden document out of her hands. “See these quotes?” She tapped the page. “CNN, BBC, CBC—all these news sources have been talking about the Sect recently. Here, let me read one.” She cleared her throat. “‘At the heart of the growing public anxiety surrounding international security lies the Sect, which, despite its nearly two centuries of existence, has yet to solve its issues with transparency.’ Hear that?”

  “Yes, yes, I hear you.” Cheryl rubbed her brow wearily.

  “And there’s more. ‘At stake for the Sect is trust. Bringing in a suspected terrorist, but being unwilling to share information with the rest of the world, has left many uneasy.’”

  Cheryl sighed. “This has always been the issue for the Sect. We’re an organization sworn to protect the world from phantoms. Other countries have caught up in terms of antiphantom technology, but what they don’t have is you.” She pointed at the two of us. “Walking, talking biological warheads. It’s always freaked them out, especially during the Great War, with all the different countries trying to recruit Effigies.”

  Yeah, I remembered that from my World History class. “I thought the Sect swore never to involve themselves in nonphantom conflicts?”

  “Which frustrated them even more. There was always a worry that the Sect could one day turn against the world, especially as the organization went international. That’s why the Council signed the Greenwich Accords as a promise to the nations. Unfortunately, people don’t pay attention in history class, and these pundits”—Cheryl took Lake’s proposal—“their entire careers depend on people’s laughably short memories. There’s zero point in indulging any of them.”

  Lake and I exchanged nervous glances as Cheryl tossed the proposal aside, next to a very scarily large pile of paperwork. So this was what she did when she wasn’t following Sibyl around.

  Lake tried again. “Thing is, you might say there’s no point in indulging in them, but right now they’ve got the public by the nose. It’s just the way it is. Trust me, I know what it’s like. . . . Fighting the tide of public opinion isn’t exactly a battle you can win by shrugging your shoulders. Who knows where it can all lead?”

  “And you think parading yourself around like some girl group is going to change things?”

  “Well, I mean, it depends on the type of girl group. I was in one, so I should know.” Winking, Lake propped herself up on Cheryl’s desk, her smile sly. “People want the sparkly, the cool . . . the girls you can kind of relate to even though they’re so pretty and posh. PR’s all about the face you show to the public. Which face would you want the Sect to show the world? I mean, right now they’ve got a shadowy council no one ever sees.”

  “Blackwell’s their representative,” said Cheryl.

  “But people barely see him, either, except in diplomatic meetings or whatever. But we—me, Maia, Belle, Chae Rin.” Straightening up, she linked arms with me, pulling me close. “We’re young! We’re pretty! Me and Belle already have lovely fans, and Maia and Chae Rin, well . . .” She glanced at me. I grinned with my teeth. “We can work on it. Think of what you can do for the Sect’s public image just by putting us out there. It’s bulletproof!”

  Lake sounded like a greasy snake oil salesman pitching a crappy movie to some cigar-smoking, money-hungry Hollywood exec, and it might have been working.

  “I understand what you’re saying, but the Sect went through something like that before with the Effigies who fought during the Seattle Siege. Didn’t turn out too well.”

  The “Seattle Siege Dolls.” Back in the sixties, when people still used “dolls” as a patronizing nickname for Effigies. Back when Seattle had spent seven days under siege by phantoms. A siege I now knew had been Saul’s “test run.”

  The Effigies had done their best, fighting battered and broken in a never-ending nightmare. Munich’s Heidi Krantz, Allison Whitney from upper-class Detroit, Roselyn Alvarez from Mexico City, and Abena Owusu from Accra, Ghana. She was the youngest. She fought the hardest.

  Though Seattle had to be given up to the phantoms, the girls had done all they could and survived the fight together. It was the first time Effigies had ever fought as a team instead of as singular agents—the moment when the image of four girls battling together side by side became part of our public memory as a potent symbol. The power of it even ended up launching a short-lived pop cultural phenomenon.

  And yet it was Allison who cashed in the most, despite having done the least. PTSD took Heidi and Roselyn, and both girls eventually shut themselves away from the living. Abena shunned the spotlight, struggling through her commitments as an Effigy for the rest of her short life. Allison’s ghost-pale face and fairy-tale dark hair made her an American favorite, but her reign as a public darling ended fast when Abena revealed to the whole world that Allison had spent most of the siege looking for new places to hide, even when it meant leaving people to die.

  “People wanted heroes, and they got four broken dolls instead.” Cheryl tightened the b
and around her auburn braid. “In a way, it ended up damaging the Sect’s image.”

  “But we can be different! We just need to start small and smart! A little interview and a pretty photoshoot can be just what the Sect needs to start repairing some of the damage. Come on, please?” Lake clasped her hands together. “You’ll talk to Sibyl, right? Please, please?”

  “But Maia’s training—”

  “I’ll train her on the plane!”

  Cheryl deflated. She knew this wasn’t a battle she could win. “Fine.”

  Lake and I decided against a high five, but grinned devilishly nonetheless.

  • • •

  “Oh my god, are you playing Metal Kolossos II?” The heat rushed to my head once I recognized the familiar characters.

  “The Lost Colony.” Chae Rin shifted her toothpick to the other side of her mouth as she clicked away at her keyboard.

  Lake and I had found her sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed underneath a blanket pulled up just enough so she could see what she was doing. MKII was an old game—well, three years, so old by video game standards. Despite not having played it in a while, I knew it inside and out on account of having shut myself in with June for several days to finish it.

  All the lights in Chae Rin’s room were off except for one standing lamp in the corner, but its weak light didn’t do much by way of illumination. Certainly not as much as the constant barrage of flashes from Chae Rin’s laptop screen.

  “Looks like you’re already halfway through,” I said. “Did you find the Old Sage yet? Which emulator are you using?” I squatted down next to her. “Oh, I’m super good at this level. Do you need help? Because I can—” Chae Rin batted my hand away the second it strayed too close to her keyboard.

  After flicking on the main light, Lake stepped tentatively inside the room, closing the door behind her. With a grimace, she looked around at the takeout containers strewn about the floor and the dirty laundry hanging off the table fan.

  “Lovely setup you have here,” she said, carefully avoiding the dirty spoons on the floor. “Anyway, Chae Rin, we’ve got something to tell you. We’re going to need your help on this.”

  “Oh?”

  I tore my eyes away from the pretty HD graphics and focused on the task at hand. The plan was simple. The first step was convincing Cheryl to convince Sibyl to let us go to France. Assuming that worked, after getting to the hotel, we’d make up an excuse and check out Belle’s old foster home. Then we’d create a diversion, sneak off to find Belle’s room, and look underneath the floorboards. Since a crowbar made for a pretty conspicuous accessory, bringing Chae Rin made sense . . . as long as she didn’t put a hole in the floor.

  Luckily, telling Chae Rin about the plan didn’t take as long as we thought it would.

  “Yeah, I can see someone killing Natalya.” She shrugged, still focused on her laptop screen as Lake and I exchanged incredulous looks. “You know, sometimes, when I was in Quebec, it felt like there was something watching me . . . or stalking me, or something.”

  “Stalking?”

  With a sigh, Chae Rin finally paused her game and slid the covers off of her head. “I never saw him,” she said, stretching out her back before standing. “At first I thought it was a fanboy or something, but maybe it was an Informer—you know, those specialized agents who shadow sketchy Effigies and bring the info back to the Sect. Not that I’m sketchy.” She stopped. “Okay, I’m a bit sketchy, obviously. I’m not surprised that the Sect would order an Informer to watch me while I’m suspended, but then, my phantom whispering wasn’t in any of the reports, so that’s sketchy in and of itself. If I really was being watched, then either that Informer didn’t do his job, or he had another agenda.”

  I sat on her bed, though not before brushing away the empty protein bar wrappers. “Do you think someone from the Sect might have been following Natalya around?”

  Chae Rin nodded. “You said she looked scared in the memory you saw, right? Kept looking over her shoulder? Plus she had that creepy ring in her jewelry box— the one I gave to Guillaume.”

  Lake frowned. “Who?”

  “Chae Rin’s old circus boss,” I answered. The one currently missing a finger. “I don’t think Natalya knew what the ring could do. If she did, she wouldn’t have left it in such a stealable place.”

  “But she got it somehow.” Chae Rin grabbed a can of soda off her dresser and took a sip. “Which means she probably was investigating Saul. If her death has anything to do with it, then we have to find out why.” Chae Rin looked down at the can in her hand. “I owe her that.”

  A wave of relief washed over me. Natalya’s death wasn’t easy to bear, but now, finally, I was starting to feel the burden chip away, bit by bit. Lake and Chae Rin—I should have trusted them earlier, gone to them earlier. It was a mistake I wouldn’t make again.

  • • •

  The longer the interrogations with Saul went on, the louder the grumbling was from international media. A few days after Lake’s impromptu presentation, Sibyl finally gave us the go-ahead. The shoot was set for the end of the week, though my mind was so preoccupied with the plan that I barely had room to feel amazed over my impending modeling debut. Seeing Belle agree to go amazed me more.

  “It’s fine,” Belle told us without the slightest inflection in her voice. “I don’t care one way or the other.”

  Chae Rin and Lake exchanged glances from the kitchen table as Belle left the dorm.

  “Enthusiastic as always.” Chae Rin went on buttering her croissant.

  Lake waited for Belle to shut the door before leaning in. “So, about Belle,” she said in a low voice as if Belle could be listening on the other side of the door. “Shouldn’t we tell her about the whole Natalya thing? The message is for her, after all.”

  I swirled the spoon in my cereal before letting it drop against the bowl with a clang. “No,” I decided with a sigh. “Not yet. The last time I tried to bring it up, Belle flipped out. She didn’t even let me get a word out. She just did not want to know about any of it. Natalya’s death is still really fresh for her. Painful. I know . . .” I stopped. I knew what it was like to flinch at the very sound of the name of a lost loved one. “I’m worried that if we tell her everything now, if we tell her what this whole trip is about, then she’ll refuse to go with us. And if she refuses to go, it’ll be that much harder to get into her old house.”

  “Let’s be real here. It’s way more serious than that.” Chae Rin swallowed her mouthful of bread before elaborating. “Natalya and Belle both dedicated their lives to the Sect. If Belle finds out that Natalya was killed and the Sect is covering it up or, worse, had something to do with the murder, who knows how she’ll react? Like, what if she freaks out and just slaughters the shit out of everyone?” She shuddered. “Let’s tread carefully on this one. We figure out what’s going on first. Then we can decide what we’re going to do about it.”

  A knock on the dorm door. We looked at each other.

  I got up. “Stay there. I’ll get it.” Setting aside my orange juice, I rushed to the door.

  “Rhys?”

  “Uh, hi.” Rhys leaned against the door frame, the definition of his arms and hardened abs well hidden inside his ridiculous fuzzy sweater. “Can . . . we talk?”

  My heart gave an awkward thump in my chest when I said yes. I hadn’t spoken to him since Saul’s first interrogation, and I still couldn’t forget his particularly disturbing conversation with Vasily.

  “The door’s real thin,” said Chae Rin as they left the kitchen and started upstairs, her mouth full of bread, “so if you make out we’ll know.”

  After tossing her the side eye, I shut the door behind me and cleared my throat. “What do you want?”

  “Your trip to Paris on Friday . . .” He shifted. “I guess I’m just letting you know that I’m coming with you.” Rhys avoided my eyes as he told me.

  Ignoring the nervous jolt in my heart, I wrapped my thin sweater tighter around mys
elf. “Why?”

  “They asked me to come along. Maybe they see me as your personal guard or something.” He laughed. “I feel so typecast.”

  After everything, I still liked the sound of his laugh. But Rhys wasn’t exactly ready to jump on the Natalya-Sect conspiracy train. He’d been with the Sect his entire life. Of course he was loyal to them—fearful of them. Doing this with him on my back would only make things more difficult, and yet something in me wouldn’t let me refuse. I didn’t think I could anyway.

  Rhys looked as if he was gathering his courage. Stuffing his hands inside his pants pockets he finally met my eyes. “Maia,” he started, “about before: I’m really sorry—”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I told him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about what you don’t want to talk about.”

  “Right.” Rhys smiled at me. There was something dangerously alluring about Rhys’s eyes, dark and boyish at the same time. I wasn’t naïve. I knew I was looking into something heavy, something potentially dangerous. I could understand why Rhys would try to steer me off that path, but there must have been more to it than that. He was hiding something.

  “You know, there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said.

  “Well, obviously. I just met you.”

  Rhys chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I just wanted you to know, in case you got the wrong idea, that I’m not like him,” he said. “Like Vasily.”

  Vasily. No, I could never think of Rhys that way. They were completely different. Then again, it was also true that I knew very little about him—about his past in the Sect, about his training side by side with a guy who’d grow up to one day joyfully slice off a man’s finger.

  “Everything’s all good. Just make sure you pack plenty of bow ties for Paris.” Playfully, I punched his arm—which, admittedly, was cheesy, but it was the only thing I could think of to ease the tension between us. “I hear the French love that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, I’ve sworn them off.”

  As he gave me a gentle smile, I sincerely hoped my hunch about Natalya’s death—and the Sect—turned out to be wrong after all.