Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  “But Natalya was learning about Saul,” I said. “About Nick and Alice. Vasily may have been ordered by the Sect to watch me, but when he realized I was learning too much, he tried to kill me. You said Vasily follows orders. Doesn’t that mean there’s someone in the Sect who knows more about Saul than they’re letting on? Isn’t it possible they killed Natalya to keep it all quiet?”

  Silently, Rhys stood and crossed the room to the window. I waited.

  “I didn’t know Natalya for that long,” he finally said, “but I liked her. She was so . . .” He leaned over, planting his hand on the windowpane. “Noble. Just. And I could see it was killing her. The burden she had to bear . . . I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

  He turned to me. My cheeks flushed, but I kept myself steady, even as he closed the distance between us. “When I first met you in that Brooklyn hotel, I saw this innocent kid who’d suddenly had the weight of the world dumped onto her shoulders. The weight of Natalya’s legacy. And . . .” He pressed his lips. “I just wanted to help you.”

  The dimness of his eyes worried me. It was like the light had been stolen from them.

  “Rhys . . . why are you telling me this?”

  He sat next to me on the bed, a respectable distance away. When he brushed back his tangled black hair, for the first time I noticed how tired he looked—the bags under his eyes, his faded pallor, his lips aching for moisture.

  I wished someone would tell me how to react as his fingers squeezed mine, so tightly and desperately I wondered what he was really clinging to. What would June have done in my place if she’d seen the silent tears running down his cheeks?

  Rhys couldn’t look at me, even as he gripped my hand tight. “Maia . . . Natalya . . . she . . .”

  “It’s okay.” Something hardened in me as I watched him. “I’ll find him.” I was more determined than ever. “I won’t let Vasily get away with murdering Natalya. I promise.”

  Rhys lifted his head, but a rustling at the door kept the words from forming. My body went rigid. Silence stretched between the three of us—Rhys and me on the bed, and Belle standing bewildered at the door.

  “Belle . . .” I withdrew my hand, but the rest of me was frozen. “I—”

  “It’s okay. It’s . . .” Belle shut her eyes, her hands slipping off the knob. “No, this is good. Maia, come with me. I’ve decided.” By the time she’d opened her eyes again, they’d hardened to steel. “I’m going to teach you how to scry.”

  • • •

  It was pitch-black outside. Even with my coat and sweatshirt, the cold night seeped into my skin. Belle had taken me to a place called “Le Lavoir,” overlooking the Epte River. I couldn’t believe it was a tourist attraction: It looked like a long sidewalk of cobbled stone, sheltered by an equally long rusted roof. Definitely different. But I could tell that it was also very old: a monument, perhaps, to the town’s early days, before the phantoms came.

  On the way there I’d told Belle about Natalya’s death, the memories I’d seen, and the cigar box hidden underneath her floorboards. It was a bit worrying, the way Belle stayed silent throughout the explanation. She didn’t speak at all until she walked up to the stone balustrade separating us from the river.

  “Do you know what our job is, Maia?” Belle placed her hands on the ridge. “As Effigies?”

  I nodded, very sure of myself as I pulled up my jacket hood for warmth. “To protect people.”

  “Our job is to destroy phantoms,” she said, turning. I shifted uncomfortably. “But Natalya . . . She always did more than she needed to. Always an idealist.”

  Her tone turned flat and lifeless as she said the word, her shoulders slumping as she looked off into the distance.

  “And you’re not?”

  Belle’s silent response unnerved me. Natalya’s drive to protect life made her a hero. Didn’t it?

  I thought of Natalya’s apartment: the decanter filled with scotch, the empty bottles of wine and vodka decorating the tables like ornaments.

  I shook my head. Natalya was a hero. Belle, too. Fighting phantoms and protecting people went hand in hand. That was what Belle had probably meant.

  It was just the look on her face that made me so uncomfortable.

  Belle turned back to the river. “Scrying is very simple. Natalya once used a matryoshka doll to explain the concept to me. The Effigies.” She tapped her head with a finger. “Each time one dies, a piece of her mind remains in the next. You know this. You also know that the consciousness of the last Effigy to die will be the strongest, the freshest. Yes?”

  I nodded.

  “There is a barrier separating your mind from the shards of consciousness remaining from Natalya, but it’s penetrable. Achieving a state of pure calm and peace allows your psyche to cross into hers comfortably. Once you do, you’ll see it. Perhaps you already have: the red door.”

  “Red door?”

  “And a white stream. I haven’t been there in a long time, but I can still remember.” Shutting her eyes, Belle lifted her head. “The frigid white waters rippling around my ankles. The fog, so thick you can see nothing else but the red door in the distance. It is the gateway to the mind of the one who died before me. This is what you’ll see if you scry the correct way.”

  Like striding through the front door with pride instead of being dragged in, screaming and blindfolded, through the back window.

  I kicked my foot across the stone floor. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t exactly been the poster child of ‘pure calm’ lately.”

  “I told you in Argentina. It was Saul who prematurely forced you over the first threshold. Now, if your mind becomes disturbed, even while asleep, parts of your psyche can potentially cross over into hers. But the reverse is also true.” Belle peered into the rippling waters. “While scrying, your mind is more vulnerable than ever before. If, in that state, you become too deeply unsettled, the psyche of the previous Effigies can slip into yours. In extreme cases, one can take control of your physical form for a short time.”

  Saul had told me that once too. I hugged myself to keep from shuddering too violently. “If that’s the case, then shouldn’t you have taught me proper scrying a little earlier?”

  I could see Belle deflating.

  “Natalya committed suicide.” Belle’s hair whipped gently over her face as she spoke. “I never believed it. I couldn’t. But if it turned out . . . that she really did . . . that she . . .”

  She looked away.

  For me, the best and worst aspect about losing my family was knowing, deep inside, that they weren’t really gone. They’re never really gone—a point belabored ad nauseam by all the priests and counselors and therapists. I’d resented it then, but it was true. Some days, I would have rested easier if they’d simply been eradicated from the world. But the dead left traces: pictures, old messages on answering machines. Memories. Pain. Bits and pieces of each lost life remained on Earth, trapped here and there, comforting and haunting their loved ones in equal measure. And part of Natalya remained in me, along with the truth of her death. I couldn’t blame Belle for being scared.

  “But now we know. No, I want to know.” Something quiet and frightening passed across Belle’s features as she looked at me. “Scry, Maia. Find Natalya.”

  I tried. I followed Belle’s every instruction, staring at the river, letting its peaceful, rippling rhythm ease my nerves. Each time I lost focus, Belle urged me to try again in a soft tone only thinly hiding the urgency belying it.

  I kept trying.

  Shut out the cold. I repeated Belle’s words like a dutiful student. Count each breath. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just let your mind fall into the waters and search for her.

  But when I gazed into the river, I saw my own face, June’s face, staring back at me. June, who would never smile at me again. And suddenly, I was thinking of what June’s face would have looked like after the fire . . . what my own face would transform into after being ravaged by flames.

 
I could only imagine it; I never saw June’s remains. Uncle Nathan was the one who’d identified the bodies. And Uncle Nathan . . . Was he okay? No, of course not. How could he be, after losing his family, and then losing me to the Sect? I just wanted to talk to him. Why wouldn’t they let me talk to him?

  As the tears blurred my vision, a sharp burning pain scorched my skull. Grimacing, I gripped my head and dropped to my knees. I could see stars behind my eyelids, flashes of light in the black. The next time I opened them, Belle was kneeling on the ground in front of me.

  Or was it Belle? It couldn’t have been. The girl looked like her, but she was suddenly so much younger. Blood and sweat matted her blond hair wildly to her face. She was screaming with her bloodshot eyes, but when her lips fluttered, bits of French and broken English passed through them in hoarse whispers. Her little body was bent over, fingers hidden in the sand she gripped.

  “Belle?”

  It was Natalya’s voice. Belle didn’t respond to it. She only trembled, rasping for air.

  “I saved them.” Belle nodded quickly, planting her dirty hand on her dirtier face. “I saved them. I killed the phantoms. Twelve. I killed twelve. I killed twelve. Are you proud of me, Natalya?”

  That was when I saw it: the bodies draped across the sandy field. Bodies of Sect troops interspersed between the remains of phantoms rotting in the sinking sun.

  “Kill me,” Belle cried and grabbed her hair. “Kill me! I want to die. I can’t do this! Kill me!”

  With a violent shudder, I awoke from Natalya’s memory, only to find the present Belle gripping her shoulders.

  “What did you see?” Belle demanded. “Did you see Natalya’s killer?”

  Belle, the Twelve-Kill Rookie. It should have been a moniker of pride for the girl who’d managed to take down twelve phantoms during one of her first missions. But that memory . . . that horror I’d just witnessed . . . how could I even put it into words? I tried to push them out, but they wouldn’t go.

  Belle just kept shaking me, her nails digging into my skin. “Tell me what you saw. Tell me! Who killed Natalya?”

  “Please stop!”

  The moment I let out the desperate plea, Belle finally got hold of herself. But it was a tenuous grasp.

  “That’s enough,” Belle said, stumbling back. “That’s . . . that’s enough for today.”

  BELLE WAS A BADASS FIGHTER. It was part of why I was such a fan. Back in my Paris hotel room, I watched an old video feed of the Effigy battling in South Carolina. Sect troops had sent tanks in, not knowing that the phantoms were burrowing underground.

  I gasped as the monsters’ wormlike bodies ripped through the ground, flipping a tank in the air. As the tank crashed to the ground, Belle jumped atop another, yelling at them to fire as it swiveled around. Then she launched herself into the air, grabbing hold of one of the phantoms while it was still reeling. Belle. The Legendary Effigy. The Twelve-Kill Rookie.

  Kill me! I want to die. I can’t do this! Kill me!

  Shivering, I shut out the memory by clicking open another video. Natalya Filipova. She stood in the streets of Moscow, a white Russian fur hat covering what I knew was a raven-black pixie cut underneath. A few strands from her black bangs peeked out from beneath the white material, falling over one of her brown eyes. The wind blew snow across her long mauve coat and past her high, black boots, getting caught on the buckles.

  She stood in the streets of Moscow back-to-back with Belle as the War Siren blew, Saint Basil’s Cathedral just barely visible behind a blizzard.

  Natalya tugged her red gloves taut over her fingers and stretched her arm. Out of the flames forged a broad sword tall enough for the embroidered hilt to reach her neck.

  Natalya’s sword.

  A swarm of black billowed out from behind the Cathedral. Phantoms. Natalya blessed the edge of her now-famous blade in the snow before flipping it around, readying herself. That was when the reporter started running. The video shook before cutting off entirely.

  Was that how Belle remembered her: as a knight slaying dragons? Maybe it hurt to even think of her at all.

  I thought of Lake, who would cry at night when she thought I was sleeping, and Chae Rin, who would find a way to disappear whenever anyone even mentioned the word “family.”

  Shutting my laptop, I laid my head on my pillow. None of us were really talking about it: the loss, the loneliness, and the pain. Why wasn’t there anything I could do?

  • • •

  Lake cursed the rain, which had destroyed our chances of having an outdoor shoot. Apparently it was the only way to be photographed in Paris. Teen Vogue had us indoors instead, their lavish sets ready for photographs. But styling came first.

  I’d never been poked and prodded and manhandled the way the hair and makeup team did to me. At one point, I literally had two different flat irons ravaging my hair while a perfect stranger assessed the damage my lack of skin-care maintenance had done to my pores.

  “Okay.” The makeup artist stood up and waved for her assistant. “We need some BB cream, stat. Get me one of the deeper sand shades.”

  They decided not to straighten my hair too much. If this would be my formal introduction to a potential fan base, they’d want me to stay as much myself as possible. They teased out my curls instead and pinned them over my shoulder.

  Lake was a pro in her styling chair, flipping through a magazine as they sewed in hair extensions, giving her a long black ponytail reaching down her back.

  She paused at a page, drawing it close to her face.

  “Ugh!” She smacked it. “Jo’s talking about me again!”

  Chae Rin, who’d let them cut her hair shoulder-length and dye it red, twitched an eyelid as they applied some deep shadow. “Who?”

  “Jo! Jo Matthews! You know, from my old group?”

  The lead singer of Girls by Day. Lake showed us the magazine page. The group had hit a set back after Lake had left to train in Finland, but after formally kicking her out of the group and replacing two of the members, they’d rebranded themselves. They were now four teenage bad-girl “hood rats” known only as GBD. Needless to say, their teenybopper looks didn’t quite work with the heavy chains and bandanas, but Jo, one of the two original members, certainly tried to pull it off in the picture.

  “She’s spreading gross rumors about me!” cried Lake. “She said I flirted with the producers during the show. I was thirteen. Do you believe this?” Lake crumpled the magazine in her hands and threw it onto Chae Rin’s lap. “Why does she keep talking about me? God, it’s like she’s been obsessed with me ever since we auditioned.”

  “How Shakespearean.” Chae Rin flipped through the magazine.

  “She was so evil to me when they first put the group together. Kept making fun of my last name and calling me Nala from The Lion King, that horrid cow.” Lake straightened up in her chair, her chin high with regality. “Well, we’ll show them, eh? And after, we can get back to . . . you know.”

  The Natalya thing. I snuck a glance at Belle on the other side of Lake. She’d remained silent throughout the beautification process, not even looking at us as the stylists worked on their canvas. GBD at least maintained the illusion of teamwork.

  Then again, Belle hadn’t seemed right since last night. I was amazed at how skillfully the makeup artists had covered up the deep, dark circles underneath her eyes, but the cream sheen did nothing to conceal her far-off, barely lucid gaze. Quietly, I looked away from her.

  The first set had a school feel. Desks, chalkboard, and us, dressed in pale gray private school uniforms. The director must have had a fetish.

  “The theme of the spread is secret identities,” said the director as they set up the lighting equipment. “One minute you’re regular schoolgirls, and the next you’re sexy, cool, stylish phantom-killing femme fatales: the two sides of our new team of warrior princesses.”

  “What cheese,” Chae Rin grumbled. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Weirdly, it didn�
��t take long for me to get uncomfortably familiar with the hot flash of white lights. Off set, the photographer barked orders: “Belle, raise your chin. Chae Rin, sling your blazer over your shoulder—yes, like that. Lake, perfect, perfect! Keep giving me neck. Maia . . . give me something!”

  Apparently I had a natural tendency to lose any and all signs of having a soul once the cameras started flashing.

  Eventually, they switched to the femme fatale set. I hated wobbling around in pin-thin heels, but at least they didn’t stuff me into those ridiculous chafing leather pants Chae Rin wore. My skirt was leather, though, pulled up high on my waist. I had to admit, it did look pretty cool with the black platforms and the black lace top. My hair was loose over my face, strands of it sticking to my apple-red lipstick.

  “Girls, think strength! Strength!”

  As the cameras flashed, I thought of Rhys waiting in the lobby with a book his hands. A shy wish crept inside me, but it was gone with the next flash.

  The interview came next; some staff brought over a few chairs. A boxy-looking woman from the magazine came right to the set with a tablet in her hands, her blond hair cropped to her chin, curving like a fishbowl. Lake must have seen me fidget, because she gave me a soft nudge.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Lake said. “This is the easy part.”

  Wishful thinking.

  “Lake, there’ve been whispers that you’re far more interested in being a celebrity than fighting to protect the rest of humanity. Do you have anything to say to your detractors?”

  Lake blinked. The interviewer, Lydia Klein, had started off asking us the usual teen magazine fluff: what we looked for in partners, what kind of music we listened to, and other meaningless garbage. Thanks to Lake’s quick car-ride tutorial, I had my fake answers ready-made, but this was a turn none of us had expected.

  Though clearly taken aback, Lake kept her smile strapped to her face like a weapon. “Well,” she said, “when you’re in the public eye, people are going to have negative things to say about you. But I think a lot of people get me wrong. And, to be honest, I think, especially when you’re a girl, people expect you to be perfect right from the beginning. A perfect role model. Like you’re not allowed to have . . . flaws. Weaknesses.”