Brennan’s panic finally got the best of him. He lunged at Ellie, gripping her arm. Ellie’s messenger bag slipped off her shoulder, splashed into the current, and was quickly swept down the street.
“The book!” Ellie yelled. She splashed down the street after her bag, but it was already far away.
I surged through the water, drenched, but it was like running in slow motion. The gumbo! Spill the gumbo, stop the flood. I dove toward the wrought-iron tripod holding the pot, and gallons of sausage and shrimp, rice and okra spewed out. The water in the streets disappeared instantly into thick mist and lifted like fog.
Aquarius bent over to right her tripod, her pot, over the still-dancing flame. When she stood, her eyes were black as midnight. “You done mess wit da wrong sign, girl.”
Aquarius ran her spoon in circles around the edge of the empty clay pot. Clouds churned in great gray circles, thunder rumbled across the sky. She tinged her spoon on the edge of the pot. A bolt of lightning sizzled from the clouds and struck nearby. Brennan jumped.
“Don’ she wan’ be with her daddy?” Aquarius asked, her black eyes locked on me. “Don’ she wan’ give in to see him again?”
Aquarius tossed her head back and laughed, whipping her spoon around inside the hollow pot. Rain pounded down, soaking us and everyone on the street, but the three of us were, apparently, the only ones who felt the chill of the downpour. Everyone else marched on, unaware.
It was so much rain, too much, and the streets began to fill with water again. But I just couldn’t attack a Keeper in human form. Not after seeing Ellie’s double crumple to the ground. It was too real for me. Had they discovered this was my weakness?
How would I stop this water bearer?
I felt a smile grow within me. The water bearer! A master of deception, Aquarius. The thing that bears water is the pot, not the woman!
I snatched a carved cane from the display at the shop next door. I reared the cane like a club and swung with all my might.
The large pot—a hollow clay pot, like so many I’d crafted with my own hands—cracked beneath my blow, fell to the sidewalk. The rain stopped like it had been turned off by a faucet. The pot shattered, but the fire beneath it remained strong.
Twelve Keepers, defeated.
I stood over the jagged shards of the broken pot and smiled.
I felt free.
I kicked aside the largest shard of the broken pot and found Aquarius’s birthstone, a light purple amethyst. After my chant, the craggy old woman morphed into a youthful, flowing lady balancing a water jug on her head. She and her pot rained into the sky. I smiled, watching that pot take its place among the stars. Because there was a place for it.
Gemini placed her hand on my shoulders, like she had felt my soul change. “You should hurry,” she whispered. “You need only to find Ophiuchus now.”
I nodded and looked around for my friends. Ellie had chased her messenger bag for several blocks. The contents were strewn across the sidewalks. When we finally spotted The Keypers of the Zodiack, we saw it now rested under the toe of a pair of pointed black wingtip shoes.
Agent Cygnus stooped to pick up the ancient book. He tucked the book in his inside jacket pocket. When he looked up, his gaze landed on Gemini.
“It’s you,” he whispered. Agent Cygnus eyed Gemini the way a wolf eyes a sheep. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought I saw fear flash across Gemini’s face.
Agent Griffin approached us. “It’s time you kids cooperate,” he grumbled. He pulled back his jacket and showed us his leather holster. My stomach lurched.
“Didn’t you know?” Ellie said. Behind her back, I could see her twist the handle of her messenger bag, knotting it in her fist. “We Virgos are known to be uncooperative!”
With that, she swung her messenger bag around, whapping Agent Griffin upside the head. Brennan lowered his shoulder and rammed Agent Cygnus with an oof to his gut.
Brennan upturned an empty café table with an open umbrella in its middle toward the agents. The four of us—Gemini beside us—ran toward the hospital.
“It’s her! The one in the toga!” Agent Cygnus yelled. We heard them scrambling over and around the wrought-iron table.
The church bells chimed the quarter-hour.
8:15 p.m.
We had fifteen minutes.
Inside Touro Infirmary, we pounded up the steps, thinking that waiting for the elevator would surely put us in the claws of Agents Cygnus and Griffin.
“304,” I huffed. Climbing three flights of stairs wouldn’t normally be a problem, but there was nothing normal about this visit. “Room 304.”
Just before we threw open the door to the third-floor hallway, Brennan grabbed my hand. I glared at him.
“Listen. I know we don’t have much time, so just listen and don’t fight me, feisty. I like you, Jalen, okay?” His face blushed bright red. “I mean, you know, as a friend? I always have liked you, and I always will. Once we turn back, we’ll still be friends. I promise.”
I looked from Brennan to Ellie, and my heart sank. The way this adventure had made our friendship grow was about to disappear. I squeezed his hand, then Ellie’s. I’d miss them both. I’d even miss this version of Ellie, though with each second, I was closer to getting my best friend back.
“Sure,” I choked out. I had to say it, or he’d keep insisting, taking more precious time.
We shoved into the hall, then threw open the door of Nina’s room. “Nina!” I yelled. My voice echoed back to me.
The room was empty.
I felt my stomach rise into my throat. “Nina? Where are you? Ophiuchus?”
I searched the room for Nina, for Ophiuchus. Behind the partition. Under the hospital beds. In the bathroom. I was very familiar with every hiding place in these small rooms, from when I’d spent months here before. Where were they?
A nurse popped her head into Room 304. “What’re you kids doing in here?”
I blinked, swallowed. “We’re looking for my Nina. Uh, Asa Jones.”
“Mrs. Jones?” The nurse’s forehead loosened a notch. “Honey, she was discharged earlier today. Needs hospice care that one. We sent her home so family could say good-bye.”
My ears started ringing so loud at the word “discharged,” I hardly heard the rest. It was too much. Nina, so sick the hospital could no longer help her. Ophiuchus gone, too, apparently still with the one who needs healing. Us, fighting like warriors to get to her, all for nothing.
For nothing.
In ten minutes, earth would pass out of the House of Ophiuchus, and the world would be forever changed. My Nina would no longer have the fighting chance she had before. My mom would be wandering the world in search of my dad. And I still had no answers about him. Lost or left? Who knew.
I turned to Gemini, my tears hot. “Where is she?” I growled. My heart ticked away our remaining seconds, the seconds until these personality changes were permanent. “Didn’t I meet every Keeper? Didn’t I win every Challenge?”
Gemini pulled out her metal nail file—her nail file!—and began sawing it over her fingertips. I snatched the file away from her and tried—unsuccessfully—to break it in half. Which added fuel to my fire.
“Didn’t I win every Challenge?” I demanded.
Gemini cocked her head at me.
I counted through the Challenges in my head. Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Aries, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Gemini…
Gemini.
The twins.
And suddenly it was as if all my fiery anger turned to candlelight, a gentle flame that helped me see. Gemini had ascended, then split into two persons, a pair. Our guide had whispered thank you to them both, to Castor and Pollux.
And Henry. He’d warned us over and over again. “Two there.” He knew both Gemini twins were in one body, both morphing into Ellie and Nina and Mom and Dad. Two there.
This person who called herself Gemini—she would’ve been cast into the heavens alongside her stone, wo
uldn’t she? This person was not a Gemini twin. Both twins were already accounted for.
“Gemini left with a warning. They’ll hunt you until they win,” I repeated. “Be wary.”
“But the warning wasn’t for me,” I said. “The agents aren’t hunting me. They’re hunting Ophiuchus. The warning was for you.”
I swallowed. “You. You’re her. You’re Ophiuchus.”
As I said it, this Keeper’s skin melted like wax, then hardened, morphing from movie-star gorgeous into a stout, pudgy older woman with dimpled cheeks and a stooped back. She wore an old-timey nurse’s uniform, flannel soft and white like a blanket, with a tiny hat and a skirt that swept the floor. A snake-and-staff pin gleamed over her heart, just like the one I wore. She smiled, no longer a brilliant, toothy spectacle, but a gentle smile, slow and sweet like warm honey.
It was her. Ophiuchus. The thirteenth sign.
“I don’t understand,” Ellie said. I startled at her voice; I’d forgotten anyone else was here. “You—Ophiuchus—you were with us the whole time?”
I shook my head. “But you told me that Ophiuchus would be with the one who needs healing.”
Ophiuchus took my hands in hers. Her hands were warm and soft but strong. Comforting. Healer’s hands. She smiled.
“I was.”
I’d been crafting hollow gray pots since my dad disappeared when I was nine years old. I’d thought I was fine. I see now that I’d needed a helping hand, but I hadn’t known how to ask.
I had called Ophiuchus the Healer for me.
Ophiuchus withdrew her hands from mine, and I held her birthstone: a rainbow-colored topaz that changed colors when I moved. Ophiuchus’s birthstone contained all the colors of the heavens. The stone that heals. All our wounds that we’d collected on this journey—the cuts, the stings, the bruises—had healed, all but disappeared. We hadn’t even noticed.
I held so much power in my hands right now. This stone could heal my Nina. Did I have to send Ophiuchus to the skies? Couldn’t I keep her here, save my Nina? Wouldn’t the rest of the world eventually adjust?
“Jalen.” Brennan shifted his weight and pointed at the clock over the door. 8:28 p.m. Tears streamed down Ellie’s cheeks. “Do it, Jalen,” she whispered.
All I had to do was lift the topaz stone over my head and chant. Could I do it? Did I want to?
Brennan nodded at me, encouraging me to go ahead, say it. Brennan. Would he and I still be friends, as he had promised? I doubted it. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed his friendship these last few years. I would surely miss it again if I cast Ophiuchus to the skies.
And Ellie. She had saved me so many times, on so many levels today. I’d never see this Ellie again. I’d miss her like part of me was missing.
8:29 p.m.
And me.
Will I still be able to ask for help when I need it?
Will I still have the fire?
Will I be happy?
Footsteps echoed in the hall. The agents!
Ophiuchus hugged me. “Just know that if you use it,” she whispered, “one life is substituted for another.”
I felt like I’d been bitten by a snake. I managed to lift my hands and shout, “Sic itur ad astra!”
And then I blacked out.
I heard the buzzing of the fluorescent lights in the hospital room. A pinprick of blue-green light flickered, then my vision slowly opened.
“Jalen?” a voice said with a tinge of panic. “C’mon, Jalen. Wake up.”
“Mom?” I said. “Nina?” My vision returned. Ellie, Brennan, Agent Cygnus, and Agent Griffin huddled over me.
Ellie sighed with relief, then giggled. “I’m not quite that old, Jalen.”
I smiled. She was back. I started to sit up, but my stomach lurched.
“No, lay back down,” whispered Agent Griffin. “You took a nasty spill. I’ll go get the nurse.” He patted my shoulder and tiptoed away. This, the same agent who had threatened my best friend.
Agent Cygnus whipped around and kicked the wall. He leaned over me and flashed the spine of The Keypers of the Zodiack at me, still tucked in his jacket pocket.
He whispered with peppermint-chilled breath, “We’ll figure out how to unlock it. And when we do, we’ll get that birthstone from Ophiuchus.”
He shoved me—hard—with the pointy toe of his wingtip shoes, then stormed away. Ice ran through me. I realized suddenly that my fingers were twining in a lock of my hair. I pulled a strand across my face. Hot pink.
I lay there on the floor of the hospital room, listening to Ellie and the nurse who’d scuttled in exchange knock-knock jokes in what I guess was an attempt to lighten the mood. The nurse shined a tiny flashlight in my pupils. “You’re going to be fine,” she said at last. I hoped she was right.
“I think I’m okay,” I said.
Brennan chuckled and slumped in the only chair in the hospital room. The nurse left to get me some water. After a few moments, I felt like I could sit. I pulled myself up on my elbows, and a clunk sounded. A thud, falling out of my open cargo-pants pocket.
On the floor. Ophiuchus’s birthstone.
She’d left it behind, hidden it with me. What did this mean? When Virgo left her stone behind, she’d been able to return without being called. Would Ophiuchus return? And the power! Could I heal Nina?
Why do I still have this stone?
I picked it up and felt a familiar spark. Not a too-brilliant spark, sharp and fiery, but a slow, solidifying warmth. The heat that completes the pot.
This stone had healed me twice.
My dad had won. He had held this very stone in his hands, and Ophiuchus had given him the same instructions. “If you use it, one life is substituted for another.”
He’d used the stone to heal me when I was nine and so sick I was supposed to die. The doctors had told him they’d tried everything, that they’d exhausted every resource. So he did the only thing he could think to do: He turned to Nina and Madame Beausoleil. He had left intentionally, and he had lost his life.
He’d given up his life for me. Left and lost. No absolutes.
“Nina?” I whispered into the darkness. A wedge of light from the hallway sliced into her bedroom. She stirred under the sheets, and it took my breath away. The last time I had seen her, Nina had still been a woman of curves and cushion. She was now a woman of angles and edges.
“Jalen?” she whispered through cracked lips. “You did it. You found Ophiuchus.”
“You knew?”
She nodded, her thin hair fanning across her pillow. “I’ve changed that way once before.” She tried to smile. It looked like it took every bit of her effort.
Ophiuchus’s stone burned against my leg. I could use it right now. I could save her. I should save her. Shouldn’t I? The world could use more Ninas.
She patted the bed, and I curled up next to her. The stone in my pocket felt like it was pulsing. Nina put her arm over me. It felt dry and thin, like a twig.
“It’s my time, Jalen,” she whispered into my hair. I realized my cheeks were wet. “Let’s do this with dignity.”
I nodded. I couldn’t save Nina. As much as I wanted to save her, replacing Nina’s life with another was not an option. Another death, even one somewhere far off in the world, would ripple through the order of the universe, like wedging a thirteenth sign into the zodiac calendar. I couldn’t give some other girl in some other family a white shock of hair just to keep my Nina here with me.
Losing Nina felt like watching a brilliant, shooting star streak across the sky: The beauty wasn’t here long enough. But I ignored the stone that practically throbbed in my pocket and instead unfastened the snake-and-staff pin over my heart.
I pinned it onto Nina’s nightgown with shaking hands. “With dignity.”
The next evening, the bells on the door of Madame Beausoleil’s shop dinged. My mom poked her head in the door, between the rows of alligator teeth. It was odd seeing her here. She was too solid for a place like this, like
a human walking among ghosts. She never used to come here with Daddy, once upon a time.
“Jalen, honey, we need to go,” she said. “It’s been exactly one hour. I don’t want to stay away from Nina for long.” She was right. I didn’t want to leave Nina alone for too long, either. I wanted to spend every minute I could with her, while I still could. But I had to make sure we’d be safe.
Ellie pleaded, palms pressed together, in overly dramatic fashion. “One more minute, please, Mrs. Jones?”
My mother’s forehead wrinkled. She looked at her watch but nodded. “Ellie Broussard, you are a bad influence on my daughter.” It was as close to a joke as my mom was capable of telling, and if you didn’t know better, it came out sounding like an insult. Two days ago, I would’ve thought it was one.
But Ellie knew, had always known, about my mom. She laughed as the door closed. “Hurry, Jalen. That’s as much time as I could buy you. Oooo that stupid Brennan, bailing on us.”
Yes, it likely would’ve been easier to stay if Brennan had driven us. But he’d canceled on us because he was auditioning to drum in a new band. He’d muttered that it “far outweighed toting around a couple of middle school kids.” I hoped he got the gig, though I wasn’t sure he’d invite us to any of his shows. It was silly to even think it, but changing Brennan back felt like watching a favorite earring roll around the sink and slip down the drain. One was still left, but what can be done with it?
Madame Beausoleil perched on her stool behind the counter. “So you’ll keep the lock safe?” I asked her.
She nodded slowly. “Guess you were ready.”
I shrugged. “They have the book.” I shuddered at the thought of it. All that power, all those words that could shape the future. But as long as we kept the lock and the key away from them, we were safe. I hoped.
“I figured dat.”
“And Nina’s wearing the pin. I think it’s giving her some fight back.” I knew as I said it that it wasn’t true, but Nina would want Madame Beausoleil to think that. That she was exiting with her chin held high. With dignity.
The 13th Sign Page 17