Call Forth the Waves

by L. J. Hatton

  So much fear. So much anger and helplessness and pain.

  I couldn’t see the light anymore, not even through the stars. Someone had stuck me inside a jar and put out my flame. I was choking on the smoky stench of dark emotion left behind without that fire.

  “Hey,” Jermay said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

  “I can’t help it. What am I supposed to do? To find Vesper and Nim, I need to first find two wardens, and I don’t have their names, much less a location. I’ve got even less on the guy who might be able to tell me how to find my father. My only hope at this point is that stupid computer, and I can’t even open the home screen without first outsmarting a man who designed and built an entire flying city . . . I can’t do it. I can’t.”

  I wasn’t as strong as people thought I was. Putting my family back together had gotten too complicated, and a good bit of that complication was thanks to my father. He hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me the truth, so how was I supposed to trust myself?

  “Is that really what you see?” Jermay asked me.

  “What else is there?”

  “You’ve got tunnel vision. All you see is you against the problem, but if you’d widen your focus, you might notice that you’re not out here on your own. You say you can’t save two people—so what? We just saved more than twenty, and before that, we evacuated hundreds, maybe even thousands. You say you can’t figure out Magnus’s computer? Big deal—Klok is a computer, and since he was actually made by your dad, I’d bet he’s got the advantage over some mass-produced hunk of plastic. And there’s nothing so special about that flying city, either. Magnus may have made it fly, but you brought it down. You made sure that the Commission couldn’t salvage it. You don’t have to do anything other than let us help you.”

  I wiped my eyes again, and this time they stayed dry. He always knew what to say to make things seem better, even if they hadn’t changed a bit.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I needed to hear that.”

  Winnie was wrong. Jermay may not have been touched, but he wasn’t powerless. His strength was in bolstering others. He saw the weak points and reinforced them. He made others stronger, which made him the most powerful of us all.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “I just figured the tears were a bad idea, considering your track record. The hotel might sympathize and flood, floor by floor.”

  “That one you’re going to pay for.”

  “Now, Penn . . .”

  He jumped up and backed away, searching the room for something to defend himself with.

  “Begging gets you nowhere with me,” I said.

  “What about bribery?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, deciding which way to go. He faked right, ran left, and vaulted over the desk to the other side.

  “Depends,” I told him. “What are you offering?”

  “Umm . . .” He considered the items on the desktop and held one out. “This pen. If you flip it upside down, the palm trees inside lose their coconuts. A very good bribe, in my opinion.”

  A moment like this was everything I’d ever wanted. Penelope and Jermay. No need to hide who or what we were. No one watching us, and no chance that the walls would fall in, revealing enemies on the other side. All of our problems were still lurking in the deep shadows of later trouble, but for this one moment, we were able to lock them out.

  I was as carefree as the kids I’d seen playing games on the Mile.

  “After careful consideration, I reject your offer,” I told Jermay.

  There was a round flower bowl set out on the desk. I flicked my fingers at him, and the bowl spit a tiny stream of water in his face.

  It was unusual for anyone to really surprise Jermay. His reflexes were too fast, but the wide-open eyes and slack mouth told me I’d struck a rare vein of gold.

  “You did not just do that!” he yipped, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  I flicked him again and he growled. He ducked under the desk and crawled through to my side.

  I pointed behind him.

  “You may have got off a couple of shots, but I’m not falling for that,” he said.

  “Suit yourself. It’ll get you, either way.”

  Warily, Jermay turned around to face my sailfish, shimmering blue to match the dye from the water that had filled the flower bowl.

  “You wouldn’t . . .”

  “You might want to start running.”

  “Are you seri—”

  I sent the sailfish streaking after him, and he ran around the room. Jumping furniture, tossing couch pillows, ducking, and doubling back. He could have run out the open door any time he wanted, but he kept circling the room. I was laughing so hard I nearly fell back to the floor.

  “This stopped being funny four laps ago!” he squeaked. My sailfish had backed him into a corner, with the tip of its bill pointing at his throat. He closed his eyes and turned his head away like there was a real chance I’d run him through.

  “Do you give up?” I asked.

  “I give! I give! Unconditional surrender!”

  “Accepted.” I kissed him on the cheek and send the water back to where it had begun.

  He cracked one eye open to see if anything else was coming, then did a pratfall faint.

  “That was pathetic,” I said.

  “Dead with relief,” he mumbled through one side of his mouth. “Can’t talk while dead.”

  “Oh dear. Dead sounds serious. I’ll see if Klok can use his palm spark for a defibrillator.”

  He caught my ankle with his hand when I tried to walk away.

  “No time. Need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

  “Only if I get to smother you first!”

  I yanked a pillow off the nearest couch and pounced on him, with my knees on either side of his stomach and the pillow over his face.

  Jermay wrapped his arms around me and sat up, leaving me in his lap. He knocked the pillow aside so I was staring into his eyes. Electric-blue and live-wire sparking.

  “This is why I love you. You know that, right?” he said.

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  He’d kissed me before, but this was different. We weren’t about to be killed or captured. There was no threat that if we didn’t do it now, we’d never get the chance. This was a choice, and we made it together. Penelope and Jermay, the way I’d always imagined.

  This was real. Not a dream. Definitely not a nightmare.

  I twitched my hand toward the door and blew it shut. Anybody ruining this moment was going to end up a fried clucking chicken.

  CHAPTER 21

  The clock flashed 2:19 in the morning.

  2:20.

  2:27.

  The numbers were so bright and so blue I couldn’t miss them, even from across the room. I closed my eyes, but I knew they were still there, stealing my sleep one perfectly calibrated minute at a time.

  I peeked out the window; it was pitch-black outside. One in twenty buildings had lights on, including the Harts and Palms. Most others had fallen prey to the curfew.

  Everyone in the penthouse was asleep except for me, the golems patrolling the upper floor, and the mini–creeper lights rolling through the rafters in an apparent game of chase. When they had no one to entertain, they entertained themselves, and I had the strangest feeling that we weren’t going to get them to come back down. They liked it there.

  Even Klok had conked out on the sofa downstairs, bathed in the light of the nearest TV, with a quiz-show theme song for a lullaby. I was the only one who hadn’t been relieved of her insomnia.

  I was afraid of what might happen if I slept. Too many what-if scenarios involving night terrors and the potential demolition of a multistory hotel because I couldn’t keep the monsters where they belonged. I needed to safely burn off some steam and unwind. Maybe then I could convince myself we really were safe this time.

  The master bathroom was the logical choice. I could lock the door, and marble didn’t burn. Better yet, I could practice
water control and not have to worry about making a mess.

  The bathroom was bigger than the bedroom. More gold—even the faucets and the toilet, which felt like overkill to me. The tub was bigger than most wading pools. Klok could have lain out flat in the bottom, and there would’ve still been room past his head and feet. It was over two feet deep and situated on a pedestal in the exact center of the room.

  I sat in the tub in my pajamas, legs crossed lotus-style and eyes closed, attempting to balance all of my weight on my tailbone. The water level rose slowly, and I went with it. Water and air worked together to create buoyancy that allowed me to float.

  Stardust, drifting through the endless void of space—maybe the word wouldn’t bother me so much if I owned it. Like the Mile, I became a trail of glittering gold left behind by a comet no one even remembered the name for. Cast-off ice, precious metals fused into frozen glass.

  When I opened my eyes, I was several feet off the ground. All the water from the tub was still below me, but out of the boundaries of the tub itself. The faucet poured up, deepening and widening the pool I held together by force of will alone.

  I laughed. This was fun! My touch had never been fun.

  Expanding my repertoire had always been a matter of self-defense or protecting the people around me. I learned in the moment, when sink or swim were my only options. I’d never had the chance to play with it before.

  Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for a sight you’ve never dreamed of. Behold the dancing waters of the Harts and Palms hotel!

  Maybe they’d give me my own brochure and a fancy new name. After all, I loved performing, and I had references. Fugitive references, but they’d give me glowing recommendations.

  I lowered my feet into the water collected below me, amazed that it felt no different to my skin than air. I raised my hands, creating currents set to the soundtrack of The Show in my head. A tinny carnival sound that used to soak into our atmosphere so that people walked out humming it.

  My sailfish made an appearance, breaking the surface with its dorsal fin to swim in time to the music. It bobbed up and down in a carousel rhythm, an observation the water decided to run with. The pool became a disk. Water bubbled up and burst, producing horses and sea creatures, marvels and beasts. They settled into tracks along the grooves with me as the floating fulcrum of a merry-go-round unlike any other, and no one else was awake to see it.

  The figures twirled faster and tighter, closing in on me. A prancing horse slammed its hooves into my chest, throwing me into a sea serpent that trampled me under, submerging my head below the beating hooves of kirin and unicorns.

  “Stop!” I tried to say, but inhaled stinging, burning water.

  The carousel kept spinning, and the music in my head turned hectic. Too fast, too pitched. Out of control.

  A lion charged toward me, jaws gaping and ready to snap.

  “Stop!”

  The carousel was now a stampede of furious feet and paws running in an endless circle and battering the air from my lungs. It knocked me end over end, refusing to allow me time to catch my breath. I pulled my arms and legs in tight to guard myself against the beating, and the creatures changed again. Their legs spiraled out into clinging tentacles dragging me down, down, down into water that deepened as I sank. The spinning disk became a column with me drowning at its center.

  I opened my eyes and saw myself in the mirror, being strangled by a swarming bloom of jellyfish.

  “Nim!” I screamed into the water. Bubbles bursting without sound. “Nim!”

  Short for Nimue, not nemesis, despite my telling her otherwise. She was the sour sister. The one who took delight in causing trouble. A turbulent sea nymph trapped on land, but she was also a fierce defender of those she loved. If I could connect to Anise through the constant of the earth, then Nim should have been there in the water.

  “NIM!” The last of my air escaped as the last word I would ever speak. My body twitched, demanding that I breathe in whether there was air or not. My lungs were empty and they hated the feeling. My blood screamed for oxygen.

  I heard a laugh. Biting and choppy as the ocean in a storm, the way Nim sounded when she’d pulled a prank.

  “Water is life,” said a voice I would have sworn was hers. “It’s not death.”

  The currents calmed, and the tentacles unraveled, but I was still trapped in the middle.

  “Water is life,” she said again.

  A hallucination before dying?

  Where was the replay of my life? All the moments I’d forgotten to remember, brought back so I could say good-bye?

  “You’re all wet!” A familiar taunt from my sister, and a warning that she was about to drench someone with a wave they couldn’t escape. “You’re all wet from H to O!”

  O.

  Oxygen. There was oxygen in water. Was Nim trying to help me from whatever hole she’d been thrown into?

  I put my arms straight out into a T with my feet pointed down to lock my position in the column, gave myself a three count, and breathed in at the point I was ready to black out.

  Water filled my mouth, cold and rushing into the void. It vaporized against my tongue. Oxygen flowed down. Hydrogen drifted up and out through my nose. I was breathing underwater!

  My heartbeat slowed. I kept my eyes on myself in the mirror, marveling as I saw myself gulp water and breathe out bubbles.

  The column flattened out. Without warning, it sloshed down and took me with it. I landed on my back in the tub with a splash. Water flooded over the sides, but I was free.

  I scrambled out, reached for one of the hotel robes on the hook, and hastily bade the water lift off the floor and return to the tub and shower and sinks—anything with a drain.

  Unwinding was the opposite of the result I got after the weirdest trip to the bathroom in history. I didn’t think anything could have struck me as weird anymore, but breathing underwater? Seriously? I wasn’t even sure Nim could do that; her act had always been on dry land.

  I needed something to distract me from the feeling of drowning I couldn’t shake. Something serious. Fun was hazardous to my health.

  I returned to the suite’s office and retrieved my father’s computer, along with my memory chip, and carried them both upstairs to where Xerxes and Bijou were the only ones around to ask me what I was doing.

  “I don’t suppose you know the password?” I asked Xerxes. More than one of the people I’d encountered since I lost my father had spoken to his masterpiece like it was his proxy, including Warden Nye and my father’s own sister. Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

  He padded over and climbed onto the table. He considered the computer, then me, then leaned over and nipped my ear.

  “What was that for?” I grabbed my ear and held out my hand so he could see the blood on my fingers.

  He made one of his many dismissive noises and jumped down.

  “Crazy golem,” I grumbled. Tugging my ear used to be a prompt from my father to center myself before going into the arena. It was a gentle reminder that he was watching from the sidelines, never hard enough to make me bleed.

  I had red on my hand and on my robe. It was probably dripping onto the chair, which was evidence of our presence in the room that we didn’t want to leave behind. Thankfully, ridiculously posh hotel suites came stocked with tissues, same as the regular kind. I pinched one around my earlobe until the bleeding stopped.

  “See what you did?” I shook the tissue at Xerxes. “Mortally wounded. Your fault. Bad gryphon!”

  He rattled his wings at me.

  He already had my attention, so what—

  “Is this a clue?” I asked.

  Xerxes sat down.

  This would have been so much easier if my father had given him a voice screen like Klok’s. What good was a machine capable of higher reasoning if he couldn’t tell me what he knew?

  And what kind of a clue was blood?

  “Thirty-three spaces and blood,” I said. “Thirty-three spa
ces . . . not enough for chromosomes.”

  There were forty-six chromosomes in human blood, and they didn’t have names. They had numbers.

  But if the clue was my blood, then maybe the answer was staring me in the face. Every time I entered a password, the screen flashed bloodred and filled with Xs. My sisters and I were all girls, so did it mean X chromosomes? Was the answer in the riddle itself? That definitely sounded like something my father would do.

  I pressed the X key until all of the spaces were filled, and hit “Enter.”

  The screen flashed red, and I lost another number off the counter. I was down to my last chance.

  “What?” I demanded. “What else could blood mean if not me or my sisters?”

  Wait . . .

  Maybe I was overthinking this.

  Nieva, Nimue, Anise. I counted off the letters in their names. Vesper, Penn.

  Too short. I deleted Penn and retyped it as Penelope.

  Still four letters off. I took a deep breath and added the name no one was supposed to speak, much less know: Nico.

  A vertical line split the screen down the middle, opening like a set of doors. I was in!

  I slid my memory chip into the slot with a promise to melt the stupid thing sight unseen if it was password locked, too.

  The chip’s drive opened, revealing a single video file.

  I hit “Play,” and my father appeared in extreme close-up, washed out in the light of his camera as he turned on the device. He took a seat in what had been his office on the train, folded his hands, crossed his legs, and began to speak.

  “Hello, Penn . . . Penelope. I swore never to burden you with this if I was able to conceal it, so it’s a given that I’m not there with you as you watch this.”

  The same words he’d written in the birthday card he left for me at the Hollow. My reaction to hearing them spoken was the same as it had been to reading them—I started to cry, but made myself stop.

  “Don’t mourn The Show, Penn. It was always an illusion on the verge of collapse; only the people were real. And if any of those people are with you now, I must ask them a favor: Leave me alone with my daughter. I suspect that having an audience hear what I have to share may be too much to bear after the trials which no doubt predicated taking refuge here,” my father said.