by Louise Cole
I bristled. “Well, maybe when you’re done patronizing me, you could answer my question.”
“Physically, they are similar to people. They eat, they breathe, they can die. They can see, despite the weird eyes. But they’re not the same inside. Inside, they’re . . .” Ella stopped and shuddered.
“Inside, they’re what?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Inside their heads, it’s like a window into hell. If that’s not the definition of a demon, I don’t know what is.”
“That’s what freaks people out? We can feel that?”
Ella snapped off a grass stalk and twisted it around her fingers. “People respond to that kind of fear in different ways. Some hurt others, some panic. Some put a bullet through their own heads.”
I felt sick. Maybe the less I knew about these guys, the better I’d sleep at night. Ella’s lips gave a little twist of satisfaction. God, was she trying to drive me off the subject? The idea renewed my curiosity.
“So where do they come from?”
Ella threw away the stalk and brushed imaginary motes of grass from her fingers, her eyes never leaving mine. “We don’t have time for history lessons. We have to work. Now.”
“History? So you do know?” I sat up straighter.
Ella gave an exasperated sigh. “No. As far as we can tell, they have been around as long as the book. They are linked to it somehow. When global tensions rise, the Order steps in—and so do the Cadaveri. They follow the book, track and kill the Readers, do whatever they can to prevent us from succeeding. One theory is they want to use the book for a different purpose to that which its creators intended—which was to bring peace and prosperity.” She spread her hands. “That’s it. That’s honestly all I have been told. Can we get on with this now?”
Her mouth was a thin, hard line, as still as I’d seen it.
“OK,” I muttered.
We started by meditating to “calm and center ourselves.”
“Let all thought drift away,” said Ella. “Make yourself comfortable. Now focus on your breathing.”
I breathed. This all seemed a little hokey to me.
“Hear all the sounds around you, and then let them fall away, too.” Her voice was soft, hypnotic.
“I want you to imagine a staircase, Callie. A long, winding staircase. You’re going to walk down the staircase, and with each step you are becoming more relaxed, more centered.”
My staircase was hewn from granite with wide curving steps leading down a mountainside. I was vaguely surprised how quickly I visualized it. I stood on the top surveying a panorama of hills and dales, and, in the distance, a desert, golden brown and silent under the sun. I slowly sank my foot to the first step, cautious of the vast drop to my right. Imaginary, yes, but my imagination had a habit of charging ahead with ideas of its own. The stone was firm and cool under my foot, and I stepped down again, amazed somewhere deep inside to find I was indeed relaxing, letting go of muscles I hadn’t realized were tense.
“All the way to the bottom, Callie. One step at a time. Letting go. Just letting go.”
I walked more steadily now, confident with the voice beside me. This was my country, the sun warm on my face and the eternal green stretching out before me. I dropped down step after step, no longer feeling the ground beneath me in the garden, only the smooth stone beneath my feet.
“As you step off the staircase you will find yourself in the world of your deepest self, Callie. There is no need to be afraid. There is nothing here that can hurt you.”
I stepped off the staircase into the green meadow, wandering under low branches of apple trees and leaping daintily across the brook which crossed the orchard. There was a house ahead, Edwardian, with wide windows. I walked through the open door and up the stairs to the first floor. I pushed open the heavy oak door and walked across the floor of the library, idly trailing my fingers across the spines of books. This was my home. I’d lived here all my life.
A feeling of deep contentment settled on me. A thousand lives waited for me in this hall, thousands of places and experiences only I could bring to life. I reached out a loving hand to the bookcase and extracted a small volume, blue leather encasing its gold-edged pages, but, as I touched it, a scream pierced the house, rattling windows and making me drop the book in alarm.
“Mummy!” I yelled, five years old again in a blue check dress and ankle socks. “Mummy!” The shelves towered over me, dark wood spiraling to the ceiling like an ancient forest. “Mummy!” I wailed, the book fluttering at my feet like a wounded bird.
Suddenly, there she was, young and beautiful, holding me.
“Shhh. Shhh. Callie. It’s OK.” My mother’s arms surrounded me. “You know you shouldn’t be here, darling. It isn’t safe.”
“This is me,” I said. “This is my place.” I picked up the book, stilled its pages. “This is mine.” I held it out to her.
“No, Callie. It isn’t. Now come away.” She stood and took a step back.
“Look, Mummy, I can read,” I said, opening the book. “I speak of love and truth—”
Her scream struck me full force, and I fell backward. Her cry raged from my lungs as a body swung high above me in the barn, like a metronome—
“Callie, Callie, you are coming back to yourself. Feel the ground underneath you, Callie, hear the noises around you, let the world come back.” Ella’s voice sounded a little frantic. “You’re safe, you’re safe,” she murmured, her arms circling me as I struggled up.
“You said nothing could hurt me. You said this was safe! What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know. God, Callie, I’m so sorry. Can you tell me what happened?”
I looked at her, angry, bewildered, and more than anything bereft of my mother. It had seemed so real. So real.
“No,” I snarled. “Jace,” I called. “Take me home.”
Chapter 12
That night, I lay in bed and silently read the book. I read it again and again until every line was etched in my heart. I studied the images until I saw them even when I closed my eyes.
Jace checked in with me after dark. “You should sleep,” he said.
“Yeah. I will,” I murmured. “I’m going to read it one more time.”
“No.” He gently took the volume out of my hands and set it on the dresser. “Get some rest. There’ll be someone outside.”
“Not you?”
He shook his head. “I need to sleep, too, you know.”
“Will I get to meet whoever it is?”
“His name’s Richie. If he does his job right, you’ll never know he’s there.” He winked at me. “Neither will the enemy.”
He slipped out the garden door, and I lay in the dark for a few moments, thinking. Always a dangerous activity. Sleep was a stranger, and, on an impulse, I decided Richie shouldn’t be. I didn’t like the thought of a man I’d never met lurking outside ready to defend me.
I opened the door softly and peered around the moonlit space. The shadows clothed the trees in impenetrable black, but I could see a sliver of lawn down the center of the garden to the gaping hole I’d kicked in the fence. I took a tentative step forward and whispered, “Hello?”
“You need something, Miss?” A solidly built man stepped from the side of the house, almost silent as he padded across the grass toward me.
“Oh. Um. Hi.” I flushed. He was a working soldier. He wasn’t going to want to chat with me, and I suddenly felt foolish with my ratty pj’s and bed hair. “I just wanted to say hello. Really.” I stuck my hand out. “I’m Callie.”
He inclined his head to me with mock formality and shook my hand, lips twitching. “Richie.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Am I, like, blowing your cover or something?”
He chuckled, a deep, comfortable sound that made me think of firesides and wood cabins. “No, ma’am. It’s pretty quiet out tonight. Besides, anyone who comes looking will know why I’m here.” His soft, warm drawl washed over me in lazy waves.
I stood still for a moment, smiling like an idiot, my small stock of conversation already exhausted. What could I say? So, how did you meet Jace? Have you worked for the Order long?
“Well, I suppose I should let you, you know, patrol or whatever. I just wanted to say hi,” I mumbled. I turned to go back inside.
“This must be strange for you,” Richie commented softly. “Confusing.”
I gave a small laugh and glanced back at him. “You could say that. It’s kind of turned my world around, you know?”
“I guess so,” he replied. “It all been explained to you?”
I shrugged. “Mostly. I don’t really understand who the hell the Cadaveri are or where they come from.” I hesitated. “I get the feeling Ella doesn’t want to tell me. Apart from that, yeah, I understand. I think.”
He’d winced slightly as I cursed, and I felt grateful that the night hid my blush. “Well, we don’t rightly know what they are. Leastways, I don’t. Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell you.”
“Really?” I edged sideways to see him better. “How can you not know?”
Richie shrugged. “We know what they do. There ain’t any book in the real world that tells you what’s going on, you know? We piece it together best way we can.” He took a small hand-rolled cigarette out of his pocket. “You mind?” he murmured.
I shook my head.
“The way I see it, there’s a balance to everything. Night, day, up, down. These guys balance whoever created the book, I guess.”
“Like good and evil?”
Richie lit his cigarette and sucked hard on the little stub, creating a tiny red star in the night. “Oh, I’ve been a soldier too long to answer that question. Maybe. The only question we really need to answer is: what side are we on?”
I pondered that for a moment. “How can I know which is the right side when I don’t know where they came from or what they want? They want to stop us. They want chaos. Why? What do they get out of it?” I shook my head. “It makes no sense to me.”
Richie took a drag of his little roll-up and blew out slowly. “I can’t tell you the right thing for you, Callie. I can only tell you how I see it. I want a safer world for my girls to grow up in. I believe that’s what I’m doing.”
“You have kids?” I don’t know why I was surprised. I guess because he didn’t seem any older than Jace or Ella, and they hadn’t mentioned families. Then again, why would they?
He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small plastic wallet. “I surely do. Gracie and Carrie-Ann.” He pushed the picture in front of the sliver of light from my window, so I could see the two mop-headed toddlers with a lean brunette.
“They’re lovely.”
He stroked the image with a single finger. “That’s my wife, Sylvie. We were high school sweethearts.” He snapped the picture shut, and it disappeared back into his jacket. “Anyhow, you need to look at what people do. Do you think my girls would be safer with you reading that Moses-old book or with the Cadaveri spreading like bindweed? That’s the only question that matters to me.”
I studied his sun-weathered face for a moment, the stubble that suggested he hadn’t had time to shave for a couple of days now. He would spend all night here to keep me safe, far away from his family, in the hopes I would keep them safe. I’d never really considered what soldiers gave up before—the ones who chose that life as opposed to the kids I knew who were being drafted.
“Thanks, Richie,” I whispered. “I’ll think about what you said.”
By the time I’d shut my door, he had already disappeared back into the inky shadows.
I lay down in the darkness and let my mind wander. Had I not met Jace, had I not been drawn into this madness . . . had Alec not been an immature jerk . . . would it have been nice? Would we have kept that feeling of discovery and excitement and belonging that we’d had in the summer? When I tried to imagine it, Alec’s face slipped away like water, to be replaced by Jace’s dark hair, high, hard cheekbones, and green eyes.
I tossed and turned, and, just as I was despairing of sleep, I found my hand reaching for the book. With it clasped to my chest, I fell asleep in seconds. There was no rest, though. Images poured through my mind, often too rapidly for me to see them. It was like falling endlessly into a multicolored well, a stream of light and sound and incident blending together. I fell all night until, shortly before dawn, there was ground beneath my feet again and a room with an old fireplace. I checked my silver pocket watch and stuffed it back into the herringbone waistcoat. Picking up my medical bag, I opened the door and paused on the threshold: my life behind me, a patient’s life in front of me. When I awoke, my heart was full of a resignation that was neither defeat nor peace. It was something I’d never felt before. I didn’t think I was old enough to have felt anything like it.
I didn’t know who the man I’d dreamed about—or felt like I became—was, or why I would see his story. I fumbled for meaning, as I showered and dressed on autopilot, but it eluded me. The most I could deduce was that it was a story about doing what needed to be done. It was almost like the man himself didn’t matter, only what he did. It didn’t matter whether I dreamed about him or was him—the only issue was what he chose to do next.
Later, I met Jace at the bottom of the drive. He wanted to whisk me back to Ella but my grief at seeing my mother was just too harsh to bear. Ella didn’t get it. Nothing good came of digging up old pain. The thought of going back to that safe house for Ella to put me through yet another pointless, painful exercise made me feel physically ill. I wanted to go back my life, the familiar routine of school, my safe narrow world with my two best friends and all the pain buried deep and unexamined.
“I’m going to school,” I said.
“That’s not a good idea,” Jace replied, swinging the car keys slowly round his finger.
“You could be there. You’d protect me,” I begged. “Please Jace, I just can’t. . .The Cadaveri aren’t likely to storm into somewhere with hundreds of people, are they?”
He frowned. “You’ll work with Ella tonight?”
I leaped at this chance to buy myself some time. “Yes. Just give me today.”
“OK.”
As we drove away I told myself it was for the best. I’d read. I’d do what needed to be done, but I was not having Ella poking through my head anymore, dredging up things that could only ever hurt. Who I was didn’t matter. Only what I did. The best thing about living with my dad was he never asked me how I felt.
***
Cyrus looked around at the new cavalcade. There was a motley assortment of vehicles, all with license plates switched. A laundry had been raided twenty-five miles away, and a mountain of fresh clothes had been dropped in the middle of the floor. IDs, wallets, and two police uniforms had pride of place on the top. One had a drip of blood on the collar.
“You hurt him?” asked Cyrus.
“He fell in his panic. Cut his face. We did nothing except let them wind themselves into a frenzy. It would be interesting to see how they explain giving their car and clothes to three men who neither threatened nor hurt them.” The Cadaveri smirked.
“You care about hurting them, Cyrus?” asked Scarman.
“I care about actions which will expose us too soon.”
“Relax. Sailor and the Seer have found the girl. We move today.”
***
As we pulled up at school, Jace held out a little black gadget.
“Take this,” he said. “It’s a short-distance tracker. I’ll shadow your classes as much as I can, but I also have to pretend to work here. So I can’t be in every classroom with you. Any problem, I can find you with that.”
“OK,” I said. It had a clip on it like a pager, but there was no way I was going to wear it where anyone could see. I tucked it into my coat pocket.
***
“Hey stranger. What’s up?” Amber pulled me into the locker room.
“Oh, same old nightmare. Anything new?”
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“Nope. I did learn that some people think a bunch of witches drove back the Spanish Armada and Francis Drake took the credit, which is kind of like your thing, but I think it only really proves that some people will believe anything.” She pushed her bulging Prada knock-off into the locker. “So what are you going to do?”
This was it. I could hold Jace and Ella at arm’s length, buy myself thinking room, but there was no lying to Amber. I opened my mouth to say I was still undecided but instead heard the words, “I think I have to do this reading. It’s my responsibility.”
Amber took a step back, her mouth open. “Since when was world peace your responsibility?”
“Since I learned I could affect it.”
“OK, number one, we don’t know that for sure. Number two, have you forgotten the great big danger sign over your head? White-eyed freaks with knives?”
I sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand, Amber. But my mother did this, so she must have thought the Order’s mission was worthwhile. And the white-eyed freaks won’t go away if I don’t read. Jace said so.”
A half-smile broke on Amber’s face. “Oh, Jace said so. Well then, it must be true. Callie, listen to yourself. Of course he’d tell you the Order is your only hope. They want you to do this.”
“My mother—”
“We don’t know what happened to your mother. For all we know, the Order killed her because she wouldn’t read.”
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I hadn’t ever really thought my mother had killed herself—although I guess I’d never know for sure—but it had never occurred to me that anyone but the Cadaveri could be to blame. It couldn’t have been the Order. Even if she’d refused to read, they wouldn’t have killed her.
“That’s ridiculous. Jace has kept me alive more times than I can count now.” I shoved my coat and bag into my locker and rummaged for my history book.
“He wouldn’t have had to if he hadn’t painted a target on your back.”
I slammed the locker and spun around. “Don’t you get it? The biggest war we can imagine is coming. Our friends, all the people we know, will be sent to fight. Cities are being blown up. I can stop it simply by reading from a book. How can that not be worth it?”