by Gwenda Bond
In the sandstorm, no one will see. He can take me anywhere. All Tam and Bree will know is that I’m not here anymore.
I struggle harder, but when the god releases me, the drop is so unexpected it knocks my breath away. I hit the ground hard.
The sand swirls once more before it settles. Mehen steps over me.
Spitting out grains of sand, I sit up and see my saviors.
Society field operatives fan out into the yard in their familiar navy uniforms. I scan for him but, like laughing Legba, sandstorm-causing Set is already gone.
The snake god stands in front of me as if I’m a prize he has to protect. The operatives approach him warily.
Most of them are adults. But a skinny blond boy not much older than me pages through some kind of small black notebook and mutters to himself as he gets closer to Mehen. He has something else in one of his hands too, a green cuff of some kind, and he looks from it to the god, his dismay clear... He frowns at the book, and Mehen glides toward him.
I consider shouting a warning, but the boy glances up and finds the god coming at him before I can. He backs away, his panic reminding me of my own.
He doesn’t see the other boy running up behind him. This one is taller, all lean muscle and speed, with angular features and dark brown hair clipped short. He’s like a human knife slicing through the air. He draws back the string of his bow, and lets a quarrel fly. It pierces one side of the snake god’s hood, drawing a hiss of pain.
The boy-like-a-knife tosses the bow aside so he can shove the backpedaling blond boy out of the way. He says, “Move it, Justin!”
He leaps into the space the other boy occupied. The god flings his arm out hard and fast. The blow will knock the boy out, maybe even kill him – except that it doesn’t connect.
Despite his successful dodge, the boy curses, first in English, which I understand, and then speaking what I think might be Ancient Greek. Definitely ancient something. He dips in close enough to… touch the god’s face. Not that different from how the god touched mine. His hand rests against one scaly cheek for a breath, before he steps back.
I wait for the god to go after him, but he doesn’t budge. At all. His red globe eyes are open and fixed on the brown-haired boy.
“Quick,” the boy waves the other operatives forward, “it won’t hold him long.”
Two men advance and sling a loop of golden rope over the god, a more visible binding than whatever the boy did. I have never seen a relic this close, but everyone knows the theory of how they work. The Society collected all of them that it could find and spent hundreds of years figuring out how to activate the gods’ magic that remains within them. Each produces a different effect.
The hero of the moment offers a hand to the other boy and helps him up. The blond’s cheeks are pink with what can only be embarrassment.
Dude, I want to say, that was a snake god. You and I, we understand each other. I can’t believe you tried to get close to him in the first place. But I’m still trying to clear my throat so I can speak.
Tam leads Bree over, supporting her with an arm. They are both coated in a fine layer of sand, and I check my clothes to confirm I am too.
When they reach me, I finally manage to choke out my question, “Is it over? We’re safe?”
The brown-haired boy stops in front of us. “Yes, it is,” he says. “Yes, you are.” His British accent is a surprise. He takes in Bree and Tam, but focuses on me.
“How did you know to come here?” Tam asks.
“Thank you, is what he means,” I say. They did save us. But it’s possible Tam doesn’t know the snake god tried to take me. I shiver.
“We just did,” the boy answers Tam. He extends his hand to me. I take it, a reflex without really thinking, to shake. But he puts his other one over the top of mine instead, and the touch helps steady me after the shock of the last few minutes. His pupils are small in the sun, irises the gray-blue of the Potomac River.
It’s nice to look into eyes that are normal eyes, and not those of threatening gods.
“Sandstorm, I take it?” he asks.
I nod.
“Set was here,” he says. “Interesting.”
I don’t take my hand back, not yet. “Who are you?”
“Oh,” the boy says, as if he’s forgotten to introduce himself and this is any given situation. I notice my breath comes easier. I’m already having trouble believing what just happened, well, just happened. He goes on, “I’m Osborne Spencer. You can call me Oz, though. I’m here to take you to your grandfather.”
The confusion on Tam and Bree’s faces is a mirror to my own. I look back to the boy, still holding my hand in both of his, and I point out the obvious problem: “But I don’t have a grandfather.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The other operatives bundle a still-bound Mehen into their big black carriage to deliver him back to Set House. Oz has clarified that he’s supposed to escort me to headquarters at the Library, and he waves a hand toward the Mall to indicate our route. “We’ll walk it,” he says.
There’s no way Bree, Tam, or I will abandon each other after being attacked by gods, so we’re all going. But as we start heading that way, Oz stops and scans us. He frowns, holds up a finger. “Wait.”
We do. He jogs across the lawn, and disappears behind Einstein’s statue.
A strange, frazzled euphoria hums through me. I recognize it from times Bree and I snuck into the Black Cat club, from the first time Tam and I made out, from six months ago when my mom saw me from a distance and waved like everything was OK… The last memory drowns out the hum, which is too bad. Surely I deserve a little high for surviving.
Bree catches my arm. “Grandfather?”
I shrug. “Both dead. Long time ago. Never met either of them.”
She nods, the purple swirls of her earrings shaking with the movement. “That’s what I thought.”
I feel a momentary twinge of guilt, because Bree believes my mom’s dead too. She only moved here post-Awakening, when her perfectly-coiffed, TV reporter mother divorced her father and accepted an assignment at the network’s D.C. bureau. I wasn’t ready to talk about Mom when we met, and so when she assumed I didn’t correct her.
Anyway, I’m positive that Society boy Oz has the wrong girl, like the gods did, and that this is a mix-up of epic proportions. I’ll play along for now. I haven’t mentioned that my dad works at the Library yet, figuring I can surprise Oz. And the rest of the Society, and my dad, once we get there. I haven’t been allowed in since I was a kid and the general public was welcome. I miss the place.
The embarrassed boy with the notebook stands near us. He was introduced as Justin. I tilt my head toward Oz as he emerges from behind the statue, holding something I can’t see from this angle. “Justin, what’s he doing?”
Justin shrugs. “I wouldn’t want to speculate.”
I feel a laugh bubble up at the formality of his answer, but worry he’ll think I’m making fun of him. In truth, I can’t help liking him. I can see the appeal of hiding your nose in a notebook in a situation like a god attack. Translating the impulse into a smile, I end up directing it at Oz as he returns. He holds out my backpack to me. “Yours?”
“How did you know?” I figure it’s the skull-and-crossbones decal, and if not that then the fact Bree’s still wearing hers. But he hesitates like he has to come up with a response. I let him off the hook, “Thanks,” I say, taking it and swinging my arms through the straps. “You found my favorite weapon. I threw it at Mehen’s head. You could say it was a swing and a miss.”
“That’s not much of a weapon,” Oz agrees.
We cross the street in a pack. Traffic is light today, just a few riders on horseback and a commercial carriage headed along the broad street. In some cities, cars work fine, but we seem to have just the right amount of magic to stop a car engine flat about ninety percent of the time. Horses and bikes are popular.
“Speaking of weapons, what happened with your relic?” Bree d
irects the question to Justin, whose pale cheeks flame again.
“I’m curious about that too,” Oz says.
“I don’t know,” Justin says, and I can tell he means it. “The notes were right. It should have worked, but when I tried to fling it, the cuff stayed locked.”
“It’s probably just something in the wrist, or a missing word in the command,” Oz says. “You’ll figure it out.”
“What relic was it?” I put in, riveted at an insider convo like this, even a vague one.
Justin hesitates, looking over at Oz, who shrugs, “You can tell her.”
I’m not the only one who catches the way they both glance at Tam and Bree. Bree tosses dust-coated black curls over her shoulder. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because you seem nice. But you’re not going to try to disappear us or something? My mom will go nuclear and his parents are–”
“We know who they are,” Oz interrupts. “And we don’t disappear people. Only conspiracy crazies think that. We save people, like we saved you.” He says it like he shouldn’t have to.
This back and forth clearly makes Justin uncomfortable. He holds the cuffs of his uniform sleeves, fidgeting while he explains. “It’s the Monkey King’s jade cuff. It was used to hold him captive briefly. We recovered it from a crime syndicate in Hong Kong sixty years ago. It should’ve worked.”
“And so what did you do?” I ask Oz.
Oz brushes the gold bars pinned to the left breast of his uniform. They’re slightly wavy to invoke rays from the sun. “When we get our stripes, they include a piece of the chains Hephaestus forged to hold Prometheus. Only a small piece, so we can’t use it all the time and it doesn’t work that long, but it’ll freeze someone – human, non-human – in a pinch. You’ve never heard this before?”
“We’re not Society groupies,” Tam says.
Justin ignores Tam. He touches the bars on his shirt, and says, “I forgot all about mine.”
Oz claps him on the shoulder. “Next one’s all you.”
“Right,” Justin says.
I hope he does get the best of whatever god behaving badly they come up against next. And also that Oz’s there in case he has another relic malfunction. It’s a weird thing to hope when it’s likely I’ll never see either of them again after we get to the Library. One more Weird Thing to add to today’s list of them. I’d almost forgotten mine and Dad’s argument, which would be the first item. Remembering now brings that hum back, but instead of euphoria it’s a hint of worry. I’ll be glad to get to the Library and see him. He won’t be able to blame me for this. Maybe he’ll give me some sympathy for once.
“Osborne, you never did say how you knew we were in trouble,” Tam says.
That he’s not dropping this question and refuses to use the shorter form of Oz’s name could be added to a list called Unsurprising Things. Luckily, I’m not the type who actually keeps lists.
“It’s not a conspiracy,” Oz counters. “I promise.”
His smile is sharp, like a razor, like him. He’s been nice – witness the backpack retrieval – but there’s an edge beneath it. Justin seems like a normal kid who somehow ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Oz couldn’t have been more comfortable going up against that god. I wonder what his story is.
“Give it up, Tam. He’s got your number,” I say.
But Tam isn’t done. “Do you think it’s possible they were there because of my mom and dad… Maybe they…?”
“No,” Oz says, “they weren’t there for you.”
The certainty in Oz’s expression makes the hum kick up when he turns it on me.
“You think they were really there for me?” I ask. “I’m nobody. They just fixated for some reason. Sometimes gods do crazy things. You should know better than anybody.”
Oz says, “Yes, sometimes they do.”
I sense he’s humoring me. “Let’s just get there, so we can go home.” The hum is turning into full-fledged worry, and I don’t know why.
Bree and Tam must be freaked too, because we stay quiet as we make our way up the rest of the Mall – passing a clump of camped-out revelers – and around the vacant white-domed Capitol. Congress only meets here twice a year. The rest of their increasingly pointless work gets done in some underground hideaway where the president is stashed. We stop across the street, in front of the Library’s main building.
The front fountain is off, but water pools around the dark statue of Neptune. He’s flanked by Tritons blowing into conch shells, calling the court of the sea. The Jefferson Building looms above us, covered in statues and busts and stone flourishes. Three arched entrances wait like dark mouths at the top of the stairs.
There had been a Society outpost here since it was built apparently, and when they announced they were taking over, that made sense. All those painted and sculpted gods everywhere, all those books full of hidden logic and forgotten knowledge. Conspiracy theorists had a field day.
I pull my jacket on as we walk up the steps. “It’s always cold in there,” I explain. “Well, it used to be.”
Oz only nods, intent on our destination. A line of Society guards waits at the top. Taking in Oz, the one in front of the only open entrance says, “The director is waiting in his office,” and steps aside to admit us. Bree slips her arm through mine, and asks, “Your dad’s working today, right?”
I nod as we go through the door and pass into the deserted Great Hall. It hasn’t changed.
Stained glass squares of blue and gold stretch high overhead. Rows of electric lights shine around windows on the upper levels. Marble stairways curve opposite one another, bronze ladies thrusting globe lights into the air at their bottoms. There’s the great brass sun in the middle of the floor. I used to lay on it right before closing sometimes, Dad calling out the astrological signs marked out around me, telling me I was at the center of the universe. When he got to mine, he’d always shout out, “Crabby!” and Mom or I would correct him, “No, Cancer, silly!”
Nice as it is to see the inside of the Library again, I’ve let this go far enough. I start, “Look, it’s been fun…”
“It has?” Bree interrupts.
I correct, “OK, not fun, not fun at all, but we’re glad you showed when you did. I think you should know my dad works here. For you guys. Can you get him? His name’s Henry Locke. He’s a research librarian.”
Oz speaks to Bree and Tam, and only them. “The first operatives back will have already gotten messages to your parents. You can wait in the gallery over there. Justin will take you.”
Tam steps forward. “And Kyra will come with us while you go get her dad.”
Oz says, “She needs to come with me.”
“Where?” Tam prods.
I step in. “I’m sure he’s just taking me to Dad. Tam, it’s fine. You probably can’t go because you might see ‘secret Society business’ or something.”
“Then why would they let you?” Bree asks. “I’m sure your dad’ll come to you if you don’t want to go off alone with…” She swallows Oz’s name, realizing he’s right there.
“Oz doesn’t scare me. Besides, I can’t wait to see the look on Dad’s face when I show up in front of him. Promise I’ll call you later.”
“I really don’t like this,” Tam says.
But when Oz prompts, “Justin?” and the blond boy says, “This way,” Bree and Tam go with him.
Oz leads me through the Great Hall, turning the corner to steps that go down. Tam’s paranoia must have rubbed off. I stop. “Doesn’t Dad work in the upstairs libraries?”
“Not today,” Oz says.
I frown, but follow him down, and down again, to a long hallway with regularly spaced doors and paintings. He leads me to… a marble wall. Featureless gray and white, except for a curving gold gas lamp. The backup lighting system, I assume. “Oz, where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t look at me. “You’ll find out what you want to know when we get there.”
“Nice non-answer.”
He reaches out and takes the unlit lamp like a handle, turning it like one too. The wall grinds open, creating a seam big enough for a person to go through.
“OK, that’s cool,” I admit.
“After you,” he says, and I walk through the wall. So to speak. The hall behind it is lit by flickering gas lights. Oz comes through, but stops. He doesn’t move for a long moment. Which is weird since he’s been in such a hurry to steer me down here.
“What is it?” I ask.
He hesitates, and I can’t help but admire the line of his jaw in profile, the rounded muscle of his shoulder under the navy uniform.
He says, “I’m taking you to your grandfather, but I don’t know exactly what he’s going to tell you. It’s just… Be prepared for anything. It may not be good.”
I am always prepared for the worst, I want to say. And usually it happens. But I go with, “I already told you I don’t have a grandfather. This is a huge mistake.”
“If that’s true,” he says, as if he’s unconvinced, “then all this will be cleared up soon. But if it’s not…”
“Got it. Prepare for apocalypse.” He cuts me a surprised look, and I add, “Not a real one, sorry. Forgot who I was talking to. The metaphorical kind.”
Oz shakes his head, having no doubt decided I’m a lunatic, and presses something on the wall so it closes behind us with a decisive thud.
For a second I feel as if I’ve been sealed in a tomb, the hall airless and dim. As bravely as I can manage, I say, “Lead on, gallant helper of girls in distress.”
“You mean gallant warrior,” he corrects, but he starts walking.
I do too. “I think I said what I mean. Gallant warrior of girls in distress doesn’t even make sense.”
He half-laughs, but, besides that, the only sound is our feet on the marble. His clomping boots, my squishy sneakers. Carved insets hold statues between the doors. Based on the names carved below or above, and the fact they’re of humans, I guess they’re Society members. I don’t bother asking, because I want to see my dad already. I want to be proved right.