Sing Down the Stars (The Celestine Series Book 1)

by L. J. Hatton

  “I thought she was lyin’,” Tuck said.

  The Abbess threw her arms up to hide her face and made for the door farthest from the lights, hissing like an angry cat.

  Tuck stood still while bits of metal and wood smashed around him. Some flew straight through Rye, who was floating near us.

  “You need to run, sister,” he said, cordial again. “They’re coming, and it won’t matter what’s in their way.”

  Shelves knocked over, shattering glass as they fell, and I was still dangling from Klok’s hands. He held tight, but the vibrations passed through his arms. Jermay had reached the vent and was propping it open when something large hit the main warehouse door. The jolt knocked Birdie sideways. She screamed as our guardian climber lights shot out to catch her. Klok pulled me up quick, and we slipped away. Jermay and Winnie dropped out onto the roof of the adjacent building.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  “Which way?” Winnie asked.

  Good question.

  We were in a dodgy part of town with nothing familiar, and all the warehouse roofs looked alike. The creeper lights and climbers hadn’t come out with us, so there’d be no more help from them. I could see blurred shapes in the streets where more unnoticeables had been dispatched.

  “Are you all right?” Jermay asked, pulling me close when we paused to get our bearings. Klok rat-tatted the same thing.

  “None of us will be all right for long,” I said. “That unnoticeable knows us.”

  “The warehouses are no cover,” Winnie said. Their walls were too thin, threatening to collapse under our feet from the rumble alone. More roofs spread out in all directions, stacked dominoes ready to fall. Dark gaps between them were the only indication of streets below us as we ran toward the hanging moon. “If they bring in air support—”

  “Don’t even think that,” I snapped. For sky-eyes, picking a person off a roof was as simple as scooping fish off a boat with a net.

  “They’re on the roof,” a voice announced. An unnoticeable was with us. Another new face—how many of these things were there?

  “This way,” Birdie shouted and spun right, hopping onto another roof. She scrambled across and climbed up a ladder that connected to another building.

  “They’re headed south,” the unnoticeable said, appearing on the next roof, too. Birdie ran through him; the rest of us followed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Jermay and Winnie shrugged. Birdie stood on the higher roof, searching for something, while Klok brought up the rear. “There! Follow the flame. It leads to help!” Birdie pointed to a distant glow that leapt suddenly higher in the night.

  Then she was off again, flitting from one building to the next, hardly touching down. Each roof we hit came with another flickering unnoticeable.

  I had no idea who Birdie’s “they” were, but she’d survived a long time before my father found her. The idea that she knew someone with a mind to help wasn’t something to argue with.

  Follow the flame, nudged a voice in my head. Follow the flame. The door’s open.

  As we drew nearer, I could see that the light was actual fire wrapping around a bronze crucifix in a giant bowl below the words Cathedral of the True Flame. The flame leapt again, and again the voice said: Follow.

  “Smart kid.” Rye was with us now. After urging us on, he shouted, “They’re headed for the church!”

  Birdie shimmied down a post beside the last building, then hurried us across the narrow road and up the stairs to a pair of imposing wood doors. The law said no one could force their way into a holy house without permission.

  She ran through Rye and into the building.

  “I can’t go in there,” Jermay said nervously. He stopped running so quickly that dust settled over his shoes.

  “Get moving before they switch to tactile transmissions,” Rye said, then he yelled, “Stop!”

  “Penn—it’s a church. I can’t.”

  It was true enough that there were people who cited prayer books as reasons to call us worse than carnies. Sometimes they gathered outside the circus grounds and tried to turn people away, claiming the flash and shine of The Show was merely a veneer of gold over garbage. But I didn’t see many alternatives. More unnoticeables were blinking in around us.

  Birdie was already inside, and Winnie had gone after her.

  “Don’t!” an unnoticeable ordered.

  The others crowded us, making a vain grab for Klok, who shuffled Jermay the rest of the way over the threshold. This time, I didn’t just see them; I felt their hands.

  Holograms with hands. How was this possible?

  Klok shut the doors behind us. Jermay winced at the thud, drawing himself up tight for several seconds before cracking an eyelid to survey our surroundings.

  “We’re okay?” he asked, as though it was a shock we hadn’t turned to salt as soon as we set our shoes against the rugs.

  “Over there,” Birdie whispered, ducking low between carved wooden benches. She led us, crouching through the rows until we reached a closet with two doors. “Inside. Hide under the seats.”

  We wouldn’t all fit in one door, so Klok and Jermay went to the other side while Birdie, Winnie, and I smushed ourselves into a space that should have barely fit one of us. A bell clinked overhead.

  “That’s the call to let them know the box is full,” Birdie said.

  I heard another door click open, and the sound of feet across the wooden floor. Whoever answered the bell stopped at the other side of the closet, jiggling the handle when it wouldn’t give.

  “This is the Father’s side, dear,” said a woman’s voice. “It’ll be a few moments. He was in bed.”

  I flattened out on the floor. Through a grate near the bottom of the divider, I could see that Jermay was in the same position. I reached my fingers through, and we lay there with our hands hooked together as if contact could keep us from being discovered.

  “There’s an order to these things,” said the woman. “I really must insist.”

  She turned the knob on our door.

  Birdie grabbed our side of the knob with both hands, and Winnie pulled against her until her muscles shook. I tugged Birdie’s belt with the hand that wasn’t holding Jermay’s. When the woman tried our door, it lurched, but didn’t open all the way before Birdie slammed it shut, making the bell tink again.

  “What on earth?”

  This time, the woman peeked through the crack. When our eyes met I forgot how to breathe. She let go of the door and retreated a step.

  “Shove her over and run out the back,” Jermay whispered through the grate.

  “No,” I said. “Stay put.”

  By now, we’d be surrounded.

  Maybe things would have happened differently if she’d kept at it, or called us out and demanded we leave, but there was a knock against the church’s front door, and the woman went to answer it.

  “What do you mean, making that kind of racket at this hour?” Her kind tone disappeared.

  “We’re looking for someone.”

  I’d heard that voice before. I peeked out, but all I could see was the woman, in a long gray dress, holding her hand on the outer door so whoever was on the other side couldn’t open it.

  “And you think they’re here?” she asked.

  “They were seen entering,” he insisted.

  “Of course they were,” she said dismissively. “I don’t suppose your miscreants are a mob of university kids running around in fright masks?”

  “Three girls; one tall and gangly, with short hair. The other two are dark skinned. One of the boys is a real monster, hulking huge, and the other’s a slippery rat of a thief.”

  It wasn’t unusual for people to think poorly of those of us who lived on the train, but it was worse hearing it said.

  “I don’t see a
nyone like that.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m a nun, Warden. We’re always sure. If you don’t trust my eyes, then use your own—but stay on that side of the door.”

  Warden.

  The one who’d followed my tour and stolen my lines. The man who destroyed my life. He was here.

  The woman stepped back to let him poke his head into the sanctuary. He bent to take a look beneath the empty seats. He glanced toward our box, but looked away just as quickly.

  “Satisfied?” the woman asked.

  “If you see them—”

  “Then it’s my business. And yours is done here.”

  “You aren’t as hospitable as I’d expect someone in those clothes to be.”

  “And you aren’t as stupid as I’d expect someone in that uniform to be. Are we finished with the veiled insults, or shall I fetch a chair and some tea?”

  “Good night, Sister,” the warden said.

  “Wait . . .” The woman sighed, and I thought surely she was giving us up. “Try the alley, past the old churchyard. We’ve had trouble lately—could be kids, or something else entirely.”

  “Thank you,” he said earnestly, then left, shouting orders for those with him to head to the churchyard.

  “Idiot.”

  The woman slammed the door.

  “You can come out now,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  No one moved more than a shrug of my shoulders. Birdie mouthed, What do we do?

  “Hmm,” the woman said. “If there’s no one holding the doors closed, they must be stuck. I’ll have to ask that nice warden to get them open for me. Can’t very well have a confessional no one can get into . . .”

  “No!” Jermay burst out of his side of the box.

  “Please don’t,” I said, coming from my side with Birdie and Winnie. Klok planted himself in front of us.

  “Oh good, someone was in there. For a moment, I thought I might have lost my mind.” She looked us over. “You really are children, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jermay said.

  “Human?”

  “One hundred percent, ma’am.”

  “No need for hyperbole; I’m not sure anyone’s one hundred percent anything these days. There’s always room for improvement, or I’d be out of a job. Now follow me before they start snooping through windows.”

  She started toward a door at the back of the sanctuary.

  “You lied . . .” Birdie announced, hurrying after the woman, “. . . in a church.”

  “That wasn’t a lie, dear.” The woman led us into the back hall, and farther into a simply furnished house with a small table and a roaring fire. “A lie would have been ‘I have never seen those children, not even once.’ I couldn’t see you very well at all. Therefore, it was not a lie, just a carefully worded truth. Besides, it’s still Friday, and I’m fairly certain that well-intentioned slips of the tongue are forgivable on Fridays.”

  She went to a cupboard and brought out a stack of dishes.

  “I don’t have enough plates, but if you don’t mind eating from bowls and saucers, you’re welcome to join me for a very early breakfast. Then I need to figure out where our priest has wandered off to. By now he’s gone looking for the person who was supposed to be in the confessional. The last time that happened, we found him in the garden, trying to give penance to a bush he’d mistaken for a parishioner.”

  I took a saucer and handed the bowls to Klok and Jermay, but Jermay wouldn’t take his. He kept scuffing the tip of his boot into a worn patch on the sister’s rug.

  “Does Friday make it all right for me to be here?” he asked.

  “And why would you need a Friday for that? Are you really a thief?”

  “No, ma’am . . . I mean . . . My father says we aren’t welcome in churches. People like you think he’s evil, so I’ll burn up.”

  “Hmm . . . we haven’t had an evil burning in a while. Might be due for one at that.” The sister winked at the rest of us over the top of Jermay’s bowed head. “But I suppose I need to know what sort of evil thing you are. Just to keep the books straight, you understand.”

  “My father does magic for the circus,” Jermay said softly.

  “In that case, I need your word that you won’t go changing into anything unnatural and smashing down the walls. I hate a mess.”

  “I can’t turn into anything!” Jermay’s head shot up.

  “Well, then, do you promise not to go eating any small children while you’re here?”

  “I don’t eat children.”

  “Are you sure you’re evil? Where are your horns?” The sister turned his head to check behind his ears.

  “I don’t—”

  The sister sighed, as though this was all very irritating.

  “And you call yourself evil. No horns, no scales—I bet you don’t even have a tail.”

  She paused, and Jermay shook his head.

  “Just as I thought. You don’t need a Friday edict. Sit down and drink your tea.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Our rescuer’s name was Sister Mary Alban. It was almost an hour, between heating up oatmeal and double-checking the door locks, before she actually told us. She said other things were more important.

  Klok picked through our salvaged bags, intent to take advantage of a real workspace while we had it. He was on the floor with all of the pieces he needed spread out on Bull’s coat. Birdie stuck close to Jermay, until she fell asleep, curled into a ball the way she used to hide in the train’s back cars.

  Winnie emerged from the bathroom. She’d combed out her hair and was wearing donation-bin jeans and a sweater that covered her scars, but her eyes carried the haunted sadness from the years that she was mute. She walked toward the fire and unceremoniously tossed in her old clothes, then sat down to watch them burn, hunched over with her hands holding her feet. I should have made sure she was okay, or even asked who it was that had hurt her—anything—but I kept drifting to whichever side of the room had the fewest people. I couldn’t shake the notion that they’d be safer if they were a greater distance from me.

  After a while, Jermay joined me at the table, which sat directly in front of the stove. He was clicking his fingernails with his thumb, so I knew there was something more than the obvious eating at him.

  “Worried about Zavel?” I asked, pushing a cup toward him. Wisps of mint wafted up from mine, reminding me of the tea my father made to help me sleep. He said nightmares hated mint, because it took away upset stomachs and replaced them with happy dreams. But a few ounces of dead leaves and hot water didn’t feel very formidable against machines that could flatten buildings.

  “He’s too old, Penn,” Jermay said. “What if he forgets to eat?”

  I put my hand over his to stop the clicking.

  “What are the chances of Mother Jesek or Smolly letting anyone starve? Smolly would kick him in the shin, and Mother would stuff his mouth with sandwiches when he opened it to yell.”

  The joke wasn’t worth laughing at, but I’d hoped for a smile.

  “If he thinks something’s happened to me . . .” Those unnatural blue eyes sparkled with tears. They were the sky and the sea stretching out along the horizon. Something I could stare at forever and never find an end. “I’m all he’s got, and he’s—”

  He took one of his hands out from under mine, shifting it so that mine was now trapped between his two.

  “Can’t we just be happy we’re safe for now?” I asked. Sitting at the table with Jermay felt normal. I wanted a few moments where I could simply breathe.

  “But it’s too easy,” he whispered. “Why would she hide us?”

  “We’re all hiding from one thing or another.” Sister Mary Alban had stepped up behind us, silent on her bare feet.

  She clasped her hands together, and they began to g
low with a soft bluish light that quickly became a crackling cage of lightning. When she opened her fingers, the energy hung in midair, swirling into a sphere that flexed and stretched until it formed wings, finally settling on the shape of a dragonfly the size of a peach, which perched on her knuckle.

  “How did you do that?”

  I was out of my seat and a foot from the table without even knowing when I decided to move. Jermay had done the same; he was holding his breath like I was, too.

  Klok lifted his head for a look, but he seemed uninterested. He went back to fiddling with Xerxes’ components.

  Winnie and Birdie stayed as they were: one staring into the fire, one sleeping.

  “How?” I asked again. The sister blew out a puff of air that scattered her dragonfly to glowing bits.

  She was too old to be one of the touched, and I’d never seen anyone other than my sisters have enough control over their abilities to create a golem, even a small one.

  “I thought you might be more comfortable sharing your secrets if you knew mine.” Sister Mary Alban sat down and reached for another cup of tea.

  “I didn’t ask why; I asked how!” Electric currents weren’t elemental. Heavenly fire belonged to Celestine. Was this one of her careful truths, when she said one thing while hiding its real meaning in the pauses between words?

  “The reasons why people do the things they do are infinitely more informative than the mechanics of how they get them done,” she said. “How is the simple part—I did it with practice. As for the why—I know a warden when I see one. There are very few reasons for someone of his occupation to be chasing someone your age. In my experience, none of those reasons were sufficient to turn you over to men with guns.”

  The way she said it made me curious to know her experience with men and guns. When she opened the door to the warden, she’d stayed partially hidden behind it, and she never left the building. Maybe we weren’t the only ones who had sought refuge in that sanctuary over the years.

  “Are you afraid of me?” she asked.

  “You’re unexpected,” I said. “That doesn’t happen very often.”