Perilous: A Ripple Novel (Ripple Series Book 7)

by Cidney Swanson

  And yet….

  Will.

  She loved Will. Didn’t she? Wasn’t he worth risking something for?

  I thought we were in love. Sylvia had been wrong, once. Sylvia, who was never wrong. Sylvia who was the wisest person Sam could think of.

  The sky was clear, and the stars burned brilliantly overhead, but they had no answers for Sam’s questions. Across the track, she saw a patch of sky where smoke from someone’s chimney was smudging the clear, crisp sky; she could make out the wisps, ghost-thin, as they ascended over the oaks and pines.

  It made her think of Will, snug in his wood-fire heated cabin.

  Will.

  A fifth lap. A sixth. A seventh. She was failing in her attempt to distract herself from all the things she wanted to avoid right now. It was late. She should head back. She turned toward home, a ghost girl gliding past the willow trees swaying on the fringe of Murrieta Park. The duck pond was still as glass and reflected a million bright stars, thick as snow falling in winter. Overhead they blazed even more fiercely—billions of unquenchable fires, shining across light years, across eons.

  Even though she was invisible, Sam thought she could feel a lump swelling in her throat. Why did things have to change? Why did people have to get married or graduate or move away to go to college? And if change had to happen, why couldn’t it happen at a celestial pace, over long eons, so that you could actually have time to adjust for once? Why couldn’t life stay still for one freaking minute? Was that so much to ask?

  She’d made it all the way back home. She came solid in her room, and felt fatigue settle over her like a blanket. Her eyes filled with tears, and she let them fall.

  8

  WHAT HE WOULD WITHHOLD

  Georg gazed at Katrin. She was lovely. How he missed her. Tilting his head to one side, Georg wondered if perhaps he missed having a family. His new Angels didn’t seem quite like … family. Briefly, he considered sending Raoul to make another appeal to Friedrich and Günter. Perhaps now that they’d had some time to think about Georg’s offer to restore their ability, they would realize they’d been fools to turn it down. Perhaps they just needed a bit more time in order to recognize what a bad bargain they’d made with Pfeffer. Georg would let bygones be bygones and help them both.

  Georg was willing to leave the past behind him, but were they? The problem was, Günter and Friedrich had allied themselves with Pfeffer and Waldhart de Rochefort. This meant even if they returned, Georg would never truly know if he could trust them. Curse Pfeffer and Waldhart!

  Georg was beginning to think he might have to do something about Pfeffer and Waldhart. When it came down to it, they were just like Helmann: eager to keep their abilities for themselves alone. They were worse, in fact, in their eagerness to take those abilities from those born with them.

  A sudden chill ran along Georg’s spine. What if Friedrich and Günter decided to tell Pfeffer about Raoul’s visit?

  Why did every decision Georg made come back to haunt him? Would Raoul have given away their location? Surely not. Georg had warned Raoul not to reveal anything sensitive, and Raoul had seemed to understand the urgency behind Georg’s warning. It had been Raoul’s idea to withhold the nature of the cure, only stating that it was possible. No, Raoul wouldn’t have given away Georg’s secrets.

  But Friedrich and Günter might have communicated to Pfeffer about Raoul’s visit and his offer. The more Georg thought about it, the more worried he became. He would warn his Angels of the possible dangers, should Pfeffer or Waldhart manage to trace them here. He would arm them, too. Georg would feel better if everyone carried a few darts of Neuroplex. Georg had not bothered restocking a supply of Immutin cream because he didn’t believe in permanently disabling caméleons. But had it been a mistake, getting rid of all the Immutin? Yet another bad decision, coming back to haunt him?

  He would not appeal to his brothers again. No, his only true family lay sleeping under his gaze: Katrin. Was he ready to awaken her? She’d slept for more than a year. He would have some explaining to do on that count. How he longed to have someone to share his burdens, his fears.

  A lock of her hair slipped from where it had rested on her shoulder. Georg reached for it, stroked it, and then withdrew his hand.

  He took a slow breath. He wasn’t ready yet. At a minimum, he still had to work out what exactly he was planning to tell Katrin. Waking her would only involve him in more agonizing decisions.

  Perhaps the real question to ask himself before he woke Katrin wasn’t what he would tell her, but what he would withhold.

  9

  THE SLEEPING GIRL

  Sam felt a tingle of apprehension when she received Sir Walter’s text, summoning her to join him and the other ripplers after school to discuss a developing issue. In her experience, developing issues always meant trouble. With Fritz dead, the threat he’d posed was gone, but Georg was still out there somewhere, and Sam didn’t trust Georg.

  Out of habit, Sam sat beside Will at Sir Walter’s, but she felt uncomfortable. She had ever since her talk with Gwyn about marriage

  “It’s probably nothing,” murmured Will. “Stop worrying.”

  He grinned at her, but she didn’t smile back. Did he really think it would help, telling her not to worry? Across the table, Mickie looked grim. As did Pfeffer. At least some of them were taking this seriously.

  Sam crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “Worries aren’t like faucets,” she murmured to Will. “You can’t just turn them off.”

  As soon as she said it, she saw Will’s expression fall, but a moment later, he was teasing his sister and grinning again.

  Gwyn looked like a contented cat, curled as usual in a chair beside Chrétien. Skandor had driven over, too, and was staring at the empty loveseat in the corner where Martina and Matteo had snuggled until their recent departure to do relief work in the Bahamas. Skandor was probably thinking about Martina’s missing sister Katrin again. Gwyn kept trying to set him up with her friends, but he hadn’t found anyone to replace Katrin, according to Gwyn.

  “Thank you all for coming,” said Sir Walter, addressing his gathered friends. “I have been following a development of which Friedrich and Günter apprised me.” Sir Walter turned to Skandor, adding, “Friedrich and Günter were raised in a family group with Hansel, Georg, Martina, Matteo, and Katrin.”

  At the mention of Georg, Sam felt her skin tightening all over: the tiny hairs on her arms rose in response to the potential threat.

  Sir Walter continued. “Friedrich told me several weeks back that he’d been contacted by someone claiming to represent Georg.”

  Everyone sat up straighter, and Sam noted Will had stopped grinning.

  “And this person,” continued Sir Walter, “Who called himself Raoul, claimed moreover that Georg had developed a method whereby Friedrich and Günter might regain their ability to ripple.”

  “We know it’s possible,” said Mickie. “I guess it’s not too great of a stretch to think Georg could figure it out, too.”

  “Ah,” said Sir Walter, “but we did not believe it was possible prior to seeing it happen. And Fritz, when he placed the Immutin cream upon my visage, certainly believed what he was doing would be irreversible.”

  “So what makes Georg think it’s reversible?” asked Will.

  Sir Walter gave a very small, very French shrug and commenced stroking his beard. “I did not trouble myself with Georg’s beliefs on the subject until Friedrich and Günter forwarded this video recording to me. I am, perhaps, basing too much upon the use of a single word—lab—which Raoul mentions but once, but I am now concerned Georg has been, as the saying goes, up to something.”

  “Up to no good,” said Gwyn. “That’s the saying you want.”

  Sir Walter bowed his head in deference to her correction.

  “Do we get to see this video?” asked Will.

  “Indeed,” said Sir Walter. “It is for that reason I called you together, but I wished first to provide
context for what you will see and hear.”

  Sir Walter flipped his tablet screen so that everyone could see the video.

  The image quality wasn’t bad, although the picture jerked around a lot, as though the camera was in motion.

  “Hello,” said a voice. “Raoul here. I thought I’d see if the smartphone in this van actually works. It’s a rental. The van. Well, and the phone, I guess, seeing as it came with the van. I guess people get lost a lot on—um, sorry, I can’t really say where we are. I mean, until you make up your mind about joining us, eh?”

  There was a small sort of laugh.

  “So, I said I’d stay in touch, but things have been crazy busy here. Georg had to send me down on a food run because apparently no one thought about groceries, and we can’t spend much time invisible when there’s so much work to be done in the lab.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I didn’t want to type it out where Georg might, you know, read it. I know for a fact he reads stuff we send from—um, from where we work. But anyway, I wanted to tell you to maybe not mention that thing I said about the girl. The sleeping one. I guess no one’s supposed to know about her. So, uh, if you could just pretend I never told you? That would be best. Georg’s really protective of her, and I wasn’t supposed to mention her in the first place. So, if you join us here, it would be best not to ask about her. Okay?”

  There was a longer pause as the van maneuvered past another large vehicle that resembled an unmarked tour bus.

  “So that’s really all I had to say. I hope you get this. You can drop me a line to say you did, but, if you could just, you know, not mention that I contacted you off-the-record like this? And obviously don’t mention anything about not talking about the girl. Okay. Well, I’m almost home. Anyway, I hope you change your minds and join us soon. It’s a great thing we’re preparing to do, and we could always use the extra hands.”

  There was another pause.

  “That’s all for now.”

  The screen froze on the image of Raoul reaching for the vehicle’s smartphone, set into the dash.

  “What’s Georg doing with a lab?” demanded Will.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” murmured Mickie.

  “Who is Raoul?” asked Sam. “He can ripple. He mentions it right in the video.”

  Sir Walter sighed. “Indeed, he does. My dear Pfeffer?”

  “I’m searching as we speak,” Pfeffer said to Sir Walter.

  “For what?” asked Gwyn.

  They didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  Pfeffer looked up from his tablet. “He is almost certainly Raoul von Helmann, a member of the Angel Corps.”

  “You have a list of the Angel Corps members?” asked Will.

  “I retrieved such a list two and a half years ago when you and I visited Geneses in Rome,” said Sir Walter to Will.

  Sam felt her pulse quickening.

  “So how did Georg find a member of the Angel Corps?” asked Will.

  “And how did he wake them up?” demanded Mickie. “He would need the passwords to wake up a sleeping Angel.”

  “He would, indeed,” said Sir Walter. “And what is more, Raoul spoke of a group of people working alongside himself and Georg.”

  “A small enough group that an extra pair of hands would be welcome,” remarked Mickie.

  “We’ve got to find out what Georg’s up to,” said Will.

  “No, we don’t have to,” said Sam. “We could just … leave things alone for a change. Couldn’t we?”

  Skandor, who had been silent up till this point, stood so suddenly that his chair fell backwards. Both his fists were clenched and his eyes were shining with unshed tears.

  “It’s her,” said Skandor. “The sleeping girl. Don’t you see? Georg’s got Katrin.”

  10

  IN IT TOGETHER

  Will had asked Sam to go running with him after the discussion with Sir Walter and the others. Sometimes, Will knew what she needed before she’d figured it out herself. As they pounded along the 7K circuit side by side, she admitted this was one of those times.

  She needed air. She needed to breathe. She needed to run and run until she was beyond the reach of Georg and Angels and secret laboratories. But if life had taught her anything these past few years, it was that you couldn’t run far enough or fast enough for that. Her old nightmares were back. And her old fears. Would she ever be free of them?

  Her feet struck the cold earth in unison with Will’s. Their steady pace carried them up through a cluster of Blue Oak and Digger Pines. Sam thought of her mother’s paintings again—of how her mother had loved Digger Pines, tough survivors of the foothills. Sam wanted to be like that, proof against wind and weather. And bad dreams. She wouldn’t give in to her fears. She wouldn’t go back to that life.

  The path climbed steeply until all Sam could do was concentrate on her next breath, her next footfall.

  They reached the summit and the path flattened out and she could speak again.

  “So what do you think Georg’s doing?” she asked Will.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say he woke up a bunch of Angels, stuck them or lotioned them with Immutin, and is busy figuring out how much trauma is required to get them to turn back to ripplers.”

  Sam grimaced.

  “Which, as we both know, is a lot,” added Will.

  “But why? What purpose does it serve?”

  Will took a sip from his Camelbak and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The way I see it,” he said, “Georg’s pretty shook up that Fritz invented that cream. I mean, if you can put Immutin into cream form, you could put it in someone’s glass of wine or shower or anything, really.”

  Sam nodded. “So you think he wants to feel safe. This whole waking-up-Angels-thing is about Georg being able to sleep at night.”

  Will shrugged. “Honestly? I have no idea. But I agree with Skandor. We have to figure out where Georg is and what he’s doing.”

  “Skandor just wants to go to rescue Katrin.”

  “Yeah, I know that. It’s a worthy goal, too. Do you not think it’s a worthwhile goal?”

  Sam frowned. She thought it was a worthwhile goal. She just wished it could be someone else’s goal, for a change.

  “If Katrin’s there, we have a moral obligation to help free her,” Sam said at last.

  “Yeah, something’s not right if Georg was asking Raoul to be all hush-hush about a sleeping girl. That sounds pretty involuntary to me.”

  “She might be there voluntarily. According to Martina, Katrin liked Georg.”

  Will shrugged. “There’s no accounting for taste when it comes to family. I mean, look at me. I like Mickie.”

  Sam reached over and shoved Will’s shoulder. It was their first contact of the day. They hadn’t kissed or hugged or anything, which was her fault. She’d just been feeling so prickly ever since Gwyn announced she was getting married.

  Which was the topic Will brought forward next.

  “So, I guess Gwyn talked to you about the wedding?” Will asked Sam.

  “Yeah. What are they thinking?” she replied.

  “I understand what they’re thinking just fine,” said Will. “I just always figured it would be you and me first. I mean, we met before they did and all.”

  Sam was silent. She and Will hadn’t discussed the future of their relationship for a long time. It was the last thing she felt like discussing right now. Especially if Will was … sympathetic to Gwyn and Chrétien.

  Sam pushed ahead on the path.

  “Hey, did I say something wrong?” asked Will.

  Here it was: her chance for honesty. But something caught in her throat when she tried to think of what she could possibly tell Will. That she wanted things to slow down? That she didn’t like change? It was more than that, and she knew it. But she couldn’t look at the … more. Not now.

  “Sam?” he called, catching up to her again.

  “It’s just this
thing with Georg,” said Sam. It was only half a lie.

  “I know,” said Will. “But we can’t ignore it. Especially not if Katrin is being held against her will.”

  “We can’t know that she is,” said Sam.

  “Which means we need to go and find out, if you ask me. You saw how torn up Skandor was.”

  “So let him go,” said Sam. “We could let someone else take care of things for a change.”

  Will was silent for a count of ten. “I guess I didn’t know you felt like helping Sir Walter and Pfeffer was a burden or whatever.”

  Sam tightened her jaw until her teeth throbbed. “That’s not fair,” she said at last. “I’ve got my parents to think about. They don’t need to spend another round of sleepless nights worrying whether some nutcase is going to shoot Neuroplex darts at their daughter.”

  They were pounding along the downhill slope now.

  “You’re right,” said Will. “There’s no rule saying you have to step up to the plate every time Sir Walter needs help.”

  “But you’re going,” said Sam. She knew she sounded angry, but it was the only way she knew to keep the fear in check.

  “Of course,” said Will. He kicked at a stone in the path. “Sam, what do you want me to say? I don’t have parents who are going to be out of their minds with worry. Even Mick’s finally admitted I’m an adult or something.”

  “And what about me?” Sam felt her throat tightening with fear. “Don’t I count?”

  Will turned, catching the change in her voice. “Sam, of course you count. You count most of all.”

  He let her go ahead as they thudded across the single file bridge.

  She couldn’t keep up the pretense of anger anymore. The truth spilled out. “I’m having the dreams again, Will. They’re getting worse.”

  “The dreams about … your mom?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Sam,” he said as he pulled back beside her, “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t go. It’s that simple.”