It sent me spinning. I searched the darkness, feeling the weight of eyes on me. I was being watched. Up ahead, through the layers, I could see a heavy black curtain. I was pretty sure I knew what it was supposed to be—a kind of dramatic metaphor for the veil between the Inner Eye and the mortal world. The Fellowship wasn’t afraid of going heavy on the symbolism.
As I got closer, I could see that there was a small gap between the opaque panels, like the not-quite-drawn curtains of a puppet show. There was a kneeler on the floor in front of it. I stood there examining the curtain, wondering what I was supposed to do next. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. I practically jumped out of my skin. A black-shrouded
figure was standing behind me. It pressed me firmly downward, pushing me to kneeling.
“Kneel before the veil and place your right hand inside it, palm up. Behold the first mystery,” the figure said. His voice was deeper than when I’d first heard it five years ago, but it had a rasp to it that was impossible to forget. Hayes Cantor was unforgettable on multiple levels. I wished his face wasn’t covered—I was curious to know if he lived up to my memories. The deep brown eyes, the lips that quirked up to one side when he smiled …
I had to force myself back to concentration. Of all the times to be thinking about boys, now wasn’t one of them.
Gingerly, I placed my hand into the gap in the curtain. Even though it was mostly theatrics, the effect was unsettling, like when they make you touch a bowl of peeled grapes in a haunted house and tell you it’s eyeballs. Hayes’s hand remained steady on my shoulder. It was oddly reassuring, like he wanted me to know that I wasn’t alone. From the other side, a palm lowered down on top of mine.
“This is the way we know one another,” Hayes said from over my shoulder. At the same time, the hand within the veil curved my pinky and ring fingers in toward my palm. My thumb, forefinger, and middle finger remained extended, making some kind of sign. Recognition flashed through my brain—I had caught glimpses of Fellowship members making this symbol out of the corner of my eye, but before now I’d never thought anything of it. Then the hand inside the veil straightened my fingers, so that my hand made a flat plane once again.
“Show the sign of the Fellowship,” Hayes said.
At first I didn’t know what he wanted. Then I curled my pinky and ring fingers in, making the symbol once more behind the veil.
“The first mystery is complete,” a voice whispered from the other side. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female. The obscured stranger straightened my fingers again and slipped a band onto my ring finger. I knew it was the one the General had shown me. “Pass through the veil and move to your new life as an initiate of the Fellowship.”
The pressure of Hayes’s hand on my shoulder disappeared and I stood up. I turned around, but he was already gone, his black robe melting into the shadows. Disappointment stabbed through me, but I followed the instruction and pushed through the curtain.
I was now in an empty room with a single candle burning. The General was standing there, the flicker of the candle below casting a long shadow over his eye-patch. He looked almost ghoulish.
“You’ve made me proud tonight,” he said.
“Thank you for giving me the chance,” I said.
“Did you find Hayes a competent second?”
I nodded. “Is he still here? I’d like to thank him.”
“No. Seeing your second after a Rite is bad luck.”
My heart sank, but being here with my father more than made up for it.
“The Inner Eye has spoken to you tonight, Harlow; may it bring you Inner Peace,” the General said.
If the voice that spoke to me was my Inner Eye, then it wasn’t going to give me peace of any kind. And if it wasn’t, then my Inner Eye was a lie and so was everyone else’s. But the only thing that mattered in that moment was that the General was proud of me.
“Thank you, father,” I said.
My voice cracked. I choked back the tears that were pooling in my eyes. For the first time in a long time, I felt loved, like I mattered to him.
“Harlow, are you okay?” he asked.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. The words tumbled out before I even knew what was happening. “I hear a voice.”
The General stiffened. “What did you say?”
“I hear Her speaking to me. Saying terrible things. Showing them to me.” The words were like a weight lifting. My father would tell me it was okay—he would help me make it right.
Something sparked in the General’s eye. His entire demeanor transformed; it was like watching a grizzly rise up on its hind legs and roar. He grabbed me by the arm, hard.
“What did she show you?” he demanded.
“People dying,” I whispered, confused by his reaction.
He backed away, first one step and then another. An all-over body shake transformed him from raging predator to cowering prey.
“How long have you been communicating with her?”
“With who?” I asked.
My father was white as a geisha. He looked legitimately frightened. Reaching his hand back, to find the door I could now see partially obscured in the darkness, he lost his balance and toppled backward onto the floor. I rushed over and reached out to help him, but he crab-walked away from me like I was the Grim Reaper come to claim my next victim.
“Dad?” I heard my voice reaching out from the ghost of my seven-year-old self. It had been years since I’d called the General that.
“You’re not my little girl.” His words slapped me across the face. My ears rang as if they’d been boxed. “You’re an abomination.”
A rogue wisp of dark hair broke free from his gel-slicked head and a bead of sweat slid down his forehead. He’d never before looked weak to me, but it was as if the man had been sucked out from inside his suit.
“Watchers! Watchers! Get her out of here!”
Watchers paratroopered in and strong-armed me like they were apprehending a terrorist.
“Sir?” The one in charge helped my father off the floor and awaited instructions.
I held my breath. What would happen next? Would he sever me right here and now?
“Take her back to the hotel,” he commanded. “Lock her in her room.”
They dragged me out. My heels scraped across the marble floor as I struggled to go to him, to come up with something that would take us back to five minutes before. The General wouldn’t look at me. He ran a shaking hand through his thinning hair. He no longer seemed larger-than-life.
The sunrise finished just as we got back to the hotel. Everything felt upside down. The Watchers pushed me into my room and shut the door behind me. I could hear the squawk of their radios outside, which meant there was no chance of leaving. As if I had anywhere left to go. I crawled into bed, too emotionally and physically exhausted to take off my boots much less try to decode my father’s reaction. I looked at the gold ring around my finger, which now felt like a shackle, and floated numbly to sleep.
In my dreams, the voice and I marched side by side. She was next to me, in front of me, above me, inside me. When I turned to identify the footfalls pounding in our wake, I saw an army of eyeless followers: dry sockets unseeing, hollow bodies marching on. They trailed behind us, a battalion of mottled corpses clipping along in perfect time. They spilled out of a forgotten temple clogged with vines, through a million identical doorways, deep into the jungle of my subconscious.
All at once, there was a girl standing right in front of me. She looked exactly like me.
I see you, she whispered over and over.
The more she said it, the closer I drifted toward consciousness. Finally, I realized that I wasn’t staring at a girl. I was standing in front of a full-length mirror, whispering I see you to my reflection. And my reflection was smiling back.
ALL THE W
AY TO CHINA
My tongue tasted like dry lint, and it felt like my teeth were wearing tiny individual fur coats. Anxiety crawled across my skin, then receded by an inch. I turned away from the mirror, rubbing my hand over my eyes. I was only sleepwalking. It was just a bad dream.
My mind turned first to Adam, then to the General. I needed to sort things out with both of them. After the way I’d been ejected from the temple, I was surprised I wasn’t already on a one-way express back to Twin Falls. Or worse.
Would the Patriarch sever his own daughter? Ministry children had been made dead in the eyes of the Fellowship before, but I always assumed those rules didn’t quite apply to me. But last night, my father was genuinely afraid of me. Like I was a mortal threat. It was almost as if he could see Her inside of me. As if he knew Her somehow.
I popped the top off my new stash of extra-strength Subdueral and crammed a handful in my mouth. Falling apart wasn’t going to get me out of this. I reached for the cell on my nightstand to call Dora. The screen was black, battery dead. Freaking perfect.
A sharp rap at the door bolted me upright. I looked around for someplace to hide, the insane thought that I could still find a way out of this mess scrambling my brain.
“Get up, lazy!” Dora yelled. She had the gravely tone of an absolute angel.
I leaped to answer the door.
Dora had chopsticks stuck through the bun in her hair and eyeliner swept dramatically out from the corners of her eyes. Her faded red T-shirt said China: a really big country with a lot of people.
She surveyed my disaster of a room.
“Dude, the China express leaves in fifteen minutes and you look like moo goo gai poo. Did you oversleep or what?”
She pushed past me and started to slam things into my suitcase haphazardly. I looked left and right down the hallway, expecting a Watcher to show up any minute.
Nothing.
After Tokyo, the next stop on our tour-de-force was Beijing. China was VisionCrest’s closest ally in the East, where with few exceptions the Fellowship was regarded with reverence and respect. Three decades earlier, an anonymous man simply called the Unknown Rebel had stopped the advance of a column of Chinese military tanks following a bloody massacre of government protestors. That event was the tipping point that ultimately led to the downfall of an oppressive dictatorship; China became the most democratic country in the world, and one of the most welcoming to VisionCrest. The fate of an entire country once rested on that silent rebel’s delicate shoulders; it was easy to imagine that in some parallel universe, it could have turned out very differently.
In exchange for their support of the Fellowship, China’s highest-ranking government officials were ordained as Sacristans and shared in VisionCrest’s profits. Many other eastern countries followed suit, but China remained the most powerful of all Ministry satellites. While no country could boast a VisionCrest compound to rival the headquarters in Twin Falls, Beijing came close.
The crumpled itinerary on my nightstand said we were leaving at 11:30 a.m. sharp. Was it remotely possible I wasn’t going to be punished?
“Some help here, Messy Marvin?”
“I didn’t think I would be coming,” I said, dazed. I wasn’t sure if it was disbelief or the Subdueral working its black magic.
“What do you mean, you didn’t think you were coming?” Dora countered. “We’ve only been talking about pork buns non-stop for, like, the past week. This is our time, baby! Get moving!” Then she gave me a sharp look that said I know something’s wrong, but you want me to pretend everything’s normal, so I’m playing along. For now.
She was right. This wasn’t the time to question my luck. I grabbed a pair of jeans and threw them on, along with a hoodie covered in sewn-on patches of punk bands I loved. Adam had made it for me back when things were normal. Maybe it would make him remember who I really was.
“I saw the General after we came back last night,” I said.
A steely glint of determination flashed in Dora’s eyes. It said that I was not going home if she had anything to say about it.
“I don’t want to know what happened.” She waved her hand in the air. “I just want you to pack up and get your butt down to the lobby. You’re not going anywhere but China.”
“But—”
She put her hand up to my mouth. “But nothing. I cannot do this trip—this life—without you. I refuse. So until you’re not, you’re here. Now let’s go.”
There wasn’t really any arguing with that. I stuffed the last of my things into an oversized handbag. Dora put my Jackie O glasses on my face.
“There—VisionCrest royalty, ready to rock.”
It was impossible to be morose around Dora. I held my breath as we exited the elevator into the lobby, half-
expecting Watchers to descend on me as we entered the crowd of Ministry kids. My classmates were buzzing like hornets ready to flee the hive, looking more motley than usual since our VisionCrest uniforms (gray slacks, oxford shirts, ties, and official sweaters for the boys; navy-and-green tartan skirts, oxford shirts, and cardigans for the girls) were optional on travel days. There were Watchers milling around looking bored, but none of them took any more note of my presence than usual.
True to form, Queen Mercy was right at the center of the action, ordering her consorts around. The way she acted, you would think she was the Patriarch’s daughter, not me. She gestured toward the matching set of Louis Vuitton luggage at her side as the scrawny son of a lower-rank Sacristan scrambled to collect it under his arms.
Through the crowd, Adam appeared. His hair was messy and he was wearing an Operation Ivy T-shirt under a fitted gray blazer. My heart clenched. His eyes met mine for a split second. Then he looked away and walked straight to Mercy, leaning over and whispering something in her ear. A smile graced her face that would have made even Mother Theresa weep with jealousy. Then he leaned down and kissed her. He looked up at me, making sure I saw. It was a clear message—stay away.
Dora saw it too. “Darling, the world is your oyster. You’re going to pry it open and steal its pearl, and no silly boy is going to stop you,” she said. It was the Dora version of a pep talk.
I watched Adam and Mercy for a moment longer, unable to tear my eyes away from the train wreck. Mercy tucked her arm inside Adam’s and snuggled up against him. He smoothed his hand over the back of her hair. I struggled not to let my knees buckle beneath me.
Dora pulled me along behind her, dragging me toward the waiting buses.
Sayonara, Tokyo. You sucked.
The flight to Beijing consisted of me scrunching between Dora and Stubin, the unlikely lovebirds, and trying to disappear. There was no sign of the General’s Learjet in the hangar when we boarded our private plane. He must have already headed to China.
Dora insisted on the window so she could keep an eye on the engines “for air safety,” and Stubin insisted on the aisle because of his “claustrophobia disorder.” No amount of protesting could convince either of them that putting me in a teen-crush sandwich met the standard of cruel and unusual punishment.
I was in no mood to argue, so I succumbed and melted into the thirteen square inches that separated me from a complete mental breakdown. I suspected that Dora was distracting me from what was happening five rows in front of us. Namely, Mercy and Adam sitting with their heads tipped together. As if I wasn’t tracking their every move from the corner of my eye.
I considered what it would be like to spill the details of the past day to Dora, in a world where Stubin wasn’t butting in every five seconds. Secrets are the ultimate tricksters—they beg not to be kept, promise to behave, but then, let loose upon the world, blaze a trail of mischief and misery. I decided I couldn’t do it. The momentary relief of unburdening myself about the Rite would only lead to questions I was too afraid to answer.
On the upside, none of the adults on the plane so
much as blinked an eye at me the entire flight. When we disembarked after landing, Brother Howard approached me. He was acting all chummy, the way he always did when he was trying to pump me for information about my father. He was a notorious social climber; if he spent half as much time on our lesson plans as he did on Ministry gossip, I would have my PhD in biochem by now.
“Hi, Harlow. So the Patriarch’s attending to some unexpected business, eh?” he said.
“Unexpected business?” My entire body seized up at the mention of the General. I had been waiting for the other shoe-bomb to drop all day.
“I guess that must be why we’re changing accommodations at the last minute. It’s highly unusual for us to stay in the home of a Sacristan. Don’t you agree?” he pressed.
We were supposed to be staying at my father’s megamansion in the VisionCrest compound on the outskirts of Beijing. The Patriarch had his own place there, as he did at every compound. Sacristans would never normally be asked to entertain houseguests, especially high-ranking Ministry children from the Twin Falls headquarters. Brother Howard was right—it was strange.
“Uh, yeah. I guess.” I played along, eager to get him off my case. It was a common assumption that I knew what the General did and why, but as usual I was as in the dark as everyone else. I had no idea what was going on.
“Excuse me, Brother Howard. I need to talk to Harlow alone for a minute,” Dora interrupted, pulling me away by the arm. She looked back at him apologetically and stage whispered, “Lady business.”
Brother Howard turned five shades of prune and slunk away.
Where had my father gone? Did his unexpected business have something to do with what happened last night? Why were we staying in the home of a random Ministry official?
A shiver of dread whispered down my spine as we piled into a swarm of industrial-strength, unmarked molester vans. There were more reasons than just my personal ones for being afraid. Many Sacristans were fear-mongers grappling for greater power, and those in China were rumored to be the most corrupt of all. Without the Patriarch and his protections, I wondered if we were safe.
The Violet Hour Page 6