“If you tell Mercy, I’ll have you castrated.”
“You’ll—” He started to sputter a protest, but then burst into uncontrollable laughter.
I realized how ridiculous that threat sounded. Even though it felt like I should do anything—anything—but laugh, I couldn’t help myself.
“Too much?” I asked when I could finally breathe again.
“You’ve always been too much,” he said. “In a good way.”
Our laughter died down, like both of us were realizing how different things were between us than they used to be. The cable car bounced up and down, struggling its way up the steepest part of the vertical rise.
Adam looked at me. I could almost see the gears of his mind clicking and whirring.
“What?” I asked.
“Whatever happens now, we’re in this together. You’re not alone.”
His words knocked the air from my lungs. The gondola slowed as we glided into the turnabout. An attendant swung open our car door.
“Good. Because I still have more to tell you,” I said.
“Awesome, can’t wait. Come on, let’s go.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the platform after him.
FAIRY TOWER
The view that was waiting for me when I stumbled out of the cable car swallowed me whole. My eyes blinked against the light, which was intensified by the smudgy layer of gray-white clouds that crowned the mountaintop. One look at the expanse of jade-colored foliage cascading below me sent the world spinning topsy-turvy. I dropped to my knees and put my hands on the stone floor of the Great Wall. The ground felt like it was rolling beneath me.
I’d always thought the wall was a walkway with high walls on each side, like an open-air tunnel. Instead, I found myself standing on the back of a stone serpent that snaked on as far as the eye could see. The edges of the wall rose only inches on each side of me—beyond which the wall dropped into a precipitous decline as steep as the south face of Mt. Everest. Instead of being comfortably ensconced like a rat in a maze, one false move would send me plunging over the side to my death. I’d rather be a rat.
The shouts and laughter of tourists mingled as if through some long tunnel and the landscape waved before my eyes like a watercolor. A new wave of terror rode through me: I didn’t want anyone to see me—or worse, photograph me—like this. It was important for the Patriarch’s daughter to project an air of strength, especially since the kidnappings had put VisionCrest in a precarious situation. A situation that seemed more uncertain all the time.
The polished toe of an expensive wing-tip boot came into view beneath my nose. I couldn’t look up—physically couldn’t—but I knew it was Adam’s. He always gave the VisionCrest uniform a sophisticated indie edge, right down to the footwear.
“Give me your hand,” he said gently. I could see his long fingers dangling in the upper periphery of my vision.
“I can’t—” I could barely eke out the strangled words. This was bad.
“Yes, you can.” His fingers closed carefully around my arm, supporting me. “One foot at a time. Just look at me.”
I put one foot underneath me and let my eyes slide up to his shin. I fixated on his pant leg like it was the only thing standing between me and certain destruction.
He pulled me to my feet and I leaned into him, my face buried against his chest. The wind whistled softly past us, making me queasy all over again.
“Did anyone see me?”
He leaned his cheek against mine for an instant and whispered in my ear, “Nobody but me. It’s okay, Harlow. We’re only human.”
Something about the feel of him so solid against me, the way his words were calming yet not denying me my fear, something so uniquely Adam, made me feel like everything was okay. Like being perched precariously atop a dangerously high mountaintop, seconds away from toppling to my death, wasn’t such a big thing after all. Not if I wasn’t alone.
“You should look around—take it in. You never know when you’ll see something like this again.”
I looked up into Adam’s face. He was holding me tightly against him, one hand on the small of my back. The wind was whipping against us. He squinted into it, looking out over the horizon.
Following his gaze, I looked out on the scene with new eyes. The gray-brown stone serpent snaked across the crest of the ridge. Puffs of cottony trees clung to its edges, then rapidly dropped away on each side of the mountain. Hazy patches of fog hung lazily under the thin sky—spotty wisps that had drifted below their natural elevation. In the far-off distance, the wall’s turrets were still visible, popping up at intervals along what seemed from here to be a never-ending stretch of stone.
The little dots of the Sacristan kids in their sweaters and tartan crept along the back of the beast, interspersed with Watchers. How they’d managed to get so far away in so little time astounded me. I didn’t think my feet would move forward more than an inch at a time.
“You okay?” Adam asked.
I drew away from him, rooting myself in place on my legs and willing my body not to rebel. It worked. I was shaky but I was still on my feet, and the world around me was coming into sharper focus. I looked over my shoulder and saw a Watcher hovering at a discreet distance, just out of earshot.
“Will you tell me what your tattoo means now—the numbers on your wrist?” I asked.
Adam hesitated for a moment, then answered. “I put it there. After I came back. My dad whispered those numbers to me before the kidnappers let me go. The last time I saw him.”
“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry,” I said. Although I was dying to ask if his father had told him what they meant, I waited for Adam to volunteer the information. He didn’t.
“Did he tell you anything else?” I prodded.
Adam hesitated. “A few things. But he was in pretty bad shape.” His voice cracked a little. He wasn’t ready to tell me the whole story yet.
I looked at the numbers again. “If the Eparch told them to you, they mean something,” I assured him.
Adam nodded, then sighed. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go that way.” He pointed behind us, in the opposite direction from where the Sacristan kids had gone. Turning, I saw that the wall became a steep incline.
I pulled the crumpled “thought prompts” out of my bag. “But this says we’re supposed to find the twelfth watchtower, which is over there.” I pointed toward our group.
Adam grabbed the paper and wadded it into a ball, then threw it over the side of the wall. “Screw the homework.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that first?
“You’re right—screw it,” I said.
Adam slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him. A wave of warmth rolled through me. “I’ve got you,” he said. “Just follow my lead.”
We walked slowly and deliberately, traversing the vertical climb to what was apparently the highest physical location on the planet. The Watcher who’d been trailing us stayed at the bottom of the incline, probably working up the courage to follow. I tried to concentrate on my shoes against the stones, zoom lens only. Still, even with the distraction of looming death, it was impossible to ignore the solid feel of Adam’s arm pressed against my hip.
The last hundred feet of the climb was brutal. Crumbly stones gave way beneath us as we ascended, sending miniature avalanches of ancient stone cascading over the sides of the wall. Every pebble that dropped over the edge robbed me of a little piece of my sanity, and I couldn’t afford to waste the precious little I had left. Even so, Adam somehow managed to take us the rest of the way without me freezing in panic. Having him next to me made all the difference.
Finally, we reached the tower. Above the cloudbank, nobody was visible. It was like we were alone at the top of the world.
I wrinkled my nose. Inside the four walls of the tower the air smelled like thousand-year-old boiled cabbage spr
inkled in dust. It was a simple four-by-four room, but it was still so much bigger than anything I’d ever experienced before. There was one window, a keyhole framing the lush green expanse beyond the walls. I loved it. It felt like our own hidden shelter from the world: an ivory tower from which I never wanted to climb down.
“What is this place?”
“It’s Fairy Tower, the most famous part of Simatai. And you just climbed up the second most famous—and death-defying—part. The Heavenly Ladder.”
“What? I tell you I’m terrified, so you take me to the scariest place possible?”
“And you made it just fine. Nothing to be afraid of. You had it in you all along.” He reached out and grabbed my hand, pulling me to him. “You just needed someone to show you.”
Adam’s voice was low and raw with something electric. Out of nowhere, we were drawn together like a moth to a five-thousand-megawatt bug zapper. I put my arms around his neck and he bent down to meet me with a hungry kiss. Grabbing my hips, he lifted me onto the ledge of the window. His palms slid along my bare thighs, fingertips slipping beneath the hem of my skirt and sending shivers over my body. He leaned into me, and our mouths pressed together so hard that his teeth cut into my lip. Months of fear, desperation, anger, and loneliness wound together in this one moment.
Mercy’s face popped into my head. I pulled away.
“Wait. Stop. We can’t do this.”
Adam ran his lips lightly along my jaw, then groaned. “Why not?”
“Mercy. There’s something going on between you two, right?”
Adam’s eyes searched mine. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Just don’t lie to me.”
“She’s my friend. We’re helping each other out,” he said.
“Your friend?”
He grimaced, the dimple in his cheek flashing. Here came the knife. “Harlow … ”
“Are you hooking up with her?”
He scrutinized my face. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
“I guess I’m just wondering what happened. Before you went away, things were so different between us.”
“Before I went away, a lot of things were different,” he said, his voice raw. Clearly it was a painful topic.
“I don’t want to be anyone’s consolation prize, Adam. Can we just start back as friends and go from there?”
He sighed and backed away, leaning against the wall across the room from me. He rubbed his hand over his face and his shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I just miss you so much sometimes, I can barely take it.”
“Yeah. I know the feeling,” I said.
We were silent for a few minutes.
“How did you know this was here?” I asked, trying to get us back to semi-normal.
He shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Internet.”
“It’s really cool.”
He looked down at his feet. “You said there was more you needed to tell me.”
“I’m worried about my father. He’s supposed to be with us, but I haven’t seen him since Tokyo.”
“Before we went to the club?” he asked. “Dora said he stopped by your room.”
“After, actually. I thought I was going to be busted for going out, but instead he took me to the temple. We had a fight.”
Adam’s eyebrows raised. “You got initiated?”
I nodded. “The first Rite.”
He looked conflicted. “I always thought I’d be there—I wanted to be your second.”
I didn’t say anything at first, just looked into his eyes. The moment hung between us.
“I was hoping it would be you, too,” I finally whispered.
I decided not to mention that it was Hayes Cantor. By the way Adam was pursing and unpursing his lips, I could tell he wanted to ask, but he didn’t.
“So, did the fight happen after you got initiated?”
“Yeah. At first we were having this, like, father-daughter moment. Talking in a way we haven’t in a long time. Then I made the mistake of telling him about the voice,” I said.
This revelation had a bigger impact than I thought it would. Adam straightened up and took his hands out of his pockets. “What did he say?”
“He freaked out and had the Watch lock me in my room. I was sure he would send me home, but then we all came to China and the General was nowhere to be found.”
Adam crossed the room toward me, only this time he looked alarmed, not amorous. “What did he say to you? Exactly?” He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped it tightly.
“Let go. That hurts,” I said, wriggling away and scooting off the window ledge.
I walked to the door, my back to Adam but careful not to get close to the descent. He walked up behind me. So close yet so far; the warmth of his body was heartbreaking.
“Harlow, you have to tell me what he said,” he repeated, his voice low.
“He wanted to know how long I’d been communicating with Her,” I said. “At the time, I thought it was just an odd choice of words. Now, after yesterday with Madam Wang, I’m not so sure.”
“What really happened with Madam Wang?”
“She said I wouldn’t be seeing my father for a while.”
Adam put his hands on my shoulders and gently turned me around. “And?”
“And then she read my tea leaves. She knew about the voice—said it wants me to ‘return’ somewhere. I have no idea where.”
“Crap,” he said, dropping his hands.
“Adam.” I looked up at him. “What happened to you when you were kidnapped?”
His face stayed stone-still but his shoulders flinched a little. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Can’t you see that this is all somehow tied together? If we don’t trust each other, something bad is going to happen. I know it.”
He just looked at me. Stone-faced. Silent.
“You do trust me, don’t you? You believe I’m not behind whatever’s happening?” I asked.
His silence was the only answer I needed. It was like being kicked in the stomach.
“Fine. If that’s what you think, then we’re done,” I said.
I turned to face the doorway again. The stone path fell vertically away from the tower, like an ancient slide of doom.
“Harlow, don’t go,” he said.
A part of me wanted to just fall into his arms. But that was the old part. The new part of me was just pissed that after everything we’d been through, after baring every part of my soul to him, he still couldn’t do the same.
“For your information, Sacristan Wang is a virologist,” I snapped. “Head of the VisionCrest biolabs. Given the kind of visions I’ve been having, that seems like a pretty convenient coincidence. Thought that tidbit might be of interest to you.”
I took a deep breath and put one tentative Mary Jane down sideways onto the so-called Heavenly Ladder, trying to approach it like a ski slope and sidestep my way down. I willed my eyes to focus only on crisscrossing my feet, one over the other, down the slope. I’d made it six steps when I noticed my shadow stretching out below me. Although I remained standing, my silhouette crouched down, then slowly rose to standing again.
Startled, I felt my downslope foot begin to slide. It rolled smoothly over a miniscule handful of pebbles that I knew were going to be my undoing. I tried to turn my body and fall to the ground, wishing I hadn’t been above the indignity of crawling on all fours to begin with. But it was too late.
The momentum of those few stones was enough to send me sliding, faster and faster, down the wall. My fingers grasped at the smooth-worn crevasses, trying to find something to hold on to. I screamed out and looked up at the doorway, where Adam was watching. The panic on his face was a mirror of my own.
Then my knee hit a protruding stone and the shift in b
alance upended me, sending me rolling toward the side of the wall even as I picked up speed. I caught a flash of the expanse of nothingness stretched out before me just before I barreled sideways over the edge.
This wasn’t happening. My hands grasped, hoping for a last-minute miracle. I managed to catch the rim of the wall.
I was dangling like a wind chime off one of the wonders of the world.
Loose pebbles hit me in the face as Adam’s shoes slid into focus. A split second later he was on his stomach and reaching his hand out to me.
“Take it!” he yelled.
I wasn’t really in a position to wait for an engraved invitation, so I let go of the wall and grasped his forearm. I was eye-to-eye with the swirl of his tattoos, the things that branded his body as property—that marked it as still belonging to whoever had kidnapped him. In my desperate state, I suddenly saw images of blood and terror buried in the jungle of colors and symbols.
Something clicked in my brain. I gasped, forgetting for a moment that I was dangling in mortal peril. His kidnapping was related to my visions. “They let you go for a reason!”
It was more an accusation than a declaration. But before Adam could say anything, I heard voices of Chinese tourists chattering and yelling near us. People had noticed that something was going on and were closing in to get a look, even as a white-hot tunnel of pain was shrinking them to tiny dots of nothingness.
Death.
Adam jerked like he’d touched a downed power line. But unlike last time, at least, this time he didn’t let me go.
Obliterate.
The world went white and we were swallowed by the vision.
Decimate.
It was like I’d fallen through the looking glass, and the only thing anchoring me to reality was Adam.
Exsanguinate.
I was still dangling over the precipice, and Adam was still holding on to my arm, but at the same time I was watching the whole scene unfold before us as if I were floating outside of my body. It was impossible to tell from Adam’s face what was happening to him, whether he too had disconnected from reality, but I just hoped he held on tight.
The Violet Hour Page 10