The only airline of the three that provided nonstop direct service was Air France, into Paris. The flight departed in three hours but the only seats available were in business class. I about choked when the ticketing agent gave me the price, but considering our dire situation, I asked her to proceed.
Three hours. We could wait three hours, couldn’t we? Once we made it through Customs and security—and that was only if I wasn’t already on a no-fly list, considering the disaster with the Higgins affair—we’d likely be just in time to board.
“Your passports and personal documentation, please,” the agent said, her French accent reminding me of Alicia. “Your friend looks unwel today. Does he have any communicable diseases? This is a long flight and we cannot alow il passengers to board,” she said.
“No, he had shoulder surgery and is just very sore. Refuses pain medication,” I said. It bothered me how easy it was becoming to lie.
“Does he have a doctor’s note for travel?”
“No. The hospital discharged him but didn’t say we’d need a doctor’s note,” I said.
“Do you have discharge papers?”
“Uh, no. I didn’t think the airline would need to see instructions about wound care and physical therapy.” I was growing annoyed at her meddling. She scanned my face and offered a cursory pursing of her lips that I think was meant to be a smile.
“Sir, your name?” She stretched on tiptoes to see Henry’s face.
Thank heavens he was alert enough to address her without slurring or staring off.
“Henry Dmitri.”
“Date of birth?”
“January 6, 1991.”
“Current address?”
The questions continued, Henry answered each one as the agent’s fingers skittered across the keyboard. She repeated her interrogation with me, but when I struggled with my permanent address, I recovered by explaining that it was my grandparents’
house (actualy, it was Ted’s parents’ address, so the lie wasn’t that big), that I lived at a boarding school most of the year. She paused and looked me over for a few beats, and I pasted on my most honest eyes, the ones I gave Marlene when I was facing trouble that someone else had caused. I hoped that karma would soften her judgment when it came time to atone for al of the day’s lies.
“And what is the purpose of your trip?”
Henry surprised me by answering her in French. Good move, Henry. Impress the girl. Make us legit. Because of my lack of familiarity with the language, I picked up two words: “Something something something grand-mère something something something morte,” Henry said, giving my hand a gentle pulse. I was glad he’d answered, and so smartly in French. I was getting tired of maintaining the line between fact and fiction, but this fiction involved his grandmother and death.
His answer had a visible impact on her attitude—she perked right up but gave us a sympathetic I’m so sorry for your loss sort of look. I played along, watching her face, then glanced back to Henry to make sure I was moving along the right path. A glimmer of hope sparked in my head at the thought that maybe, just maybe, we’d make it through this sooner than later.
Her typing slowed and she stared at the screen, her smile fading.
Her eyes scanned back and forth as she read some unknown text with a fierce attention, her eyebrows knitted across her delicate forehead. My stomach flipped over. Was there a warrant for me?
Was it in her computer?
She looked up at me and then to the monitor, her left hand tabbing through the mystery words on the screen. My anxiety was inching upward as other travelers to our left and right had come and gone, their tickets in hand and bags checked. We were easy passengers—no luggage, clean passports, a wad of cash to pay for the crazy fares—what could be the hold up, other than the possibility of an outstanding warrant for my arrest?
“Excusez moi, mademoisele, attendez une minute,” she said, scooping our passports from the counter. I watched her turn and walk the short distance from her terminal to another desk where an older gentleman sat. He must’ve been the supervisor as he wore the same airline-issue uniform jacket and had the same air of unspoken French superiority as our ticket agent. The man typed while she bent over and explained something to him. They looked over toward me at the counter, and then back to the monitor. The male agent picked up the phone and turned his head away, hanging up after a brief conversation.
That was it. We were screwed. Somehow my name and face had made it into their database. I was wanted for questioning in a murder in Washington, and a warrant had been issued for my arrest.
Maybe I’d gone from a person of interest to a suspect. Lucian was going to win this one after al.
Our agent stood with her back to us while her supervisor continued on the phone. Though I could hear his conversation, I couldn’t understand a damn word he said. Why hadn’t I taken French instead of Spanish? He looked past her slight frame to me, his face suspicious and concerned. I felt like a criminal, as if every glance by staff and felow travelers condemned me for something they knew and I didn’t.
I turned to look at Henry, to see how he was holding up, if our charade was going to survive long enough for us to be granted passage to France. I scanned the crowd, afraid someone would recognize my face from any one of the recent news reports, and listened in on conversations—the people in the vicinity were, thank heavens, way too involved in their own dramas to pay any mind to a purported criminal in their midst. I scolded myself: Face forward, Gemma, before someone does recognize you.
Just as I was about to return my attention to the delay at our counter, a familiar face stepped from behind a thick pilar at the far end of the ticketing area. The smile on her face sent a shockwave through me, and a spike of terror stabbed me in the gut. I was consumed by a cold sweat.
Summer Day.
I tapped the counter to get our agent to turn around. “Excuse me, ma’am. Uh, oui, excusez moi…is there a problem with our tickets?” She turned slowly, her former fake smile replaced by a look of annoyance, her red lips pursed together in a narrow line.
“Can you come here, please? S’il vous plaît?” I said, gesturing for her to return to her computer. She put her finger in the air and resumed her conversation with her supervisor.
I looked down the counter, hoping against hope that it was just my imagination messing with me. That couldn’t have been Summer…could it?
I puled a few ringlets of my hair forward to hide behind as I surveyed the throngs of people. There was no sign of Summer.
And the amulet was cool against my skin, so Lucian couldn’t have been close. It was just paranoia. Too much stress, the lack of food and sleep were wreaking havoc on my sanity.
The Air France agent continued to ignore me, despite my bouncing of a pen against the countertop.
“Gemma, you won’t make it out of here…”
A whisper, clear as a bel. I whipped around, my eyes darting from one anonymous face to the next, searching for its source.
“Lucian isn’t going to let you and loverboy get away so easily.” This time, the whisper carried a caling card: the sound of metal against teeth. Tap tap tap. Metal, like from a piercing. A metal loop against the enamel of a tooth.
I leaned over to Henry and put my hand under his chin so he’d look up at me.
“Henry, he’s here. Summer Day is here. She’s whispering threats from somewhere in the terminal.” He nodded and squeezed my hand. His grip was painfuly frigid.
I stood straight again and gasped. The shades. They were everywhere, and they were congregating around us, moving through living travelers in lines, stepping through luggage, sailing through ticketing kiosk machines. The temperature of the air around me dropped like it did when there were so many of them. My nose. It stung. And then it dripped onto my hand, crimson and warm.
“Gemma.” I jumped. Marlene was standing next to me. “You need to get out of here. You and Henry. Find a way.” I couldn’t respond to her; the people standing around
me would think I was insane. I gave the ghost of my aunt a subtle nod and turned again to the counter. A box of tissue was tucked next to our agent’s computer. I reached over and took the whole thing.
Henry was looking around, suddenly more aware of our surroundings than he’d been just a few moments prior.
“What is it, Henry?” I bent over, careful to keep the pressure on my nose. With so many shades in our immediate area, my nosebleed had little hope of stopping any time soon.
“They’re everywhere, aren’t they?…I can feel them.”
“Yes, there are a lot of them. Marlene just whispered to me. We have to get out of here.”
Henry coughed. The anguish on his face made my heart ache.
He was in so much pain, and this stupid woman behind the counter was making every second stretch into centuries. Her back was stil turned away from me. But the shades—instead of moving closer to me, to Henry, they had formed a half-circle around the ticketing counter, shoulder to shoulder, facing outward.
They were protecting us.
After what felt like an eternity, the agent returned to her station and placed our passports next to her keyboard.
“I am sorry, Miss Flannery, but we wil not be able to issue tickets for your passage to Paris this morning.” As she spoke, two armed security guards stepped out from behind the Air France counter. “Please alow these gentleman to escort you to a holding area and my supervisor wil explain our situation in a moment.” As the airport police moved toward Henry and me, a new voice hummed in my ears.
“Gems, where you running off to?”
Ash.
I spun my head in the direction of the sound just in time to see him move from behind a massive sculpture thirty yards away. Our eyes connected and he glowered at me. From a distance, he looked tired and pale, but he’d obviously made somewhat of a recovery from the incident on the train. It had to have been Lucian’s doing.
Lucian could fix anything. Or anyone.
Ash puled a cel phone from the pocket of his long overcoat and held it to his ear.
A phone rang next to me and I jumped a foot, jerking Henry’s arm and causing him to moan. The security guard who’d moved into position behind Henry’s wheelchair answered the ringing. “Yes, we’re moving the subjects into a secured area. Yes, ma’am,” he said, and hung up. That was al I heard as we began to move.
Like flipping through radio stations, I searched the litany of voices around me for Ash’s voice, for Summer’s voice, but only heard the whispers among other travelers as we walked past. Their commentary suggested that maybe we were terrorists or runaways or drug mules. I was humiliated. But the humiliation was overshadowed by a consuming sense of dread.
The shades moved with us, a circle of the dead in perfect formation around our foursome as we walked through the airport.
My whole body quaked, despite the renewed warmth radiating from Henry’s hand. One of the officers had his hand under my right elbow, the box of tissues in the other hand. I was too afraid to ask him who he’d been talking to on his phone, and doubted he’d answer me, anyway. He’d said “ma’am,” though, so he couldn’t have been talking to Ash. Was it Summer? When did she join the chase?
I didn’t dare tempt fate and ask how things could get any worse, because they could always get worse.
“Hey, Gemma, Lucian sends his regards…” Ash mumbled to me. He had moved from the sculpture and was starting toward us.
“Sir, can we move a little faster? I…I need to use the bathroom.”
“There’s a restroom in the holding area, miss,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Can we please move a little faster, then? I realy need to go.” I looked back over my shoulder. Ash was closing the gap.
Henry was strangely calm through everything, although I feared it was due to shock and a general lack of awareness induced by extremes of fatigue and physical agony.
I let go of Henry’s hand and stepped in front of the guard who was pushing the wheelchair. It took the officer on my flank by surprise and he lurched toward me and repositioned his hand on my upper arm.
“I said, I have to go now! Please!”
He stopped me midstep. “Miss, alow Officer Banks to push the wheelchair.” Omigod, we can’t stop.
“Fine, okay. Let’s go, then. Please, hurry, I’m begging you.” I crossed my legs and bounced for effect.
Henry had slumped forward in the chair.
Ash was behind us, though his way was impeded by a huge crowd of travelers who seemed to come from nowhere. The frustration was mounting on his face as he tried to push his way past baby strolers, luggage carts, and slow-moving families.
We reached a set of double doors and my officer swiped his security badge. The door buzzed and the handle released.
Just as the doors clicked closed behind us, I heard the pound of a fist. I turned around; Ash, his nose pressed against the smal, wired-glass window, glared. He said something.
I couldn’t hear him.
In that halway, the sudden onslaught of silence nearly took my breath away. It was so foreign but was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I couldn’t hear Ash, couldn’t hear his threats, couldn’t hear the racket of travelers and children and walkie-talkies. It brought tears to my eyes. It’s stunning how much a person misses something as simple as quiet until every second of the day is bombarded with sound.
A locked set of security doors stood between Ash and Summer and us, and even if this was our last walk of freedom, of life, at least these final few minutes would be quieter. And the shades—they didn’t move with us into the hal. The pressure in my face immediately lifted.
We traveled down a long halway through several more sets of heavy doors, into the bely of the airport. There would be no way out, no quick escape. This place was a maze, security cameras everywhere, and the officer escorting us had to scan his ID badge over and over again at every new section just to get the heavy, reinforced doors to unlock.
We came to a room at the end of yet another hal. It looked like a hospital waiting room, with large windows looking out over a less-busy part of the runways. The early morning sunlight was spotty and peeked through breaks in the cloud cover. The security guards left us in the room without uttering a single word, but it wasn’t until they’d closed and locked the door behind them that I realized just how bad things were. Even though there was a mile of twisted halways and untold security doors between us, Summer and Ash were at the airport, lying in wait. Lucian couldn’t be far behind.
Thoughts of what he would do to us, to everyone, once he had his hands on the book that we had with us al this time…
In an unusual twist, I hoped it would be the police who arrived before Lucian. At least if I were arrested, I’d be under armed guard, out of Lucian’s clutches. Unless they were working with him, the way the cops in Eaglefern were. Unless he found his way into my head via another unexpected, unwanted vision.
I was overwhelmed with despair.
Henry stretched his arm toward me. I took it and he puled me toward him. “It’s okay, Gemma. It’s going to be okay, my love,” he whispered. He was very weak—he had taken a bulet for me. My selfishness was reprehensible.
“Lucian is coming. Summer and Ash are here. Even if the police know I’m here, even if the airline people know about Bradley, it doesn’t matter. Lucian wil get to us first. I mean, look at this place?
We’re locked in! We’re prisoners already! And you’re…you’re…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. You’re dying.
“Is the amulet burning?”
I stopped breathing and touched it again, terrified at what I’d find. If Lucian had been near, I would’ve felt the triangle heating up long before now, right? Maybe he wasn’t at the airport yet and so the amulet was quiet, although it hadn’t warned us about Ash’s sudden appearance at the station or on the train, and his presence had brought calamity. I didn’t trust the coolness of the amulet as evidence of our temporary safety. I knew Summer
and Ash were here. That meant Lucian was coming. And when he walked through that door, we were as good as dead.
“She’s near, Gemma…I can hear her but I can’t see her yet…,” Henry said, his eyes drooping. He was looking at something I couldn’t see. A tender smile crawled across his weary face.
“Who’s near, Henry?” I patted his cheek. “Stay with me. I can’t do this without you.”
“Alicia…she’s near…I’ve missed her so much, so, so much…” He was talking to nothingness, his eyes fixated on empty space. A tear roled down his cheek and his smile held fast. His lips quivered over the white of his teeth.
Oh my God. He was realy dying. He could see his mother, coming toward him, where nothing but dusty fragments danced through the sunbeams slicing the windows. I saw nothing, heard nothing, no shades, no Alicia. It was confirmed: the injuries were winning, the halucinations setting in.
“Henry, please…please don’t go, not now, not like this. Tel Alicia it’s not time yet. Beg her—beg Marlene and Teo and Delia—
beg them to help us,” I dropped to my knees and cried, kissing his hand over and over again, my own tears smearing across the surface of his skin. “Lucian is coming. They’re here, Henry, please, ask for her help.”
“She hears us,” he said. His voice was so soft, he sounded as if he were faling asleep. I sobbed into his lap. He placed his good hand on top of my head and tried to stroke my hair.
A knock at the door startled me and I again jerked Henry’s body. His eyes popped open.
I couldn’t grant entry to the outside party as we were locked in.
I could hear nothing, not even a whisper, coming from the opposite side of the steel door. The buzz of a scanned security pass was folowed by the heavy click of the locking mechanism as it released.
I was deafened by the pound of my heart in my ears, but instinctively took a protective stance in front of Henry and tried to control the sobs constricting my throat and chest. Anyone who wanted him would have to go through me first.
As the door swung open, I braced myself for the worst, running through possible escapes or negotiations with Lucian. Take the book. Let Henry go. I’l confess to Bradley’s murder. Kil me instead. I’l do anything you ask.
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 36