by N. D. Wilson
Cyrus smiled again. Being notorious could work. He winked at the kid in the bed. “You’ll meet them soon enough.”
“Cyrus Lawrence Smith!” A cold hand clamped onto Cyrus’s ear, twisting his head around and forcing his skull against the doorjamb. Mrs. Eldridge’s face leaned in close to his, her breath more dill than pickles. He grabbed at her wrist, at the hand twisting his ear, but he couldn’t fight it. She bent him lower. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she asked quietly. “Where’s your sister?”
Cyrus’s eyes rolled around the hall. Had Tigs left him? “You’re tearing my ear off. Let go!” He bit his lip. His eyes were watering with pain. He tried to find her legs with his feet.
“Smith?” The boy’s voice was almost a squeak. “He’s one of them? He could have killed me. What does he want?”
Ignoring the kid, Mrs. Eldridge released Cyrus into the hall and shut the door.
Breathing hard, Cyrus massaged his ear and examined his fingers for blood. How could his ear not be bleeding? How was it still attached?
Mrs. Eldridge crossed her arms, examining him.
“You’re nuts,” Cyrus said. “Did you have to do that?”
“Boys need hard lines,” said Mrs. Eldridge. “Sneaking into the hospital.” She shook her head. “The Polygon’s not rough enough for you already? If I’m to be responsible for you around here, I’ll do what needs done to keep that empty head on your shoulders. Where’s Antigone? I always thought you were the dimmest Smith bulb, but you never know with families.”
Near the end of the hall, behind Mrs. Eldridge, a door cracked open. “Cyrus!” Antigone whispered. “Get in here! He doesn’t look good.”
Mrs. Eldridge smacked her lips. “Well, I have my answer then, don’t I?” She turned around. “Miss Antigone!”
The door widened, and Cyrus watched his shocked sister step out into the hall.
“Mrs. E?” Antigone asked. Cyrus blinked. His sister sounded relieved to see the woman who’d just tried to souvenir his ear. “Horace doesn’t look good. He’s gray and barely breathing and hooked up to all sorts of stuff.”
Mrs. Eldridge, arms crossed and angry, deflated a little. “I know, doll. I know. He doesn’t look good ’cause he isn’t. He’s the opposite of good. They put all new blood in him twice over — that bullet was a big one, and it spread out and splattered. Now come on. Let’s get you two out of here and back to where you belong. I know what I said, and I know what I swore, and if it were up to me, I think I’d shut you two out and stick to it. But with Skelton dead and Horace dying, Rupert didn’t give me a choice. I’m your Keeper now, and that’s that.” She glared at Cyrus. “And you’ll be doing as I say, starting now. In the morning, we’ll get you proper clothes of your own and get you working. You two have got an impossible lot to learn.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Antigone said.
“Just tell me how you like your waffles,” Cyrus muttered.
eleven. BED
WHEN MRS. ELDRIDGE finally rereleased Cyrus and Antigone into the Polygon — she actually stood at the top of the dank stairwell, tsking them all the way down — and the two of them had made their cautious way across the network of planks, through the corked gap in the showers, and through the hole, they found Nolan tucked awkwardly onto a stone bed. His teeth were chattering, his shirt was off, and sweat dripped from swollen mountain ranges of Whip Spider welts. His right arm was twice as thick as his left, and his neck had expanded out past his jaw.
Wheezing, Nolan opened his eyes. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “Happened too many times to count. Need to sleep.”
Antigone looked at her brother. “We should call someone.”
“No.” Nolan shook his head, and then managed to point to a thick envelope on the floor. “Was on the door. For you.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“What now?” Cyrus asked, watching Nolan breathe.
Antigone picked up the envelope, ripped it open, and sat down on one of the other stone beds.
Cyrus watched his sister pull out the three defaced photos he’d found in Skelton’s camper. Then she tugged out a rectangle of misshapen glass. His beetle.
“Ow!” Shaking her fingers, she dropped the glass, kicked it off her foot, and sent it tumbling across the carpet. A small note fluttered out of the envelope and settled on the floor.
“It shocked me,” Antigone said, popping her fingers into her mouth. “Who’s it from?”
Looking back at Nolan, Cyrus pinched the glass and dropped it into his pocket before he picked up the note. “ ‘U left these in the car. Creeps. Made it back. Couple stitches but fine. Heard about you. Sorry. Horace is deliryous. Check in later. Gunner.’ ” Cyrus looked up. “I’m glad he made it. I wonder what he heard about us.”
Antigone laughed. “Maybe that we got stuck in the Polygon. Tomorrow I absolutely need a toothbrush. And a hairbrush.” She looked around the room. “And a mirror. And someone who can tell us what’s going on with Dan.” She shivered, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her eyes settled on Nolan’s dripping face. “I really don’t want to sleep in here, and I feel like I’m going to cry.”
“Well, don’t,” said Cyrus. “Think of me. How much worse would it be for me if you were crying?”
“It’s not like I’m planning on crying. It’s just that, well, here we are. And Mrs. Eldridge is the only person we know, and it’s not like she’s excited to help us. Dan’s gone and we don’t know if anyone is doing anything about it. Mom’s back at the hospital — when will we get another Mom day? Are we even allowed to leave? And we’re sleeping in a room with a boy we just met who looks like he’s dying, and there are Whip Spiders, and the motel is burned, and who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow? This place was supposed to help us.” She scrunched her face.
“I think you are planning on crying,” said Cyrus. “It’s like you’re trying to talk yourself into it.”
“Dork.”
“Girl.”
“Oh, shut up.” Antigone raised her head. “If you think making me mad is going to keep me from crying, you’re dumber than I thought, and you haven’t been paying any attention to girls for pretty much your entire life.”
“Just trying to make you laugh.”
Antigone dropped her forehead onto her arms. “I don’t want to laugh right now, Cy. I can’t. Honestly, this has been the most traumatic forty-eight hours of my life. Tell me that’s not true.”
Cyrus pulled in a long, slow breath, and his mind jumped back in time — he couldn’t stop it — and an old ache, forever fresh, broke out of its cage inside him. His lungs compressed, his heart tightened, and his ears began to ring. In a shattered second, the temperature of his soul had dropped ten degrees.
“Tigs,” he said, breathing carefully. “That’s not true.”
Nolan sputtered. The grandfather clock on its lumber stilts tocked. The lights of the Polygon buzzed. The little refrigerator hummed. Together, Cyrus and Antigone were far away.
Antigone lifted her head. “You’re right,” she said. “This is nothing like as awful as that.” She sniffed. “This is just another part of that.”
The two of them sat, seeing and hearing invisible things, sharing silence.
“I miss Dan,” Antigone said.
Cyrus nodded. He missed too many things. His mom’s smile. Her laugh. The blackness of her hair. His father’s heavy hands and thigh-thick arms that had so easily popped his ten-year-old ribs. The smell of his wind-salted skin.
Dan. Their mother might never look in Cyrus’s eyes again, and his father’s smile was at the bottom of the sea, but Dan would be back. He had to be. Dan gone for good would be too much. More pressure than Cyrus’s lungs could fight.
He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to care. Caring hurt. But not caring would be worse. And then his mind arrived where it always did when the deep ache got out of its cage. Death was real. It was waiting. For him and for everyone he loved and needed. In the end — in one year or in ninety �
� he would be alone in a cold box, silent, breathless, bloodless, listening to the slow groping of tree roots.
Stupid. He shook his head, wishing he could dig the thoughts out of his ears with his little fingers. He wondered if Antigone thought the same way he did, but he wasn’t about to ask. Not ever. She cried, but she always ended with a smile. If she thought things would get better, he should keep his own sour thoughts to himself. He could put the ache back on its leash and drag it behind the old bars. He could renumb the raw, if only for a while.
Across the little room, Antigone sniffed and wiped her eyes. And she smiled.
“We’ll get Dan back,” she said. “Somehow.”
Tight-lipped, Cyrus returned her smile. And then out in the Polygon, the door squealed open and heavy feet found the planks.
“Sir,” a girl whispered. “I’d really rather not.”
“Fine,” a man said. The voice was Rupert’s. “Just give them to me and go.” The door closed. “Hello? Anyone here?”
Cyrus looked at his sister. She shrugged. “All the way back!” he yelled.
When Rupert Greeves ducked beneath the showers, his arms were stacked with folded blankets and towels, capped with three bulbous pillows. He stopped at the hole and leaned in.
“May I?” he asked Antigone.
She nodded.
He stepped inside, filling what was left of the small yellow space. He was wearing a loose linen shirt with rolled-up sleeves. The neck was unbuttoned low enough that a cluster of bulging old scars were visible on his dark chest. His brows flickered when he saw Nolan, but he focused on Cyrus and Antigone. “I brought you some things, though I see you’ve found some for yourselves already. Your deposit is listed as paid, but the maid service didn’t want to come down. So here I am. Special delivery.” He set the pile on the floor.
Antigone smiled. “Thanks.”
Cyrus said nothing.
The big man eyed him, scratched his pointed beard, and then twisted his head, looking at the skull-inked photos still dangling from Antigone’s fingers.
“Cy found these in Skelton’s truck,” she said. “Pretty sick. Take them.”
Antigone handed over the pictures and watched Greeves thumb through them. He focused on each image without any reaction and then fanned all three out. Cyrus stared at the calloused and battered hands holding the photos. One of Rupert’s fingernails was black with old blood.
“There were more,” Cyrus said. “Other people. I only took those three.”
Rupert nodded. “Unpleasant. I’ll have someone collect the others.”
“Unpleasant?” Cyrus snorted. “I don’t know. I love having a picture of my mom with a skull drawn on her face. And the one of Dan bleeding has a nice note on the back, too.”
Antigone slid to her feet. “Ignore him,” she said. “It’s been a rough day.”
“Rough?” Cyrus asked. He wanted to be angry at Greeves, at someone, but he didn’t feel up to the effort. He sighed. “That’s one way to put it.”
Antigone collected herself. “I have a question. Two, if that’s all right. Maybe three.”
“Maybe twelve,” Cyrus muttered.
“Ask,” said Rupert. His eyes were on Cyrus. His accented voice had grown an edge.
Antigone looked at Nolan. “You think he’s going to be okay?”
Rupert nodded. “Yes. Nolan is always okay.”
“Dan,” Cyrus said. He had to keep his voice calm. “What are you doing to find our brother? What’s happening? Where is he? What do you know?”
The big man straightened, his head nearly grazing the ceiling. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” he said. “Maxi sent him to Phoenix, his handler. They used a small grass airstrip not far from your motel, and I have a description of their plane. But where Phoenix is right now, I cannot say. In the last ten years, I have flushed him out of dens in Paris, Miami, and Quebec. I’ve even put a bullet in him. He’s not immortal — nor even transmortaled, I suspect — but he has some vile charm about him. Tonight, I have people and”—he paused, rubbing his jaw—“things searching for where he might be. In a few hours, I will be joining them.” He raised his eyebrows, turning from Cyrus to Antigone. “What might Daniel have that Phoenix wants? Does he have any particular gifts, strengths, abilities?”
Cyrus shook his head slowly. Greeves continued. “Did Skelton give him anything before he died? The doctor always has a twisted reason for what he does. He’s after something.”
Antigone swung meaningful eyes onto her brother. “What’s he after, Rus?”
Rupert waited. Cyrus chewed his lip. “I want to come.”
Greeves crossed his thick arms. “I beg your pardon?”
“You said you were going to be looking for this Phoenix guy tonight.” Cyrus cleared his throat. “I want to come. I can’t stay here, sleeping in this … basement. I have to do something. Let me come.”
Rupert Greeves leaned forward slowly until he was eye to eye with Cyrus. For a moment, the man simply stared, and Cyrus struggled not to squirm, not to blink or shuffle or look away. When Greeves finally spoke, his voice was soft. “Rightly or wrongly, you feel some guilt for this. Now, do you want to make yourself feel as if you are helping me find your brother, or do you want to truly help?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What does Phoenix want? Why take Daniel?”
Cyrus exhaled. “I don’t even know who Phoenix is. How should I know what he wants?”
“Who is he?” Antigone blurted. “And don’t say we don’t need to know.”
“Right,” Greeves said. He ran a hand over his tightly shorn head. “Phoenix is someone I hope you never meet. In his own mind, he is the greatest of all altruists, philanthropist to the natural order, god to new races, savior to the world. In reality, he is a soul-crippled, subhuman devil of a man, part scientist, part sorcerer. He was expelled from the Order when I was young. He should be an old man now, but he still appears relatively young. I have no doubt that he robbed the collections of Ashtown before his expulsion, but there is very little order to them, and the darkest collections are sealed. Few people would miss anything. If I knew what he took, I might understand his weaknesses better. Then again, I might not. There may not be any weaknesses.”
“What did he do to get kicked out?” Antigone asked.
The big man’s jaw rippled, clenching. He pulled at his pointed beard. “The truth will not be reassuring. Phoenix began by secretly conducting experiments — as cruel as can be imagined — on animals in the Order’s zoo. He moved quickly to working on Acolytes, staff, and poor ignorant wretches he and his friends collected from the surrounding population — pulled from farmhouses, bus stops, schools.…”
Rupert’s scarred chest inflated. His eyes lost their focus. He was looking straight through the stone wall and into memory, seeing old horror. Cyrus glanced at his sister. Her eyes were wide, worried.
“Ten years ago,” Rupert said quietly, “I found the … remains … of seven Acolytes hidden in the floor of his old rooms. I dug graves for them myself. Among the murdered was my elder brother, missing from my childhood. Also among them”—Rupert’s eyes found Cyrus’s, and they were heavy, glistening—“were the bodies of Harriet and Circe Smith.” He turned to Antigone. “Your father’s sisters.”
Antigone blinked.
“What?” Cyrus said. “What? Our dad didn’t have … How do you know?”
“Because Phoenix labeled them.” Rupert’s voice was cold and level, his face undisturbed. “Phoenix is why I strove to become the Avengel, and I am why he lurks in shadow, afraid to show himself. The blood of the Order that he spilled is mine to avenge. And so help me God, I will leave his lifeless body to the birds so that he might be spattered across the land. But if, through witchcraft and devilry, he now numbers among the transmortaled, I will prepare for him a place in the Burials of Ashtown, deeper in anguish than any before him.”
Cyrus swallowed. Antigone slid to the back of her bench. The big man’s dark eyes had become ston
e.
“Keys,” Cyrus said quietly, and he looked down at his own toes. Rupert’s eyes were too uncomfortable to meet. “Skelton gave me his keys before he died. He told me to keep them safe.”
The big man breathed in slowly and turned his face up to the ceiling. “And have you?” he asked.
Cyrus was confused. “Have I what?”
“Kept the keys safe.”
Cyrus nodded. “Yeah. Well, I still have them.”
“And whom have you told?” Rupert asked. “Who else may know what you’re carrying?”
“Just Nolan,” Cyrus said. “He’s the only one.”
“And there were two keys?” Rupert’s eyes grew even darker.
“Yeah.” Cyrus nodded. “Normal-looking. Old, I guess. One is small and silver, one’s longer and gold, but the gold one was just to his truck.”
“Mother Mary.” Rupert breathed deep and shook his head. “Too many Skelton rumors prove to be true. No, Cyrus, the gold one was not just to his truck.” He became suddenly worried. “He placed these keys in your hand? He gave them to you? You did not take them?”
Cyrus nodded.
Greeves seemed relieved. “Then Skelton has already given you more than you can imagine.” He stepped toward Cyrus, blocking the ceiling lanterns with his shoulder. “With these two keys, was there anything else? Did Skelton speak to you about a tooth? Not a whole tooth. A shard? It would have been black. He might have called it a dragon’s tooth.”
Cyrus blinked. His neck was suddenly quite heavy.
“Reaper’s Blade? Resurrection Stone? Anything like that?”
Cyrus glanced at his sister. Her eyes were wide, nervous, waiting for his decision. He looked back up at Rupert, and then he shook his head.
“Skelton didn’t say anything.” He swallowed. It wasn’t really a lie. Skelton had been dead. Horace had done all the tooth talking.
Rupert’s brows slid slowly down, and his eyes disappeared in shadow.
“Are you going to take the keys from me?” Cyrus asked quickly.
Greeves blinked, and the shadows on his face slid away in surprise. “Take them? Is that what you think of me? Cyrus, I am not a bullying thief. And if I were, Solomon Keys protect themselves. If I did force them from you, those keys would be deadly for me. For any mortal. They do not take kindly to theft. And if you gave them to me freely, they could never be returned to you. They are ancient, they are powerful, and no man living can know or understand the charms woven into them.”