“He did it purposefully to hold the passengers hostage,” I said.
“Willing it to happen by using the ring, I’m sure,” Pete continued. “So not only can you use the stone to control phantoms, but you can also use it to force phantoms to transition between natural and petrified states. Whatever the ring is made of, it can control the phantom’s biology down to a molecular level. The stone and the phantoms. There’s definitely a deeper connection between them we don’t know about.”
Dot sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to pick Saul’s brain. You guys have no idea how much you screwed up by letting him go.”
Lake scoffed. “We screwed up? The traitors that let him escape the facility in the first place were in your department.”
Dot cocked her head to the side. “Oh, right,” she said with a shrug. “Still, it would have been nice if you could have brought him back.”
“Not exactly easy when you’re being attacked by a bunch of phantoms, but whatever floats your boat,” Lake said.
I would have shared Lake’s indignation, but I was too busy contemplating what we’d heard from Director Chafik back at the Marrakesh facility. “You’re the one who came up with the ether theory, right? That Saul represents a fifth element?”
Dot perked up. “Oh, so you’ve been reading up on me?”
“We heard about it in Morocco. Saul’s powers—living forever, disappearing and appearing at will? It’s like he can bend space-time.”
“Well, it’s just a theory I had. The four of you girls can manipulate different elements. For a time we thought that there were only four of you. But then Saul appeared—a fifth Effigy.”
A fifth. And that dead soldier could be a sixth.
“For centuries,” Dot continued, “scientists have theorized ether as a medium necessary for the very propagation of gravitational and electromagnetic force. The raw essence of all space . . . the mysterious foundation of the universe. Is this Saul’s element? And is the ring tapping into the same force?”
Dot was lost in thought for a moment before heaving her shoulders with a sigh. “We need to learn more about him.” The smoke drifted past Dot’s safety glasses as she continued to solder. “What’s more, we need to find the connection. Among the stone, the phantoms, and the Effigies. Those three very mysterious variables. If we had more information, we could find out where all three came from. Maia, I know you were debriefed after your mission in France, but sometimes we think of things after everything’s settled. Are you sure Saul didn’t tell you anything else about the ring when you faced him last?”
I placed my hands behind my back like a child who’d just been caught with her hand in a cookie jar. I wanted to help. And I could have. The ring controls the phantoms. The ring uses the deaths they cause to magnify its power. That was why Saul had been using the stone and its ability to control phantoms to go on a killing spree. Somehow, when he used the stone to force phantoms to kill, it added to the stone’s ability.
Its ability to grant wishes.
All these facts would surely be of use to Dot and the R & D department. And if the Sect hadn’t been involved in Natalya’s death or Saul’s escape, I would have told them happily.
Dot sighed when I shook my head. “Well, that’s fine, I suppose. But anyway, that’s not really why I called you here. Wait a second.”
She opened one of the drawers at her bench and pulled out a small briefcase. As she unlocked it and lifted the lid, the glint of a silver steel band caught my eye. Using a screwdriver, she pried open a small section on the inside and began fitting in the chip she’d been soldering.
“What is that?” Lake asked.
“Maia, you’ve been having issues with scrying, haven’t you?”
Rhys looked at me.
“Dr. Rachadi at the Marrakesh facility sent over the results of your earlier exam. Because of your encounter with Saul in New York leading to your premature summoning of your weapon,” she said as she tinkered with the chip, “your mind is vulnerable to the consciousness of the other Effigies in your line. More than it should be. Case in point.” Dot set down the bracelet. “You’ve seen Natalya a lot lately, haven’t you?”
The intensity in her gaze froze me to the spot. I nodded before I could stop myself.
Rhys’s back straightened a little. “You’ve seen her?” he asked.
“Well, I told you a long time ago I’d been dreaming of her,” I said. “It’s getting more frequent.”
“Has she said anything?” A short silence followed after Rhys spoke. “Or done anything?”
“Why?”
The nonchalant shrug of his shoulders calmed me for the few seconds I believed it before the doubt began crawling back up my insides. Rhys wasn’t stupid. If he’d really killed Natalya, he would have known that I would find out eventually through Natalya’s memories. Was he really innocent? Or was he just quietly waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Maybe we were both just trying to deny reality.
“I’m just worried about you.” Looking suitably concerned, he folded his arms across his chest. “It’s dangerous enough having past Effigies milling about in your head. You know that, Maia.”
Why not turn him in?
Why not?
If he killed Natalya, he deserved to be punished.
My lips trembled as I thought of him rotting away in a Sect prison for the rest of his life. Or executed. Is that . . . is that what I wanted?
He looked convincing, natural. And why wouldn’t he ask more about my scrying? It was the obvious question to ask considering everything that had happened to me. Right?
What do I do? I thought desperately, turning from him.
“Yes, it is dangerous,” said Dot, picking up on Rhys’s warning. “Hence the necklace.”
Dot was finally finished. Standing, she carried the device in front of her as she approached. “Remember, Sibyl still wants you to scry to find this ‘Marian.’ That’s who Saul is really after, right? But we don’t want to hurt you in the process. This will help regulate your brain chemicals while using your powers to scry so you won’t get any more surprise visits from previous Effigies. Let’s see if this fits: Sweep back your hair for a bit?”
I did. “Ah!” My breath caught in my throat from the stinging cold of the steel. The effect was nearly imperceptible, slight enough for me to ignore it, but if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could feel the cold vibrating softly through muscle.
“We can also inject her with a primer to help stabilize her cylithium levels,” Mellie said.
“Oh, right, good idea,” Dot answered. “You can handle that, Mellie.”
“Won’t that make it harder for her to scry?” Lake looked a bit worried. She knew how important my communication with Natalya was. But Dot was right. It was a dangerous game. I didn’t want to lose myself playing it.
“Well, you won’t be able to communicate as readily. It’s like setting up a makeshift wall in your brain. The windows are still there—you’ll just have to pull a bit harder to open them, but hey, it’s better than the storm blowing in, you know?”
The neck-band was a bit clunky, but I could pass it off as a fashion statement if I needed to. It was better than being body-snatched by Natalya.
“I still don’t understand how Natalya’s mind is in me in the first place.” I shook my head once Dot took the neck-band off again. “All this stuff about frequency and vibrations and chemicals and whatever, but at the end of the day, someone’s mind is in my mind. I don’t understand it.”
“Welcome to our world.” Dot gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Controlling the elements. Effigies passing on their consciousness, but only after they die. Magic. What you do is magic. Magic that shouldn’t exist, but does. And the only thing we mere mortals can do is try to understand magic through science.” With her bony hands, she propped herself against her assistants’ table. “Because really, what else can we do? How can the ability to perform magic be created from inside the human body? Why can we
also find it in phantoms?”
There was a wildness to her curiosity, smoldering as she pulled up her safety glasses and faced me. “How is the mind connected to the body? How is the mind connected to magic?” She tapped my forehead twice with her index finger. “How did Natalya’s mind and magic travel into your physical body after she died? Mind, magic, body. One hundred years and we have more questions than answers. But we are trying our best. There’s just so much we don’t know yet.”
“That’s understandable, but it doesn’t really help me,” I said.
Dot rubbed the muscles in her neck as she moved back to her station. “It’s like we’re looking at the wall of a cave seeing only what we can see through our limited scope. Trying to grasp the universe into our hands using nothing but our flimsy, woefully insufficient technology.” She picked up a screwdriver from her table. “But the real truth . . . the real truth, Maia, is always just out of sight.”
10
SIBYL WORKED IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS. organizing a secret mission away from the prying eyes of the vast majority of your highly skilled, perceptive agents must not have been an easy feat. The few that were let into the loop were already in the expansive underground hangar by the time I arrived with Chae Rin and Lake. I could see their tiny forms through the glass of my elevator as it took us down. They were scurrying across the pavement, loading seven white delivery vans. Belle had gone ahead of us. Maybe she was already among them, helping to prepare the decoys.
It was part of the plan. Each van was inconspicuous enough to pass under the average civilian’s radar. Under Sibyl’s orders, they would drive off in different directions, forcing potential enemies to split their forces to get to the cargo they wanted: the rings. Two rings, two vans, two Effigies in each, waiting to strike like snakes in a gift box alongside a small crew of agents for backup. A city-wide shell game. It was Sibyl’s idea, but Rhys was the one who’d figured out the routes, the one directing agents to their respective vans. In his maroon suit, Kevlar-based like the one I was currently chafing in, he leaned against a wide table set up next to one of the vans, a paper map spread across it.
“Howard?” I waved excitedly when Howard Day, the beefy, bald Sect agent I’d met in New York, lifted his shades to greet me.
“It’s good to see you again, Maia.” His voice was just as grave and his expression just as serious as ever. I was glad he was okay; he’d been in bad shape the last time I’d seen him. Cocking his head to the side, he narrowed his eyes. “What is that?”
He pointed at the leopard-patterned bandana around my neck. Lake had lent it to me to hide the steel neck-band keeping the little voices in my head in check.
“Neckwear is against mission dress code regulations,” he started to say, suddenly reminding me how very stuffy he could be. “It can be a distraction on the battlefield and—”
“I think it’s pretty. Howard, relax. We’ve talked about this.” The beautiful woman standing next to him smiled at me through her long lashes, green eyes bright against her tawny skin, a similar shade to mine. “I’m Eveline. The wife.”
She was shorter than I was, which made the height difference between the couple all the more noticeable, yet charming nonetheless. Her black hair was shaved close to her skull, pronouncing the square shape of her head. The three white studs at the corner of her left ear gleamed under the hangar lights.
“Didn’t know you were married,” I said as she greeted Chae Rin and Lake.
“Well, they say the family that slays together . . .” Rhys left his words unfinished as he flashed me a quick glance and an even quicker smile.
Keeping my face unreadable, I dodged both, looking at the map instead. “These are the routes we’ll be taking, right?”
My evasion didn’t go unnoticed. After a slight pause, Rhys straightened up. “Yeah. The routes of the different vans are all here in marker.” I could see the red streaks tracing lines through London and Essex, the two cities sandwiching us here in Epping. “Each will take different paths out of the facility, but, Maia, you and Belle will be in one of the vans going underground.” He tapped the route with the tip of his covered marker. “Route L-9. It’s an underground highway built during World War II. It was used for communications during the war, but since then, the Sect has revamped it and built new structures. There’ll be Sect agents in stations along the way monitoring the route and keeping the tunnel APDs online.”
“We’re not headed to the same place, are we?” asked Chae Rin. I could hear the sound of music from her headphones as they dangled down her chest, her phone deep in her left pocket.
“You and Lake will be in Unit Two, heading out toward Dover Port with Unit Three following close behind as backup. Belle and Maia are heading northwest in Unit Seven with Unit Six as their backup. For security purposes, you won’t be told the location until you get there.”
“I’ll be with you, Maia,” said Eveline, picking up a gun off her table. “And a few other agents.”
“Do I get one of those?” Chae Rin watched, far too interested, as Eveline fitted the gun inside the holster on the small of her back. “Hey,” she added when Howard gave her a sidelong look, “unlike some of us, I can’t generate my own weapon. It’s for protection.”
I peered around the hangar. “You really think we’re going to need all these people?” Several agents were suiting up and equipping themselves. Preparing for Saul. Felt more like preparing for a war. My stomach lurched as I watched them pack into their respective vans.
“We know it’s a possibility that Saul might launch some kind of attack to find the rings,” said Howard. “He wouldn’t come unless he had some trick up his sleeve. We want to be prepared.”
“Don’t worry.” Rhys’s tone was much lighter as he rolled up the map, sweet enough for my heart to speed up. The difference between his boy-next-door and boy-bred-for-battle personas was like night and day. But both were dangerous. “I’ll be one of the agents in your van. And as I seem to remember, we’ve worked pretty well together in the past, right?”
I remembered too. “Okay, whatever,” I said, avoiding his smile. “We should go get ready. Get in position or something.”
I thought I’d be better prepared for the look on Rhys’s face, the quiet but unmistakable pang of hurt in his eyes as he watched me. I pretended not to notice. It was better than dealing with the sudden twinge of pain I felt upon realizing that if he was really innocent, then I was hurting him unnecessarily.
But if this was a ruse and he was playing me . . .
“Good luck,” I said to Howard with a quick nod before taking off.
The awful sensation corroding my insides was the same I felt every day I avoided telling Uncle Nathan that I’d become an Effigy. I would look in the mirror and wonder how I’d become so pathetic, or if I’d been like that from the beginning.
You’re so annoying! Just confront him, I ordered myself, but I kept walking. The thought of confronting Rhys over what he might have done sent a fresh surge of panic through me. Because knowing the truth meant consequences I wasn’t prepared for. Because I didn’t want to believe he could hurt a friend in cold blood. Because I was a coward.
And because of that other thing.
You don’t believe me . . . because of your crush? Pitiful. This body. This life. You don’t deserve it.
I could still remember the way she’d laughed at me. Natalya . . . She was probably watching everything right now, more determined than ever to take me over.
That is, if sending me into a tailspin of doubt wasn’t her plan all along.
“Oi, Maia.” Lake tugged my sleeve as we walked side by side down the hangar, past the agents loading weapons. “Something going on between you and Aidan?”
I stopped. “No. Why? Who told you? What are you even talking about?”
“Relax!” Lake laughed in surprise before lowering her voice. “Wow, try a little harder to act less guilty, yeah? Seriously, you guys have been weird since he came back.”
“W
hat ‘you guys’?” I could feel my mouth drying. “There’s no ‘you guys.’ Since when has there been a ‘you guys’?” Luckily, Chae Rin was already off somewhere hounding some agents to lend her a firearm “for protective purposes.” Otherwise she’d have been picking apart my obvious insecurities like a barely healed scab.
Lake, on the other hand, only shrugged. “I dunno. A while ago you guys seemed to be getting along well.” I hated the way her grin spread across her face as she added, “Really well. Especially on his part. It always seemed to me like he was a bit taken with—”
“That’s not possible.” The heat rose up from my cheeks.
“Not possible?” Lake made a face as she adjusted the tight black bun at the top of her head. “What does that mean?”
I struggled to find the words. “I mean, that can’t happen.”
“Why not? Goodness, you need to have a bit more self-esteem, yeah? There’s nothing wrong with you.” She patted me on the shoulder. “You’re a bit neurotic and judgmental, but aren’t we all?” She paused. “Actually, no, it’s just you.”
Self-esteem was probably one reason. Even before my family died and my introversion went into hyperdrive, I’d found the comfort of my own room and a good gaming console more reliable and relaxing to be around than the opposite sex. The other reason was something I didn’t dare utter here, to anyone.
Not until I was sure of the truth about Rhys.
“I’m sorry. I’m not good with . . . romance feelings.” My stilted delivery made that pretty clear. I couldn’t blame Lake for laughing.
“Anyway, don’t worry about that stuff. If it happens, it happens.” And she gave me one last slap on the shoulder. “Nothing wrong with a little love on the battlefield, I always say. Plus, he’s really hot. Pretty face, banging bod.” She shrugged. “You could do worse.”
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