Hours passed inside the van until I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of the car. It’d been several hours since I’d even stood on my own two feet. I needed to stretch my legs and breathe in fresh air that didn’t carry with it the hint of stale curtain. And maybe go to the bathroom.
“No way,” Chae Rin said. “It’s dark now; we should be heading back to the museum.”
“Please, just for one second! I’ll be in the trees, out of sight!”
“Ew.” Lake scrunched up her nose, but I was already tying my hair and wrapping it up in one of Lake’s scarfs she’d kept in her knapsack.
“Nobody will see me out here, I promise.”
Lake peered through the windows on either side of her, making sure the coast was clear before passing me a pair of shades.
“Ten minutes,” Belle ordered.
I answered with a quick nod and hopped out of the car. My legs felt like noodles the second my feet touched the ground. I wobbled into the trees, finding my footing only as I soaked in the solace of nature under the cloak of the ever-encroaching dark. The night weaved through the sturdy trees, concealing secrets of ancient lives told only through fairy tales. Tales of love and suicide, the bloodied bodies of warriors left in their wake. It was more June’s thing than mine—how she would have loved to come here, to see the world the way I’d gotten to as I breezed here and there. June had always planned to take a year off after high school to travel. The moonlight dancing across the leaves was just another reminder that I was living her life.
I walked a little bit deeper into the trees, stepping over the roots and mushrooms sprouting out of the bark of fallen logs. I inhaled in the clean air, hoping the calming breath would give me a moment’s peace.
But the hand around my wrist trapped the breath in my lungs as it yanked me behind another tree.
My first instinct was to summon my magic to fight, but the magic was dead, at least temporarily—by my own hand. I prepared for a struggle nonetheless, whipping around, squeezing my hands into fists, but my strength left the moment I looked up and saw his face.
Rhys.
Maybe my eyes were tricking me, but he’d pulled me close enough that I could see the outline of his defined jaw, his soft, focused eyes. His black hair fluttered, ruffled, across his forehead, though the majority of it was hidden underneath a baseball cap.
My chest swelled, and for that moment I looked up at him, my mind was blank. That was until I remembered Naomi, the blood oozing out from the bullet holes in her battered body.
My name in connection to the attack.
He wasn’t here on duty. In his waist-long corduroy jacket and jeans, I couldn’t see a weapon, though I knew he was trained enough that he didn’t need to carry one to do harm. I was ready again, ready to fight, but when Rhys grabbed my shoulders it was only to shift me this way and that. He was checking for wounds.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“How did you find me?” was all I could say.
“Are you okay?”
“I didn’t hurt your mother.”
He straightened his back almost immediately and took off his cap, his lips flattening as he tensed at the mere mention of her.
“I didn’t hurt your mother, so . . .” I exhaled, steeling myself. “Are you here to turn me in?”
Rhys tossed his cap against the protruding roots, and then his hands were on my shoulders again. But it was a gentle grip. His hands were soft as he pushed me back against the tree and kissed me. Short, sweet. So quickly, I could barely register the moistness of his lips as they separated from mine. I was still in shock when he answered.
“No,” he said simply. “No, I’m not.”
He let me go, picking his cap up again before turning his back. If he was confident I wouldn’t take the opportunity to run away, he was right to be. My legs were practically petrified against the solid earth. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“When I heard about my mom, I convinced my brother to lend me a jet to go see her, but I flew to Prague instead,” he said. “Rosa told me you’d be coming here. And not long ago, James told me what car to find you in. That crappily painted Volkswagen, right? You girls sure travel in style.” He turned and smiled.
Rosa and James. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was his mother. Of course they’d know him. Trust him. Why wouldn’t they? They didn’t know what I knew.
Rhys must have noticed my features crease with concern. “You’re scared.” He paused. “You’re scared that I’m here.”
“Yeah.”
“I told you I’m not going to turn you in.”
“The Sect is looking for me. Your dad. They think what happened to your mom is our fault.”
“Yes, they do. But they can’t track you. And I’m not going to turn you in.”
I looked up at him. “But you’re loyal to the Sect.”
“I’m not going to turn you in.” Rhys’s voice was hushed, but I could hear the desperation in his words—the desperation to be heard. “I’d never hurt you.”
“But you killed Natalya.”
Silence fell. The kind of silence that held the secrets of a thousand years. The symphony of cicadas receded into the recesses of my consciousness, insignificant. I thought Rhys’s eyes would grow wide, but they remained steady. I thought he’d stumble back or turn to escape the judgment barely concealed in my stare. But he remained still.
“Even so,” he said, “I’d never hurt you.”
I didn’t have the energy for any of the emotions I’d thought would stir in me once this moment came. I was tired. I kept my back against the rough bark as I shook my head and searched him. “Why did you do it?”
Rhys fitted his cap back onto his head and looked up at the sky, his broad shoulders limp. “Does Belle know?”
“I haven’t told her.”
“She’s going to kill me.”
“That’s why I haven’t told her.”
He shifted a little, surprised. “You’re protecting me from her.”
“I’m protecting both of you from her. But maybe I should have told her.” The anger rose in my chest, corroding me from the inside as the words formed on my tongue. “Do you know how awful it’s been, not saying anything to anyone? How much this hurts me?”
Rhys lowered his head. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that . . . and I don’t deserve your protection.”
“You don’t!” I agreed, stepping closer, my hands shaking at my sides. “Why did you do it? What happened?”
Rhys was quiet for too long before finally letting a sigh escape his lips. “I got my orders through an encrypted line. Scrambled voice, so I didn’t know who the order had come from. But these kinds of orders come from very high up. They’re orders from the Council. They said Natalya was becoming a danger to the Sect and that I had to watch her.”
“A danger to the Sect . . .”
“Someone like Natalya could do a lot of damage if she ever went rogue. She could easily kill a lot of people. It’s happened before. In the fifties, Mary Lou Russell went from training at a Sect facility to trying to start a genocide in an effort to ‘purify her race.’ And she was taken out the same way. These kinds of orders don’t come every day and they don’t come lightly. But when you get them . . .”
“Why did they ask you?”
“Because we were friends.” Rhys choked up at the word and swallowed quickly, keeping his face turned from me. “I didn’t want to. I ignored the order for as long as I could, but they called again, telling me lives were at stake, reminding me what happened to traitors. The Sect would never kill their greatest asset if they didn’t have a good reason. I had to do it. No one else would have been able to get close enough to manage it. Natalya was a powerful warrior. One of the greatest Effigies to ever live. How else do you stop her?”
“By betraying her? Rhys . . .”
Tears filled our eyes at the same time, though only his fell. Neither of us could speak.
“Are you our Infor
mer?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head. “I’m here because I genuinely want to help. This is not for the Sect. For once, it’s not. It’s for me. My life isn’t . . . just another chip for them to play. That’s what I decided, but . . .”
“If that’s the case, then you need to know what’s happening in the Sect,” I said. “And what Natalya died for. Why they asked you to kill her.” I paused, watching his eyebrows furrow slowly in confusion. “You really don’t know, do you?”
He couldn’t hide it; the horror of the unknown was stripped bare and staring me in the face. “What’s happening?”
I told him what I could. About the mysterious Project X19, the second phase of which had transformed his friends into monsters. The mind control. The unidentified assailants who’d attacked Naomi just as she’d told us about the book she and Baldric had sent Natalya to get all those months ago.
“Wait,” he interrupted me. “Mom? Mom’s a member of the Council?”
He looked genuinely shocked. I searched his face. “You didn’t know?”
“No . . .” He fell silent for a moment, staring into the distance as he considered it. “The identity of all the Council members is a secret to all outside the Council, though I’m sure Dad would have known about Mom even if Brendan and I didn’t. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t tell him—or that he wouldn’t notice.”
“Naomi’s the one who sent us here. We are all just trying to figure out who Saul is,” I said. “Who the phantoms are. Who we are. Where we come from. If we do, we can get ahead of Saul. Find a way to stop him. Obviously, there’s someone who doesn’t want that. That’s why your mother was shot. That’s why you were told to kill Natalya.”
Rhys took a few steps away from me, his feet coming to a rest against an arched root that blocked his path.
“I mean, you said those orders come from high up. Was it someone else in the Council? Or maybe one of the directors? Even your—”
I caught myself, but Rhys had already crouched down to the ground.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“But you’re right,” Rhys said. “Dad could be involved. How can I know for sure he wouldn’t do something like that to his own family? He’s not above it, what with the way he fed me to that place.”
“The Greenland facility . . .”
Rhys sucked in a haggard breath, his body shaking as he did. “Brendan was right. It used to be prestigious. But then things started getting out of control. Fisk-Hoffman died and the facility was left in the hands of his sadistic son. Training got more brutal. People didn’t even start to notice until they could see the effects on its graduates. Andrew Brighton, for one.”
The Surgeon. The Sect agent who’d turned his well-honed interrogation skills into a method of serial killing. That’s what Brendan meant by Fisk-Hoffman’s “rough patch.” Understatement of the century.
“Vasily’s mom, too,” I said, remembering Vasily’s face screwed up in pain as Brendan forced him to look at the picture of his dead mother.
Rhys nodded. “They weren’t from the same cohort, so they wouldn’t have known each other. But they graduated from the same cruel system. Brighton’s murders finally brought what was happening at the facility to the Sect’s attention, and the Council took it over. It was supposed to be a new leaf. That’s what they told everyone, anyway. My cohort was supposed to be different, but . . .” He exhaled, shaking his head. “It wasn’t. They taught us not to think. To be cruel. To do what was necessary.”
I wondered what memories Rhys saw when he closed his eyes. But he didn’t have to tell me for me to understand. Vasily, Jessie, himself. Their deeds spoke volumes. I knew all too well the legacies of that place.
“After the fire, the few of us who survived signed nondisclosure agreements to never speak about what had happened, and by then I was too broken to disobey anymore. Brendan doesn’t even know. Dad never let on one way or another, but maybe he did. Maybe Mom knew all along too what that place did to me.”
“I don’t know,” I said quickly, because Rhys looked shattered at the thought of his mother hurting him. “Your mom said there are members in the Council helping Saul. She only found out about that recently. They were probably the ones who knew. What if they kept it open on purpose? And grabbing some of those kids was part of the plan? What if they started the fire?”
I knew I was getting ahead of myself, but I was still surprised to see Rhys react so strongly. His body went rigid at the mere suggestion.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice hollow. “Look, I don’t know. If that’s true, I don’t know if they would have chosen Jessie and the rest for their project. I don’t know if Dad was in on it. The only thing I know is that Dad wanted me broken and he got his wish. He said it was the way it should be. Loyalty. It’s in our family’s blood. Mom believed that too. We lived for the Sect. The facility burned it into me and my dad made sure I didn’t forget.”
A trigger can’t pull itself. That’s what Naomi had told me. Neither parent had ended the suffering their philosophies and actions had caused their son.
“But now,” Rhys said, standing up, “I’m here for you. To help you.”
That was when I remembered I was talking to Natalya’s murderer. A chill seeped into my voice. “The four of us are fine. We don’t need your help.”
“You do,” Rhys said. “Rosa didn’t tell anyone but me.”
“Tell you what?”
Rhys held up his hand. “My mother’s wedding ring. She had a hunch, so she took it off and examined it. It was bugged.”
Bugged. The heat rushed from my head as I considered the consequences. “You mean . . . someone was listening to our conversation?” When Rhys nodded, I inhaled sharply and turned. “So they already know we’re here. I have to hurry.”
It’d been way past ten minutes, and I’d gone far deeper into the trees than I’d meant to. The other girls were probably searching for me. And if Rhys could find me, we didn’t have any more time to spare.
“I’m coming with you.”
He reached for me, but I jerked my hand away before he could touch it. “No. I told you we don’t need you.”
“I can help. Let me prove myself to you.”
“Forget it.” I was determined to ignore the way his wounded expression shook me. I kept my hands curled into fists and pressed against my side, to keep them still. “I appreciate you telling me about what happened. But it doesn’t change the fact that you killed Natalya. No matter how I . . .” I caught myself, the words catching in my throat despite my efforts to submerge my ache beneath a slab of ice. “Regardless of anything, you deserve to be in jail.”
“No. I deserve to die.” He said it simply as if talking about the weather. “But I still want to help you. When I know you’re safe and it’s all over, I’ll turn myself in. I already decided that a long time ago.”
I fought to keep my trembling lips steady. “If they tell you to kill me, will you do it?”
“I already told you I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“What makes me so special? Why do you care?”
For the first time, his lips cracked into a sad smile, hesitant and unsure. “I’m in love with you,” he told me. “Maybe because you make me feel like the man I should have been.”
My body felt numb. I didn’t know how to respond.
He stood before me, broken, and it was then I realized that he’d been in pieces long before I’d even met him. He’d just been so very good at hiding it. And I couldn’t forgive him. But I couldn’t ignore the soft longing in my heart. I couldn’t ignore his pleading eyes or the tears they must have shed during each terrible night in the Devil’s Hole.
He deserved to be in jail. I didn’t want him near me and I couldn’t stand him being apart from me. It was an infuriating contradiction. My chest throbbed from the pain of it. So I compromised instead.
“Here’s the number of our burner phone.” I gave him the digits. He only needed to he
ar it once before nodding to confirm he’d memorized it. “You can be our lookout. Let us know if trouble’s coming.”
“You mean the Sect,” he said.
He moved toward me, and I stepped back quickly, turning away. “I’m trusting you,” I said, my back to him. “Don’t betray me like you did Natalya.”
And without waiting for a response, I left him speechless among the trees.
27
AT NIGHT, THE STREET LAMPS illuminated the narrow cobbled streets and tall buildings in a romantic golden hue. The National Museum stood proud like a castle of the ancient world of Eastern Europe, its dome lit up white, its brick splashed red and gold from the tall lamps in the front court. We parked far enough away to not draw attention and began our trek around the back of the building. After hopping the fence, we scuttled past the moss-covered brick to the metal scaffolding stretching up the building.
“Lake, you have the cigar box in there, right?” I pointed at the knapsack she carried on her back.
She nodded. “Although it’s going to weigh me down while I climb. You all should thank me for sacrificing myself.”
“Oh, stop whining,” said Chae Rin as Lake pouted.
“All right.” After silently staring up at the scaffold, Belle cracked her neck side to side. “Let’s go.”
The director of the museum confirmed through James that he’d disabled the security and left a window open, but only for the time being. We wouldn’t have too much time. Grabbing the metal bars, I began hoisting myself up, finding footing wherever there were metal surfaces to stand on. Chae Rin was the best at this, unsurprisingly, her circus-trained equilibrium and deftness helping her zip and flip up the scaffold. It was all I could do to keep pace.
Once we squeezed ourselves deeper into the labyrinth of metal poles, we came to a section of the scaffold blocked off by a wall of netting. The net, at least, made it harder for us to be seen, though I doubted at this point that anyone could even see us. Maybe Rhys was somewhere below, out of sight, watching for trouble. Looking out for us like I’d asked him to.
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