by Lydia Millet
When she hung up, she still didn’t know whether her friends would show up.
Or whether the Burners would get here first.
Jax’s room, she thought, for Jax’s computer: that was where she had to go. If she couldn’t figure out the book with the blank pages, maybe there would be a clue to finding her mother on there. She wasn’t a computer whiz, but she knew more about laptops than about mysterious, blank books.
She found the part of the wall she thought she remembered was the elevator—the right angle where one of the narrow corridors turned a corner—but she didn’t see any keypad. She wasn’t sure she had the right place until she noticed that the light-switch plate didn’t seem to fit neatly on the space behind it: there was a narrow vertical gap.
She reached out and touched it, and the plate slid to one side, exposing a modern-looking grid of numbered buttons. It took a couple of tries to get the digits of her birthdate entered; she flubbed a number once and had to start again. But on the next try the door slid open. It was perfectly silent: it didn’t ding like a regular elevator.
She got in and stared at the console for a while. What floor was this? How would she get back? She looked up above the door to the strip of numbers. It read: 1, 1Ψ, 2, 2Ψ, 3, 3Ψ… was on 8Ψ, it looked like. And Jax’s room had been 822. So she hit the regular eight, and the door closed noiselessly and a split second later was sliding open again.
The fluorescents running along the ceiling shocked her eyes; she’d gotten used to the dim core, the dull gleam of low-wattage floor lamps and the torch-like sconces on the walls. The walls in the shell were bright and bland, the carpet—under the fluorescent lights—a strangely metallic gray that made her head throb dully behind the eyes. She felt like she’d suddenly been transported from ancient Greece to Walmart.
And it was definitely cooler out here.
The rest of the kids must have been moved, she thought, heading down the hall through the silence that seemed to buzz faintly. Maybe the elementals were dangerous to them, too. But the lights were still on, blazing for no one. A couple of room doors stood ajar, and through them she could see windows, once again—windows into the dark city with its spots of light that were also windows, the windows of other tall and unknown buildings.
Suddenly she felt more alone than she ever had. What if they didn’t come? What would she do here, by herself?
Night had fallen.
Jax’s room was more or less as they’d left it when they hustled him out, the covers on the bottom bunk still imprinted with two rounded dents where he and Cara had sat. The poisonous pen was gone, of course—the teachers must have taken it—but Jax’s closed laptop sat on one of the desks, a tiny light on its side fading and brightening again.
She sat down and opened it; the screen lit up and prompted her for a password, which luckily she knew. Jax wasn’t secretive the way Max was; he’d keyed in his password in front of her. Once she entered the word and its suffix of numbers, his email inbox popped up. She scrolled down, wishing she knew what she was looking for. Would he have bothered to hide what he found?
She saw emails from her, emails from Max—the normalcy of it was comforting, all Jax’s everyday, kid emails. Finally there was a raft of messages from his geeky best friend, Kubler. She felt guilty clicking on the first one; like she was spying, until the thought of Jax’s black eyes firmed up her resolve.
There it was: a mention of the source. Kubler’s reply didn’t say much except No way, that’s so incredibly weird, but Jax’s email to him, below, read I pinpointed the coordinates. It’s along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Somewhere between Greenland and Norway. The volume is massive! Black smokers, is what it looks like. But what Mom’s saying is, these black smokers aren’t your typical geological features. These are not natural.
Black smokers? It had to be her vision. Her vision had been of the source. And Jax hadn’t kept all this a total secret: Kubler knew. That meant maybe someone had intercepted these messages, as well as Jax’s texts to her. The bad guys—Roger or maybe even the elementals.
She thought back to the vision she’d had in her bedroom: dark, billowing smoke. And the scene beneath the smoke—snatches of light, apparently under the ocean floor. It seemed impossible, light under the ocean floor. Unless there was a subterranean volcano, maybe? She knew they existed, volcanoes beneath the sea. Could what she had seen be lava?
But Jax had written: “These are not natural.” Quickly she googled “black smoker” and read black smokers, or sea vents, are hydrothermal vents occurring on the ocean floor. They resemble dark chimney-like structures….
So normally black smokers were natural. But these, according to Jax, were not. Did that mean the vents on the ocean floor were manmade? Made by the Cold?
Then, from her pack, her phone made a text alert sound. She fished it out and looked. It was from Jaye.
We’re here, it said. So come get us.
In the lobby downstairs there was no one at the reception desk. The lights were on and the phone console at the desk was blinking; beside it lay a half-eaten sandwich with a piece of baloney sticking out. The night guard must have taken a bathroom break. Cara looked around warily, half expecting to see frightening men with flames leaping in their mouths.
But all she saw was Hayley and Jaye, standing near the revolving doors and looking a little stunned.
“No way were we getting on the T. We took a cab,” said Hayley. “I had to sneak the money from my mom’s purse. So you better pay me back. I’m in serious, serious crap already because of this. OK?”
“OK,” said Cara gratefully. “Come on.”
Hayley kept talking as they followed her to the elevators.
“You’re lucky, by the way,” she said. “That Zee totally took the heat off you. She did a disappearing act herself! Only there wasn’t anyone covering for her.”
“Really? Zee?”
Cara was puzzled. It didn’t seem like Zee.
“Please. She was clearly pining for Max, after one night away,” scoffed Hayley as Cara punched the button and the doors closed in front of them. “I bet they’re shacked up in a sketchy motel as we speak. Catching some bedbugs to take home.”
“Anyway,” said Jaye softly (Cara thought she was trying to blunt Hayley’s meanness). “It was kind of a coincidence. Two people going off campus at the same time. But then, with Zee being older, and I guess she doesn’t have a stellar attendance record anyway, they’re not as worried about her. Plus, Mrs. M wasn’t in charge of Zee, or she’d have really freaked.”
The number eight lit up, and the doors dinged open.
“This is the smart-kid think tank?” asked Hayley. “It doesn’t look like much.”
“Oh, it gets weirder,” said Cara. “Don’t worry.”
She led them down the bright empty halls to the other elevator, the hidden one. There was a keypad here too, beneath a switch plate again; again she slid it open and keyed in her birthday.
“Cool,” said Hayley when the wall opened noiselessly.
They stepped in, and before they were even settled the door reopened. They were inside the core.
“Way different,” said Jaye as they walked through the narrow hall. On the walls the sconces glowed dimly.
“It’s hot in here,” said Hayley irritably.
“It is hot,” agreed Jaye. “So is this—does this place have something to do with—”
“I had to tell her,” interrupted Hayley, turning to Cara guiltily. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have come with me!”
“You told her—” started Cara.
“I told her about August,” said Hayley. “The pouring dude. How he reached out from the mirror. And the other Cara and Jax when we were in the boat. The shapeshifting or whatever. All the bizarro stuff that happened.”
“I still think you’re pulling my leg,” said Jaye. “And if this turns out to be a prank, I’m going to be really hurt that you guys were playing with me.”
Before Cara could answer, they
were at the door to the huge room beneath the dome.
“Wow,” breathed Hayley. “This place is wild.”
“What is it?” asked Jaye as they stood on the threshold.
The heavy curtains were held back now and they could see the dome and the two wings of the room reaching out to the sides—the one with all the artifacts, on the left, and the one with all the books, on the right. There were some dim lights among the chairs and tables, but overall it was shadowy. The crannies and alcoves that were nestled into the dusty walls receded into darkness.
“You know what this reminds me of?” asked Jaye. “It’s like the cathedrals my family went to in France last spring break. On that vacation where I decided I wanted to be an architect? If you look at those cathedrals from above, they have the shape of a cross. Like this room! That dome is what they call an apse, those two wings are the transept, and the big open part there is the nave. I really loved those old churches. I swear. This room is just like a church.”
Cara looked around the room. Now that Jaye mentioned it, she thought her friend must be right. The raised platform where Jax had lain would be where the altar was.
Only this church was deeply imbedded in an office building.
“It didn’t occur to me,” she said, nodding slowly.
“But I don’t understand,” went on Jaye. “When I say old…I mean, you don’t see places like this in the U.S. At all. It’s basically medieval. Gothic, I think.”
“There’s a bunch of other stuff I could show you,” said Cara. “But we need to get going. There’s a task I have, to help Jax. Come on.”
She led them to the library wing, one half of what Jaye called the transept. The large, flat book was still on the table, light reflecting off its white pages.
“I’m supposed to read this book,” she said. “At least, I think this is the book I’m supposed to read. I’m guessing it has instructions or something, like the prophecy from this summer. The problem is, it’s completely blank! And then I…well, I asked a question. And…”
Her fingers went to her ring, and she looked up at the Elizabethan portrait on the wall. Jaye’s and Hayley’s faces weren’t there anymore; it was just two prim-looking women in funny collars now. Beneath the painting was a plaque that read LADIES OF THE COURT.
“Anyway, the answer was you guys,” she said after a moment. “I think you’re supposed to help me read the book.”
Hayley stared at her.
“You called us out in Boston in the middle of the night to read a book?” she said. “Are you serious?”
“I have to, or I won’t know how to get to my mother” said Cara quietly. “It’s—just like it was in August. I need her again. And if I can’t find her, I won’t be able to help Jax.”
“You said he was poisoned?” asked Hayley. “So is he like in the hospital now? And where is everyone? How come this place is so empty?”
“Long story,” said Cara. “Later, promise.”
She leaned over the book, and the other two followed suit. Jaye touched the corner of one of the huge pages, then turned it gingerly. They saw the next page was blank, too. Hayley grabbed some pages at the end and opened the book there: still nothing.
“So what exactly are we supposed to do?”
“Maybe we need to hold a light to it. Remember when we were little, how there was this way you could do invisible ink using lemon juice?” asked Jaye. “You could write with the juice, and it didn’t show up on the paper. But then the writing would turn brown when you held it up to a light bulb, and you could read it?”
“Uh, I never did that,” said Hayley.
“Too busy with Fashionista Barbie,” said Jaye. “Here, I’ll hold this side.”
They maneuvered the book in close to the green reading lamp and tried their best to peer over at the page. Nothing.
Hayley peeled off her jacket and plunked it down on the table; Cara pushed up her sleeves. Was it getting even hotter, she wondered? Were they coming?
“I guess it might have to do with my ring,” she said.
“That good-luck ring?” asked Hayley.
“Maybe I have to ask a question again, but with the two of you here. I see these pictures, if I touch the ring. Sometimes. I don’t quite know how it works. My mom called them visions.”
She touched the ring and leaned toward the book, sandwiched closely between her friends. She thought: How do we read you?
And it seemed to her that she was just beginning to notice something shift on the white page, almost like one of those fractals rearranging itself, when Jaye shrieked.
Cara looked up—Hayley was grabbing at her—to see fire. It was leaping on the hotplate in the corner, where Mrs. O had boiled the water for her tea; an actual fire was burning there, crinkling the tablecloth, sparks and pieces of burning fabric fluttering toward the floor.
It was a small fire, at least, and Cara thought maybe she could put it out. She’d put out a fire once before when Jax, age eight, decided to conduct combustion experiments with household cleaning products. So she rushed over, looking for something to use and thinking randomly of a TV show where a man set on fire had been rolled up in a rug to quench the flames; she grabbed the corner of the Persian rug beneath her feet and pulled it up, then brought it down clumsily on the burning tabletop.
As soon as she had it on top of the flames, though, the rug got heavy in her hands. The rug seemed lumpy. Heavier and heavier, and then suddenly there was movement, the rug was resisting her, and the fire leapt up instead of subsiding as she thought it should. Vaguely aware of her friends screaming behind her, she had to jump back—because the rug was hot, and the rug had something inside it.
She dropped it, her hands hurting, but was barely aware of the pain because now she was looking at the man from the subway, rising out of the lumps in the rug, and he opened his mouth and his mouth was flames.
Five
It wasn’t only him, either.
Behind the Burner, as Cara and her friends backed up, others appeared—all of them copies, as though he was duplicating himself. They had the same face. They all opened their mouths in the same way, and in every single wide-open mouth the orange tongues of fire flickered. And then they were coming forward, and heat blasted off them in a wave.
Fear hit Cara along with the heat, but oddly she found she was thinking clearly. She had to get the book. It had to be the right one; she’d seen it start to respond to them. She grabbed it off the table but instantly dropped it—her hands hurt too much to hold on, a searing agony on the palms. The rug had burned them.
“Get the book!” she yelled to the others, and Jaye leaned down and grabbed it and then they were running. The three of them ran as fast as they could, through the thick drapes on the door, swerving down the hall the way they’d come in….
But the heat didn’t let up. The heat stayed right at their backs. It wasn’t that the Burners were running, just that they were there—there were no thudding footsteps but those of the girls themselves, no noise but a low crackle—the crackle of flame—and a rhythmic sound like heavy breathing. Heat pulsed from them, heat pushed at Cara’s head and shoulders and forced her to run fast, pell-mell along the corridors, banging against cabinets and statues as she went.
How could they get away? They had to go somewhere the Burners couldn’t go.
“We’ve got to get into the cold!” she yelled.
Outside it was cold, she thought, and the Burners didn’t like cold. Would they follow the girls into the elevator? Could they? She didn’t know where the stairs even were, in the core, and anyway this was the eighth floor…so they couldn’t make it that far. They couldn’t make it all the way outside.
Then she remembered the kitchen. It was near, and it had a walk-in fridge. Or maybe freezer. She’d passed it as they went into dinner: a door with a small window and the kind of metal handle you sometimes pulled up to open an airtight door, even a sign that read COLD STORAGE PLEASE CLOSE TILL IT CLICKS.
“Th
is way,” she cried out, and had to push Hayley to make a turn. She thought she knew the way—it was down some stairs, but not too many, she thought—and then, running, she realized there was too much heat on her back now. Too much to stand. Something was burning.
It was her fleece hoodie. She knew it wasn’t the shirt, because her skin wasn’t hurting. Yet. She shrugged desperately as she ran, frantically, and the burning hoodie fell behind, but now the shirt beneath it felt, hot too—
“Hot,” came a breathy, raspy voice, almost right in her ear. “Hot…hot…hot…”
It wasn’t either of the other girls, who were beside her and in front. It was him.
“Turn! Down the stairs!” she cried out, and they did, stumbling as they fell against each other. She smelled something acrid and was suddenly afraid of her hair catching fire. Her whole body felt weak. They were scrambling against the wall, their feet were slipping on the stone, and then there was the kitchen door. They banged through it.
“Left! Left!” she yelled, and Jaye grabbed the door to the cold-storage room. And jerked it open.
“Hot…” breathed the voice, beside her.
And then they were inside, tripping over each other and a pile of big cardboard boxes right in the middle of the floor. The big book, which Jaye had been carrying, snagged the edge of a shelf and fell onto the floor; frigid air hit their dripping faces, and Cara turned and slammed the door shut.
The Burners were black now, their features almost gone except for the bright mouth-holes—the skin cracked and wrinkled and burnt up.
“Oh my God!” burst out Jaye as they sat on the boxes huffing and puffing.
Cara was glad this wasn’t a walk-in freezer but only a fridge—lucky for them. She held her hands out in front of her. They were shockingly pink and raw.