by Ally Carter
“Grace,” Ms. Chancellor warns, but I shake her off.
“It was on a timer, wasn’t it? The bomb?” I wait, but of course they don’t answer. That doesn’t stop me from seeing the truth in their eyes. “He wasn’t supposed to be late. Alexei is never late. If I” — hadn’t drugged him — “had to guess, I’d say whoever set the bomb knew that.”
“The Russian delegation is handling this situation internally. It was an official embassy car on official Russian territory. We haven’t examined the wreckage, haven’t removed any bodies. We know only what they tell us. And they tell us mechanical malfunction.”
I can tell by the way he says it that Officer Smiley doesn’t think there was a driver, a body. Now at least I know the Adrian police are buying into one conspiracy theory. They just have the wrong one.
“Someone killed Spence. And then someone tried to kill Alexei right before Alexei was able to talk. You can’t possibly think that’s a coincidence.”
“So you’re saying that you think there is some vast international conspiracy at play here? Some cover-up?”
It’s all I can do not to turn and stare at Ms. Chancellor. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Smiley leans a little closer, places his elbows on his knees, like we’re confidants. Like we’re friends. “Now, come, Grace. We know you have an active imagination.”
Times like this I want to yell, I want to scream. I want to tell the world that I was wrong about the Scarred Man, but I was right, too. I was just a different kind of —
“Crazy.”
The officers stare at me, not blinking. I go on. “That’s what you meant to say, isn’t it? That I was institutionalized? That I have a history of psychotic breaks? It’s okay if it is. I really am —”
“Gracie?”
I turn at the sound of Jamie’s voice. He’s standing in the doorway, hurt and confused. He looks like maybe I’ve betrayed him. I’m talking about his little sister, after all. It would be easier if I’d just act like everyone else. Pretend.
“What’s going on here?” my brother asks Ms. Chancellor as both cops rise to their feet.
“James Blakely?” the woman asks.
“What do you want with my sister?”
Smiley extends a hand, but Jamie lets it hang, empty in the air.
“Well,” the officer says, pulling back. “Good to meet you. We were hoping to have a moment of your time as well. We have a few questions about —”
“Gracie, come on. We’re leaving.” Jamie jerks his head toward the door.
“Mr. Blakely, please come in. Have a seat.” That Officer Smiley doesn’t have the right to offer anyone a seat in the US embassy is something that no one mentions.
Jamie stays at the door, his own form of rebellion.
“What’s going on here?” he asks.
“These officers had some questions for Grace,” Ms. Chancellor tells him.
“Please, join us, Mr. Blakely. We have some questions for you, too.”
Jamie doesn’t budge until Ms. Chancellor says, “James. Please.”
Grudgingly, Jamie comes around and takes a seat beside me. It feels like I have a guard, a protector. It’s something I haven’t felt in ages, but I don’t let myself think about how much I’ve missed it.
“Do you have any idea why Mr. Volkov wasn’t in the car yesterday?” Smiley asks me.
“No. But I know John Spencer is dead and the boy who was getting ready to start talking about that night is supposed to be dead. So please tell me you people don’t still think this is just about some kids trying to blow off steam at some party.”
He doesn’t speak, so I cross my arms, defiant. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me the truth. But please don’t treat me like I’m stupid.”
“Let’s talk about that night. Tell us about the party,” Smiley says.
“It was nothing special. My friends went. So I went. It was just your typical, run-of-the-mill high school party.”
Smiley slides his gaze onto my brother. “But you and Mr. Spencer are no longer in school, are you, Mr. Blakely? So why did you go?”
“We felt like it,” Jamie says, and Smiley turns back to me.
“And you talked to Mr. Spencer there?”
I nod. “Sure.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Nothing really,” I say, honestly not evading the question. It just seems so irrelevant. So far in the past.
I will not tell this man that Spence kissed me. I will not tell him how that made me feel or what happened next.
“Where did you talk to him?”
“At the party.” I’m so exasperated I do everything shy of roll my eyes.
“I mean where, exactly, at the party? What parts of the island did he make it to?”
“Oh.” I think a bit. “The beach, of course.” Everyone nods. After all, they’ve already seen the video. “And we might have wandered just a little bit.”
“Wandered where?” the cop says.
“Inland. There’s kind of a clearing. We saw some old ruins and looked at them for a little while.”
“Have you heard enough?” Ms. Chancellor asks, shifting, reminding everyone that she is still my grandfather’s pit bull. A pit bull in high heels.
“Almost. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Volkov got into a fight that night, did they not?” This time he looks at me.
“Boys are idiots,” I say.
“Why don’t you tell us about the fight?” Officer Smiley leans back and crosses his legs, like we’re just chatting, like at any moment Ms. Chancellor is going to ring for tea.
“I thought you were here because of the manhunt,” I tell him, but Smiley just raises an eyebrow. It’s almost like a dare. “It was a fight, okay? A bunch of hitting and grunting and showing off in front of girls in bikini tops. It was exactly what that fight always is. I know you’ve seen the video.”
“Yes. We have. But perhaps you can tell us what Mr. Spencer and Mr. Volkov were fighting over?”
The officer eyes me. We’re playing a game, I realize. Him asking questions to which we both already know the answer. But I don’t like games, so I don’t say another word.
“You don’t have to talk to them, Gracie,” Jamie says.
Smiley ignores him. “Were they fighting over you, Ms. Blakely?”
Beside me, I feel Jamie tense, but I have to laugh at the thought of it. It’s so absurd.
“They were fighting because that is what alpha males do when they are thrown together in close proximity. Herd dominance. Survival of the fittest. Alexei had been gone. Spence was new. So they were the designated fight of the night. Go to any high school party in the world, and chances are you’ll find one.”
“But one of the fighters doesn’t always end up dead.”
Smiley has a point, but I don’t say so.
“Did you give Mr. Spencer a ride off the island?”
It’s the woman, Officer Scowl, who asks this. I’m taken aback for a moment. I’d half forgotten she was here.
“No,” Jamie says. “My sister and I left early. We didn’t see Spence again.”
Until the next morning.
Until he was already dead.
“Did you see Mr. Volkov?” Scowl asks.
“Not until the next day,” Jamie says. “He came to tell me … He and Grace were there when the body washed ashore.”
“Have you seen him since then?” Smiley asks. Jamie shakes his head, so Smiley turns to me. “And when did you last see him?”
“Yesterday morning,” I say. “Not long before someone tried to kill him.”
“Do you know where he might have gone?” Smiley asks.
“No.”
“Do you know anyone he might go to for help?”
“Sure. Anyone who doesn’t want him to be killed.”
I’m being ridiculous, the grown-ups think. A kid. An innocent. A crazy girl with fantasies about conspiracies and wrongly accused boys with pale blue eyes and soft black hair. I am what happen
s when people just refuse to listen to reason, I can see it in Officer Smiley’s eyes. And I really can’t blame him. Sometimes the lies are so much less work to believe.
“Mr. Spencer died on the island, Ms. Blakely.” Smiley isn’t calling me Grace anymore, I notice. “Now that we’ve spoken to the two of you, we have officially interviewed every person who was there that night, except for Mr. Volkov, of course. It’s been a diplomatic nightmare, but we have done it. And what we’ve learned is that Mr. Spencer didn’t get a ride off the island with anyone. No one saw him on any boat. The current is strong that time of night — too strong for even a young, fit man to swim that distance. So listen to me carefully. Your friend John Spencer died on that island. And on that island there was only one person who might have wanted to hurt him.”
When the pair of officers stand, Officer Smiley closes his notebook and gives me a grin.
“Don’t worry. We have officers posted at the airport and all the private airstrips. All trains in and out of the country are being searched, and his picture is posted at every port. If he’s still here, Alexei Volkov isn’t getting out of Adria.” Then the man cuts his eyes around at the embassy — the fortress — I live inside. “And I highly doubt he can hurt you here.”
“You think Alexei would hurt me?” I actually laugh. “That would be like being afraid of my own brother.”
Smiley cocks an eyebrow and glances from me to Jamie, then back again. “But Alexei Volkov is not your brother, is he?” the man asks, and I sit for a moment, thinking hard about the answer.
They’re almost to the door — I’m almost free of them — when the woman stops and pulls something from her pocket.
“One more thing. We were wondering if any of you recognize this?” She’s holding a plastic bag, but it’s what’s inside that draws my attention. A piece of leather is looped through what looks like some kind of medallion. It’s the size of a quarter but the color of a penny. For a minute I think it must be some kind of European coin. But then I stand and move closer, and it’s easy to recognize the symbol that I have been seeing around Valancia for weeks, leading me down beneath the city and into the Society’s web.
It takes everything within me not to turn to Ms. Chancellor, not to gape. But it’s Jamie who breaks the silence. “That’s Spence’s.”
“What an unusual piece,” Ms. Chancellor says, her voice so calm and casual.
“Yes,” the officer says. “We found this in Mr. Spencer’s pocket.”
“In his pocket?” Jamie asks. “Not around his neck?”
“You sound surprised.” Smiley studies my brother.
“Spence always wore that. Always. He said his grandmother gave it to him — told him to come to Adria someday and it would lead him to …”
“Go on,” Smiley says.
When my brother exhales, it’s like the world’s smallest, saddest laugh. “Treasure.”
There’s a twinkle in Officer Smiley’s eye. “Did he find it?”
No one says the obvious: that John Spencer found something far, far worse.
I can feel my brother’s gaze on me long after Ms. Chancellor escorts the cops from the room.
“He’s okay, Gracie,” Jamie says. “He’s probably back in Moscow by now — was probably halfway there by the time the car exploded.”
“He was going to renounce his diplomatic immunity.”
“That’s what the Russians said, but it’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true!”
“Grandpa says the Russians did it themselves. Probably to buy time or change the headlines. Or both. The windows were tinted and no one saw a driver get into the car. It could have been driven by remote. Easy. The army can fly a drone from the other side of the world. Trust me.”
I can’t tell if Jamie believes it or if he only wants to. Which version of the truth might scare him more — that someone killed one of his friends and tried to kill another? Or that our grandfather has been right for all these years, and we never should have made friends with the boy next door?
“Either way,” Jamie says, “by the time that car blew up, Alexei was long gone.”
“No. He wasn’t.”
Something in my face must tell him that I’m serious. That I’m right.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I really did see him. Earlier yesterday. He came to tell me what his father had agreed to do. He was going to go to the police station. He was going to be in that car.”
I can actually see this wash over Jamie. One of his friends is dead, and one should be. But Jamie’s anger is a lifeboat. He’s not letting go just yet.
“He was lying.”
“No, Jamie.” My voice is soft, gentle. “He wasn’t.”
“You heard the cops. No one else on that island had reason to hurt him.”
“Maybe they didn’t talk to everyone on the island. Maybe there’s more here than meets the eye. Maybe … This is Adria, Jamie. There’s always more under the surface.”
I love my brother. And I’ve missed him. And I need him. I should stop and tell him all of that, but the officer’s words are still ringing in my ears. The sight of Spence’s pendant is still burned into my brain. Questions are swirling inside of me, about to come screaming out, and if I don’t ask them soon I may explode, so I start for the door.
“Gracie, do you …”
“Like you said” — I turn and give him a knowing look — “he’s okay.”
Then I practically run down the hall and to the center staircase. I’m going to search the embassy, the tunnels, the entire continent for Ms. Chancellor if I have to. I don’t care how loud I have to scream or how far I have to run, I’m going to get answers this time if it kills me.
Then I stop. I let myself wonder if that’s what killed Spence.
“Grace.”
She’s standing at the bottom of the stairs as if she’s been waiting for me. Of course she has, I realize. She knew I was going to give chase, cause trouble. Ms. Chancellor is no fool.
I’m almost to the bottom of the stairs when she looks me straight in the eye and says the only two words that might make me hold my tongue.
“Not here.”
When she walks through the embassy’s doors, I follow.
Spence had seen the symbol before. Of course he had. I should have realized it that night at the ruins. I should have recognized his lies when I heard them. They sounded so much like my own.
He was looking for something.
The only question now is whether or not he found it.
As soon as we step out the embassy’s doors, I smell smoke and feel tension. Two marines are stationed at the gate. Next door, Russia has a half dozen armed men guarding their high walls. Maybe more. Adrian police patrol the barricades that hold back the crowds, but I can feel a thousand eyes upon me; I can almost hear the people wondering who I am and why I’m allowed inside the fences. But Ms. Chancellor doesn’t falter, doesn’t care. She’s walking quickly in her high heels, past the end of the barricades, pushing through the crowds.
When we reach Israel we turn and start up the steep incline toward the city center. I expect her to turn into the narrow alley that leads to one of the entrances to the tunnels, but Ms. Chancellor keeps walking, higher and higher, faster and faster.
Her heels don’t get stuck in the cobblestones. Her breath doesn’t come even a little bit hard. She’s practically floating up the hill, and I follow right behind, but I refuse to ask any questions that I don’t think Ms. Chancellor will answer, so I don’t say anything at all.
When we reach the palace, Ms. Chancellor walks up to the gates. I half expect them to swing open, to welcome both of us inside. But the gate stays closed, and Ms. Chancellor stays silent.
Until, finally, the silence is too much.
“Tell me,” I say.
Ms. Chancellor draws her hands together. It’s almost like a prayer.
“You’re probably wondering why we’re here and not down in the tunnels
, aren’t you, Grace?” I nod. “The truth is, the answer to your questions are here. The stories Spence heard from his grandmother, they all started here. Because of this.”
Her voice is distant, like she’s remembering a dream, but I don’t understand.
“Because of what?”
“The festival,” she tells me. “No. That’s not true. The war. The rebellion.”
Slowly, Ms. Chancellor turns and stares through the wrought-iron bars of the fence. Guards in ornate uniforms with bright gold buttons stand, unblinking, at the gates. The sun shines and a light wind blows. Tourists snap pictures all around us. But in the center of the square the bonfire still burns. A hint of smoke taints the air. I think I’m going to be sick.
“You know the story, Grace. Everyone knows the story. There was a drought and a coup and a massacre. For eight hundred years the Society had been here, watching history, guiding fate. But two hundred years ago we didn’t see the rebellion coming. And we should have. Truly. We should have known. Trouble such as that does not happen overnight, doesn’t come out of the blue. The drought was severe and the people were restless, and we should have understood that a mob was forming.”
I think about the crowds that are filling Embassy Row, blocked by barricades and still pushing toward the scene. Two hundred years have passed, but I can’t help but see the truth.
A mob is always forming.
Ms. Chancellor places her hands in her pockets. She doesn’t face me as she says, “But by the time word left the palace it was too late. Some of our sisters reached these gates only to find them open and the royal family …”
Ms. Chancellor raises her hand to point, as if looking back in time.
“They were already hanging the bodies, Grace. From those windows. There. In the center of the palace, see? The king and queen and the children, too. They were in their nightclothes, or so the story says. Snow-white muslin practically glows in moonlight except … except when it is stained with blood.”
Ms. Chancellor’s hand was steady as she shot the prime minister, but her voice trembles as she tells this story. It happened centuries ago and yet it feels like her mistake, her failure, her burden, I can tell.
“We were too late to save the family, and the palace was in chaos. But the Society knew the building well, so as quickly and carefully as possible we went inside and gathered all the artifacts and relics that we could. Looters were everywhere, and more were filing in by the minute, so we collected the things that mattered most. That night the Society did what we always do — we guarded Adria’s history.”