Scheme Page 10

  Xavier grinds out his half-smoked cigarette, and before I can respond, he picks up the glass ashtray and hurls it against the wall, sending shards and ash and cigarette butts everywhere.

  He exhales loudly, and then starts laughing. “You’re so naive—you think that we’re safe here? You think that ‘hiding in plain sight’ is going to make you invisible? We know Lucian is in Europe. Who do you think was on the safe-house roof yesterday?”

  “Wait—what?” I swallow hard. Of course it was Lucian. Who else would it have been?

  “Yes, Genevieve. Those were his men. The chatter was put out there to give away our location so that we could get a bead on how close his operation was. It took less than two hours for them to find us.”

  “You used us as bait?” Henry says.

  “Why wouldn’t you give us that information?” I yell.

  “We needed to know how organized his team is. Seems very. Which means we have to get the hell out of here, considering your faces are probably circling the internet right now.”

  “Thierry died in that house. You killed him by setting us up,” I hiss back.

  “Thierry knew the risks. He knew the trap had been set. It was just bad luck.” Xavier pulls his hands down his face, his scruff like sandpaper. “Get your packs. We’re leaving,” he growls.

  “Where—”

  “Not one more fucking question out of your face. You’ve done enough damage for a lifetime.”

  Henry slides a hand under my elbow, ever the calming force. “Come on,” he says. I follow him down the hall. We take turns in the bathroom—my hands are sticky from that young man’s blood. I put my gloves back on right after I healed him; they’re stiff, so I wash them too.

  When I return to the bedroom, Xavier has been in to unlock the trunk; Henry sits with his pack already on, his head covered in the wool cap despite the warm air, his forest-green Circ shirt folded at the end of his bed.

  Xavier pokes his head into the room again. “Let’s go.”

  We follow him down to the car park on the first level. The black cargo van from earlier is nowhere to be found. Instead he walks briskly to a well-loved, green-and-white Volkswagen camper van with a magnetic sign on its side advertising what I think might be a coffee shop. Xavier looks around cautiously, and then peels off the sign, not without difficulty. He then tosses it inside, followed by his own pack and another long black bag heavy enough that the van jostles when it lands inside.

  “Get in. Packs on the floor next to you. Pull those side curtains closed and stay down.”

  Then he hot-wires the car. So much for staying above the law.

  Once we’re in, Henry offers a small smile. “Hope there’s no high-speed chase or we’re in trouble.”

  I want to smile back, but I can’t.

  Xavier says nothing as he winds through Barcelona traffic. He drives and drives, and when the roads sound less congested, and become nauseatingly curvy, I dare to ask where we’re going.

  “To the rendezvous point. We will camp until the Guardian makes herself available.”

  The scene at Circ plays itself on a loop, Xavier’s scolding still fresh in my ears. But I couldn’t let that man die. Not when it was so easy for me to reach out and fix him. He gets to go home tonight to whatever family he has—they will be hugging him and asking about his day, not planning a funeral.

  As angry as Xavier is, I’m glad I did it. I would do it again.

  If I’m honest—in a conversation I keep locked in my head—I don’t want to let go of that part of myself. I’ve always been able to fix the people around me. Montague when he tangled with the lion, Violet and Ash when they’d sprain or break something during workouts (as long as their mother didn’t know), Baby or my mom whenever something sickened or broke them, even my animals. I love that part of being from this line of wild, magical people. I love helping others, fixing them without outside intervention. It’s one of the million reasons I want to become a vet.

  But if we destroy the books, I’ll lose those abilities to heal with a single touch. What kind of person will I be without my healing hands? How will I find my place in the world that comes after?

  I have to be rid of the Etemmu, and I don’t want Delia’s life—to be on the run forever—but it has occurred to me that Henry and I could do a lot of good with our gifts, especially with long lives. I could help so many people. . . .

  Am I being selfish in wanting to destroy the AVRAKEDAVRA? Am I dishonoring my mother’s legacy, and the lives of my other extended magical family, if I undo what they’ve been fighting to protect for millennia?

  “You okay?” Henry asks.

  “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  “I always get myself into trouble when I do that.” He repositions against the long bench seat at the rear of the narrow van. Henry peels off his gloves, wincing a bit as he does. His palms are blistered, and one has torn open, angry and oozing clear fluid.

  “That’s from one day?”

  He smiles sheepishly. “Some of us aren’t as tough as you.”

  Xavier slows at a stoplight. He’s looking at us in the rearview mirror. “Don’t heal his hands. He needs to build calluses. No one’s going to believe that he’s a laborer with soft hands like those, and we still have two cities to survive before we head east.”

  And by east, he means Iraq. Babylon. The birthplace of the AVRAKEDAVRA.

  I can’t believe this is all happening.

  The van moves again, and I anchor myself between the side wall and the dilapidated built-in cupboards. I pull out the medical kit—again. “I can at least clean them and apply ointment so you don’t get infected,” I say. Henry nods.

  “He’s right, though. I need to toughen up.”

  “It’s all the years of wearing gloves,” I say. “To protect yourself.”

  Henry nods. “We do what we have to do, I suppose.”

  Judging by the fact that we’re on the run—again—a truer statement has never been uttered.

  18

  “SADDLE UP,” XAVIER SAYS. “WE’RE HIKING.”

  We’ve stopped down a narrow dirt road in a forest, and the van has been squeezed in among a copse of pine trees whose branches scratch and grab at us as we exit. Xavier pulls an army-green canvas tarp out from his extra bag.

  “Some help, please,” he says. Henry and I pull the tarp over the van so its white top doesn’t stand out in all this greenery.

  Then Xavier turns and heads into the bush, telling us nothing, referring only to a digital compass he pulls out of his pocket every so often. We walk until dark, and even for a while after that, climbing deeper into woods.

  Even though the sun is long asleep and Spain’s February night air is colder than I expected, Henry and I both have slight sheens on our face from the exertion. “Xavier, tell me there’s fresh water nearby,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond.

  When it feels like I cannot move another step, a tiny wooden cabin, panels bolted over the windows, appears up ahead. The firepit in front is cold, the small metal stovepipe extending from the roof quiet.

  The heavy wooden door looks as if it was shaped out of local trees, but despite its rustic front, the door only opens with Xavier’s thumbprint.

  “If he dies before this is over, we’re going to have to cut off his thumb to get anywhere,” I say to Henry.

  “I heard that,” Xavier says. The door scrapes open, dust dancing like dervishes in the light of his flashlight. We follow him in, waiting while he lights a glass hurricane lamp on a square, rough-wood table in the center. The room takes shape—a small, galley-style kitchen, a cold, black potbellied stove at the cabin’s north end, and wooden bunks with tired-looking mattresses lining the walls.

  “We camp here tonight. The Guardian will meet us.”

  “When?” Henry asks.

  Xavier drops his pack, claiming a bunk in the far-right corner. “I’ll get a fire started,” he says, ignoring Henry’s question. “Go out and get some wood. We need to bo
il water and make dinner.”

  Henry and I drop our packs on bunks on the opposite side of the single-room cabin. I’d sleep under the stars if I could, as far away from Xavier as possible.

  Outside, we find a neat stack of dry firewood and each carry an armload inside to get the fire going. Xavier works silently, pulling water out of a plastic water tank attached to the ceiling above an iron faucetless basin anchored to the wall. “This is collected rainwater—there’s a rain barrel on the roof. It has to be strained and boiled before we can drink it,” he says. “Outhouse in back. Check for snakes before you sit.”

  Snakes? Awesome.

  Once the water is ready, Xavier throws military-issue MREs (meals ready to eat) at us.

  “What’d you get?” I ask Henry as he tears his open.

  He examines the package front in the dim light. “Spaghetti with meat sauce. You?”

  “Cheese tortellini,” I say.

  The food tastes as disgusting as it looks, or maybe we’re just spoiled after the meal at Circ de l’Anell d’Or. Doesn’t matter. We eat because we’ve been walking for god knows how many hours and we’re starving.

  “Wash up and get ready for bed. Lights out in fifteen.”

  Xavier is out the door, again with his satellite phone, another cigarette at his lips.

  “I will never understand what my mother saw in him,” I say under my breath.

  “He’s under a lot of pressure right now,” Henry says.

  “You are not allowed to defend him. He’s a dick.”

  “He might be, but he’s also trying to keep us alive.”

  I stop digging through my pack and stare at Henry standing at the bed that abuts mine. “Are you saying that you agree with him? That I shouldn’t have saved that man’s life today?”

  Henry sets his gloves down and closes the distance between us. “I know how hard that would’ve been for you to not help him. After what happened with Thierry.”

  “So you blame me for Thierry’s death too?” I step back before Henry can touch me.

  “Genevieve, please. We’re tired. Let’s not fight. I’m on your side. You know that.” When he moves closer to me yet again, I have nowhere left to go—I’m up against the cabin wall. Henry’s blistered hands, curled into loose fists, brush under my jaw and he reaches down to kiss me. I let him, but I make sure my thoughts are filled with images of me saving that man’s life today, in case Henry gets inside my head with the connection of our lips.

  “Let’s sleep. Tomorrow we will get the first piece of the key, and then we can move on to the next stop.”

  “Which is where? He still hasn’t told us,” I snap back, right as Xavier reenters the cabin.

  “Naples, Italy,” he says, shoving the wooden door closed and sliding a thick two-by-four into brackets on either side of the doorjamb. It would take a stampeding elephant to break it down. “I hope you don’t get seasick.”

  “We’re going by boat?” I ask.

  “Naples is about 550 nautical miles from Barcelona. And as I surmised earlier, your face is now making its way around the World Wide Web at lightning speed, thanks to one enterprising, awestruck Circ employee with an iPhone. Travel by land is going to be dicey until we are across the Mediterranean. Best to hide in the hold of a fishing vessel and not heal anyone, no matter how close to death they might be. Are we clear?”

  “Clear as glass,” Henry says.

  “The Guardian will be here early. Now. I don’t want to see your faces again until the sun is up. Please grant me this one kindness.” Xavier pulls closed a curtain suspended from a wire stretched from wall to wall. The dust it stirs up makes me sneeze.

  The next sound is Xavier’s snores. With his every noisy exhale, I again question my mother’s sanity when she spent time in this man’s presence. She always teased Baby about how he was the perfect partner because he never snored, and here I am, stuck in a fifteen-by-fifteen cabin with a motorboat.

  If Xavier lives through this, and Baby doesn’t, I truly will be an orphan.

  19

  “GENEVIEVE . . . GEN . . .” I OPEN MY EYES, SLEEP HEAVY ON MY HEAD AND body like a weighted blanket. “Come here. I want to show you something,” Henry whispers.

  “Is it morning?”

  Henry presses a finger against his lips and shakes his head no. “Slide into your boots.”

  He helps me put them on. Xavier’s privacy drape is still drawn, but I see that the cabin’s front door is ajar, the earlier two-by-four barricade resting against the wall. A brisk breeze whistles through the crack between door and frame.

  I stand, wobbly for a second. Henry loops his arm through mine and we tiptoe as quietly as is possible in combat boots.

  Henry pulls the door behind us, though it’s so heavy and noisy, he can’t close it tight.

  The evening sky is a brilliant blanket of stars—even the Milky Way is visible. It’s so beautiful, it doesn’t look real.

  At the quiet firepit, a rough woolen blanket from our bunks has been stretched out on the ground; on one of the big rocks that forms the circular firepit rests a familiar rectangle covered in its leather wrapping.

  Henry’s AVRAKEDAVRA.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just sit.”

  I do, and he slides down too, leaning forward to uncover his book. A shiver runs through me as the aged cover is exposed.

  “You left it sitting out, unprotected?”

  “For a brief moment—and who else is out here?” He laughs once under his breath. He then opens the text and holds his ungloved hand between us. “Trust me,” he whispers.

  I take his hand, the familiar warmth rushing through. And then sitting next to Henry is Alicia, her glowing form floating above the ground. She moves over the ashy remnants in the firepit and flattens a glowing hand on the AVRAKEDAVRA.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Watch.” Henry smiles.

  In front of us, like the flicker of a movie, a scene plays out: The young man I saved earlier walks into an apartment where he’s met by a beautiful young woman with a lush ponytail and the widest smile, tears flowing down her face. When they embrace, the chubby baby perched on her hip squeals and pats the man’s shoulder. Another little one with bouncing curls and a pink nightie runs barefoot across the tile floor dragging a stuffed cat. She throws her arms around the young man’s legs. “Papa! Papa! Papa!” The man and his wife cry and kiss, and then his wife inspects the back of his head, crosses herself religiously, and they kiss again.

  The scene fades out.

  “Alicia thought you’d want to see it. To let you know you made the right choice.”

  “How . . . how did she get that memory?” I ask.

  Alicia gestures to the AVRAKEDAVRA, and then to Henry. “She’s teaching me, Genevieve. She’s teaching me to see so much.”

  “When have you had time?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping as much as I should,” he says, his smile tentative. “It helps that no one else can see her. I can carry on conversations, and no one is aware.”

  I look at Alicia. “I miss you,” I say. “You helped me so much back home.”

  Her lips move, her hand over her translucent chest.

  “She says she loves you as if you were her own.”

  As my head moves through the initial shock of seeing Alicia, the AVRAKEDAVRA out in plain view, and the vision of the young man and his family, I’m overrun with what I should’ve thought before anything else. I grab Henry’s arm with my free hand.

  “Can you see Baby? Is he okay? What about the elephants? Please?”

  Alicia dims for a moment. She then says something to Henry and nods at the AVRAKEDAVRA. “She wants me to show you. Don’t worry. It’s okay.”

  And then Henry takes his hand from mine and places both on the ancient text. Alicia shimmers from sight—I can only see her through Henry now—but another image flickers in front of us.

  It’s Baby. Still asleep. Still in Croix-Mare. But lying on his bed
next to him—

  “Is that Delia?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Since we have Alicia, Delia is watching over Baby,” Henry says.

  I don’t care that Henry sees my tears. I’m so happy to know that Baby isn’t alone, that Delia is out of the mausoleum, that she’s not trapped in that stone box for eternity. I don’t know what good she can do to help Baby, but in my heart, I hope he knows she’s there with him.

  “I wish I could see her again. Here. Now. I wish I could just talk to her again.”

  Henry nods. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Seeing my mother and Baby, together, both reassures me and breaks my heart. And yet it also reaffirms what we’re doing here. I have to keep fighting—I have to save Baby’s life. Delia would fight. So must I.

  “And what about the elephants?” I ask, scared to see the truth.

  Henry pulls his hands away, murmurs under his breath, and then pauses before placing his hands back on the book. Again an image floats into shape. I hiccup with tears and pure relief to see Gertrude with Ted and Dr. Philips in the field, Houdini running around like the nut he is. Gert has her trunk looped over Ted’s shoulder as he feeds her mango and bananas. Though Ted’s lips are moving, I can’t hear what he’s saying to the veterinarian.

  “I wanted you to see. I wanted you to know that your family is okay,” Henry says.

  And before his hands lift from the AVRAKEDAVRA, a whisper lands right in the middle of my head, the voice unmistakable: Use the magic, little bird. Don’t be afraid.

  I love you, Mom, I whisper back to her.

  With Henry’s hands off the book, night again falls into a darkness lit only by the constellations. He closes the text and rewraps it in the thick leather. “It’s almost a shame that we have to destroy them.”

  I freeze mid-swipe of the tears off my cheek.

  “Of course, I know it has to be done. But losing our abilities—me losing the connection with my mother—it’s just not fair,” he says, scooting back onto the blanket. He picks up a stick and digs at a rock embedded in the hard dirt.

  I contemplate telling him I had these same thoughts just a few hours ago. But if he sees a chink in my armor, he might work at it until I change my mind—and I can’t change my mind.