Scheme Page 4
Before Nutesh can answer, Baby’s body is overtaken by spasms. “Seizure! Montague, hold his head,” Nutesh says.
“What can I do?” I yell. I stand uselessly—I can’t touch Baby yet or else I might make his seizure worse. I’m short of breath, damp with sweat, terrified I won’t be able to help.
“Please, Baby, please . . . please . . .” I chant under my breath, burning fingers steepled in front of my nose. “Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare leave me.”
As soon as the worst of the jerking subsides, Nutesh injects something into Baby’s thick upper left arm. Then his body really goes lax. “Geneviève, cold compresses from the supply cabinet. Hurry!” I do as instructed, rushing back to hand over the armload of white-and-blue packages. One at a time, he cracks and shakes them to activate the cold inside. He nods at the pile and I follow what he’s doing.
“Pack them around his neck and under his armpits, behind his knees.” Montague finishes slicing through the front of Baby’s blue flannel shirt and the black T-shirt underneath, lying his chest open to the world. His severe chest bruising from the car accident is gone, but his torso is scorching hot.
“There was blood—on the walkway. Where is it coming from? Is he infected?”
“It appears so.”
“From what? We HEALED him!”
“I do not know, ma chère,” Nutesh says. “More ice. We have to bring down his temperature.”
“Should I put my hands on him? See if I can slow the progression?”
“I fear there is something else going on here that may be beyond our ability to remedy.”
“Don’t say that!” I clasp my hands in front of me, eyes closed, pushing the electricity aside so I can use whatever healing power I have. The back of my head sings with pain as the star within ignites.
Eyes open, I step to Baby and put both hands on his upper chest, just below his neck. The heat radiating off him frightens me.
Baby, please come back to me. I’m going to heal you. Work with me. Calm your heart. Listen to my voice. Let’s work together. Let my hands fix you.
I shove as much energy into his body as my own body will allow, until the twinkling lights close in along the periphery and my legs threaten to give out. Gently, I ease myself to the floor next to the bed, eyes closed as I try to control the pain in my skull and the short, terrified breaths in my chest; Montague tucks a bottle of juice into my palm.
“Thank you,” I whisper. I drink, and within a minute, I’m strong enough to stand and try again.
“Geneviève, we must cool him down. That is the only way to help him now,” Nutesh says. “We must get his temperature, and the infection, under control.” He hands me a pair of surgical scissors. “Cut the rest of his shirt off.”
Nutesh quickly moves to the head of the bed and speaks to Montague. I again chide myself for resisting the French lessons Baby and my school tutors tried to foist on me.
As if they’ve done it a thousand times before, Nutesh and Montague work in harmony. They intubate Baby and connect him to a machine that breathes for him. “The medicine I gave him will induce a coma. It’s the only way we can prevent seizures and manage his body temperature. He needs to fight this infection, whatever it is.”
“Don’t you know?” I ask, the lump in my throat straining my voice as I slice through the fabric covering his left arm, to the shoulder, trying to pull the two layers of shirt from his skin. “Don’t you know where it’s coming from? Does he have any open wounds? How can he be so sick when Henry and I are fully recovered?”
Nutesh does not answer as he tapes the breathing tube in place. I’ve moved to the right side, and as I cut through the fabric overlying Baby’s forearm, my heart thumps hard in my chest as I tear the sleeve away.
“Oh my god,” I say, stepping back, the scissors hitting the floor with a muted tink. “Nutesh . . . his arm.”
In the untattooed skin of Baby’s right forearm, a bloodied message has been sliced:
Aveline sends her love.
7
“WHO DID THIS . . . WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?”
“Geneviève, I am as stunned as you,” Nutesh says. “It is impossible. Baby is too strong. No one would be able to get near to him to do this.”
Someone here wants to hurt us.
Without asking permission, I move my hands over Baby’s arm, again pulling from the star in my head, hovering over the viciously scored flesh. Upon opening my eyes, it’s as if I’ve done nothing at all. In fact, it almost looks worse, angry purple veins spidering away from the slices.
“He has streaking,” I say. “His blood is infected.”
Nutesh steps beside me and cradles Baby’s limp arm in his hands. “This is not what it looks like,” he says.
“To me it looks like someone in the building—someone on your staff—wants to send a message. Someone here hurt him!” I yell.
“Geneviève, please, if that were the case, the wounds would have healed when you laid hands on him just now. Instead, the cuts are still as fresh and angry as they were upon discovery.”
“I’ve seen this before . . . with Udish,” I say. “Alicia showed me his death—he had a terrible infection. The AVRAKEDAVRA symbol had been carved into his chest—the inverted triangle overlying the circle. It killed him—he died in Delia’s arms.”
I turn to Henry’s grandfather, gripping the fabric of his shirtsleeves. “I am begging you to fix this.”
Nutesh’s eyes soften as he nods and pulls off his exam gloves. “S’il vous plaît, do not leave. I will be right back.” He nods to Montague, standing near the wall of vital-signs monitors to the left of the bed where he adjusts Baby’s head and neck and packs more cold compresses around his forehead and shoulders.
I finish removing Baby’s shirt, but I leave it to Montague to cut free his black military-style cargo pants and cover him with a light sheet. The breathing machine is the only sound in the room for a moment—whirr, click, whirr, click. In, out, in, out. Though Baby’s head is packed with ice, I move to the bedside and kiss his glistening forehead, trying to keep my eyes away from the festering message on his forearm.
Aveline sends her love.
I’ll kill her myself if anything happens to this man.
The door swishes open again, and Nutesh hurries in, a thick bundle in his arms—he has one of the AVRAKEDAVRA texts. He nods at Montague, who rolls over a stainless steel cart. Gently, Nutesh places the book on the square surface and pulls back the cloth.
A slight tingle shivers through me, but right away I know that is not my text. The leather is too dark.
It’s Death.
When Nutesh opens it, a chill blows through the room. On instinct, I sniff, hoping the stench of the Etemmu won’t seep out of the pages and find me.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching Nutesh finger through the crackled pages. He doesn’t answer but continues turning, scanning text I can’t read, his fingers hovering over haunting, millennia-old illustrations.
He pauses, looks up though his eyes are far away, and then flips forward through the book. When it is splayed open, he takes a step back.
I step closer.
The image on the pages are of scored flesh. Ancient renderings of sketched body parts, words carved into the skin, but despite the lack of color in the images, the angry infection is obvious. Blistered and festering, darkened veins streaking away from the injured areas.
Just like Baby’s arm.
“I can’t read this. What does it say?”
Nutesh’s silence layers the medical suite in ice.
“Nutesh! What does this say?” I stab a finger at the open Death text. “Is—is this a curse? Has Aveline cursed him?”
Before Nutesh can answer, the medical suite door slams open. Henry stands in the doorway, eyes wide, jaw set in a mixture of anger and fear, gloved hands fisted at his sides. One of the guards steps in directly behind him—he’s standing too close, his bulky body partially obscured by Henry’s height. The gu
ard looks away just long enough to close—and lock—the medical suite door. That’s when I see his sidearm is no longer holstered but pointed squarely at the back of Henry’s head.
“If I shoot him, not even the power of the two of you can fix him again,” he says, nodding at us, jabbing Henry in the shoulder with the gun’s barrel. He steps forward.
“Mathieu, what has come over you?” Nutesh asks, holding up his hands and then flat in front of him, as if he’s welcoming the guard in for tea. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Montague move ever so slowly. Mathieu raises his gun arm at him, but Montague doesn’t freeze. I steal a glance as he positions himself at the bedside, his body now protecting Baby’s head and upper chest.
Mathieu jabs Henry forward another step, but the key hanging around Mathieu’s neck—it turns a hellish, sooty black against the desert-brown of his shirt.
“Have you gone mad?” Nutesh says.
“Moi? Your possession of the three texts will make you mad with power, Thibault. We cannot allow this to happen,” Mathieu says. “The AVRAKEDAVRA can remake this world. We can do better.”
I’ve heard these words before, that night in the big top.
Mathieu is a mole.
“Geneviève, your soeur chérie Aveline wishes for me to send you her sincerest greetings,” Mathieu says.
“Did you do that to Baby? Did you cut him?”
Mathieu laughs. “No. That love letter is from America. Though, they won’t be in America for long. But I see the realization dawning on your face, Geneviève. Dagan and Aveline will find you, even after I deliver the books to them. Before Dagan finishes what he should have started millennia ago, he will make sure you pay for the sins of your dead mother.”
My insides burn. “Don’t you dare speak of Delia, you bastard.”
“Oh, Americans and their love of foul language. So unbecoming,” Mathieu says. “If you were my daughter, I’d wash your mouth out with soap. Though, by the looks of things, you won’t be anyone’s daughter for long.”
I jerk forward with every intention of putting my hands on him, like I did with Lucian and Aveline at the airfield in Washington, but Nutesh grabs me hard above the elbow just as Mathieu shoves his weapon harder into the back of Henry’s head.
“Oh, no, no, no, you keep your hands to yourself, mon chou.” Mathieu moves Henry two more steps forward but, unexpectedly, Henry looks left toward the wall of stainless steel cabinets and raises his arms out to his sides. “Your timing is impeccable.”
“Henry?” I ask, but he doesn’t look away from whatever he sees. He smiles, light from the wide upper windows reflecting the tears rimmed along the bottoms of his eyes.
Henry losing his shit right now does not bode well. Is he possessed?
Mathieu scans the area Henry is glued to. “It looks like it is your grandson who is mad, Thibault. I think you may have bigger problems than—”
His sentence hangs unfinished in the charged air as three things happen all at once: Mathieu stumbles backward, the gun fires, and Henry drops flat to the floor.
And then, quiet.
Just the whirrrr-click of Baby’s ventilator and the adrenalized collective inhale-exhale of the people in the room.
Montague rushes to kick the handgun out of Mathieu’s reach as Nutesh leans over to check the pulse at his wrist. I scurry to Henry—“Are you hurt? Did the bullet hit you?”—frantically surveying the button-down shirt covering his newly patched torso, looking for the blossom of blood.
He smiles again. “I’m fine. It didn’t hit me. I’m okay.” I help him to his feet, though I’m careful to only touch his gloved hands, my own extremities charged with electricity in search of release. He pulls me against his chest as soon as we’re both upright again, burying his face in my hair, the warmth of his relieved exhale whooshing through me.
I unbury my face and look at the scene to my left. “Is he . . .”
“No. Unconscious only,” Nutesh says angrily. Loud bangs echo from against the locked main door—Nutesh stands and opens it to Thierry and two other scary-looking soldiers, each with weapons drawn. I hold my breath, waiting to see if they’re going to finish Mathieu’s turncoat takedown.
Nutesh quickly explains what has happened as Montague rolls Mathieu onto his side and secures his hands with a pair of silver cuffs. I don’t realize how hard I’m shaking until Henry whispers “We’re okay it’s okay we’re safe,” against my ear. The armed men holster their weapons, and the tension in the room deflates like a week-old balloon.
I move to Mathieu’s still form, kneeling to touch the key around his neck. With a single swipe, I yank it off him and hold it in my palm. The black dissipates, the key again a tarnished silver.
It turned black before my eyes—when it was touching a traitor—and now it’s silver again. I glance around me—did anyone else see that?
Hurriedly, I tuck the key and chain into my pocket. Mathieu doesn’t deserve what this key stands for.
Montague then empties Mathieu’s pockets and Thierry helps lift him onto another gurney along the wall, securing his feet to the metal and vinyl bed with leather belt straps. The four soldiers speak in hushed tones for a moment before the decision is made that the compound will go into full lockdown. Thierry instructs the soldier whose nametag reads Lucas to gather a team and tear apart Mathieu’s quarters. “Bring everything you find to me. We will need to run a full scan on whatever tech he has. We must see who he’s been in contact with on the outside.”
On the outside? Dagan and Aveline—who else could we be at risk from? Are there other people who want these books, who want us dead?
The two other bearded soldiers leave, but my confidence in their loyalty has evaporated. What’s to say they’re not in on it too?
Can anyone be trusted here?
Panic prickles through me. Again.
The sadness in Nutesh’s eyes as he looks at Mathieu . . . it hurts in my chest to witness the disappointment so heavy in his features. And just as quickly, he resumes the role of commander, speaking to Thierry and Montague in a low but fierce voice.
I move to check Baby, the back of my fingers pressed to his still-scorching forehead. I’m so grateful Mathieu’s errant bullet didn’t hit him. The carving on his arm is unchanged, and the small digital heart on the monitor flashes in time with his pulse—faster than it should be. His temp and blood pressure are still too high, all secondary evidence of severe infection.
“Everything will be okay, Baby,” I whisper into his ear. “I will fix you. I promise.”
A gentle hand rests on my back. “Genevieve,” Henry says softly.
I turn and face him. “What was that? Who were you talking to?” I ask.
Henry pivots and again looks at something I can’t see, watching movement of a figure that isn’t there, his smile wide. He nods at nothing, and then turns back to me.
“Give me your hand, Gen,” he says, his gloves now removed. I don’t comply. “Please. Trust me.”
Tentatively, I fold my hand into Henry’s, and Alicia’s ethereal form takes shape, her dark-blond hair floating as it always does, her green eyes bright, her smile soft and warm.
“Genevieve, I believe you know my mother,” Henry says proudly.
8
“YOU . . . YOU CAN SEE HER?”
“And I can talk to her. Isn’t it incredible?” Henry’s face is like a little kid who’s just met Santa and the Easter Bunny on the same day. Alicia’s lips move, but just as before when she showed herself to me in Oregon, I can’t hear her.
“What’s she saying?”
“She wants you to know she’s proud of you for being so brave. For saving us in Washington,” Henry translates, looking between me and his mother’s ghostly shape. Alicia places the hand not connected to Henry over her heart and dips her head reverently.
“Your son is brave too,” I say. She smiles and looks up at him with so much love. “Wait—Henry—can you see other people?” I want to know if he can see Delia.
“But I haven’t seen her since we left America. And I couldn’t see her in here—not until you touched me,” I say. “Usually I can see her without her making contact.”
Nutesh, finished with his other conversation, steps alongside me. He looks lovingly at his grandson.
“Grand-père,” Henry says, “your daughter says hello.” Nutesh bows at the waist.
“Can you not see her?” I ask. Nutesh shakes his head. “How are you unable to see your own daughter?”
“I do not know, Geneviève. It has been this way since her death, despite my every effort to access her through our family’s text. Given that she has passed into another realm beyond ours, she is under the purview of Dagan, of his ownership and control of the Death text.”
“But you are Memory. And you have Dagan’s book now,” I say. “Can’t you use it?”
“I am not schooled in the intricacies of the Death text as Dagan is. He has had many more years with his father’s volume than I. These books grow and evolve under the ownership of the possessor. Once Belshunu died and Dagan assumed control, my connection was greatly diminished.”
“Then how could I see Alicia before I was sealed to my book? How was I able to see my mother in the mausoleum?”
“That is your unique gift, one I sadly do not myself possess.” Nutesh takes a deep breath. “Some magic is even beyond my skills, Geneviève.” He touches Henry’s arm. “But if my beautiful grandson can at last have a moment with his mother, my precious Alicia, I have no complaints.”
Henry releases my hand, and Alicia again disappears—at least from my sight. “This is so weird,” I mutter. While seeing Alicia’s ghost was a terrifying new development that happened three weeks after Delia’s death, I learned to appreciate her presence. I’m happy for Henry that he finally has a real connection to his mom, but I’m selfishly sad I won’t be able to see her now myself, without Henry connecting us.