Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(16)

“Hi,” I start to say, but she shushes me, gestures to the door. I follow her out of the church, glad for the fresh air on my face, the sudden sun, the breeze that shifts the fronds in the palm trees at the edge of the quad.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Angela says.

“What is that thing anyway, in the church?”

“It’s a labyrinth. A knockoff of one, anyway. It’s made of vinyl so they can roll it up and move it around. It’s patterned after these huge stone labyrinths they have in churches in Europe. The idea is that walking in circles can free the mind so that you can pray.”

I arch an eyebrow at her.

“I was thinking about my purpose,” she says.

“Does it work? Was your mind freed?”

She shrugs. “At first I thought it was pointless, but I’ve been having a hard time concentrating lately.” She clears her throat. “So I tried it, and after a while I got this amazing clarity. It’s weird. It just steals over you. Then I figured out that I could make the vision come to me this way.”

“Make the vision come? On purpose?”

She scoffs. “Of course on purpose.”

Knowing this instantly makes me want to go back inside and try it. Maybe I’d get more than that little bit of darkness. Maybe I’d figure my vision out. But there’s another part of me that shudders at the thought of going to the pitch-black room voluntarily.

“So. Why I texted you,” Angela says, her shoulders tense. “I have the words.”

I stare at her. She throws her hands up in exasperation.

“The words! The words! All this time—I mean, for years, C—I’ve been seeing this place in my visions, and I know I’m supposed to say something to somebody, but I never hear myself say the words. It’s been driving me crazy, especially since I got here and I know it’s going to happen pretty soon—within the next four years, I’m guessing anyway. I’m supposed to be a messenger, at least that’s what I thought, but I never knew the message, until now.” She takes a breath, sighs it out. Closes her eyes. “The words.”

“So what are they?”

She opens her eyes, her irises a flash of eager gold.

“The seventh is ours,” she says.

Okay. “So what does that mean?”

Her face falls, like maybe she was expecting me to know the answer and share it with her. “Well, I know that the number seven is like the most significant of all the numbers.”

“Why, because there are seven days in a week?”

“Yes,” she says, completely straight-faced. “Seven days in a week. Seven notes on the music scale. Seven colors in the spectrum.”

She is seriously obsessed with this. But I guess that comes as no real surprise. It’s Angela.

“Huh. So your vision is brought to you by the number seven,” I joke. I can’t help but think of Sesame Street. This episode is brought to you by the number twelve and the letter Z.

“Hey, C, this is serious,” she says. “Seven is the number of perfection and divine completion. It’s God’s number.”

“God’s number,” I repeat. “But what does it mean, Ange? ‘The seventh is ours’?”

“I don’t know,” she confesses, frowning. “I have considered that it might be an object of some kind. Or a date, I suppose. But …” She grabs my hand. “Here, come with me.”

She pulls me across the quad again, essentially retracing the route I used to get here, all the way out into the arcade, where there’s a group of black statues, a replica of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, six mournful-looking men with ropes around their necks. I don’t know the history or what doom they’re supposed to be going toward, but they’re clearly walking to their deaths, which I’ve always found weird and unsettling to run into in the middle of Stanford’s bustling campus. Kind of a downer.

“I see them, in my vision.” Angela pulls me past the burghers, until we’re standing at the top of the steps looking out at the Oval and beyond it Palm Drive, the long street that’s lined with giant palm trees and marks the official entrance to the university. The sun is setting. Students are playing Frisbee in the grass wearing shorts and tank tops, sunglasses, flip-flops. Others are stretched out under trees, studying. Birds are singing, bicycles whirring by. A car makes its way around the circle with a surfboard strapped to the roof.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think: October in California.

“It happens here.” Angela stops and plants her feet. “Right here.”

I look down. “What, you mean where we’re standing?”

She nods. “I’m going to come from that direction.” She points to the left. “And I’m going to climb up these five little steps, and there’s going to be someone waiting for me, right here.”

“The man in the gray suit.” I remember her telling me.

“Yes. And I’m going to tell him, ‘The seventh is ours.’”

“Do you know who he is?”

She makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat, like I am bursting her “guess how brilliant I am” bubble by bringing up something that she doesn’t know. “It feels like I recognize him, in the vision, but he’s got his back to me. I don’t ever see his face.”