Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(108)

“I tried,” Natalya said. “I tried because I wanted to know, and you promised you’d tell me.”

“However you look at it, the Sect’s secrets aren’t for you to know.”

“Not for me to know?” I could see Natalya’s fingers curling into fists. “Baldric, by chance, do you know what my number is?”

Absently, Baldric grabbed another book off of his bed. “Number—”

“Fourteen. Fourteen years I’ve fought for the Sect. And I will probably die for the Sect. I’ve given everything to them. I let them turn me into a child soldier because they taught me to believe it was the right thing to do. And I tried to trust them. I tried. But then Naomi tells me that the Sect could be corrupt. And I— Listen to me.”

Natalya stood in front of him, blocking his path. Baldric strained his neck to look up at her, but he matched the power of her stare nonetheless.

“I deserve to know. I deserve to know if everything I’ve been fighting for has been a lie. I deserve to know what I am. No matter the cost.”

Baldric cast his gaze to the floor. Silence stretched between them until his mustache twitched again, his lips parting to speak. “And among the shadows,” he said, “you will find them.”

Natalya narrowed her eyes. “. . . Deoscali? What does this have to do with that foolish cult?”

“The cult may be foolish, as is anyone who worships the phantoms. However, there’s more to Emilia Farlow’s old teachings than you would expect. The secrets of the shadows . . . and the secrets of the beings who dwell among the shadows.”

“What do you mean?”

Baldric rolled his wheelchair back away from her and over to the open door. With a swift movement, he reached for the knob as if to shut the door quickly, but unexpectedly, his hand rested there.

“Have you heard of Allegory of the Cave, my dear?”

Natalya nodded. “Plato. Of course.”

“Yes, Plato.” Baldric’s fingers tightened around the doorknob. “The unlearned men and women chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads to see the puppeteers behind them. All they can see are the shadows dancing across the cave walls.”

“The shadows are lies,” said Natalya.

“But these shadows are all they’ve ever known. How can they know that the shadows have been cast by the puppeteers under the light of a fire burning behind them? How can they not help but think the shadows real?”

“I don’t take well to riddles.” Natalya scowled. “Tell me plainly.”

“The Haas family has had to speak in tongues since the day the phantoms appeared.” Baldric let go of the knob. “1865 . . . perhaps the skeletons of those days cannot stay buried forever. The sins of those little girls . . .”

He must have lost himself in the riddles of his thoughts, because he trailed off for a moment before snapping himself back to reality. “Don’t go there again,” Baldric told her. “And forget what I’ve told you. When the true battle begins, you will not find me.”

Natalya had just begun to speak again when I felt her hands wrap around my mouth and pull me out of the memory with a violent tug. Baldric’s room ripped away from my sight as I fell into a black void. I should have known she’d take her chance when I least expected it. No matter how hard I struggled, Natalya wasn’t letting me go. We struggled and sank deeper into the ever-expanding darkness. Scenes stretched past my vision as I sank deeper into the depths. Natalya fighting. Natalya speaking to news reporters. Her duties to the Sect. The empty bottles of alcohol around her apartment living room.

And then I saw Belle. Little Belle. Couldn’t have been more than thirteen, though still lanky for her age. Her legs were bent at odd angles as she crouched near a dirty toilet, barely conscious. She was losing too much blood. It was Natalya who’d found her, but it was all she could do to keep pressure on her bleeding wrists. Her phone was on the ground, the paramedic still trying to speak with her on the other end of the receiver. Natalya, whose tears did the speaking for her.

“It’s my fault.” Belle slurred her words. “I killed the phantoms but I couldn’t save them. The agents tell me every night when I close my eyes. They say, what good are you? What good are you? I don’t want to hear them anymore. . . . Please let me die. . . .”

“Let go of me!” I struggled against Natalya until finally my eyes snapped open and the bright white overwhelmed my sight.

? ? ?

“You okay, kid?” Chae Rin asked from the backseat of our van. I was back in the land of the living, my body jolting to life in the passenger seat. But I could only answer her by rubbing the sweat off my face with both hands.

The old, rusty van Jin had given us was a vintage sixties Volkswagen. It was a classic, but barely maintained. There was rust around the edges. The paint job—white for the top half, red for the bottom—was dull and peeling, and the flannel curtains covering the windows smelled like cat. I guess they couldn’t have given us their best, but they could have spared us one that didn’t give me the jitters with each sudden shake. At least the gas tank was full.

It was going to be a long trip, an almost twenty-hour drive—and we’d just started it. Naomi had wanted us to get to the museum fast before the Sect, but “fast” was a luxury when you were driving across countries in a crappy car. We’d already given ourselves the inoculations so the Sect couldn’t track us. We’d also dropped James off at the first town out of the mountains. It’d actually taken him a while to come to, but after he had, despite still being a bit shaky, he’d scrounged up some money we’d need on the road and promised to let us know if he heard any rumblings from the Sect—or from Naomi. If she was even still alive. For Rhys’s sake, I hoped she was.