Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(32)
As if purposefully planning the cruel irony of her timing, Belle added, with utmost certainty, “It’s Natalya. We can trust her.”
I took the fan letter out of my pocket and turned it over. “The last time I trusted Natalya, she tried to take over my body,” I reminded her quietly.
Belle stood frozen to the spot for a moment. “Yes, well,” she said quickly. “I told you once before, scrying has its risks. Normally, you need to be calm. You need complete control of yourself. But at that time, you were in the middle of facing Saul. Such a high-stress situation would obviously compromise the barrier between your consciousness and hers. Given that, it makes sense that her mind would cross over involuntarily.”
The letter crinkled in my hand. “Except it wasn’t involuntarily.” The words fell from my mouth, heavy like the stone sinking in the pit of my stomach. “She very, very purposefully chained me up in my own mind.”
And I remembered every painful second. It was like being buried alive several feet underground. My mind was probably weaker for it now, which made it easier for her to scratch at the surface of my subconscious.
But did Belle understand that? From the awkward purse of her lips to her subtle attempts at avoiding my knife glare, her reluctance to accept the truth was obvious.
“We were both in danger.” Belle raised her head almost in defiance. “I’d been captured by Saul. Chae Rin, Lake, and all the train passengers were the hostages of phantoms. You weren’t enough to save us. She would have seen everything through your eyes.” She met my gaze as if to challenge me. “She would have wanted to fight.”
“Seemed to me like she just wanted to live.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Belle’s words evaporated into the silence that stretched out between us, unbroken but for the sizzling of Lake’s frying pan.
There it was. That insidious, nagging suspicion that had bloomed the moment we’d spoken for the first time at La Charte hotel: that I was nothing more than a replacement borrowing Natalya. I lowered my head. That night in France, as she’d held Saul’s ring in her hands, I really believed for a second that she’d do it: wish me away and Natalya back into my body. It would have been an easy wish to grant. Saul had said so himself. I wanted to believe in Belle. I wanted to believe in the tears she’d shed as she dropped the ring and collapsed to the ground. And though there were times it felt as if she were finally warming to the idea of us as a team and of me as the fire Effigy, other times I couldn’t be sure.
Maybe she wanted Natalya back. Even if it meant I was gone forever.
“Wait.” Chae Rin placed down her soda can and stood from the table. “You’re excusing what Natalya did now?” She looked at her in disbelief. “Are you a body-snatcher apologist?”
But it was clear that Belle had realized her mistake. She was already shaking her head as each of us watched her. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Wow.” Chae Rin let out an incredulous laugh. “That’s kind of a new low.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice rang out over the room. Regret was clear in the pale blue of her eyes as she faced me again. “That’s not what I meant.”
Panic. Even if it was just a shadow, I wasn’t used to seeing it sweep across her features. Suddenly, she looked sheepish, ashamed of herself. “That’s not what I meant, Maia,” she said, shaking her head. “Please don’t take it that way. I would never.” The regret in her eyes as she pleaded with me told me she remembered that moment in France as well as I did. “I wouldn’t.”
I played it off with a shrug. “I guess I’ll just have to believe you, right?” I wanted to. I had to.
“My, what a well-adjusted, functional bunch we are.” Chae Rin rolled her eyes. “Okay, look, we all know Natalya was your mentor and you and her were tight while she was still breathing or whatever, but we need to be realistic about our situation.”
Nudging Lake out of the way, Chae Rin went over to the kitchen cabinet. When she reached under the pile of magazines in the bottom drawer, I knew what she was looking for. We had to put it in an unsuspecting spot after all.
She pulled it out: the cigar box Natalya had buried underneath Belle’s old floorboards. A couple of weekends ago, Belle had cleaned off the moss and dirt that had clung to the dark wood, polishing the stunning handcrafted carvings in appreciation for their design. But it was what was inside that mattered. Lifting the lid, Chae Rin pulled out a small shard of white stone—the same mysterious stone that comprised Saul’s rings.
“You said Saul wants the rest of this, right?” She squeezed the tip of the shard delicately between two fingers. “A death-powered stone that grants wishes. One of the dead fire Effigies in Maia’s head knows how to find it. That’s why he kept coming for Maia. Natalya led us to this thing. She clearly wants us to figure this whole mystery out, but given what happened to Maia, that doesn’t mean we can trust her completely. It’s possible that she wants two things at once.”
She wanted us to solve the mystery she couldn’t. But she also wanted to live again. No one knew which she wanted more. Maybe not even Natalya herself.
Placing the shard back in the box and shutting the lid, Chae Rin turned to me. “Kid, Natalya isn’t going to stop talking to you. And that’s fine. We need her. Listen to what she has to say, but keep two eyes open, you know? Not everything she says may be on the level.”