Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(8)

It was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. It was almost impossible to stitch his words into a coherent picture.

“I don’t understand.” Belle straightened her back. “Who was forcing you? How? To do what? Tell us who you are.”

It was obvious that just speaking was agony for him. He couldn’t answer right away.

“If you wanted the Sect to find you, why come all the way out here?” I asked him, trying to be as gentle as the urgency of the situation would allow. “They have facilities all over the world.”

“Not the Sect,” he blurted before taking in a sharp breath. “You. You. I . . . knew they’d send you once they could track me . . . looking for him. I have to trust you. My . . . family . . .”

Family? What was he talking about? As I shivered, he opened his left palm, revealing a gray flash drive just long enough to fit in his hand. He’d been holding on to it so tightly that after Belle took it, its indent remained in his palm. As the blood pooled in his veins where it’d been, he let his hand fall.

“What’s on this?” Belle asked.

“I stole it from the lab . . . I ran . . . I wanted you to find me. . . . Others like me are coming for you. I was just . . . the first. . . .”

I gripped his arm tight until it stopped convulsing. He was looking at me. Only me.

“Tell me who you are,” I said again, quietly.

I wasn’t ready for the sight of his green eyes welling up with tears. It wasn’t what I’d thought awaited us at the end of this mission. I swallowed the lump in my throat as he parted his lips one more time.

“It’s too late for me. . . . No one can heal me. . . . Please find Alex. . . . He’s . . . still . . .”

His head rolled to the side, and his body stopped twitching.





3



DEAD. HE WAS DEAD. BELLE checked for a pulse, but it was clear even before she shook her head.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Lake said it before I could. Turning away from us, she crouched down and buried her head in her knees.

“Belle. You said Effigy.” Chae Rin’s mouth parted as she considered it. “What do you mean? Whose frequency did we track here?”

“He said we were family,” I whispered. “What if he meant—”

“No.” Chae Rin shook her head resolutely. “He was clearly delirious.”

“Everything else he said was coherent enough,” I argued. “It has to mean something. What if it meant—”

“That he’s an Effigy?” Chae Rin looked like she was having trouble accepting it. Furrowing her eyebrows and scrunching her lips made her beautiful face shrivel like a dried prune. “He said ‘my family.’ Those exact words. He could have meant anything. I mean, he was dying. His cognitive abilities were probably on the fritz. That’s it, isn’t it? Right?”

If Chae Rin was having a mini-freak-out, I couldn’t blame her. I’d learned in school what we all had learned growing up: that there were four Effigies, each with the power of different elements—fire, earth, water, air. And when one died, another took her place in an endless cycle. Despite all the resources the Sect and various government agencies put into researching where we came from, where the phantoms came from, no one knew for sure.

Four girls and a world full of phantoms. That was the only truth we could cling to. Until Saul appeared as the fifth.

The rules had changed.

But if there were more . . . where did it stop? Were there dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? We already knew so little about the world. Now we couldn’t even trust what we did know.

“Belle, what were you thinking before?” The several seconds Chae Rin waited for Belle to respond was clearly too long. She grabbed Belle’s arm. “Hey! Did you hear me? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Belle snapped, pulling her arm out of Chae Rin’s grasp. “Just stay calm.”

But the look of dread on her face betrayed her.

My eyes drifted back to the young man in her arms. Dead. And I was close to the body. With a sudden surge of panic, I stumbled back, almost slipping on the sheet of ice covering part of the floor. The whites of his eyes popped against the dark dreariness of the bunker as they rolled to the back of his head. Belle must have seen the expression on my face because after a quick glance my way, she closed his eyelids.

“Well, good job, Barbie. Dude’s dead. You killed him.” With her arms folded over her chest, Chae Rin scoffed in disbelief. “At least we could have pumped him for information that actually made sense. Like who he is. And what that is.”

Belle turned over the sleek drive in her hand. “My attack wasn’t . . . It wasn’t forceful enough to kill.”

“But you attacked him anyway when he was clearly no danger to anyone. You basically admitted that yourself,” Chae Rin pressed. “Look at this place.” She motioned around the hideout. “It’s a freaking winter wonderland. You panicked. Just admit it.”

Belle’s attack did scream overkill. It wasn’t like her to jump the gun.

Wasn’t like her.

A phrase I’d been thinking a lot these past few weeks. Since France.

Since the consciousness of her dead mentor had found life again through my body, even if just for a moment.