Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(85)

The door opened. I didn’t need to see more than a few strands of his limp brown hair before I slammed the door the rest of the way open and jumped on him. With my arms wrapped around his scrawny neck, I was bawling before his back hit the ground.

“Maia.” My uncle’s voice. My family. My blood.

He was laughing. Teary-eyed, I lifted my head off his chest just to make sure of it. His youthful face flowered into a grin too childish for his thirty years.

“It’s only been two months.” He showed all his teeth as he laughed, sweetly, happily, because he was just as ecstatic to see me. It was just the two of us, after all, since the day his dead older brother’s only surviving daughter had arrived at his New York apartment looking for a place to sleep.

My body shook as we both sat up, and a fresh wave of tears spilled out as both his hands crushed my cheeks together. I could feel Belle awkwardly maneuvering around us, trying to shut the door. “Sorry,” I said, and moved. We weren’t exactly being stealthy.

Uncle Nathan let go of me. “After the hotel was attacked in New York—”

“I know, I know. I wanted to call you, but—”

“Yeah, the Sect. Don’t worry, I’m up to date. Well, on most of it. I’ve read enough headlines to fill in the rest.”

We stared at each other, and that’s when I noticed what I didn’t before: the weight he’d lost. He’d already been a thin guy, but though his face had kept most of its vibrancy, it’d slimmed down too much for me to ignore, his skin matte and dry. And the circles under his eyes . . .

“You haven’t been sleeping.” Just like after Dad died.

Uncle Nathan’s hands stayed around my face, but his grip had slacked to the point where I could only feel the rough touch of his fingers. “I’m so sorry” was all he said.

It was his turn. The tears began to leak out one by one before he swiped his face quickly. “Maia, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from this.”

A thousand words passed between us in silence. His hands fell onto his lap as we considered which to speak out loud.

“Hey!” I tapped his shoulder. “Look what I can do!”

I sat back, sliding from him a little in case something went wrong. Then I snapped my fingers. The tiniest flame erupted at the tip of my thumb, flickering gently in the air.

Uncle Nathan laughed in amazement. “Look at you! You’re a little lighter!”

“There’s other stuff too!” I stood up excitedly, but Belle gripped my shoulder before I could get too carried away.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “Mr. Finley, my name is—”

“Belle Rousseau. Of course I know.” He jumped to his feet to shake her hand, a little too fast like he always did when he was nervous. “It’s an honor to meet you. Wow, Maia, you’ve really upgraded your list of friends.”

“Yeah, from zero to a positive whole number.”

Belle seemed a little taken aback and—maybe? Was it my imagination?—shy. Shy at the word “friend.” Her cheeks were a little redder, but it might have been a trick of the light.

“We’ve asked you here for a specific purpose,” she said.

“Yeah, the agent of one of the other Effigies—Lake? He called me and said you guys would explain. I don’t know, I could barely understand what he was saying—he just kind of barked stuff at me and hung up.”

Grabbing his hand, I helped him up. “I’ll fill in everything now.”

It took some time to put everything out there. Saul being at large, he knew about. But he didn’t know about the mysterious soldier with the mark at the back of his neck. Jessie, who could control the dead with her thoughts. The mind control. The flash drive. When I told him about that, Belle handed it to him.

“Are you okay?” Urgently, he pulled me by the arm and swept back my hair to check my neck. “It’s still red. God. Maia, if I’d known you were going through all this . . .”

“You couldn’t have done anything anyway,” I said with a shrug.

Running his hand through his hair, he turned and started across the room. “I’ve never heard of nanotechnology that advanced.” He sat in a chair by the curtain-drawn window and set up his laptop on the table, pushing away a little tray of milk and sugar for coffee. “But none of this surprises me. Development firms around the world have been looking for a way to reproduce Effigy-like abilities. And I suppose they’d also need to come up with a method to control them.”

I walked behind him. “Why?”

“Why else? For defense. For war.” He looked at the drive. “When I was at Caltech, I heard whispers of a program jointly developed by DARPA and another defense subcontractor. That guy you mentioned, Grunewald? His name definitely came up.”

“DARPA?” I furrowed my brows, confused.

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.” He pushed up the lid of his laptop and clicked it on. “An agency within America’s Department of Defense.”

“What are they working on?” asked Belle.

“Were,” Uncle Nathan corrected. “I mean, it was years ago, after the Seattle Siege. An entire American city reduced to ashes by phantoms—of course the government was spooked enough to try different things. A black project. But the Senate axed it, I guess.”