The Violet Hour (9 page)

She is coming. Bringing death.

I leaned back against the door and exhaled, willing my body to slow down. Death. Just like the voice in my visions had promised.

You see it. The virus.

Madam Wang and Mei Mei knew about my visions. They were more than just freakozoidal followers of the Inner Eye. Sacristan Wang was a virologist, with the access and ability to create a bioweapon, but he wasn’t the voice in my head. Madam Wang was threatening, but she wasn’t the voice either. Was Isiris the key? Everything was getting worse.

A terrible momentum was gathering.

I snuck quietly back into the bedroom. My eyes roamed over the sleeping girls. Dora was still as a statue in her bed, completely undisturbed. But when I looked at Mercy, I could see her blue eyes shining, taking me in, evaluating. Making sure I saw her, but making no move to learn what was the matter. Just watching. Like a sentinel. Or a spy. The memory of her sneaking in just hours ago washed over me. All that time, she’d been somewhere in this house with Adam doing who knows what.

I felt ill. I went into the bathroom, flipping on the light and shutting the door behind me. Dark rings around my eyes reflected my own exhaustion back at me in the mirror over the sink.

You must fight or all will perish
.

I turned the faucet on and splashed water over my face. When I stood up, my reflection was already there, as if I had never bent down. While I stood there, frozen, it turned and walked out of the open door of the bathroom, reflected behind me. I spun around, frightened. The door was closed. When I looked back at the mirror, it was just me, the closed bathroom door beyond me.

I hurried out of the bathroom and over to my bed, climbing under the covers in a panic. Mercy’s eyes tracked me all the way. She was probably gleeful, plotting the ways she could break the news of yet another weird incident involving Harlow the Freak to Adam. Little did she know how right she was.

My hand reached for the Subdueral I’d slipped under my pillow when we first settled in the room, but I grasped at nothing. I patted around for a second. It was gone. I had a feeling the Wangs were behind it—not even Mercy was mean enough for that move.

Dora coughed. I knew that cough. It was an
I’m awake and I know you are too
Dora special. I turned my head and opened my eyes. I couldn’t see hers through the reflection off her glasses, but I knew they were wide open. She slid her hand out from under her comforter and reached it out to mine. I took it, more grateful for the comfort than she could ever know.

I wasn’t able to sleep—the crushing weight of impending doom would not fade to black. Holding Dora’s hand made the uncertainty bearable until the tentative light of morning peeked through the window shades. Whatever the next day would bring, I knew with dread certainty it would be something awful.

GREAT WALL

Brother Howard burst in, sending all three of us flying from our beds. His hand was shielding his eyes so he wouldn’t see anything illegal.

“Get up, girls! Today is a big day! It’s not every day you get to see the Great Wall of Chi-i-i-ina!” He sang the word “China” like he was Julie Andrews on a mountaintop.

“It’s not day. Not even close,” Dora grumbled from her bed.

Brother Howard was undeterred. “Lots of people never even get the chance to see the wall. It’s something you’ll remember for the rest of your lives,” he said reverently. “Not only that, but I have a very exciting project for you today. Something that will help awaken your inner eyes!”

Mercy and Dora groaned. Even the believers thought that VisionCrest should give it a break atop the Great Wall of China. I was too preoccupied with worrying about what the hidden motive behind this outing might be—a decoy, perhaps, broadcasting to the world that everything was business as usual with VisionCrest? The Wangs were calling the shots here, that much was for sure.

Mercy threw back her covers and rose like the Phoenix from her bed. It never ceased to amaze me how she could emerge fully formed and polished like some kind of beautiful robot.

I looked over at Dora, who had the impression of her glasses branded into her cheek and looked like she was housing a family of sparrows in her hair. She did a little
whoop-de-do
twirl with her finger.

“Go Team Inner Eye,” she deadpanned.

The desperate urge to tell her about Mei Mei rose in my throat. I swallowed it down. Telling her any more risked endangering her further. I’d already put her at risk by telling her a tiny bit of what had happened with Madam Wackadoo.

“Be downstairs in forty minutes, girls. Forty, and not a second more.”

Brother Howard tried to sound authoritative, but Mercy flicked him away with her hand as if she were swatting a gnat.

“It would be a lot easier to get ready without you here,” she said.

Brother Howard turned puce and ducked his head. He scrambled out of the room like a whipped dog.

Sixty minutes later, the entire entourage of Ministry offspring was standing in the entryway of Casa de Wang. Brother Howard gave us a look but thought better of chastising
us. The daughters of the Ministry elite could take a few extra minutes if they liked.

I combed through the bleary-eyed crowd of students, still evenly divided by boys and girls, for Adam. Stubin was standing across the room doing his usual limber-up leg-shaking maneuvers. His sweater today was Colonel Mustard yellow with a custom-embroidered VisionCrest logo. Stubin seemed to have a monopoly on uniform flair—while everyone else was rocking the boring rotation of predictable grays, greens, and blues, Stubin was always out there. I was also ninety percent sure he was rocking guyliner. Somewhere between Tokyo and Beijing, I’d grown kind of fond of him.

Stubin shifted an inch to the right and there was Adam, burning me with the intensity of his stare. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie a little askew under his navy sweater—recklessly beautiful, as always. I thought of Mercy sneaking in last night and looked away. It was time to forget him, or at least pretend to until I actually could.

“All right, everyone!” Brother Howard’s over-enthusiastic bellow got the group’s attention. “Today is going to be a wonderful day full of history and mystery as you work in pairs to discover one of the wonders of the world.”

I knew what “work in pairs” meant—the Patriarch’s daughter was always put with the next-highest-ranking offspring. My stomach clenched.

“Sister Wintergreen with Brother Fitz.” Howard started yelling out names, organizing us for whatever harebrained project he’d cooked up.

I tried to remain stoic, as if being paired with Adam didn’t send my heart into panicked palpitations. I could feel the sizzle of Mercy’s laser beams on my back. At least he would be forced to finally talk to me.

One by one, disgruntled pairs were formed; it was like they’d designed it as a social experiment to see how quickly we would kill and eat each other at a national monument. Sacristan and Madam Wang were nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign of Mei Mei. I wished we were sticking around so I could try to track her down for some daylight interrogation.

Brother Howard was calling off the last few names. A nervous cloud settled over me.

“So, are you going to call a truce or hang him by his ankles and hope a terracotta warrior reanimates and comes to finish him off?” Dora asked, reading the worry on my face.

“I don’t know. What’s your plan for keeping that Mercy-clone’s manicured claws out of your Mansfield?” I jutted my chin toward Stubin, who was paired with a girl who was desperately trying to cop Mercy’s style.

Dora cracked a sardonic smile. “No plan—look at him, he’s miserable already.”

“Totally Swizzle Stick, right?”

Dora put her arm around my shoulder, clearly pleased at my use of her trademarked term.

“You with Adam, me with Mercy. I’d say this is the second coming of the Anti-Swizzle. But we can pretend.”

Brother Howard raised his VisionCrest flag and speared it into the air. Someone needed to burn that friggin’ thing. “Everyone grab a handout and head to the vans with your partner. Your project begins now and will take you on an adventure through history—and through your own inner eyes!”

My inner eyes were already rolling, but there was no evading the inevitable.

“Tear him up, Tiger,” Dora said.

I took a deep breath and walked out to a van, not bothering to check if Adam was coming. He could follow me for once. I thought of my missing bottle of Subdueral. It practically guaranteed the voice and the visions were coming along for the ride, but the medicine hadn’t been doing much to help lately anyway. I would just have to take my chances.

Adam remained mute for the entire ride to Simatai, one of the oldest and steepest sections of the Great Wall, seventy-five miles outside of Beijing. We were squeezed into a van with nine Sacristan kids I didn’t know very well, and four members of the Watch who worked for Sacristan Wang. The Ministry kids had been divided into three groups that were traveling to different sections of the wall, all with an unusually high number of Watchers. I guessed that whoever orchestrated this trip wanted to ensure maximum media exposure but wasn’t taking any chances on an abduction. Mercy and Dora were sent to the section at Mutianyu, which left Adam and me on our own. My palms were sweating.

The handout Brother Howard gave us had a bunch of “thought prompts,” which was VisionCrest speak for questions that are supposed to help you learn something valuable about your Inner Self but really just read like lame high school essay questions:
This section of the Great Wall was begun in AD 550 under Emperor Wenxuan, who declared Buddhism to be the one true religion of his realm. Discuss why VisionCrest Fellowship is the one true religion of the realm in modern day.
Whatever.

Since I wasn’t in a giant hurry to complete Brother Howard’s bullshit assignment, Adam’s silence was fine by me. There were a million things I wanted to say to him and exactly zero ways I could imagine saying them, and I needed to collect my thoughts. Through hooded lashes, Adam watched the landscape slide by as we began the twisting, turning ascent into the mountainous Chinese countryside.

When we arrived at the Great Wall two hours later, I still had no idea how I was going to begin the conversation. Adam slid the van door open and jumped out. I got out and stood next to him, both of us looking up at the massive mountain with the Great Wall snaking across its top. The other kids ambled ahead, eager to get in line for the gondola that ferried people up the mountainside. There were tourists everywhere, and several vans full of Watchers had arrived as reinforcements, dotting the crowd and unsuccessfully trying to blend in.

My eyes traced the snaking line of the rickety lift that ascended the face of the ridge. It was the only way to reach the wall itself, which looked like a series of tiny upended puzzle pieces from way down here.

“This is all so surreal, isn’t it?” Adam asked.

As majestic as it was, I knew he wasn’t just talking about the Great Wall. Being in the eye of the VisionCrest storm was like living inside a Dal
í
painting. After all my angst about how to start a conversation with him, he’d been the first to begin.

“And getting weirder all the time,” I said.

“Sorry for being a jerk. Leaving you at the club like that was a dick move. I was scared.” He still wasn’t looking at me.

“Yeah. Me too.”

His jaw clenched. “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it yet.”

“I’m not sure I can wait for you to be ready.”

That got his attention. He looked at me. There was something new in his face—respect, maybe.

“We better get going, then,” he said.

We walked on in silence toward the base of the mountain. The multicolored gondolas were strung precariously from a cable, like a child’s candy necklace. The cable snaked its way vertically up the mountain, and a vast chasm cut through the earth far below. I could imagine that if a gondola were to fall, it might keep on falling, straight to the center of the earth. The others in our group were way ahead of us now, climbing into the open-air cars. My knees quivered and my stomach did a queasy flop. Heights scared the hell out of me.

When we reached the front of the line, the attendant opened our door as the car rushed past. Adam jumped in and then held his hand out to me. I held my breath and jumped. The little half-door swung close and I glued myself to the hard plastic seat, facing Adam.

“You’re as white as that sheet of paper you’re clutching,” he said with a smirk.

I barely registered that I was still holding the homework assignment in my hands. Bouncing by a thread over a bottomless abyss, I felt like that sheet of paper was holding me and not the other way around.

Adam put his hand on my knee, grounding me. “Breathe. Just focus on me.”

I zeroed in on him, staring into his eyes like my life depended on it and not letting the tilting horizon in my peripheral vision filter in. The blue of his iris was slashed through with silver behind his dark lashes. Slowly, my hands and feet reattached to my body and the four-by-four world inside our little teacup slid into focus.

Now that I was back, the feel of his hand on my knee drew my attention. I could see the spot where his tattoos began their winding path, right at the wrist. I gently turned his forearm over to get a closer look. He didn’t flinch.

There were two strings of numbers, stacked one on top of the other. The first line read 135738.6022, and the second 104213.2076. They were different from the other tattoos—solid black font, no florid colors or grandiose ornamentation.

“What do they mean?” I asked, sliding my thumb over his skin.

He pulled his hand lightly out of my grip. A fleeting look darkened his face. “Uh-uh. You first. What happened in the club?”

My heart tilted, and it wasn’t because of the gondola. I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and at that moment I knew I was going to jump.

“If I’m going to tell you things, they have to stay between us. I need to be sure I can trust you,” I said.

He looked out over the horizon. I traced the line of his jaw as he clenched and unclenched it.

“You don’t trust me?” His eyes returned to me, disarming.

I wanted to say that I did, but the truth was, I didn’t know him anymore.

“I want to. I used to,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me about your tattoos?”

“Is this about Mercy?” he asked.

“This isn’t about her. It’s about us. How you’ve been, since you came back. How you’ve been to
me
.”

“What do you want me to say, Harlow?” There was a wild look in his eyes.

“I just want you to tell me the truth. Why are you treating me like a stranger?”

“Do you want me to tell you about being blindfolded? About being beaten? About how I heard my mother crying in the cell next to me and couldn’t do anything to help her? If I’m different, maybe it has nothing to do with you. Have you considered that?”

The words lacerated me. He’d clearly singled me out for punishment, but it had nothing to do with me at all? I shouldn’t have given up so easily. I felt relieved and angry and ashamed all at the same time.

“I’m sorry. You’re my best friend. I wanted to be there for you. I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

He ran his hand through his hair. There was a flush on his cheeks. I wanted to kiss him so badly.

“I didn’t,” he said.

My throat constricted.

“You want Mercy?” I managed.

“Does it matter?”

I bit back the tears. He wasn’t denying it.

As crushing as this conversation was, what I needed was an ally, not a boyfriend. Adam had seen what I’d seen in the Tokyo club and things were getting worse. If there was something going on with the Wangs and my father, then I needed to make sure someone else was on guard for it.

“Everything I tell you has to stay between us. I mean it—it could be dangerous if it doesn’t,” I said.

“I haven’t told a soul about the club. Now tell me what happened in there.”

Secret.

I swallowed past the fear in my chest. Past the voice rising up inside me.

Secret. Price.

“I’m not sure, exactly—”

“Dammit, Harlow. Tell me the truth!” Adam smacked his hand so hard against the side of the car that it sent us bouncing on the cable, which was now beginning the near-vertical ascent up to Simatai.

DeathSecretDeathSecretKillSecretDeath.

My arms gripped the sides of the car and I squeezed my eyes shut, shoving down the voice that was razoring through my brain.

“I have visions!” I blurted out.

“Visions,” Adam repeated.

I opened my eyes. He was studying me like he wasn’t sure what to make of me anymore.