The Violet Hour (4 page)

As us
ual, it felt like we were talking about something more than what we were talking about.

“It’s called
nampa
.” He looked down at me, waiting for my reaction. There was a playful tilt to his shoulders.

“Maybe you’re
nampa
-ing
me
right now,” I teased.

Out of nowhere, it was like old Adam and old Harlow were back.

“Using
nampa
to pull a
nampa
.” He paused, as if considering it.
“
That would be so meta of me.”

There was an exhilarating undercurrent to this exchange. Talking to him had always been like sticking my finger into a light socket, but this was different—more intense. My world was being rocked right now, and it wasn’t the roiling beat of the music that was doing it. I tried my best to keep my voice even. We were in uncharted territory in the best possible way.

“You are the master of meta,” I said.

He moved closer, his bare arm pressing into me ever so slightly but with absolute intention. He bobbed his head to the slamming music. He looked over at me and I did a double take, looking away and then looking back again. He held my gaze and raised an eyebrow, then leaned closer to speak into my ear.

“You have really smoky eyes,” he said.

“Oh, the eyeliner? I told Dora it was too much.”

“No, your eyes.” He pointed to his own eyes. “The color. It’s like seafoam with clouds of smoke blowing through it. Mysterious. Your mystery’s always been one of my favorite things about you.”

His words made me feel special in a way that had nothing to do with whose daughter I was. Adam had always made me feel that way. I looked at the tattoos swirling over his skin and the strange runes embedded there like a code.

“So what’s the story with the tattoos?” I asked. I was afraid of fracturing the fragile shell he’d built around himself, but I wanted to understand this new version of him.

Adam shifted back to the stage, his shoulders stiffening. “It’s just ink.”

“It doesn’t look like just ink,” I said. I wanted him to feel me reaching out for him. I wanted him to reach back.

Instead, he kept his stare steadily on the band. This was a risky subject. It wasn’t like he’d been banished, like Romeo gone to Mantua; his family had been abducted. But I wanted to understand who this new person was. And I didn’t see any way around it. Only through it.

“This band is awesomely terrible.” He tried to change the subject, his voice strained.

I examined his face, searching for some clue as to what was going on with him. He turned and met my stare—the vulnerability in his eyes like an open wound for a split second, and gone just as fast.

“Maybe it sounds better up front,” I joked.

“Want to go closer?” he asked, completely serious.

I glanced in the direction Mercy had gone. There were certain benefits to changing coordinates, namely her inability to find us in the crowd. But the air was feeling tight again and I could almost hear the beat of the voice building in my head. Not now. Not here. I’d been so in control a moment ago.

“Absolutely,” I lied.

I didn’t want to be swallowed by a crowd. What I wanted was to feed the current of whatever was happening between me and Adam. I was walking a tightrope; one misplaced step could send me hurtling toward the abyss.

The moment we immersed ourselves in the knot of bodies, I realized what a huge mistake I’d made.

Purity.

Her voice was following me. The walls of the room started to close in.

Penance.

I kept moving, as if by some miracle I would be able to outmaneuver Her. The universe would be my friend tonight. This wasn’t happening. I wouldn’t let it.

Adam showed no sign of pausing as we passed the halfway mark to the stage. I reached out to tug on his shirt. I couldn’t go any farther. I needed to pause and get myself together. Adam turned to me with a question in his eyes, and I pointed down to the nice little island of space I was rooted to.

Onstage, the singer bent his legs, arched his back, screamed full-throttle into the mic, and then threw it to the ground. Looking out over the crowd, his eyes fixed on the space near me. He leaped headfirst into the crowd. Right toward me.

Obliterate.

I turned my shoulder against the impending blow.

Decimate.

At the last second, Adam snatched me out from under the incoming missile. I didn’t register the crowd filling in behind me and body-surfing the singer over their heads, the song exploding to its raging climax. I was too busy with an explosion of my own.

Exsanguinate.

My eyes met Adam’s. His arms tightened around me, and a feeling like the closing of an electric circuit between us coursed through me.

Exsanguinate.

Adam’s head jerked up at the sound of the voice. Like he’d heard Her, too.

Exsanguinate.

The vision overtook me.

The kid standing next to us turned to look at me, clotted blood streaming from his empty eye sockets.

“
Exsanguinate,” he said, his voice like a howl of rushing wind through some faraway tunnel. A petite girl at his side convulsed as red bubbles formed at the corner of her mouth. She clutched at Adam, then vomited a river of red down the front of her artfully tattered white shirt.

The entire room erupted in chaos. Geysers of blood
sprayed across the room. Through the haze of my vision, I watched as Adam’s eyes followed their arcs in disbelief. Now I was sure. I was like a livewire of horror in Adam’s arms, channeling my visions into him. He was seeing what I was seeing.

His eyes locked onto mine. The sensation that he was seeing me for the first time washed over me again. Only this time, it wasn’t pleasant nostalgia I saw reflected there.

It was fear.

All around us, clubbers fell to the floor in convulsions. Pustules erupted across their skin. Meanwhile, people continued dancing on the edges of the vision like marionettes dangling from strings. It was the only thing that let me know this wasn’t really happening—the normalcy at the edge of my nightmare. Our nightmare. As if Adam and I were the only two people left in the world. Maybe we could pull each other out of it.

I looked at him. Tried to tell him to run.

Obliterate. Obliterate. Obliterate.

I couldn’t tell, but it almost sounded like the words were coming not from Her voice in my head, but from me. Adam’s grip on me went slack. He gaped at me, stumbling back. I reached a hand out for him, pinwheeling blindly in the pitch blackness, searching for a lifeline. I wanted to bring him back. To explain that She wasn’t me. She was something I fought against. My balance failed me, and I fell to the floor.

The lights blinked out in MegaWatts.

AFTERSHOCK

A shiver of panic rocked the crowd. The blackout was real, not part of my vision.

The lights flickered on again for a second, then pitched us back into darkness. Shrieks. Feet tripping. Panic. I anchored my palms to the floor and pushed myself to sitting. Adam. Where was he? A strobe came on, mixing with the pulses in my brain to create a full-force migraine.

I looked up and there he was, staring down at me. His face was lit up in bursts of light. The haunted look I saw there told me I was right—he’d seen my vision, heard Her voice. There was an accusation in his eyes. Like I was responsible. Maybe I was. The possibility of us was slipping through my fingers like sand, and every part of me screamed to make it stop.

Sprinklers went off. Manufactured rain drenched us, raindrops bouncing off the floor. I couldn’t distinguish it from the tears I felt slipping down my chin. The feedback from the abandoned microphone onstage squealed an ear-piercing alarm. It combined with the fading footfalls of the fleeing live-goers like some kind of portent of the world’s end. I stood up and reached out to Adam.

He flinched, shaking his head like he was emerging from a trance. His face registered disgust. He saw me now for what I truly was: a freak, a menace, someone to stay as far away from as possible. He turned to follow the crowd, running from something more terrifying than whatever had set the alarms howling. Me.

An overweight boy with his hair dyed in pink checkers grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the exit, yelling at me urgently in Japanese. He didn’t know I couldn’t be saved.

The boy’s fingers pressed into my arm, forming little indentations there. As he tugged me along behind him, I watched the flesh fall away from his arm in blackened chunks. He turned to me, tears of blood running down his face. The last threads of the vision invading my psyche.

I wrenched my arm away. The visions were bleeding over into my reality at an alarming rate. It was getting hard to tell what was real and what was not. As the tide of bodies finally swept me onto the street, the cool black air slammed me in the face. Clusters of confused hipsters were pointing and ogling just outside the club.

I fell to my knees at the curb and heaved into the gutter. When the retching finally subsided, I wiped the wet tendrils of hair from my face and searched the crowd. I had to find Dora.

Finally, I saw her glasses through the crowd at the same moment she saw me. Relief flooded me as she elbowed her way over, Stubin in tow. There was no sign of Adam or Mercy. I hoped they were safe, or I would never forgive myself. I didn’t know how it had happened, but this disaster was my fault.

Dora took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“Adam?” I wheezed. “Mercy?”

“Holy Hera in a handbasket! Where the hell have you
been? I tried to go back, but the bouncer thugs wouldn’t let me in!” Dora wrestler-hugged me. Stubin shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I’m happy to see you, too. Now we have to find Adam and Mercy,” I said.

As if on cue, Mercy Mayer hobbled like a wounded glamazon out of a thicket of punks, ravaged platform heels in hand. She was sobbing and shivering uncontrollably.

“It was so awful! People were stepping all over my shoes and then the sprinklers turned on and they got all wet and Harlow left me and—” A hiccup interrupted her rant long enough for her to notice we were missing someone. “Where’s Adam?”

She flung the question at me like an accusation, as if I was keeping him hidden in my pocket only to increase the cruelty of her evening. I looked down at my feet, shame washing over me.

“He left,” I answered.

A wounded look flashed across her face. I almost felt sorry for her.

“Is he okay? Was he hurt?” Her eyes darted around the crowd, looking for him.

“I’m not sure,” I whispered.

“Everything you touch is a disaster,” she hissed, her voice scalding.

She was right. I’d known what this foray could mean and I did it anyway. I was selfish.

“We’re getting out of here.” Dora stepped between us, defending me. “All of us. Taxi. Pronto.”

She took my hand and tugged at Stubin’s sleeve. He leapt into action.

“I’m on it. Taxi! Taxi!” Stubin started waving like a madman and charged down the street. We followed him, melting away from the crowd, as sirens approached, like dandelion seeds scattered on the wind.

As we tottered down the street, I looked back. A broken little piece of me hoped to see Adam combing through the wreckage for me, desperately wanting to tell me it was all a big mistake

But all I saw were anarchy signs, and in my heart and mind the reckless unnamed anarchy of
Her.
The one I couldn’t stop, closing in around me. Blotting me out until I ceased to exist.

As usual, the ride to the top was lonely.

Tonight, it was just me and my warped reflection in the stainless steel elevator, watching the number creep up, up, up while Muzak assaulted my gray matter. We’d tried the service elevator and it was out of order. Which probably meant the Watch was on to our disappearing act.

I considered whether to go camp outside Adam’s door until he returned. Demand that he speak to me. Try to explain the unexplainable. Make him see that I was still the girl he spent those endless summer nights with in the carriage house.

Until Mercy’s phone lit up with a text.

“It’s from him—it’s from Adam!” she screamed. She thumbed her way through the words, biting her lip in concentration.

“He wants me to meet him in his room,” she said, aiming the words at me like a gun.

I felt nauseated. After what had passed between us tonight, how could he run to her? But the more I thought about it, how could he not?

The bell dinged. Everyone but me was getting off. I wasn’t going to fight Mercy for Adam’s attention. He didn’t deserve to have me barging in on his life and destroying it. Still, my fingers itched at my side and my cheeks burned.

Dora looked at me reluctantly as she and Stubin stepped off the elevator after Mercy, who practically sprinted away to meet Adam. “Are you sure you don’t want us to go up with you?” she asked. “Make sure you get there okay?”

I looked at her hand firmly ensconced in Stubin’s. It had taken me all night to realize it, wrapped up in my own self-involved world as I’d been, but I was really excited for Dora. She had an actual boyfriend. A boyfriend with a rock-star pedigree. Someone to care about her and love her.

I shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen to me on an elevator ride?”

Her beetle-brows drew together in a frown as the doors slid shut. She knew I was taking the fall for the rest of us, and she also knew I wasn’t going to let it happen any other way. I’d instigated this mess, and there wasn’t any point in taking the rest of them down with me. Besides, there was always the off-chance I’d be able to sneak past a sleeping sentinel and get away with the whole fiasco scot-free.

I noticed my reflection in the metal doors of the elevator—something was off. The image smirked back at me. Then she winked.

Ting.

I jumped backward as my reflection split in two and the doors slid open.
I’m seriously losing it
, I thought as I stepped onto the dimly lit hallway. Silence. The stress was playing tricks on my mind … or something.

A thread of light crept out from beneath the mahogany doors of the master suite where the General was sure to be slaving away at his desk, answering pleas from devoted followers or revising his next speech. Maybe nighttime would soften him into something more closely resembling the father I used to know, the man who was little more than a memory these days. The father who had me ever-present at his side, who used to hug me and tell me I was the most important thing in the world. Even parental disapproval held a certain appeal right now. At least it was acknowledgment. I needed someone to see me.

I slipped the slim keycard into the door of my room, a smaller satellite just down the hall. The alarm flicked green. It was almost spooky that there wasn’t a Watcher waiting at my room. I guess I wasn’t quite the priority I’d imagined myself to be. Happy birthday, Harlow. No one noticed you were gone.

I was just wiping the kohl from my eyes when a swift rap at the door jolted me. My thoughts flew directly to Adam. I couldn’t think of anyone else who would be knocking on my door in the middle of the night. Still, I hesitated. Adam could be pretty reckless, but he probably wouldn’t chance the General’s displeasure by lurking outside my room. When a second knock didn’t come, I panicked and ran to the door. If he was reaching out to me, the last thing I wanted him to do was leave. With Adam, it could be a limited-time offer. It wasn’t like he hadn’t just seen me at my worst.

When I flung the door open, I was face-to-face with a cross-armed Watcher dressed like he was running covert ops for the Navy Seals instead of fetching a misbehaving teenager. Faster than I could say
so screwed
, I was standing in front of the General’s desk.

He hunched in his beloved high-back chair, under the glow of an antique lamp. He took that chair with him everywhere he traveled; it reeked of the sweet-sour smell of lemon-scented furniture polish. The VisionCrest Patriarch did as he liked. There was a framed picture, on his desk, of him with Eparch Fitz when they were much younger, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of a busy street in Siem Reap, tuk-tuks darting around them like minnows around a sunfish. Their faces were serious, my father’s damaged eye wrapped with a bloody cloth bandage and me swaddled in his arms.

The General’s thick fingers drummed at the brass buttons on the chair’s armrests, and his lips pressed together like they did when he was trying to solve a particularly complex problem. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence. The silent treatment was never a good sign. I expected him to fix me with his deadeye stare—the coldest in his repertoire, the one that meant I was royally flushed. I’d really done it this time. Maybe enough to earn a full-blown quarantine I would never get out from under. Goose bumps rose on my arms. It wasn’t just the icebox temperature of this and every room the General stayed in; it was the chill of dread.

Instead, he looked up as if he’d only just registered that I was there. He cracked a weary smile. If he noticed that his daughter looked like something the cat dragged in, it didn’t show.

“Harlow.”

He sounded surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time
he’d
summoned me only to get absorbed in something else
moments later and completely forget about me. His brow wrinkled like dough under a rolling pin.

“Sir?”

He snapped his fingers. “Yes, how could I forget?”

Standing up, he walked around the desk, picking up a small, square package with silver wrapping and an elaborate bow as he came to my side.

“It’s your birthday. With all the nonsense earlier, it slipped my mind. I bet you thought I forgot completely, right?” He held the package out to me.

I had officially entered the Twilight Zone. I took the present from him, unable to remember the last time he’d hand-delivered a gift on my birthday.

“Sort of,” I whispered feebly. Did he not notice that I was fully dressed, with makeup half-smeared across my face?

I carefully peeled away the wrapping. Inside was a velvet box. I opened it. Nestled on a cushion was a gold band with the crest of the All Seeing Eye stamped into it: my initiate ring. I plucked it from its resting place and turned it over in the light. I hadn’t thought that I wanted it, but holding it now it felt like the Rosetta stone, like it would help me to decipher the purpose of my life.

“You’re seventeen now. I’ve arranged everything so you can cross the veil tonight.” He beamed. The General didn’t beam. “We’re going to the Tokyo temple right now.”

I stared at him. “I haven’t actually been feeling that well. The migraines and all,” I hedged. Maybe there was a way to put it off just a little longer. Make sure I really wanted to go through with it.

Disappointment flashed briefly in his eye, then determination. He was not interested in hearing no for an answer.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been hard on you lately, Harlow. I know it’s not easy to be the daughter of the Patriarch. Trust me, taking the Rite will make you forget all that.”

I was confused about a lot of things, but one thing was crystal clear: I wanted to be worthy of my father’s love. If this was what it took—to take the Rite and wear his love around my finger like an unbreakable promise—I would do it.

He wrapped me in a hug, the first one I could remember in at least a year. Had he hugged me on my last birthday? The familiar cherry smell of tobacco wrapped itself around me. I rested my cheek against the rough material of his suit. If his affection was the reward, I would go along with whatever he wanted.

“I’m honored, sir.”

“It’s almost the Violet Hour. They’re waiting for us—it’s time to go.”