Illuminate: A Gilded Wings Novel, Book One Page 26

  With only a bit of a struggle—the crawling made my sore muscles ache and my knees burn until the passage opened enough for me to stand upright—I found my way back to that little peephole. By now it was after eight in the evening, and the room was deserted and dark, save for the dim, buttery glow of the art deco lamp on her desk. It was always locked when she wasn’t in there. But I needed to get in, it was just that simple.

  I flipped my flashlight back on and shone it all around me, illuminating this musty secret corner of mine. My other hand felt the walls around me, patting at the jagged wooden beams on my sides and the strange rough stones in front. And then I hit an edge with my fingertips—an odd horizontal slice knifed straight through those stones and level with my chin. I had seen something like this before, in my closet, so I looped the flashlight around my wrist and pushed with both hands and all my force. Sure enough, it started to give. I threw my whole body into it, planting my legs firmly on the ground, and pushed harder. It popped, the sound of something springing loose after years of being closed up. Bits of mortar and dust rained onto my fingers in a soft, crumbly spray, and this telephone-book-thick rectangular cutout creaked open. I pushed easily now, and it opened outward, a narrow door hinged on the left side. I craned my neck out as best I could: I was directly above her desk, the flat screen on the back of this doorway. After several failed attempts to pull myself over the ledge into the room, I took a running start.

  Clomping against the flimsy floor beneath me, I launched myself at the wall, my foot catching on top of one of the stones, and I pushed off, my hands grabbing at the ledge. Over I went, landing on the carpet of Aurelia’s office and thumping my head against the wall. I imagined I had the makings of at least a date-size lump on the back of my head. But I was in.

  Now I could get to work. I stood on the desk chair and unhooked my flashlight from where I had stashed it, then scanned the room for plausible hiding spots for a photo the size of Aurelia’s. I tried the usual suspects first: inside the coat closet in the corner near the door (nothing, not even a sign of passageways like in my closet); behind the painting over the couch. I examined the floor and the walls themselves for any seams that indicated doorways or secret compartments. I walked around the entire perimeter of the room, running my fingers along the wood paneling, searching for something that didn’t quite fit.

  I found myself standing before that wall of built-in bookcases. I had read in one of those history books that all manner of sins had been hidden in hollowed-out books or behind façades of book spines during Prohibition. It made perfect sense that this hotel, full of nooks and niches and tunnels, would have something lurking behind a display like this. I started tapping and pushing at some of the books, shaking the shelves to see if anything might open up. It always worked in old movies but it seemed ridiculous and haphazard now. I stepped back and shone my flashlight all around, and then I spotted it: a round quarter-size disk embedded in the wooden border along the far end of the bookcases. When I got closer, I saw the pentagram design, same as I’d seen on that mysterious door downstairs. There could be no clearer sign than the repetition of this symbol that there was evil at work here.

  I rummaged through Aurelia’s desk and found that key ring buried beneath some papers: a trio of pentagram-shaped cylinders, all different sizes, hanging from it. I tried the medium-size one first—it was the length of a white piano key—pushing it slowly into the disk on the wall and, sure enough, a click sounded, and a pop. Two shelves in the middle of the wall of books opened, jutting out like a loose tooth waiting to be pulled. I tugged on this section expecting the whole column to come open, but this waist-high window was it. I leaned in, shining my flashlight, and found a small room with two velvet-shrouded pictures propped against the wooden beams of a wall.

  I slithered over like I was climbing a fence. Once inside, the space enveloped me. It was eerily quiet, like a tomb, and pitch-black except for my flashlight. The darkness was alive and hungry and it magnified the silence, filling the area so completely that you almost believed you could scream and it would be instantly stifled. It was a cell, an isolation chamber. I wanted out as soon as I was finished.

  Wasting no time, I threw off the covering and the two photos stared back at me, side by side. My knees weakened the second I caught sight of the horrid changes to Aurelia’s photo. The blemishes I’d noticed days ago were nothing—they had bloomed into a whole new breed of all-encompassing, gag-inducing revulsion. Now the woman’s luscious long limbs melted like shiny plastic in the sun and seeped onto the ground in the picture. Her bony, yellow-nailed finger chased after an eye that had popped out of its socket on a bungee cord of a vein. Her bird-like neck had been slit and the festering gash oozed shades of red, yellow, and green, which matched the sores and wounds all over her body. Aurelia looked just a few steps removed from Calliope, the once-beautiful girl, who showed up a charred and decaying monster at the gala and in my dreams. I had to look away.

  So my eyes fell on my own elusive photo. Why had she pulled mine out from the pack? Why sequester it here with hers?

  With the exception of my scars, I had been spared the kind of grisly disfiguration Aurelia’s photo had suffered—and since the scars were all mine, they were the ugly truth, so I couldn’t be too upset about those. No, something entirely different had happened to my picture. My entire pose had changed; now it looked like I was lying down on my back and there was a smudge of light above my head. I leaned in, training my flashlight upon it and reaching out to touch it. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked like a halo had formed over my head. Could that be right? That didn’t make the least bit of sense at all. How had this happened? I was so lost in thought that I must have tuned out the rattling at first. But then my ears seized on it and my whole body froze.

  The door. The door to the office shook against its frame, and the soft flutter of voices wafted in. I bolted up.

  Of course, of course, of course: the light had been left on, the keys were left out. Aurelia never would have done that if she wasn’t planning on returning soon. Something took control of my body and instead of thinking, I took flight. I didn’t even cover the photos back up. I just leapt out of that opening, flashlight in hand, waving its light beam around, as I slammed those two bookshelves back into place. I sprinted to the desk so fast I covered the length of the office in only three long galloping strides, threw the keys onto her desk, hopped up onto her chair, flung the flashlight in the opening, and then, springing up on legs I didn’t know could jump so high, I hoisted myself through the opening with arms that suddenly felt capable of lifting boulders. I landed with a thump inside, smacking against the hard ground. But the adrenaline coursing through me kept me from feeling the least bit of pain. Instead, it bounced me back up to my feet and infused me with enough force to yank that panel back into place just as the office door burst open.

  Aurelia walked in with Lucian trailing her; he swung the door shut behind them. She was talking to him in a harsh tone, one she usually used on me. My sweat-coated head in my hands, I leaned against one of the wall beams, shaking. I closed my eyes, trying to calm myself. You have to focus, you must listen. I watched out of that peephole.

  “I’m not myself today,” Aurelia was saying, as she took her place behind her desk, dangerously close to me. “This . . . situation . . . with the gallery and so forth. Oh, here they are.” She interrupted herself, waving the key chain in the air. “Beckett will need this later.” She held it out with her fingertips for Lucian to take, then she sat in her chair. I hoped I hadn’t left a footprint on it. Lucian sat on the couch, looking bored, adjusting the cuffs poking out from his suit jacket sleeves, touching the cuff links to be sure they were secure. “But at any rate, I’m a bit taken aback because I just thought we would have more time to work with. I don’t understand how she’s gotten so powerful so fast.”

  “Well, I think early on—” He still wasn’t bothering to look at her, as if he just didn’t want to give her the satisfaction since
she looked to be on the verge of her boiling point. “There are fits and starts with it from what I understand—these jarring shifts and this frightening progress and then nothing for a little while. I suppose that’s how it was with us, before, you know . . .” He trailed off.

  “Please,” she barked, then softened in volume. “I’m not listening to this. If you were doing your job with any competence, we wouldn’t have this problem. She would be taken care of. I’m growing tired of this Haven and I blame your ineptitude for her having gotten so far.”

  My heart dropped through the floor, taking my throat, my lungs, my stomach, everything with it.

  “Obviously you have some issues you want to address with me, so out with it already,” Lucian said in a flat tone, lengthening his leg to look at his shoe now. He couldn’t appear less concerned by her mood.

  “I see. Aren’t you so strong now against me? But I’ve already spoken of this to the Prince. Just wait until he arrives and you’re on your knees begging to be given another chance.”

  “I don’t beg.”

  “You will. Have you forgotten how this works? I can have you banished any moment I wish. Are you really ready to go back down there? Your role in the recruitment and the revolution can be dramatically downsized to the point of nonexistence.”

  “I’m starting to understand,” he said, perfectly calm and charming, looking at her now. “This isn’t so much about my performance as it is about your jealousy.”

  She tensed at that, the muscles in her neck straining against the accusation.

  How was this possible? Aurelia, jealous of me? Even he started laughing. “That is adorable.”

  Aurelia seemed to be ignoring him. She rose from her seat and took a spot leaning in front of her desk. She pointed her index finger at the floor, concentrating, and then a small flame sparked up out of nowhere and began to flicker and burn right there in that spot. I felt the shock of that flame burning through me, alighting a new level of fear; the scars on my chest felt it too, tingling and sizzling. I patted at them and then grabbed the pendant of my necklace, nervous, and turned it over and over again in my hand, fidgeting. With her finger still poised, Aurelia drew an imaginary circle and then the flame followed the path until the circle burned low and crackling right on the floor. Finished, she focused on Lucian, glaring. She wound up her arm as though about to throw a pitch and let go, shooting a blazing bolt of fire the size of a baseball at him. He barely flinched and only scooted an inch or two to the side to avoid being hit. He seemed to have witnessed this behavior before. The flame sparked near his feet and he stomped it out.

  “Usually you’re cute when you’re angry,” he said coolly. “But this is so unbecoming.”

  “I won’t be spoken to in this manner, certainly not by you. I find this all rather insulting, but I’m only entertaining it because I trust that you’ll be put in your place soon.”

  With that, the flame roared and the Prince materialized out of the darkness, within that fiery circle.

  “Did I interrupt something?” he asked, looking from Aurelia to Lucian and back again, his voice calm and honey-like as can be. The flames died down once more and, as soon as he stepped out of the circle, they burned out altogether, leaving not a trace of damage on the floor. He took the seat behind Aurelia’s desk, leaving her to sit beside Lucian. She perched herself on the arm of the couch, as far from him as possible, and folded her arms across her chest.

  “Lucian was just about to enlighten us as to why he has thus far failed to seize the girl’s soul,” she said to the Prince. She reached over to the candelabra perched on the credenza behind them, held her finger out, and lit the wicks.

  “Oh, good,” the man answered, settling back in his chair. He shifted his piercing gaze to Lucian. “Kindly go on, then.”

  Lucian’s entire being changed. He sat up in his seat now, his face set firm. A subtle power shift swept the room. Aurelia stood, arms folded. The Prince rose from his seat and began wandering the room, scanning the book titles and then watching the flat screen. I wondered if he could see me, back behind this wall. Could he know I was here? I had studied this spot from his side and I was undetectable since the peephole peeked out behind the dark frame of the screen. But these people weren’t really even people at all, were they? Who knew what they could do, what they could see?

  “Yes, I’ve been making progress—”

  “This Haven person, from what I see and hear, has taken to you.” The Prince turned around to face him. Lucian sat perfectly upright, stiff, unsure. “And it certainly doesn’t seem an unpleasant assignment, yours.”

  “No, sir. Not at all. She is . . . lovely,” he said finally. And at that, even though intellectually I knew that this was someone to fear, not love, I could not help it: my heart purred involuntarily, for the briefest of moments, before sense set in. Haven, guard your heart. He doesn’t really care about you.

  “Indeed, lovely, I’m sure,” the Prince said, in an understanding tone. “But there is work to be done, and, as I’m sure you’re aware, time is of the essence.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, defeat edging his voice.

  “I trust you’ve seen the photos?”

  “Yes, I have.” He hung his head, ashamed.

  “Her soul-illuminating powers are more advanced than I expected for this stage.” The Prince was pacing now. What did that even mean? “I’m growing . . . concerned . . . with how quickly she’s progressing. I know this is never a steady climb and I do expect her to slow down, but this is troubling nonetheless.”

  I had to keep reminding myself that this character they were speaking of was actually me. It was all coming out too fast for me to even begin to process it. So they thought I had somehow changed these photos? Some power of mine had done this, had illuminated all of the souls of my photography subjects? Is that what they were saying, was I hearing this right? My mind flashed back to the hospital, the photo collage, Jenny, my favorite patient, who used to tell me she only liked the pictures I took of her. Maybe there was something to that after all. But how was it possible they could know all of this about me that I didn’t know?

  “Yes, troubling,” Lucian repeated, with a nervous nod. I had never seen him behave this way, so unsure of himself. I should have been angry, but I felt sorry for him.

  Aurelia, in the corner with her arms still folded, seethed quietly until she couldn’t help herself. “Charm her, for god’s sake!” she blurted out. Lucian snapped his head toward her. The Prince smiled, the cunning grin of an owner who enjoys watching his pets spar. “What’s so difficult?” she snarled at Lucian. “She stares at you with those absurd saucer eyes.” Aurelia batted her lashes at him for effect and then rolled her eyes in disgust. Lucian’s expression hardened, like his face had been put in a kiln overnight.

  “It’s not so easy.” His voice came out as a stifled roar. He looked down at his hands, opening and closing his fists, trying to cool himself. “She resists me.”

  “Or maybe you’re resisting your assignment,” she shot back.

  “It’s not like it has been with the others.”

  “Of course not,” the Prince said easily, tossing himself in that desk chair again. “There’s obviously an extra strength to her, this latent power beginning to engage, that’s the point. That’s why we want her with us and not against us. She would be dangerous against us, a menace.” He said it with enough flip confidence that he didn’t seem concerned. I turned this over in my mind: me, a menace. It sounded ridiculous.

  “I’m not sure it will be possible, she—”

  “Enough with your excuses! Just get it done!” Aurelia sniped. She looked away from him, trying to calm down.

  “Aurelia!” the Prince censured her.

  “I’m sorry, my liege. But,” she whispered, “you saw that picture. We are running out of time.”

  “Lucian.” The Prince turned to him. “I’m afraid what Aurelia says is true. If we don’t get her soon, then this will end neither well nor cle
anly.”

  “Yes, I know. But I must warn you. This may be . . . unrealistic. She seems to have some sort of . . . will. She’s not as prone to being swept up as the others have been.”

  “I don’t understand. You’ve been feeding her,” Aurelia said.

  “She’s immune to the toxins already. But I’m certainly doing everything in my power. That’s all, I’m just trying to . . . manage expectations.”

  “This is not my problem, yet.” The Prince spoke very slowly, to be sure each of his words was heard clearly. “It behooves you to find a solution before it becomes my problem.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lucian whispered, his head bowed.

  “Maybe,” the Prince addressed Aurelia now, “we should adopt some of the innovations being put to work within the New Orleans outpost.”

  “You know that’s not my style.” Aurelia sounded defensive, her posture firmed up. “I find it risky and foolhardy what they do there.”

  “I think your style should be whatever brings results,” the Prince chided. He shifted gears: “Where are we with her counterparts?”

  “Lance isn’t entirely immune yet,” Lucian explained with a pained look, like he wanted to be done with this meeting, this business. His heart wasn’t in it. “He took ill today, but it’s not fully working on him. The toxins just aren’t having the effect they should.”

  I thought of Lance, sick and in bed. So they had been trying to poison us, control us through what we ate and drank here. This was what they did to people. Why hadn’t we succumbed to it? At least that would explain my wooziness last night and even, I supposed, my very first night here.

  “When we get the girl, we get her associates,” Aurelia said. My associates? This was certainly all making me sound much more important than I ever felt, that was for sure. “The kitchen boy is a cakewalk. Etan is working his magic brilliantly on this Dante person. Apparently the toxins have been working, and Etan has already succeeded in coding him—so as soon as the boy is sufficiently wooed and delivers Etan’s code back to him, his soul will be ripe for the taking.”