The Dark Fable, page 16
“I’ll transport it to my home and keep it safe.”
She glanced at the bracelet of obsidian beads on his left wrist, identical to the one Mother Night wore. “So, you only keep the artifacts? Not the jewelry, the paintings, the cash?”
“Some of the cash. Most of the items are sold. The artifacts, the rare ones, those we keep.” He looked at her, and it was as if some fallen angel were making its way into her soul with a razor blade. “Are you asking the right questions, Evie?”
She couldn’t ask the questions she wanted to: Do you have families? Where do you really live? Why is everyone so afraid of both of you?
“I think so.” She made a little dune of sand with one foot. “I think I’m done with the questions for now.”
They returned to the pavilion, where Mother Night was laughing beautifully at some story Mad and Queenie were telling her. Night glanced at Silence, who lifted a black envelope and handed it to Ciaran. Ciaran slid out a detailed illustration of a black jar in the shape of an unidentifiable curled beast. Little figures of other beasts paraded around the handle, the jar’s middle.
“The Anesidora Pithos,” Night told them. “Pandora’s jar.”
“No. The Pandora?” Mad plucked the illustration from Ciaran and laughed in delight.
“Yes. The Pandora.” Father Silence laid a hand over Mother Night’s, both of which rested on the Bestiarum Vocabulum in her lap. “It is going to be offered at an auction of rogue thieves and unsanctioned Collectors in St. Petersburg, Russia.”
“This is going to be a dodgy one.” Dev ran a hand over his buzz cut.
“This is a powerful object. Like the Bestiarum, you will not be able to open it.” Mother Night didn’t know that they had opened the Bestiarum.
“Is this jar the one that all the monsters came out of?” Mad handed the illustration back to Ciaran.
“Yes, this is the one all the monsters came out of. The thief selling it doesn’t even know what it is.” Father Silence’s gaze fell upon Evie. “Be very careful with this one.”
Evie told herself she was being paranoid, that Silence wasn’t warning her and her alone.
Evie stood in the night-drenched desert as a twisty zephyr played with sand, bonfires, hair, and clothing. The thumping bass of the music was almost ghostly, echoing in the canyon strewn with the cars everyone had driven here. La Fable Sombre were clustered around a silver roadster. Mad, barefoot, walked on the car’s roof, holding a glass of champagne. Her gold-streaked hair was in two braids, her wolf eyes lined with rosy kohl. She wore a black bomber jacket and a pink camisole dress. Queenie leaned against the roadster, talking to Dev, who was idly dancing to the music pulsing from the car. Mad, Queenie, and Dev wore crowns of pink damask roses.
“My, aren’t we a sight.” Ciaran eyed them. He was sleek in a black Henley shirt and jeans. “Proper delinquents, we are. Why don’t you lot mingle?”
Mad twirled on the roadster’s hood. She stepped off. Ciaran took her hand as she seemed to float for a moment. “Watch that,” he warned as her feet settled on the sand. “You don’t want the others to see. Fenrir are holding our secret close to their little black hearts.”
Evie looked around at the other crews, some of whom had glammed up, but most were in jeans and hoodies. Someone had tossed sparklers into one of the bonfires and pinwheels of light stung the air, left a snaking glow on Evie’s retinas when she blinked.
Fenrir were keeping their distance, drinking and smoking near one of the fires.
Evie set her focus on Ciaran, who had taken a bottle of beer from a cooler and was popping the cap off. Watching her, he drank from the bottle. His silver skull ring gleamed.
Mad handed Evie a bottle of something fizzy and pink. Evie idly asked, “Silence and Night seem rich as lords, so why can’t they just buy the mysterious objects they have us steal?”
Ciaran looked devilish in the flamelight cutting across his cheekbones. “Some things aren’t for sale.”
Evie met Ciaran’s gaze and thought, He’s more dangerous than Silence and Night. He’s hungry. “Who’s going to be the new Silence and Night when they retire?”
“Why Queenie and Ciar, of course.” Dev draped an arm around Mad and Queenie’s shoulders. “Mad and I are too harum-scarum. Let’s get some s’mores.”
Queenie spoke as they sauntered away. “I get the best s’more, for I am the future queen . . .”
Evie, worried about their refusal to talk about Lycan, shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. She looked at Ciaran. He shook his head.
“It’s not the first time, Evie, we’ve had collateral damage. Ask Mad. Ask Jase.” He surveyed the other crews.
“I know Lycan tried to kill you—”
Those gray eyes flashed to her. “He was like us.”
“Tell me what you know. Tell us.”
“When there’s something to tell, I will.” Ciaran slid onto the hood of the silver roadster, all of him in darkness but for the glint of the skull ring and his eyes. He cradled the beer in both hands as his shadow twisted across the sand. It was as if night had come out of the sky in male form. There weren’t enough stars in the universe to make Ciaran Argent anything but darkness.
“Being invisible. It’s a power we all share, isn’t it?” He spoke softly. “No one notices any of us. We’re the lost causes and the never-will-bes.” There was no anger in his voice, no bitterness, only pride.
“The world doesn’t see us.” Evie drew herself up beside him. She watched the other crews.
“But someone does. Someone has it in for us. And I’m still figuring it out. I’ll tell all of you when I do.”
They were quiet a moment. Evie continued, “Tell me how you found out about the Doors.”
“I found the first Door when I was eight, before I learned fictional worlds are a bad idea.” He absently stroked the scars on one arm. “So, I stole a book about great cities and began visiting them. Also”—his smile was crooked—“I learned I can’t time travel.”
“You brought us to a fictional world on Valentine’s Day.”
“The ‘Great Gatsby’ is what I call that one. It was my favorite book. The fictional worlds are dangerous, Evie, because you never know what you’re going to get. You can’t stay in them for very long, because they start to unravel, smear, or decay. Like a theater set aging in time-lapse photography. It’s terrifying.”
“What was your first fictional world?” She leaned back on her arms.
“Well, I was eight. It was Winnie-the-Pooh. The Hundred Acre Wood.”
She cast him a look of shock and delight. “No.”
He shuddered delicately. “Let me tell you, a real-life Eeyore isn’t nearly so charming as the one in the story. And Dev insisted on Narnia for his first trip. He’ll never see Mr. Tumnus the same way again, I’m afraid. Queenie’s practically written an entire thesis on how those worlds exist.”
Evie laughed, awed. “Can you take me to Middle Earth—”
“Absolutely not. No. It’ll never happen. Don’t ask again. Those worlds are like spray paint on mist or pretty paper that rots. I did learn a neat trick. If I left an object with a drop of my blood on it, I could track my DNA anywhere in the world.” He glanced at her, studying her in that way of his that made her feel they had known one another in a different life. “That trick may come in handy sometime.”
A wind swept around them, tousling Evie’s hair into her eyes. As she lifted a hand to push the tendrils back, Ciaran’s fingers brushed her brow, sweeping the hair away. He said, “Like little black snakes, that hair. It’s called Chergui, this wind. It travels and becomes other winds, in other places. Other names. Always causes erratic behavior. Some unlucky souls can hear the voices of the dead in the wind.” His gaze tracked to Dev, Queenie, and Mad dancing near a bonfire. “I would die for those three, blackbird.”
Evie believed him.
He set his hand on the car between them. The skull ring grinned at her. “And I would die for you as well, Evie Wilder.”
She breathed out, a deep true-’til-death. She carefully placed her hand over his.
“Ciar!” Mad called. “Get over here and show us some moves!”
He slid down from the roadster. “Mad calls, I answer.” He strode toward the dancing. He moved among the other crews like a king. He slid an arm around a golden-haired boy and twirled him in a brief waltz, spun and dipped a girl in emerald silk.
Evie remained, her smile fading.
She found herself drinking more than she’d planned. They weren’t on a job, and the buzz made her feel fearless. With liquor, the flame-gilded and rowdy camaraderie of the thieves around her was seductive. One of the Tsars was DJing out of a van painted with images of the Russian witch Baba Yaga. As music crashed out over the desert, a rainbow of colors ghosted from glow necklaces and bracelets, lighting up the darkness. Nearly everyone was dancing.
Drinking from a plastic cup, Evie threaded among the fires, curious about these people chosen by a secret society. They were a single force now, had set aside all their petty allegiances and grudges, mischief and mayhem, to reveal a softer side. Mad was dancing with Arachnae crew near the DJ’s van. Dev sat in a folding chair near a fire, strumming a guitar. Queenie was moving among the crews, a queen bee in her element. The Nara guy with the spiky blue hair was stalking the fringes, ignoring the come-hither gazes cast his way, his attention hooked on Queenie as she mingled, regal even in a flannel shirt and ripped jeans, laughing at something a Tsar said, accepting a bottle of beer from a lanky Fenrir. The Nara guy—Knife, that was his name—turned when his leader, the girl in cat-eye glasses and Prada, moved to his side and spoke to him.
Evie tilted her head back to watch the stars.
Darkness swept down around her. She stood, terrified and numb, listening to the drip of water as something vaguely human-shaped glided toward her from the dark—
The desert and the stars returned. She shivered away the heart-staggering dread. The dancing, glow-striped bodies around her were giving off an invisible energy she could almost feel, like static electricity humming through her.
“It’s all so beautiful, isn’t it?”
Evie turned her head to find a girl with a glorious brunette mane standing beside her. The girl’s smile was a rueful curve as she surveyed the thieves. Hearts and roses resembled splashes of blood on her jeans and denim jacket. She looked familiar.
“I remember this used to be everything to me.” The girl had her hands in her back pockets. “Parties. Adventure. Money. I wish I’d enjoyed it more.”
Evie found herself wishing the same.
“I wish I’d gotten away from them before the ground hit me.”
Evie, who had let her attention drift, snapped her gaze back to the girl.
The girl was gone. As the wind swept Evie’s hair into her eyes, she realized who had been speaking to her.
Vero Jordan.
She frantically scanned the desert for any other dead people. She dumped her cup into a garbage bag and leaned against a yellow jeep. She sank into a crouch, her arms over her head. I’m hallucinating now?
“Evie.” Jason Ra, in a black hoodie and jeans, emerged from the dark. The upper half of his face was shadowed by the hood, but she recognized him. She’d been expecting him, had been the one to initiate their rendezvous through the little bug he’d planted in her medallion. But now, still shaken by her brush with the supernatural, she wasn’t prepared.
He turned and walked toward the indigo shadows beyond the bonfires. She rose to wordlessly follow. He halted, extending a hand. “What I have to show you is near the Palm and the Lotus, but not on the warded grounds. I’ll be able to spirit you back.”
She twined her fingers around his. Ciaran’s nomad Doors were nothing compared to what Mother Night had done with her witchy, howling-darkness transport. Evie once again wondered what all this traveling through the borders was doing to her molecular structure and expected she might one day fade away for real.
“Close your eyes.” Jason held her hands. As the silver pentacle tinsel-glimmered around them, Evie breathed out in awe. She heard a sound like galloping hooves, bit her bottom lip as the desert spun around them. She didn’t close her eyes. She saw that other place—the black grasslands—swirl violently around them, glimpsed something massive and equine running in circles.
When the pentacle faded, they were still in the Agafay Desert, in a secluded spot, with a slope looming to one side. Jason walked to a patch of sandy, rocky ground. The moonlight was as bright as a lamp. He told her, “The last time I was here, a Tsar was exiled after hacking into one of the Collectors’ accounts.”
Evie watched as he began kicking at sand and pebbles. He swept one sneakered foot across a stone surface. He crouched down and gazed at the stone. “Silence’s guards brought him out here.”
Apprehensive, Evie backed away. He continued, “The bodies don’t get tossed into unmarked graves. Silence and Night are superstitious. They leave a marker to prevent the dead from roaming.”
The dead did roam. Evie had learned that.
She watched as he rose and nudged sand away from a second square stone. He revealed a third. He looked at her. “A secret society of thieves wouldn’t exile members, let a witness slip into the world. For people like Silence and Night, this is the only option. After the exiles are branded, for show, they’re secretly brought here and shot in the head.”
Her stomach heaved. “Ciaran knows about this?”
“Ciaran showed me where it was. He wanted someone else to know. He didn’t want to scare his crew, lets them believe Silence and Night are benevolent, that they’re safe as long as they don’t cross Mother and Father.” Jason was grim. “He thought Mad, Dev, Queenie, and Vero would run if they knew.”
“Jase.” Evie reached out to touch his wrist. “That’s when you and Vero . . .”
“Decided to leave.” Jason drew back and Evie’s guts twisted when she saw at least a dozen stones in the sand. This was a graveyard. Bile rushed up in her throat. Jason tapped one of the stones with his foot. Evie walked to it, stared down at the name chiseled into it. Matthew Orion. She was almost sick. In a flash, the desert night became a liminal hellscape, with Jason anchoring her to reality.
Jason continued, “Silence and Night found out about my dad being Interpol, that Vero and I were planning to leave . . . they decided to kill us on that strike.”
“It wasn’t Ciaran who told them. What reason would he have?”
“I don’t know.” Jason shook his head. “When he’s ready to mutiny against those two dragons, he’ll turn all of you against them. By poisoning Lila Pearce, he declared war on Silence and Night.”
Evie regained her composure. “Why would Ciaran mutiny against Silence and Night now?” She turned, desperate. “Silence and Night could have learned who your dad was on their own. They might have suspected you and Vero would run because you were the two who had something to lose. It was Vero’s murder that triggered Ciaran to finally turn against them, if he’s planning on doing so.” Would it take more than this graveyard of traitors to convince LFS to mutiny against the pretend mom and dad they idolized?
Jason gazed out over the desert. “You don’t believe me.”
Her throat tightened in sympathy. “It’s all circumstantial, except for this. This, I believe. Silence and Night killed your dad. And, maybe, caused Vero’s death. But I can’t believe what you say about Ciaran.” Because that would destroy everything she’d worked for.
He took a step toward her. “Meet me at the Silver Cove Bowling Alley Saturday night at seven. I’ll bring you to the leader of the Sirens. And she’ll tell you why her crew mutinied.”
“Take me back.” She shoved her hands through her hair, fraught with fear. “Take me back to the party. I’ll meet you Saturday.”
Because she had another question for Circe the Siren: who had told Circe holy ground affected LFS’s powers?
“Evie.” Jason clasped one of her hands. “Tell me your real name.”
She looked straight at him. “Evie Wilder.”
His gaze went cold. Then the darkness came to sweep them away.
Set on edge by a night full of supernatural threat, Evie stood alone near a bonfire, gazing into the flames. She lifted her head as Mad flung an arm around her shoulders. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Still stunned by Jason’s revelations, by that graveyard of Silence and Night’s victims, Evie wanted to tell Mad everything, including how she’d seen Vero’s ghost. While levitation and Doors that instantaneously transported one to other countries almost had a wild science to it, ghosts were dead people who wouldn’t stay dead—they were horrifying.
But if she revealed Silence and Night’s treachery, she’d be ending La Fable Sombre. She whispered, “Tell me about Vero, Mad.”
Mad eyed her. “Are you having some type of crisis? Because, if you are, you need to deal with it and contain.” Genuine concern laced her voice.
“Tell me about Vero.”
Mad sighed. “In LA, I was working at a diner. Vero caught me levitating in my roller skates in the parking lot. She showed me what she could do—she could find things.” Grief cracked the carefree code in Mad’s voice. She looked around at the gangs of kids in the fire-spotted desert. “I met Jason when Vero and I were racing some jerks in her Corvette, and they sideswiped us into a ditch. Jason arrived, the white knight. He and Vero were friends.” Her voice drifted. “We started hanging out together—Vero, Jase, and me. Then we met Ciaran.”
The damn wind circled them again, causing one of the bonfires to roar upward. Evie glanced into the night surrounding the party, wondering apprehensively if other spirits related to La Fable Sombre were waiting. “Do you know why Vero and Jason were going to leave La Fable Sombre?”
“I don’t know.” Mad slid her gaze away. “Let’s go eat toasted marshmallows with Oracle crew. They’ve got the best booze and we’re just having fun tonight. Okay?”
