The Violet Hour (11 page)

Then my knee hit a protruding stone and the shift in balance upended me, sending me rolling toward the side of the wall even as I picked up speed. I caught a flash of the expanse of nothingness stretched out before me just before I barreled sideways over the edge.

This wasn’t happening. My hands grasped, hoping for a last-minute miracle. I managed to catch the rim of the wall.

I was dangling like a wind chime off one of the wonders of the world.

Loose pebbles hit me in the face as Adam’s shoes slid into focus. A split second later he was on his stomach and reaching his hand out to me.

“Take it!” he yelled.

I wasn’t really in a position to wait for an engraved invitation, so I let go of the wall and grasped his forearm. I was eye-to-eye with the swirl of his tattoos, the things that branded his body as property—that marked it as still belonging to whoever had kidnapped him. In my desperate state, I suddenly saw images of blood and terror buried in the jungle of colors and symbols.

Something clicked in my brain. I gasped, forgetting for a moment that I was dangling in mortal peril. His kidnapping was related to my visions. “They let you go for a reason!”

It was more an accusation than a declaration. But before Adam could say anything, I heard voices of Chinese tourists chattering and yelling near us. People had noticed that something was going on and were closing in to get a look, even as a white-hot tunnel of pain was shrinking them to tiny dots of nothingness.

Death.

Adam jerked like he’d touched a downed power line. But unlike last time, at least, this time he didn’t let me go.

Obliterate.

The world went white and we were swallowed by the vision.

Decimate.

It was like I’d fallen through the looking glass, and the only thing anchoring me to reality was Adam.

Exsanguinate.

I was still dangling over the precipice, and Adam was still holding on to my arm, but at the same time I was watching the whole scene unfold before us as if I were floating outside of my body. It was impossible to tell from Adam’s face what was happening to him, whether he too had disconnected from reality, but I just hoped he held on tight.

The smell of burning tires and something meaty filled the air. Behind Adam, flesh dripped from the bones of the unlucky onlookers. Clothes hung tattered from their birdcage torsos, and their stripped-bare femurs clattered like marionettes. This was just like the last vision Adam and I had shared—gruesome and unreal. I could feel his fear coursing through me, feel our connection even as I felt completely disconnected from my own body.

This was going to happen—these deaths would become real. The voice was going to make sure of that. Something terrible was coming, and Adam knew more than he was letting on. The whispering of the voice rushed through my ears, at first far away and then pounding over me like an air-raid siren, the words blending together:
PurityDeathObliterateDecimateExsanguinatePurityDeathObliterateDecimateExsanguinate.

Adam yanked me hard, and I was simultaneously pulled back into my body and up over the edge of the wall. Then Adam ripped his arm from mine, shoving me away. The voice was abruptly silenced.

We lay on the ground, side-by-side, breathing hard and shallow. Two Watchers pushed past the people around us, yelling.

Adam looked at me and whispered, “Harlow, I’ve done something horrible. I need to tell you—”

The Watchers pulled me away from him, the flashbulbs of the tourist cameras documenting everything for the next day’s news.

I had no clue what Adam had done, or if we’d get another chance to be alone so he could tell me. But somewhere in my heart I knew that it was the reason he could barely look me in the eyes.

After revealing my innermost secret, I felt like I was more completely on my own than ever before.

MERCY

I halfway expected to be greeted by the Watch and carted to a padded cell when we arrived back at the Wangs’, but instead was escorted to my room without a word. Adam was taken to some other part of the building by a burly Watcher who looked like he might have him for a snack. If we were going to ever get a chance to talk, it would have to be later.

Dora returned to the room hours after I did, during one of the knockout slumbers that frequently followed my most intense visions. She shook me awake.

“Hey, cheekie monkey … are you okay? I heard you took a swan dive off the Great Wall. Ten points for style.”

It took me a minute to clear the sludge from my brain. The whole scene unfolded in my memory. I forced myself to sitting, my head pounding.

“I slipped.”

“I sense there’s more to that story, morning glory.”

I rubbed my temples. “How much time do you have?”

“Why don’t you just hit me with the highlights?” Dora smiled her most reassuring smile.

“Here we go: Adam and I had a heart-to-heart. Then
he flipped out. Then I flipped out. I fell over the side of
the Great Wall. He saved me. The end.”

“Oh, is that all? Gosh, girl. Normally we’d just call that Wednesday.”

“I have to find him,” I said.

Dora looked down. I could see the avoidance all over her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mercy took off a few minutes ago to find him. Did you get the scoop on what’s up with them?”

I groaned, falling back onto my pillow and putting my arms over my head. “He wouldn’t give me a straight answer, so it’s safe to conclude they’re hooking up.”

“So you’re involved in a real-life love triangle, eh? It’s so
telenovela
of you. I’m
muy
impressed.” Dora poked at my arm, trying to make light of it.

“Honestly, that’s the least of my worries right now,” I said.

“Spill it, sister. Guts on the table.”

It was time to let her in. I didn’t even know where to begin. How do you tell your best friend you’re hearing voices that want you to kill people?

“D, this is going to sound a little strange. Actually, it’s going to sound a lot strange.”

A knock at the door interrupted us.

“Dinner, misses,” a soft voice called. A demure girl poked her head in. It was the maid whose eye I’d dreamed of cutting out during tea.

“What is it?” Dora’s brows knit together in concern.

“It can wait until after dinner,” I said, giving Dora a meaningful look and tilting my head toward the maid, who I was unable to look at directly.

Dora nodded and held out her hand, hefting me out of bed.

“Okay, but we’re having salacious confessions for dessert,” she said. Then, unexpectedly, she leaned in, pretending to kiss me on the cheek, and whispered in my ear. “They took our cell phones away from us when we came back. And they rifled through our luggage while we were gone.”

My eyes went wide. I looked around our room, panicked. She was right—things weren’t exactly as we’d left them. They had clearly been gone through.

A Watcher pushed the door wide. “Your presence is requested downstairs, Miss Wintergreen.” He looked at Dora dismissively. “You too.”

Panic uncoiled in my belly. Dora beamed her sunniest fake smile at him. “Ready or not, here we come.”

They had taken away our means of communicating with the outside world. We were now prisoners. Not that anyone could defend us from the Ministry itself—no government, no politician, no one would dare.

When we got downstairs, all thirty-odd Ministry kids were already there, looking stunned and frightened. Everyone could feel that something had shifted. It was silent as a cemetery. Stubin found us like a heat-seeking missile and for once kept his mouth shut. Watchers flanked two massive doors. My eyes combed the crowd for Adam, but I didn’t see him. He was probably off with Mercy somewhere, doing who knew what; the thought made me want to tear my hair out by the fistful.

The doors opened before us. The Watchers herded us into two regimented lines—shooing me to the front of one and Stubin to the front of the other—and into the cavernous dining hall.

The world’s longest table was laid out for dinner. Sacristan Wang stood rigid, like a five-foot-tall military general, at the other end of the room, in front of an elaborately carved chair that could only be described as a throne.

“You know what they say—big chair, huge ass,” Dora whispered. But I wasn’t in the mood for joking.

“Welcome back from the beyond.” Wang’s voice boomed across the great hall. “If Sister Wintergreen and Brother Fitz would please sit at the head of the table.”

My ears perked at the sound of Adam’s name, and I swiveled. Like magic, there he was next to me, a burly Watcher shoving him in front of Stubin.

Adam looked at me, his gaze heavy. A million unspoken words passed between us. There was no sign of the good Madam or their pallid paper cutout of a daughter. It seemed weird that they weren’t here. Speaking of no sign, Mercy wasn’t around either. Knowing her, she would saunter in halfway
through dinner demanding a gluten-free option. Still, given the most recent developments, I was genuinely worried.

Adam and I led the two solemn lines down opposite sides of the table, like death row inmates marching toward the electric chair. The usual tittering and jostling was replaced with gravity. Everyone sensed the zero-tolerance vibes practically oozing from Sacristan Wang’s pores. The atrocious bowl cut he was rocking made him look like an overgrown child. It gave the smug look of satisfaction on his face an ominous edge. He had the look of someone who would stop at nothing to elbow his way to the top of the VisionCrest ladder. Or the look of someone who already had; there was still no word from the General.

The table was impeccably set—china plates featuring fire-breathing dragons, silver platters piled high with succulent goodies, goblets filled with murky-looking liquid—the works. It was like a dinner party at Count Dracula’s castle.

“Think that’s water in his glass or does he prefer to drink baby tears?” Dora whispered.

Wang’s sausage lips turned down at the corners; no detail escaped his notice. A pang of fear ran through me.

“Shhh,” I hissed. I didn’t want Dora singling herself out.

Wang picked a pewter bell up off the table and rang it like a petulant child. Servants skittered from all directions to pull out my chair, and Adam’s on the other side of the table. Everyone else could apparently suck it. I knew weird, and this was over the line even for me.

“Daughter of the Patriarch and Son of the Eparch.” Wang raised a golden goblet. There was a wet, burbling gargle in his pronunciation. “It feels good to have you at my side.”

He said it like we were his subjects. A knot of foreboding lodged behind my sternum. The Sacristan nodded to me and then to Adam. His Jimmy Dean lips stretched into a bowed smile.

“Everyone! Take your seats!” he yelled, so loudly that spit flew out of his mouth and plopped into his soup bowl. Everyone flinched, then dutifully pulled out their chairs and sat down.

“
Bon app
é
tit
,” he said, garnishing it with a gap-toothed sneer.

I’d thought that even sitting next to Creepy Creeperton wouldn’t make me less hungry, but then the servants pulled the silver covers off the dinner platters. Chicken feet.

Dora’s face went white as she looked at the pale steamy pile of knuckles and claws in front of her.

“In China, chicken feet are a delicacy,” Stubin whispered, loud enough for people in Taiwan to hear.

The whole table was waiting to see what I was going to do, except for Wang, who was feasting with voracity. I needed to project composure, so I picked up my chopsticks. The rest of the table took my cue and reluctantly followed suit.

It dawned on me just how much everyone was looking to me for leadership. I was all they had. There was no choice but to step up, which right now meant playing along until I could figure a way out of whatever this was.

I had just wrangled the first slippery toes into my mouth when there was a commotion near the doorway. Servants scattered as they were pushed aside by the frantic windmilling of Mercy’s arms as she barreled into the dining room.

Halfway between the door and the table, she collided with a wheeled serving cart and sent china platters and silver toppers clattering to the floor like shrapnel from a roadside bomb. Her hands were grabbing her throat and she was running around in crazed circles.

Everyone’s chopsticks froze midair. Adam jumped out of his seat, his chair tipping over and crashing to the floor behind him. He ran toward Mercy. Amidst her choking and gurgling, she spotted him. Her eyes cleared as she recognized help. Stumbling toward him, she pitched headlong into the dining table. Everyone jumped back from their seats in unison, as if she were a felled electrical wire. Everyone except for Adam, who grabbed her arm and put a hand on her back as she leaned over the table, face-first over a steaming pot of soup, convulsing.

“Are you choking?” he asked her, panicked.

She jerked frantically, clutching at her neck. Her eyes jumped like a frightened rabbit’s. I ran around the table to help them.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Hold her up,” Adam commanded, his voice shaking. Mercy’s joints were like Jell-O. I draped her arm over my shoulder and did my best to shoulder her weight. Adam moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her, about to administer the Heimlich.

Sacristan Wang watched from the far end of the table, his sausage mouth methodically crunching on chicken feet as if this was a spectacle for his amusement.

Adam clenched his hands into a fist at Mercy’s diaphragm, then jerked them back hard. What happened next was horrifying. Even though I’d seen it coming, in real life it was ten times worse than in my visions.

Mercy spewed a fountain of blood from her mouth; it splattered into the soup pot. Black boils erupted on her face. A sick popping sound rose from her. She was infected with the virus from my visions. Only this was absolutely real.

The room exploded in chaos. Kids ran and servants crashed into one another. Only Sacristan Wang stayed still, a spooky grin fixed to his lifeless face.

I couldn’t support Mercy’s weight anymore; I draped her body over the table. Adam moved to grab her as she crumpled to the floor.

“Don’t touch her! Back away! It’s contagious, Adam! Get away!”

He heard me yelling and looked up, confused and horrified, his arms wrapping around Mercy’s waist. I clamped a hand over my mouth, equally horrified by my own words. I fell to my knees beside her, drawing my arm around her quivering shoulders. Trying to give her some comfort, someone to be with. If this was the end, she wouldn’t have to face it alone.

Mercy looked up at me like a drowning puppy and fixed me with a look that seared itself into my memory. I could see the blood vessels bloom in the whites of her eyes just as the light left them. Exactly like the Harajuku girl’s had.

It felt as if my heart had ceased to beat. Adam stumbled back, then ran from the room. My brain could only think of one thing to do. I gathered Mercy in my arms and cried.