The Violet Hour (14 page)

The blankets were tucked so tightly around her legs that if she were awake, she’d be immobile. I moved along the length of the container, my nemesis’s withered body laid out before me. The awkward bend in her arms, the clockwork rise of her machine-operated lungs, the lily-white neck that had exchanged its pearls for plastic tubing.

I closed my eyes and took a breath, gathering the strength to look at Mercy’s face. To really see what had been done to her, possibly by the evil thing that lurked inside my head. The thing that looked just like me. Who haunted my reflection. Isiris.

Purity.

The word whispered underneath the door.

My eyes flew open. Mercy was staring up at me, terror tightening her blue-tinged lips. My reflection echoed back at me, hovering over the incubator. A slow, wicked smile turned up the corners of my mouth. But it wasn’t me who was smiling. It was my reflection in the plastic case that surrounded Mercy. It was Isiris. And she was taking over my body.

Obliterate.

My hand moved to the latch that held the capsule closed. I was trapped, motionless, inside my body. I wasn’t going to let her take control of me. I couldn’t.

Exsanguinate.

As my hand lifted the plastic cover, the needles and tubes pulled, tearing through the tissue-thinness of Mercy’s neck. Her skin broke with satisfying pops. Blood flowed, soaking her corn-silk hair and pooling like a crown behind her. Tears slipped in streams from the watery corners of her eyes. She shuddered inside her blanket restraint.

From outer blindness, inner sight.

I leaned over her.

The reflection’s head cocked to the side, mirrored back at me in the irises of Mercy’s wild eyes. Isiris’s pursed lips taunted me. Hands that were not mine ran along Mercy’s shoulders, tangling themselves in the mess of hair and gore. They moved over Mercy’s cheekbones, thumbs following the skull-hollow contour of her eye sockets. Slippery with blood, my thumbs met with the fleshy perfection of Mercy’s sky-blue eyes. They pressed, hard.

Revulsion swept through me. I strained against the invasion, every muscle in my body tensing for a fight. I hovered over Mercy, lips nearly touching lips. I concentrated every ounce of my being on shoving Isiris out, pushing her back for good.

The pressure from my fingers eased, and I thought I had won. Beaten Isiris at her own game. Then my thumbs pressed down doubly hard, and a puff of breath pushed from Mercy as her optic nerves broke loose. Her head thrashed back and forth, spattering blood across the walls.

My fingers tugged her eyeballs free; two perfect orbs glistened in the palms of my hand. I screamed inside my brain, horror overtaking me. This was not me. I did not want this. The reflection smiled sweetly, gleaming up at me from the lifeless sheen of Mercy’s extracted gaze.

You cannot stop me. You are part of me.

Isiris raised her prizes to my mouth, shoved them between my protesting lips. She bit down.

The click of the door sounded behind me. I spun around. Mei Mei was standing there.

I looked down at my hands. They were empty. The latch on Mercy’s capsule was still secure, tubes running in and out of her body as before. Her eyelids were closed, lashes fluttering lightly against her sallow cheeks. No blood. No empty sockets. No smooth, round firmness against my tongue. Not a trace of what Isiris had done. Or what I thought she had done.

Mei Mei tilted her pale face up to mine. “Isiris was here.”

A chill ran over my skin. It was a harbinger. Isiris’s hold on me was getting stronger— she was inhabiting me from the inside out. My time was running out.

FORBIDDEN CITY

Mei Mei deposited me back in the library, returning to the tunnel without a word. The room was silent except for the
snick snick
of the clock, which told me it was past three a.m. I paced the room, unable to get the images of my father and Mercy out of my head. Finally, sometime after four a.m., I collapsed onto the couch and fell into a fitful sleep.

I dreamt I was wandering through a temple with a thousand doors. Every time I opened one, I stepped into yet another endless hallway. No matter how fast I ran, I never found what I was looking for. No matter which way I went, I could never escape. A voice followed me down each passage:
Harlow … Harlow …

“Harlow.” The word sounded from some far-off place. My brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

“Harlow,” Adam’s voice whispered in my ear. His touch ran down the length of my arm.

Reality slammed into focus. I bolted upright. Adam was sitting on the couch next to me.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked.

His eyes traced the lines of my body. It was like he was seeing me for the first time since those distant days in the carriage house.

“No.”

As I tried to get oriented, the memory of what I’d seen in the lab came drifting back. Adam slid his arm behind me and drew me close. I leaned my head against his chest, tears dampening my cheeks.

I was overwhelmed by the irrational desire to return to Twin Falls and pretend that none of this had ever happened. I’d always hoped that one day the noose of the Fellowship would slip off my neck and I could just be normal; but right now, I would give anything to be back at the VisionCrest compound, sitting in the carriage house listening to punk rock records with Adam.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

He ran his hand over my hair. “Mei Mei,” he said.

“Sacristan Wang is behind the abductions.”

Adam leaned away from me. His face became pale. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“He told me.”

Adam released me and leaned forward, elbows on knees and head in hands. “Harlow—that thing I needed to tell you,” he started. His voice was tortured.

I held my breath. This was going to be bad.

“Remember when I told you yesterday that I’d heard the voice?”

I recalled his words in the gondola:
I heard her, too
.
That voice made me think I was going crazy.

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked up at me. “That night at the club wasn’t the first time I heard it. I recognized it because it isn’t just in your mind. It’s real. And it belongs to someone I know.”

My scalp tingled. “Who?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“Her name is Isiris. I think she’s your twin.”

I couldn’t breathe. Adam thought she was my twin, but she wasn’t. I didn’t know
what
she was to me, but after what the General had described, I knew she was something infinitely more terrifying than a long-lost sibling.

Adam seemed to think I was confused. “My family was abducted out of our home, by strangers, in the middle of the night. At least I thought it was by strangers.” His voice was urgent, heart-wrenching. “When I came to, I was blindfolded. I screamed and screamed until I had no voice left. After days of isolation, the first thing I heard was
your
voice. Giving the orders to cut out my father’s eyes.”

He paused, getting choked up. I felt sick.

“And you already know what she did to me after that,” he said.

He pulled his shirt up over his head and turned his body to the side. The blaze of reds, greens, and blues twisted up his arms and over his chest. My eyes followed the lines of ink down the ridges of his rib cage, across his stomach. I’d seen the tattoos before, of course, but I’d never been able to really study them. There were signs and symbols embedded in them. Hidden things. Secrets. They reminded me of the renderings of the Inner Eye that filled the sacred texts my father once claimed were dictated to him by our version of God. In the tattoos, repeated over and over, was a rougher version of the slick VisionCrest logo that hung watchful on walls across the world.

“I was strapped to a table. It took days to finish the tattoos. Isiris was there the entire time, hovering over me, rambling about VisionCrest destroying the purity of the Inner Eye. It was horrible, but nothing compared to what came next,” he said.

The way Adam looked at me was like a silent apology. Like he needed to make a confession that might break things between us in a way that couldn’t be repaired.

“You can tell me,” I whispered.

“They removed my blindfold, and she was there. Isiris. She looks exactly like you, but there’s this vacancy behind her eyes. Like she has no soul.”

“Where were you?” I asked, shifting the topic. I wasn’t ready to tell him what my father had revealed to me about Isiris giving me to him. I couldn’t bear the thought that it might make Adam feel differently about me.

“Inside a temple. Isiris’s temple. I don’t know where it is, and I didn’t see much of it, but it was old. VisionCrest inscriptions all over it, just like my tattoos. Doors everywhere,” he said. His words validated what my father had told me only hours earlier. “She was surrounded by these … things. Some of them were like zombies—they’d been blinded, but moved around like they could see. The way Mei Mei does, except not human. Some of them were more like wraiths.”

“Ghosts?” I asked, incredulous.

“I guess, kind of,” he said. “I don’t know—I was really disoriented. Maybe I imagined it.”

“So if you weren’t kidnapped by strangers, then who took you there?” I asked. “Was it the Wangs?”

He shook his head and his shoulders slumped a little. “It was my father. When he whispered the numbers that are on my wrist, he told me what he’d done. Apologized to me. But it was already too late.”

“Why would your father kidnap you?” I asked, incredulous.

“To cover up his defection, and to make sure we couldn’t be used as leverage against him. Sacristan Wang recruited my father—said that he and Madam Wang were uncovering the most sacred secrets of VisionCrest. Things only the Patriarch knew, the source of his power. Wang said that with that knowledge, he and my father could gain control of the Fellowship. All he wanted in exchange was for my dad to tell him where the temple was.” Adam paused bitterly. “Maybe my father should’ve wondered why Isiris didn’t just tell Wang directly, if she was so ready to give up her secrets.”

“So your father and the Wangs were working together.”

“Not exactly. My father was greedy—he was the only person besides the Patriarch who knew how to find the temple. He wrongly assumed that all he needed to do was show up and Isiris would bestow some great power upon him. So he figured, why not bypass Wang and have it all for himself? Cut out the middleman. He staged my family’s disappearance—took us with him in case the Patriarch found him out, or the Wangs tried to get revenge. He actually thought that my mother and I would thank him, once we had the world at our fingertips.”

My father’s best friend had betrayed him. I was torn between feeling furious at the Eparch’s selfishness and hurt for Adam. His father’s actions had torn his family to shreds and endangered us all.

“Why didn’t your father just kidnap me? I’m sure that’s what Wang had planned,” I said.

“Wang didn’t tell him that Isiris wanted you. My dad only found that out once we got there. I hate to say it, but if he’d known, he probably
would
have taken you.” Adam hung his head.

I let that sink in. If the Eparch and Wang hadn’t been so busy double-crossing each another, I might already be in Isiris’s clutches.

“I don’t understand why the one secret Wang couldn’t figure out was where the temple was,” I finally said.

“Who knows? Maybe his connection to Isiris wasn’t as strong as he made it out to be. Or maybe something else was standing in his way.”

“What happened when your father showed up instead of Wang, and without me?” I asked.

Adam swallowed hard. “She decided to use me as her weapon.”

My stomach did a flip-flop. My throat went dry. “What do you mean?”

“Isiris said she needed you to be whole. To remake the world—purify it. Some of her followers brought my mother into the room. She was frail—couldn’t even stand up on her own. Isiris put the tip of the blade right up to her eye. My mother was crying, telling me it was okay, that I shouldn’t give Isiris what she wanted. Isiris said that every promise exacts a price.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Adam, I’m so sorry. I would give anything to take this hurt away.”

He shook his head sharply, his voice thick with emotion. “Don’t. Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should apologize.”

“Why?” I asked. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. None of this was your fault.”

“Harlow, I didn’t have another choice,” he said.

There was something in his eyes. Something terrible. My heart started to race. “What do you mean? Adam,
what did you do
?”

I didn’t want to hear it, but I had to. Even if it was something that would change things between us, irreparably and forever.

“Isiris said that if I convinced the Patriarch to bring you to Asia, she would let my mother keep her eyes,” he whispered. “She might let my father live.” His cheeks tinged red.

“She sent you back to get me,” I said.

He hung his head. “Yes.”

My limbs began to shake as the realization of what he’d done set in. Just like my father, I’d been betrayed.

“How did you convince my father to bring us here?” I asked, my voice dead calm. I needed to hear it all.

“Mercy did it. I convinced her to talk to her mother—persuade her that the Patriarch was overdue for a diplomatic trip to Asia, and that he should bring the Ministry children along to keep us safely in the public eye. It didn’t take long for Prelate Mayer to sell the idea to your father. What Mercy wants, Mercy gets.”

An anger like none I’d ever felt before bubbled up to the surface. “There’s clearly more to your relationship with Mercy than convincing her mother to recommend a PR trip to Asia,” I spat. “You kept hanging out with her long after that was done.”

Adam’s jaw clenched. “It was the best way to keep you away from me. I couldn’t look you in the eye, knowing what I had to do.”

The lid blew off my fury and I jumped to my feet. “What you
had
to do? No, Adam. What you
chose
to do.”

“What else
could
I do?” he asked.

“Anything! I loved you!”

“I loved you too. I love you now,” he pleaded.

“Screw you. You don’t get to say that to me. Not ever.”

Adam looked up at me, the corners of his eyes tight with pain. I was so angry with him I could barely see straight, but there were things much bigger than me in motion, and lives were in danger.

“Mercy isn’t dead,” I said.

“What?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Sacristan Wang is keeping her alive. My father, too. He’s using them for some kind of experiment. I saw both of them. If they die, it’s your … ”

I wanted to say it would be his fault, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Disbelief mingled with relief in his voice. “She’s alive?”

“Yes, no thanks to you.”

His voice cracked. “Harlow, I’m so sorry. Isiris was going to murder my parents. What was I supposed to do?”

He was right, in a way. But it didn’t matter. He’d hand-delivered me to someone who wanted to hurt me. He’d created the situation that now left my father dying in an underground lab. There was no getting around that.

“I don’t know, Adam. Maybe trust me? The girl you supposedly love? We could have figured it out together.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“It’s not enough.”

He stood up. “What do you want me to do, Harlow? I’ll do anything to make this right.”

For the first time in my life, I looked at him and felt nothing. No, that wasn’t exactly true. I felt disgusted and betrayed.

“Nothing will ever make this right. There’s no coming back from what you’ve done, Adam.”

The latch on the library door rattled and Madam Wang slipped in, a cloud of sickly sweet smoke preceding her. She’d discarded her sleepwear for an elaborate silk cheongsam dress that made her look like a 1920s film star. Her hair was twisted into a pretzel bun and her lips were painted red. She glanced back and forth between us.

“It is time for you to leave Sister Wintergreen and her preponderance of yang, Brother Fitz,” she said. Taking a long drag of her miniature cigar, she ground the butt into an ashtray on the Sacristan’s desk.

“I haven’t told her everything yet,” Adam said. They shared a conspiratorial glance.

“I will see to it. Go with Mei Mei. It’s nearly time,” Madam Wang commanded. Her chimeric daughter appeared behind her.

Adam hesitated, looking at me. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Harlow, I’m not your enemy,” he said. Then he followed Mei Mei out of the room.

I sat back down on the couch. Madam Wang seated herself behind the Sacristan’s desk and pulled out another cigar. She didn’t smoke it, just twirled it between her fingers. I’d once seen a feral cat catch a mouse and slowly kill it between its paws—letting it escape just often enough that the light of survival stayed in its little eyes until just before it was dead. That was exactly the way I felt right now.

“The stars are aligned against you, girl,” she said. “Your father died an hour ago.”

Like a dagger, the words slipped between my ribs and pierced my heart, cold and inevitable. If I hadn’t seen the empty look in my father’s eye myself, I would have wondered if she was lying. But I knew she wasn’t. He was gone.

“But not all the stars,” she added.

I could only blink at her, an icy sadness laboring in my veins.

“There is power that lives in you. I’ve seen it. And a willing army that waits to stand behind it.”

“If you’re talking about Isiris, I know all about her. You can spare yourself the cryptic declarations,” I said, the words bitter in my mouth.