The Violet Hour (5 page)

THE RITE

Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the VisionCrest temple. The deserted neon glow of pre-dawn Tokyo was the only witness to our convoy of bulletproof sedans slinking through the city streets. We pulled around the back of the temple, where there were two special entrances—one that only the Patriarch could use, and one for the remaining Ministry members and their families. Everyone else had to enter through the grand entrance at the front, which on every VisionCrest temple looked exactly the same: a giant eye that split down the middle and opened to welcome the masses into its mysterious center. As it was nearly the Violet Hour, the temple would be packed with devoted followers assembled for their meditations. Today I would officially become one of them. A slither rolled through my stomach.

“Who will be my second?” I asked as we climbed out of the car. A second was a spiritual mentor, of sorts, from the moment of the Rite forward. I’d always fantasized that mine would be Adam. It was a bond for life, and if there was anyone I wanted to be bonded to, it was Adam Fitz. But he was in his room with Mercy Mayer. Maybe the General had forgotten to tell him and the whole thing would be called off.

Always meticulous in his appearance, the General picked at his sleeve as we walked to the entrances. “One of the British Prelates is passing through town with his son—do you remember Prelate Cantor? He and his son Hayes stayed with us in Twin Falls a few summers ago while the Prelate was taking a survey course.”

“A little,” I lied.

It was exactly five summers ago. Prelate Cantor was nothing more than a shadowy memory, but I definitely remembered Hayes Cantor. He was my first crush, two years older and impossibly out of reach. Even though he’d barely acknowledged me the entire week he was in my house, I thought about him for years afterward. I couldn’t help but feel a little thrill at the possibility of him being my second at the Rite.

“Prelate Cantor’s been a little on the fringe lately, and this will be a show of good faith—a strengthening of our alliance, if you will. Having his son second my daughter binds us tighter. Pay attention, Harlow; one day these are the decisions that will belong to you.”

My father breezed through his entrance, leaving me standing there dumbstruck. Not at his confirmation that Hayes was my second, but at his allusion to me taking an active role in leading the Fellowship. He’d never done that before. I scrambled through the Ministry entrance, eager to hear more.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a sliver of light peeking out from behind a thick velvet curtain that divided the front hall from the inner sanctum where we were. Through the crack, I could see that the hall was full. A thousand heads bowed in prayer.

The Violet Hour was considered sacred, the time when the veil between the Inner Eye and mortal man was the thinnest. With enough meditation, and initiation into the many-leveled mysteries of VisionCrest, True Believers could eventually transcend into the Inner Truth and receive the gift of life everlasting. According to the General, at least. If you asked me, it was thinly veiled all right—a thinly veiled fantasy.

“This way, Harlow,” the General instructed.

I tore my eyes away from the worshippers and followed him down a thin, dark hallway. He stopped us in front of a plain wooden door marked with the crest of the Inner Eye and the Roman numeral I. The inner sanctum of every temple had a series of marked doorways. The level you were attempting to attain determined the door you walked through. The first Rite was notoriously simple to pass, but most people never made it beyond that. There was no way of knowing what it would entail. Many gave the Fellowship years of their life and savings for spiritual training to attempt the next mystery, only to fail at whatever awaited behind the door marked II. Sacristans had attained the seventh level, and Prelates the eighth. The Eparch had completed nine, and only the Patriarch had attained all ten. Rumor had it that my father had discovered even higher levels, which so far only he could conquer. Big shocker. I was willing to bet that the General would keep inventing levels until the day he died. It was an insurance policy that kept him and his favorites in power, while everyone else labored for something that remained perpetually out of reach. And here I was, about to willingly participate in the world’s biggest lie just to gain my father’s approval. The slither rolled through my gut again.

The General passed through the marked door. I pursued him down a frigid hallway lit by the glow of candles mounted along the walls. The air smelled like lavender mixed with sulfur. The murmur of chanting grew louder. I spotted a vent in the ceiling—the voices were coming from the Great Hall, where the VisionCrest faithful were beginning their Violet Hour ablutions.

At the end of the hallway, there was yet another door. The General paused in front of it.

“You will enter alone, signifying the choice you make tonight: to join the Fellowship of your own accord, ready to receive the Inner Truth, or else be severed from it entirely. Do you accept these terms?”

There was no room for hesitation. The mere mention of being severed made my nerves sing with fear. I should have known that was the choice I would face—it must have been how all those lost boys ended up at the Blue House. Nobody really talked about it, or at least not with me. VisionCrest secrets inspired discretion, even from those who didn’t believe in them. I wasn’t prepared to leave my whole life behind. How could I?

“I accept,” I said.

The General’s mouth curved up for just a moment. It was the closest thing to outright approval in his repertoire. He pulled a length of fabric out from inside the breast pocket of his jacket and draped it over my head like a veil.

“Proceed,” he said.

I placed my hand against the wood and pushed. It was warm to the touch. It swung softly open and I stepped through. The door closed behind me, and the chanting stopped.

The room was a cocoon of dark silence, suffused with a blue light that shone dimly through a series of gauzy panels that hung down from the ceiling. It was a transparent maze. As I passed through the panels, the silky fabric shushed across my shoulders.

Someone whispered behind me. “Closer.”

I spun around. No one was there. I thought of Her voice—the terrifying things I had just witnessed inside MegaWatts—and shivered. I had to make it through this without a meltdown. It might be the most important thing I’d ever done.

Another whisper came, more insistent. “Closer.”

It sent me spinning. I searched the darkness, feeling the weight of eyes on me. I was being watched. Up ahead, through the layers, I could see a heavy black curtain. I was pretty sure I knew what it was supposed to be—a kind of dramatic metaphor for the veil between the Inner Eye and the mortal world. The Fellowship wasn’t afraid of going heavy on the symbolism.

As I got closer, I could see that there was a small gap between the opaque panels, like the not-quite-drawn curtains of a puppet show. There was a kneeler on the floor in front of it. I stood there examining the curtain, wondering what I was supposed to do next. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. I practically jumped out of my skin. A black-shrouded
figure was standing behind me. It pressed me firmly downward, pushing me to kneeling.

“Kneel before the veil and place your right hand inside it, palm up. Behold the first mystery,” the figure said. His voice was deeper than when I’d first heard it five years ago, but it had a rasp to it that was impossible to forget. Hayes Cantor was unforgettable on multiple levels. I wished his face wasn’t covered—I was curious to know if he lived up to my memories. The deep brown eyes, the lips that quirked up to one side when he smiled …

I had to force myself back to concentration. Of all the times to be thinking about boys, now wasn’t one of them.

Gingerly, I placed my hand into the gap in the curtain. Even though it was mostly theatrics, the effect was unsettling, like when they make you touch a bowl of peeled grapes in a haunted house and tell you it’s eyeballs. Hayes’s hand remained steady on my shoulder. It was oddly reassuring, like he wanted me to know that I wasn’t alone. From the other side, a palm lowered down on top of mine.

“This is the way we know one another,” Hayes said from over my shoulder. At the same time, the hand within the veil curved my pinky and ring fingers in toward my palm. My thumb, forefinger, and middle finger remained extended, making some kind of sign. Recognition flashed through my brain—I had caught glimpses of Fellowship members making this symbol out of the corner of my eye, but before now I’d never thought anything of it. Then the hand inside the veil straightened my fingers, so that my hand made a flat plane once again.

“Show the sign of the Fellowship,” Hayes said.

At first I didn’t know what he wanted. Then I curled my pinky and ring fingers in, making the symbol once more behind the veil.

“The first mystery is complete,” a voice whispered from the other side. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female. The obscured stranger straightened my fingers again and slipped a band onto my ring finger. I knew it was the one the General had shown me. “Pass through the veil and move to your new life as an initiate of the Fellowship.”

The pressure of Hayes’s hand on my shoulder disappeared and I stood up. I turned around, but he was already gone, his black robe melting into the shadows. Disappointment stabbed through me, but I followed the instruction and pushed through the curtain.

I was now in an empty room with a single candle burning. The General was standing there, the flicker of the candle below casting a long shadow over his eye-patch. He looked almost ghoulish.

“You’ve made me proud tonight,” he said.

“Thank you for giving me the chance,” I said.

“Did you find Hayes a competent second?”

I nodded. “Is he still here? I’d like to thank him.”

“No. Seeing your second after a Rite is bad luck.”

My heart sank, but being here with my father more than made up for it.

“The Inner Eye has spoken to you tonight, Harlow; may it bring you Inner Peace,” the General said.

If the voice that spoke to me was my Inner Eye, then it wasn’t going to give me peace of any kind. And if it wasn’t, then my Inner Eye was a lie and so was everyone else’s. But the only thing that mattered in that moment was that the General was proud of me.

“Thank you, father,” I said.

My voice cracked. I choked back the tears that were pooling in my eyes. For the first time in a long time, I felt loved, like I mattered to him.

“Harlow, are you okay?” he asked.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. The words tumbled out before I even knew what was happening. “I hear a voice.”

The General stiffened. “What did you say?”

“I hear Her speaking to me. Saying terrible things. Showing them to me.” The words were like a weight lifting. My father would tell me it was okay—he would help me make it right.

Something sparked in the General’s eye. His entire demeanor transformed; it was like watching a grizzly rise up on its hind legs and roar. He grabbed me by the arm, hard.

“What did she show you?” he demanded.

“People dying,” I whispered, confused by his reaction.

He backed away, first one step and then another. An all-over body shake transformed him from raging predator to cowering prey.

“How long have you been communicating with her?”

“With who?” I asked.

My father was white as a geisha. He looked legitimately frightened. Reaching his hand back, to find the door I could now see partially obscured in the darkness, he lost his balance and toppled backward onto the floor. I rushed over and reached out to help him, but he crab-walked away from me like I was the Grim Reaper come to claim my next victim.

“
Dad?” I heard my voice reaching out from the ghost of my seven-year-old self. It had been years since I’d called the General that.

“You’re not my little girl.” His words slapped me across the face. My ears rang as if they’d been boxed. “You’re an abomination.”

A rogue wisp of dark hair broke free from his gel-slicked head and a bead of sweat slid down his forehead. He’d never before looked weak to me, but it was as if the man had been sucked out from inside his suit.

“Watchers! Watchers! Get her out of here!”

Watchers paratroopered in and strong-armed me like they were apprehending a terrorist.

“Sir?” The one in charge helped my father off the floor and awaited instructions.

I held my breath. What would happen next? Would he sever me right here and now?

“Take her back to the hotel,” he commanded. “Lock her in her room.”

They dragged me out. My heels scraped across the marble floor as I struggled to go to him, to come up with something that would take us back to five minutes before. The General wouldn’t look at me. He ran a shaking hand through his thinning hair. He no longer seemed larger-than-life.

The sunrise finished just as we got back to the hotel. Everything felt upside down. The Watchers pushed me
into my room and shut the door behind me. I could hear the squawk of their radios outside, which meant there was no chance of leaving. As if I had anywhere left to go. I
crawled into bed, too emotionally and physically exhausted to take off my boots much less try to decode my father’s reaction. I looked at the gold ring around my finger, which now felt like a shackle, and floated numbly to sleep.

In my dreams, the voice and I marched side by side. She was next to me, in front of me, above me, inside me. When I turned to identify the footfalls pounding in our wake, I saw an army of eyeless followers: dry sockets unseeing, hollow bodies marching on. They trailed behind us, a battalion of mottled corpses clipping along in perfect time. They spilled out of a forgotten temple clogged with vines, through a million identical doorways, deep into the jungle of my subconscious.

All at once, there was a girl standing right in front of me. She looked exactly like me.

I see you
, she whispered over and over.

The more she said it, the closer I drifted toward consciousness. Finally, I realized that I wasn’t staring at a girl. I was standing in front of a full-length mirror, whispering
I see you
to my reflection. And my reflection was smiling back.