The Woken Gods (21 page)

I extend my hand, not daring to hope. Barely breathing. But when he drops the metal into my hand, it’s what I think. Stripes. Gold bars that shine like sun rays, and it’s as if they’re working their magic already. I’m paralyzed.

“You have a place,” he says.

I close my fingers around them, unable to speak. Stripes. I have stripes.

One element of the plan just got way easier, but no grin bubbles up. Because every piece that falls into place means I have to do it. This is going to happen. My grandfather and I look at each other, solemn for entirely different reasons.

Bronson rises, then. But he stops in front of the unicorn poster, the question on his face plain. He’s perplexed by it. If Mom and Legba hadn’t warned me, I’d be completely charmed by him.

“Ann picked it out,” I say, and it startles me how weak my voice is. “It’s growing on me.”

“We’ll redo the room. You can paint it black, if you want.”

“Like my soul,” I say.

“I don’t think so.” He smiles, a sad one. “Know that I’ll do what I can to make this as painless for your father as possible.”

No
,
I think,
you won’t
.
“Thanks.”

When he reaches the door, I stop him. “Wait.” I need to play at normal – or something as close as I can sell to it. “Will you send Ann up with some of that ice cream?”

He lowers his voice, confidentially. “My guess is she’s waiting in the hallway already. She may not be a genius decorator, but she makes the ice cream herself.”

After he opens the door, he steps aside to let her enter. She has a metal tray gripped in both hands with a giant bowl on it. “You hardly touched your Cornish game hen,” she says. “And Oz said you were jealous of the boys. We can’t have that.”

I still don’t know if that means dinner was a chicken or not. Somehow, even though it’s been years since I’ve had good ice cream, I know I won’t taste that either. Not while I’m thinking about my dad in a cell beneath the Jefferson and picturing the long shadow of tomorrow, looming over us both. Dad must believe I blew town at last, left him to his fate. I hold the stripes in my hand tight, like I’ll never let them go.

“No,” I say, and muster a weak smile. “We can’t have that.”

I memorize every shade and angle of the unicorn poster. Really, it’s amazingly detailed.

I don’t have anything else to do while I wait for the rest of the house to quiet, everyone to visit dreamland. After a while, trying to count the number of points on the prism above the horn makes me pass out. I’m still telling myself I have to stay awake when I nod off.

But my dreams are the usual predictable, unicorn-less dark. I wake, as always, with a light coating of sweat, breathing hard, shaking, my mother’s voice in my ears. For once, I’m glad I have an internal nightmare alarm clock. Turns out it’s 3am. No one else seems to be stirring when I crack the door and listen. Perfect timing.

I make my way down the stairs, start to go in Bronson’s office, but have to scoot past the door. He’s not there, but a light is on. Justin is sitting at a table and chairs at the far end of the bookshelves, reading something and making notes.

So I decide to visit the kitchen and wait him out there. On the way, I pass a sliding door that looks out onto the yard. I can’t miss the creature right outside it. Anzu sits, staring in. I walk to the door, and press my hand against the glass.

On the small patio, he takes a step closer, and another. Until he’s so close his breath fogs the glass above my head. It evaporates immediately in the too-warm D.C. summer night. I peer up at him, glad for the barrier. His eyes are liquid gold and unreadable, and I wish I knew whether he could answer questions for me. Can Anzu talk? I wish I knew if between the two of us, we could get into the Jefferson and get my dad out. But I remember he’s a guard, not a conspirator.

Big difference.

I hear soft footsteps behind me. “Don’t worry,” Oz says. “It’s just me.”

Anzu… grimaces… if that’s the word for it. He doesn’t growl or roar, that we can hear through the glass anyway, which I’m assuming means he makes no sound. When he does either, it’s not subtle.

“Why shouldn’t I worry?” I say.

“Because it’s just me,” he says, again. “Couldn’t sleep?”

He stands at my shoulder, and I can
feel
him there even though he’s not touching me. We stare out at Anzu together, and he stares back in at us. Considering us.

“Nightmares.”

“Sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be. I always have them.”

“That sounds like something I should say more than sorry for, then.”

I turn my head to the side, despite it making me nervous to not be watching Anzu when he’s
right there
on the other side of the glass.

“Nah,” I say, “nothing to be done about it. History. Ancient. I’m not the only person in the world with nightmares. Not even close.”

“Still sucks. I thought maybe you were up because of what’s happening with your dad.”

“Doesn’t help,” I agree. “But, hey, shiny new life. Unicorns and tiny Cornish chickens.”

“Unicorns aren’t real,” he says. “Just a few gods that look like them.”

“But are they chickens? Those Cornish things?”

“Tiny, more expensive chickens.”

“Well, that’s one mystery solved.”

“And you also had ice cream.”

“I did, but I felt too guilty to eat it.”

Anzu yawns wide and the motion drags my attention back to him. He turns from us and stalks back into the yard. Oz takes my shoulder with a gentle hand, “I think that’s a sign we should go back to bed.”

The word bed is another word I need to add to the list of things he should stop saying, along with my name and the word nice.

When I face him, I realize how close we’re standing. Closer than we were in his reliquary earlier. He has on a T-shirt, plain and blue, with his pajamas tonight, which is less distracting. I start to ask him what Justin is doing in Bronson’s office, but instead I flinch when his fingers find mine. It’s not as if he’s lacing our hands together in some cheesy pop song way. He’s just taking my hand to tug me up the hall toward the kitchen. Casual. No big deal.

Only I know this is dangerous. Not for me, for Oz.

I want to warn him off. Tell him he should have a chat with Tam if he doubts me. But, for now, any interest he has helps. So I feel bad about it, but I don’t say a word.

He releases my hand when we get to the kitchen. Relief.

“My dad’s on trial tomorrow. Bronson told me.”

“I know,” he says, looking in the fridge instead of at me.

“Look, I don’t need you to be on mopey Kyra duty. You can go to sleep.”

“I will,” he says, “as soon as I get some water.”

“Why’s Justin up so late?” I ask.

He whirls from the fridge, shuts it behind him. “What do you mean? Justin sleeps like the dead. Like a baby.”

“Well, he’s in Bronson’s office.”

Oz swings back the way we came, and I follow, even though it’s none of my business. When we get to the office, the light’s out. No one’s there.

“He was here. I swear.”

Oz moves further into the office. I follow him. There’s nothing on the table where Justin was sitting before… Wait. There is. Oz walks over and plucks a pen off. He holds it in the air. “This is his.”

He slips it into the pocket of his plaid pajama bottoms. “I’m sure it was just some scholar nerdery that couldn’t wait. But you won’t say anything?”

It takes me a second to understand what he’s asking me. Earlier Justin said Oz trusts me. Oh, Oz, you shouldn’t. “To Bronson? Don’t worry. Your – his, whoever’s – secret is safe with me.”

“I’m heading up to bed,” Oz says, “after all.”

He’s going to talk to Justin. I say, “Good night.” When I don’t make a move to leave, he frowns but leaves me behind. He’s on a mission to interrogate his friend.

I slip over to the desk, and punch in Bree’s number. I wait through the rings, counting them, and, as I’m about to give up, someone answers.

“Hello?”

It’s Tam. Tam answers.

I sit there, thinking of what to say. Then I hang up… not in
shock
exactly. But surprised, and knowing I should call back. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be there. I let the receiver stay where it is. If they find out my plan, they’ll want to help. That can’t happen.

I’m on my own from here on out.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tam Nguyen replaces the receiver of the phone on Bree’s desk. The cord snakes across the floor of her bedroom and out into the upstairs hallway. They had to dig a long extension line out of a closet filled with extra camera pieces and miscellaneous gear and hook it to the phone in her mom’s room, to get it to reach all the way in here.

Bree smacks his shoulder for the second time. “I told you,” she says. “I told you to let
me
get it. I should never have invited you over here.”

“Kyra’s my friend too. It might not even have been her.”

“This is almost exactly when she called last night. Tam, that might have been our only chance to stop her from doing something stupid. We shouldn’t have gone downstairs.” Bree sighs, the weight of several worlds in that sigh, and lowers her head onto her crossed arms on the desktop. Not looking at him.

He wants to reach out, run his hand over her black curls. He wants to reassure her it will be OK, though he doesn’t believe it will anymore. But he’s had a hard time thinking of much else – besides worrying Kyra’s going to get herself in deeper than even she can swim out of – since the visit to Enki House. What the sages showed him is why he’s here.

Instead of a hair touch, he settles for one on her shoulder. He tries to make it as light as possible. “Hey,” he says.

She peers up at him, her hair falling half in front of her face, her eyes so green it nearly hurts. How in the world has he missed this? All these years?

“What?” she asks. Those green eyes drop to his hand.

“Why don’t I… I don’t know, make you some tea or something?” Tam asks. “You might feel better.”

Bree shakes her head, eyes wide with disbelief. She shrugs his hand off her shoulder. “Do you even know how to make tea?”

Tam is quiet. He does know how. He learned how to make it from his dad, one of the few family traditions he brought here with him. Tam’s dad has tea when he needs to be calm, to think. That’s what made him suggest it.

“Fine,” Bree says. “I’ll make it. You stay here. I need a minute.” She gets up, stops in the door and says, “If she calls again, do not answer. I’ll get up here to answer.”

He nods.

As soon as she’s gone, he strides around the room, idly taking in her art on the walls. He stops in front of a fresh canvas, heavy paint. It’s of a murky, water-filled tank with several long sage bodies inside, one head visible above the rim. Is that a black heart in the air above it? Stretching so it’s almost unrecognizable, so it fills the air of the chamber? It is. He has no idea what it means.

But when she still isn’t back, he checks where he’s wanted to all night. This is why he came here, instead of asking her to his house. Not that Bree would have agreed to leave the phone. She faked a fever so she could stay home sick from school today, and wait beside it.

Tam opens the closet door and paws the clothes aside. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this. It’s a violation of her privacy – the kind of thing the Skeptics would say is a civil rights violation. But they’re… friends. And he
has
to find out if the sages were messing with him or if what he saw was real.

Plus, it’s not as if Tam, average citizen, is equivalent to a secret Society raid or a Man-in-Black showing up to take hard drives or reams of printouts. He’s not going to take anything.

He’s just looking. That’s what art is for.

What he saw in the vision was Bree drawing, and what she was drawing – him – and then her stashing the sketchbook away in here before Kyra came in the room.

Yahtzee.

There are several sketchbooks propped against the back wall. He takes the first, listens to make sure the coast is clear, and flips it open on his knees. Him. The next page is him too. And on the next one, another image of him. This should be creepy, but it isn’t.

Bree draws him how he wishes he could think of himself. How he wants and wishes to be. He tears one sheet out of the sketchbook and folds it, puts it in his pocket. Then he replaces the sketchbook, and shuts the closet.

He sits on the bed, waiting, trying to take in the rest of her art. But he can’t look away from the one of the sages in the tank, even though it’s clearly unfinished. She’s managed to capture how it felt, the sliminess of their touch. Even though the visions they give are gifts. Clearly gifts, though it sure didn’t feel like one at the time.

What did
she
see? He’s curious. She’s been short with him ever since Kyra took off. Concern, he’s been telling himself. That’s all it is. But what if the sages showed her something of him too? Something that makes her
not
see him that way anymore.

He’s such a fool. And Kyra. Her dad’s trial is tomorrow. No way she’s gone belle of the Society ball. She’s up to something, and it’ll be unbelievable, and it’ll be crazy, and it might get her killed. That’s the other thing he’s worried about. He doesn’t know how he and Bree are supposed to handle that.

Bree comes back, and he can only be happy that she is here. She brings two cups of tea. She could kick him out, but she isn’t.

“Do you want to stay?” she asks. “In case she calls again?”

“Sure,” Tam says. “I don’t care about getting in trouble this week. We have to watch out for her. That’s more important.”

Bree takes a sip of tea. He can tell from the heat of the cup in his hands that it’s too hot. He wants to lift hers away, protect her from burning her tongue. He sits his down on the nightstand beside her bed.

“Did you guys get back together?” Bree blurts the question, tea sloshing onto her fingers.

Tam can’t bear to watch that, so he does lift the cup out of her hands. He sets it next to his own.

“No,” he says. And then, “No, we should never have been together. It would never have worked.”