Call Forth the Waves (31 page)

CHAPTER 30

I woke gasping, with my arms thrashing in the air because I thought I was still under water.

“Hey! She’s awake!”

Winnie’s announcement drew a crowd to my bedside in a room I didn’t recognize, but I was fairly certain it was another hotel. An exceptionally nice hotel. Someone had convinced her to work her magic again. Klok was seated beside my bed, functioning as my medical monitor. When I tried to sit up, he shoved me back so he could check my vital signs.

“Can you talk?” Jermay asked. He hooked my pinkie finger.

Klok slapped our hands to separate them; we were messing up his numbers.

“I saw Evie,” I said, weak and shaky. “And a mermaid. Wait . . . did I just say I saw a mermaid?”

“Oxygen deprivation. You saw Nim and her dolphins, so it’s not too far off. She’s still out, by the way. Between the collars and the underwater demolition, all of the hydros crashed hard.”

Hang on, Chey-chey.
I’d forgotten how much my sisters sounded alike.

“My touch cut out again. I didn’t have enough air to get to the surface.”

“We kind of figured that part out.”

“I am so sorry,” Winnie said. “We were all in the transport, and the driver wanted to leave without you, but Lawrence and Peter and Callie and I, we told him that he needed to wait as long as we could keep the door open without water getting in. But the guy freaked out and he was going to leave, so Lawrence went outside, thinking the driver wouldn’t leave while he was standing there, but he shut the door and took off and there wasn’t anything we could do. I tried to tell him to turn around, but the intercom was one-way. The driver’s compartment was completely isolated and he couldn’t hear me.”

She hugged me so hard that she pulled me up off the bed.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. I got away and someone else got left behind. Just like with Birch.”

“That wasn’t your fault, either,” Birch said. It was a touchy subject that neither one of them liked discussing; I hadn’t realized how guilty she felt for escaping Arcineaux’s Center. That was a lot of weight to drag around.

Klok beeped at us, but there was nothing on his voice screen. He pointed at his wrist, to a watch that wasn’t there.

“He’s instituted a strict four-second hug policy until you’re recovered,” Jermay explained. “He’s also started threatening me in strange and frightening ways on a daily basis. Any idea what that’s about?”

I shrugged and tried very hard not to laugh at Klok’s attempts to be more brother-like without actually telling anyone that he was my brother. I wasn’t sure how long he wanted to keep the others in the dark, but I was sure he had his reasons for not telling. Anonymity had been his security blanket for a long time; things like that were hard to give up.

“Is Lawrence okay?” I asked.

“He was in the hospital yesterday, but he’s back home now,” Winnie said.

Right. Because that’s where the normal people went when bad things happened. They went to their houses and their parents and their fluffy dogs. They didn’t have to scam their way into hotels or grow their own medicine because hospitals were too public, too exposed, and too dangerous. They didn’t have to pretend to be high-school students or live inside the identity of their maybe-not-so-dead twin or wonder if the brassy gryphon watching over them was really their father in a form he chose because it could protect them better. Those of us who were less mundane were the only ones who had to deal with gripey cyborg brothers beeping in our ear.

“No one’s hugging anyone, Klok, so knock it off,” I said. “You’re giving me a headache.”

He kept beeping.

“That is not a hugging beep,”
Klok explained.
“That is a Squint-is-hungry beep. He has a remote, so I can be aware in any room. Also you should know that you are healthier than you look because you look like you nearly drowned and then slept for two days. Ha ha. Ha ha.”

Teaching Klok to tell a joke. That was my next feat of derring-do. I wanted to hear him say it out loud with a voice box and not a keyboard. If I was truly my father’s daughter, then I could figure it out. One lousy knock-knock joke was all that I asked.

The beep came again, and Klok left to answer Squint’s summons. My vitals must have been stable enough that he could afford to focus on the only real father he’d ever known.

“Squint’s been eating since you broke him out,” Birch said. “I’ve never seen someone put away so much food.”

There’d been no mention of Smolly, but if she’d been killed or captured, Klok would have given it away. He was too happy to be mourning his surrogate mother.

Someone knocked on my doorframe and stood there hidden by a huge vase of pink and purple carnations. “Flowers for the lovely lady,” Nagendra said. If his stage-ready voice hadn’t given him away, his stork-stilt legs would have.

“Seriously?” Jermay said to Birch. “I’m right here.”

“Forget you,” Winnie said. “
I’m
right here.”

“I am not responsible for those,” Birch said. He wisely held back from adding that any flowers he created would have been twice as big and three times as fancy.

“Should we believe him?” Jermay asked Winnie slyly.

“I say we beat it out of him.” She snatched the pillow from a chair.

Birch jumped up and ran, while the other two chased him down in the next room.

“These came to the door.” Nagendra set the flowers on the table beside the bed. “Should I be worried that someone knows you by name and knows where you are?”

He plucked the card from the holder, displaying “Penelope” on the envelope. “1004” was written neatly in the bottom corner; I assumed that was our room number.

“You opened it,” I said. The flap had been torn.

“I wanted to see if it was signed. What I found was worse.”

I pulled the card out, and a shower of gold glitter came with it.

“Stardust,” I murmured.

“I know what that word meant to your father, Penn. What does it mean to you?” Nagendra sat on the edge of my bed, a nightmare of a man to most people, but he couldn’t intimidate me even when he tried. “Why, the first time I saw you after the train, were you wearing Commission silvers? And why are you getting flowers with one of these?” He plucked the card from my hands and held it up between his fingers, turning it slowly from the front to the back. It was another of Warden Nye’s black business cards. The ankh on one side, and on the other a name: Errol Bakke.

“Who is he?” Nagendra asked.

I’d never heard the name before, but I knew he was the warden who had Vesper. I’d kept my word and destroyed the Sea Center; now Nye was keeping his and giving me the next bread crumb. This way, I’d be close in case he needed another favor.

But I wasn’t telling Nagendra that. I’d been out on my own for over a month, and I wasn’t about to start jumping at orders again.

“I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll fill you in on my time with the Commission if you fill me in on yours.”

He scowled, pulling the chains on his face tight with a clinking sound as they moved through their loops.

“Didn’t think so,” I said. “I did what I had to do to survive. That’s the only explanation you get for now.”

“Fine, we’ll change the subject. Winnie and Klok explained what happened to you after the train was sacked,” Nagendra said. “I’m familiar with the warden who tracked you down.”

“Because you were assigned to Brick Street with him?” I countered.

Nye had never named Nagendra as the partner who had been beside him when the riots broke out, but it was the only way the pieces of Nagendra’s history fit. He’d been Commission, he’d been on Brick Street, and he’d run as fast and as far from that life as possible once the dust cleared. Nye’s reminders were of blinding pain; Nagendra’s were the memories that continued to haunt him.

“Did
he
tell you that?”

“I’ve seen your file,” I told him. “Warden Nye kept tabs on you the same way he did me and my sisters, but he didn’t tell me anything. I found out on my own.”

A wall of mistrust had gone up between me and Nagendra, and I wanted it gone. He had never been a father figure in the traditional sense, but he was a mentor and a protector, and he was someone that I could have literally told anything to without fear of judgment. He had way too many skeletons clogging his closet to blame anyone else for their mistakes, and he’d always been brutally—some might say inappropriately—honest, without a filter in place to protect feelings. When he first sat down, I’d been so certain that all I had to do was ask and listen while he unraveled the tangled threads of my family’s legacy. He’d know all the things my father hid from me. He’d know about Klok, and my mother, and what side of the line Nye actually fell on. He’d know about Sister Mary Alban and Cyril Bledsoe and the people who helped them save touched children from the Commission.

Nagendra had some of the subtlest movements of any man I’d ever seen. His expressions could be broken down into individual muscle twitches, each with its own meaning, and what the muscles around his eyes had to say wasn’t good. I saw grief for the loss of his beloved snakes and fear for what would happen to him now that The Show and its protection were gone. I could also tell that he was holding something back, and that scared me most of all.

“What is it?” I asked. “If it’s the flowers, forget them. I don’t take any of Nye’s gestures seriously. Just leave them with the golems; Bijou likes to eat these cards, and Xerxes will make confetti out of the carnations.”

“Actually, I’m more concerned about the boy than the flowers. How long has he been with you?”

“Birch? A couple of months. He escaped from Nye’s Center with us, but you don’t have to worry about him, either.”

“Not him. The other one.”

“You mean the boy I asked about in the detainment area?”

His expression was puzzling now, like there was something simple I was missing. Maybe he’d somehow gotten news of the boy who brought Arcineaux back from my nightmares.

“I know he’s dangerous,” I told him, “but—”

“No,” Nagendra said. “Just listen for a minute. Winnie told me about the Centers and the Mile. She told me about the Hollow—how you found a grave.”

“We found Zavel’s top hat on the stones,” I said. He was obviously trying to lead me somewhere, but I couldn’t read the signs. “Jermay was devastated.”

“Penn, did Jermay tell you he made it to the Hollow before he was caught?”

“He was taken on the road with Winnie and Klok.”

He’d slipped through the rabbit hole that we’d hoped would take us both away from Nye and his men, but he and the others hadn’t made it far enough away.

Nagendra shook his head. “Jermay was taken at the Hollow with us. Rabbit holes are fickle unless you really know what you’re doing. Klok’s mass made his fall short. Winnie was carrying a passenger, which screwed up the calibration. Jermay was the only one whose device worked correctly. It took him to the road near the woods, but he got lost looking for the house. We’d sent most everyone on, but Zavel, Bruno, and I were waiting for stragglers; we found him.”

“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay would have told me.”

He would have said it wasn’t safe to go back to the Hollow because it had already been raided.

“It wasn’t a full incursion, but there was a fight.
Jermay fought
, mainly to protect his father, and he fought hard. Zavel left his hat behind as a memorial, then he went with Bruno. I’m sorry, honey.” He reached out and patted my hand where it rested on the comforter.

Nagendra had never once in my entire life called me “honey,” even when I was a little girl. He’d called me plenty of other things, most of which strangers would be horrified to hear, but he didn’t use common endearments. He said they rang false.

“What are you saying?” I asked. “It wasn’t a grave?”

“It was.”

“But if Zavel left alive—”

“Penn, honey, we didn’t bury Zavel. We buried Jermay.”

I pulled my hand out from under Nagendra’s.

“That’s not possible,” I said. “Jermay was in Nye’s prison. I rescued him.”

Whoever they had buried had to be a pretender. Someone like Beryl or Greyor who could change his face at will. The Commission had sent someone to infiltrate the Hollow using the form of the one person who wouldn’t be expected to display any special ability beyond a few magic tricks.

“Zavel knew his own son,” Nagendra argued. “Whoever Warden Nye put into that cell, it wasn’t Jermay Baán. Nye’s tricky, and he’s smart. He could have—”

“No!” I snapped. “You’re wrong.”

Zavel knew his son, but I did, too. I grew up with him. I’d memorized his face and his movements. I knew the back of his hands like the back of my own, and I knew that the boy who’d been held at the Center was
my
Jermay because
my
Jermay was still alive.
My
Jermay had been grieving the loss of his father and fighting the desire to blame Birch for all of Nye’s crimes, because Birch was the only one he could reach.
My
Jermay was running down the hall of our hotel, celebrating because we’d reclaimed part of our family and he was finally secure enough to relax and act like a kid.

That was what my voice told me, but then I heard Winnie’s voice, so loud and so persuasive in my memory, reminding me that Nafiza’s words were never wrong. That even if she couldn’t interpret what she saw, she couldn’t stop it, and it always came to pass. Winnie was present at the end of the Mile, just like Nafiza had seen. Anise fell, because stones couldn’t fly. And there was a false heart, ready to betray. She’d spoken those words to me and repeated them to Jermay.

Why us if there wasn’t a reason?

Why hadn’t Klok told the others the truth of who he was? We could trust each other with our lives, so what made him hesitate?

“Everything okay?” Jermay asked, poking his head in the door as he ran by.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just a little off.”

“It’ll pass,” he said, and flashed me a lopsided smile before answering Winnie’s call to arms from the next room.

It was almost exactly the smile I remembered greeting me from the wings or the stage when we’d cross between acts.