Brightly (Flicker #2) (54 page)

“Your best guess,” Filo pressed.

Amelia exhaled through her nose. “You are all very young, and your circumstances are unique to say the least. You’re already skilled. When the investigation is complete, the Guild may very well be merciful and offer you pardons.”

“But there’s a chance they won’t,” Alice said darkly.

Somewhat reluctantly, Amelia nodded. “It will all depend on who the Guild happens to send and how they react to what they find. From there, your case will travel up the chain of command. I can put in a good word for you in my report, but beyond that, I have no influence. When the Guild comes for you, your fate will be in their hands. If you want to avoid that…”

“What?” Clementine asked tightly.

“I’m not supposed to tell you about this procedure, you know,” Amelia said. “The Guild prefers its investigations to be—”

“Ambushes?” Jason supplied.

“Discreet,” she said. “People who know they’re about to come under investigation tend to disappear, which the Guild finds rather annoying.” She paused, looking them over. “Does that make sense?”

Alice furrowed her brow. “Are you saying we should… make ourselves scarce?”

“For the time being,” Amelia said carefully, “you might consider it.”

“But we couldn’t come back,” Filo said. “That’s what you’re getting at, right? The Guild is expanding its reach, putting its eyes everywhere. Soon, there won’t be room for people like us to get around. If we leave, we can never come back.”

“That’s how it’s shaping up,” Amelia confided.

“So we can stay and face the Guild,” Davis said slowly, “or we can run, and keep running every time the Guild encroaches, and hope they never catch up. That’s a hell of a choice.”

“Be glad you have a choice at all,” Amelia said. “Most people don’t get one.”

“Why are you telling us all of this?” Filo asked. “What’s in it for you?”

“I was sent here to help the people on this island. Nothing in my orders said I had to stop with the sick ones.” Amelia paused. “I can’t do much more for you, but I can give you some advice. If you choose to stay,
cooperate
. Answer their questions. Do what they ask. Do not fight them. Otherwise, things will go very hard for you. Understand?”

At first, nobody spoke. Then Clementine nodded once. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “We understand.”

The next morning, after Amelia and Davis left to check on the curse victims, Clementine and Henry called everyone into the living room.

Jason went upstairs to fetch Nasser. A few minutes later, everyone made a point of keeping their gazes away from the stairs as they listened to the
thump-thump-thump
that signaled Nasser’s descent.

Three days ago, he’d walked downstairs for the first time since the surgery. The process was slow and precarious on crutches, but when he reached the bottom of the stairs, Nasser had smiled for the first time in days. It was a thin, exhausted smile, but for a moment, Lee had a wild hope that things really would get better. Then his expression closed off again. He looked somehow more unreachable than before, and she didn’t know what to think.

As he made his way across the living room, Lee thought that he really was starting to look better—healthier, anyway. There was more color in his face. He was getting around easier on the crutches. His eyes were different, though: shadowed and dark.

The right leg of his jeans was folded back and safety-pinned in place. Lee made an effort not to look. His leg bothered him enough without her staring.

It took Nasser an extra moment to settle himself. He grasped the armrest of the couch and carefully lowered himself beside Lee.

When they were all gathered, Clementine squeezed her hands together and looked across the coffee table at them. Henry sat beside her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry about this entire mess. I mean it. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. I know that doesn’t fix anything, but I wanted you to know.”

Her gaze flickered toward Nasser, but he shook his head wearily. “Just get on with it.”

Henry placed a stack of file folders on the table and spread them out. Each one was labeled in black marker. The files looked so ordinary, Lee thought, so terribly ordinary, not anything that someone should risk their life over. For the umpteenth time since they returned from Otherworld, Lee wondered if they would’ve been better off just leaving the files at Brightly and taking their chances.

“You upheld your end of the deal,” Henry said, “so we’re doing the same. They’re yours. But before you look at them, you need to know something.”

“The pages are enchanted,” Clementine said. “Some of the writing is always visible, but other parts are hidden, kind of like invisible ink. The writing can be revealed, but only by certain magical signatures. They were tailored for each one of you. Only the subject of the file can reveal the whole thing.”

“What parts are hidden?” Alice asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Your true names, for one thing,” Henry admitted. “We knew they were written in the files—it’s pretty obvious, when you see where the blanks are—but we never knew them.”

Lee frowned. “You said you knew the true names.”

“That’s what you assumed,” Clementine said. “We said that we had information that’s valuable to you, and we do. We promised to hand over the files if you helped us, and we’re doing that now. We’ve kept our word.”

“You lied to us,” Jason said, sounding bewildered.

“By omission,” Clementine replied.

“It was still a lie,” Filo argued. “We only agreed to come here because you let us think you knew our names!”

Henry shifted, looking abashed. “We misled you. We needed your help, and you never would’ve given it otherwise.”

“Let me get this straight.” Nasser’s voice was clipped, each word sharp and distinct. “You were threatening us with information you didn’t even have?”

“It wasn’t right,” Clementine said. “But it was what we had to do.”

“Don’t give me that self-righteous bullshit,” Nasser growled, with a vehemence that startled Lee. She laid her hand on his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Alice was cursed for nothing! I’m crippled for
nothing
!”

“If we’d known what would happen—”

“You would’ve done it exactly the same way,” Filo finished, his eyes flashing a hard, unforgiving blue. He wasn’t looking at Clementine, though. He was looking at Henry. “Don’t pretend. This worked out perfectly for you. The curse was broken. That’s what matters to you. Isn’t that right?”

Henry flinched. Quietly, he said, “That’s not the only thing that matters.”

Filo’s eyes didn’t soften. “Don’t speak to me.”

His voice trembled slightly when he said it, but Lee didn’t think it was with anger.

“Take them,” Clementine said, pushing the files across the table. Her jaw was clenched, but Lee could see her lower lip quivering slightly. “Please just take them.”

For a long moment, nobody reacted. Nasser moved first, but he didn’t reach for the files. He grabbed his crutches with one hand, pushed himself up off the couch with his other hand, and turned stiffly away.

“Nasser,” Lee started.

“I don’t want it,” he said firmly.

Lee started to get up, but Jason shook his head. Reluctantly, she sank back down and let him go. As Nasser crutched up the stairs, the
thump-thump-thump
made Clementine and Henry wince. They looked sick—but not half as sick as Lee felt when she looked at them.

When he was gone, Jason sighed and picked up two folders: his and Nasser’s. Apparently following his lead, Alice reached out and grabbed hers, as well.

Filo stared at his shoes, as if determined not to acknowledge the five people who were watching him. Rubbing his eyes with one hand, he muttered a long stream of Old Faerie. Then he snatched his file, got up and left without so much as looking at any of them. Lee heard the screen door slam in the kitchen as he headed outside.

“What did he say?” Henry asked, a moment later.

Alice pressed her mouth into a thin line. Bluntly, she said, “Something to the effect of, ‘Everyone under the heavens should die.’ It comes across a little stronger in Old Faerie. Swears don’t usually translate very well.”

Clementine looked dubious. “It sure took a long time to say.”

“Because that wasn’t all of it,” Jason said frostily. “I don’t think you want to know the rest.”

When Jason stepped into the spare bedroom about an hour after Nasser went back upstairs, he said, a bit nervously, “I brought the files. Both of them. I know what you said, but… I thought you should see them.”

Just the sight of the folders in Jason’s hand irritated Nasser. “What for?”

“You’re not curious?” Jason asked, sitting beside the bed. “Not at all?”

Nasser shook his head. “I don’t care.”

“Take a look,” Jason insisted, holding out one of the folders. “Here, this one’s mine. It’s already revealed.”

“Did it work like they said?”

He nodded. “There were blanks in the file, but I applied a little magic and they filled themselves in. I tried yours, too, just to see if the enchantment was really tailored for each of us. It didn’t work. My magic had no effect on your file.” Jason shook the folder impatiently. “Come on, Nass. Just look.”

With a sigh, Nasser accepted the file and skimmed notes. Most of the handwriting was Neman’s, but here and there, he recognized Morgan’s writing, as well. The pages were in no discernible order. Some were just scraps of torn paper with only a few words jotted on them.

He didn’t know what Jason wanted him to see. He didn’t want to read Neman and Morgan’s observations at all, didn’t want to know what went on inside their heads. Not now. Maybe not ever.

The names sprinkled throughout the files jumped out at him, though he knew them already. He spotted their parents’ names first: Ethan and Cassandra Rew. She had been Cassandra Cohen before her marriage, he recalled, but that wasn’t noted in the file. It was just something he remembered. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

Jason Elliott Rew,
he read on one page.
Nasser Ethan Rew.

Nasser paused. He hadn’t seen his full name written out in years. It looked unfamiliar and sort of vulnerable, just a few lines of black ink. He wanted to cover it up.

As he turned the page, something fell out of the folder and fluttered onto the bed. He picked it up and his breath caught.

It was a photo: Nasser, Jason and their parents, in the yard behind their house. Nasser must’ve been about nine years old, and Jason about six. The bright green grass made him think that it was summer then, but he wasn’t sure. He thought he should remember the day this photo was taken. There hadn’t been many moments when all four of them were together and smiling. But he had no memory of that day.

For a moment, he wondered when Neman and Morgan had snatched the photo. The night of the fire, maybe, or sometime before. Imagining the two of them pacing through the old house and looking through their photos made Nasser’s skin crawl.

“I forgot what she looked like,” Jason confessed.

“Me, too,” Nasser said softly.

Their mother had wavy, honey-blond hair that spilled halfway down her back. Somehow, he had never forgotten that. Even when the memory of her face went hazy and the sound of her voice was lost to him, he remembered the precise color of her hair.

The smallest details were the ones he’d managed to hold onto. Her hair. The bracelet she always wore, the little silver charms clinking merrily. The smell of her perfume. Over the years, he’d lost so many pieces, like the color of her eyes. Now he saw that her eyes were blue-gray, the color of rain, and he wondered how he could have forgotten.

All at once, he could see her in Jason’s face, echoes of her in his high cheekbones and long neck and straight eyebrows. She was right there. How had he never noticed before?

“You look just like him,” Jason said, nodding toward the photo. “I never realized. I mean, I know you’re tall like him. I remember how tall he was, but I forgot everything else. God, you look so much like him.”

Nasser shook his head. “No more than you.”

“Are you kidding? You’re the spitting image of him.”

“Will you stop saying that?”

Even if he wouldn’t admit it, he saw what Jason meant as he studied the photo. It was more than the height. It was the lines of his jaw, the shape of his eyes, the angle of his nose. It was the slope of his shoulders and his big hands—working hands, not a doctor’s hands. Nasser looked much more like their father than Jason did. That bothered him. It was bad enough that he shared two-thirds of his name with that man.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

“Nothing,” Nasser muttered. “I just don’t want to talk about him.”

“Okay.” Jason sounded unconvinced. For a moment, he was silent. Then he lowered his voice and said, “I’m so glad you’re still here. You should’ve seen us while Amelia was working on you. We were going out of our minds.”