Indexing: Reflections (Kindle Serials) (Indexing Series Book 2) (15 page)

“There will be guards stationed at the door at all times, and Agent Davis will be expected to keep up his research duties while he remains here,” said Ciara, ignoring me like a pro. It occurred to me that she could have read
all
my files. She’d said she hadn’t, but if she was a liar, most of my tricks would be familiar to her. Damn. “We’ll be in constant radio contact, if nothing else. No hearts will be scraped off the ceiling on my watch if I have anything to say about it.”

“How bad are things out there?” asked Jeffrey.

For the first time, Ciara sobered. “Bad enough that I canceled a cruise with my husband to come here and take over this team. Bad enough that Childe is calling inactive guards back to duty. There have never been this many breakouts in a short period of time. They’re turning up the calming charms, and the inmates are still on the verge of riot. They can taste change on the air, and they want a part of it.”

“Do we have any idea what Birdie
wants
?” asked Andrew. “I know she was going for the Index before—at least that’s what Henry said; I was asleep at the time—but it’s just a book. It doesn’t control anything.”

Now it was my turn to stare at someone. All of us gaped at Andrew, even Demi, who had only been part of the Bureau for a short time. I had seen the organization born, and the urge to claw his eyes out for saying that was stronger than I cared to consider. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the murderous impulses that were suddenly thrumming in my veins.

Be better than this, you have to be better than this,
I thought, scolding myself the way my mother had always scolded me, before the narrative started taking root in our innocent little family.
You are a wicked, wicked child, and I will never ask you to be a good girl, but I will always ask you to be better.

It didn’t help as much as it used to, back when I could still remember what my mother’s voice had actually sounded like, instead of what I had turned it into, one century at a time. It helped enough that I could trust myself to speak without screaming. “The Index links every story in the world to their monomyth,” I said. “It says ‘Snow Whites have skin as white as snow, and hair as black as coal, and lips as red as blood,’ and it says ‘they will always eat the apple, except when the apple is a pomegranate, or a wine-red grape, or a slice of cake.’ It says ‘this is how they live, this is how they love, this is how they
lose
,’ and we protect it because when you change it, you change the stories it connects to.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Andrew.

“Snow Whites used to wear a poisoned girdle,” I said. “Disney left that out. It got less common, because people didn’t think about it. But the Index remembers, because the Index was written by people who wanted to know
every
angle,
every
aspect. They codified legends, and they turned them doubly dangerous.”

“The original, mundane ATI only covered European and some Middle Eastern stories,” said Jeffrey, sparing me the rest of the explanation. “We’ve expanded it since then, because we’ve had no choice. There are more stories in the world than just the ones that emerged from Germany or the British Isles.”

“You don’t say,” said Andy, tone turning sarcastic. “I still don’t understand how writing them down made them worse, or why we kept doing it if it was such a bad thing.”

“Writing them down made them easier to identify and prevent,” said Jeffrey. “When a baby is born with Henry’s skin tone, or with hair that grows unnaturally fast and strong, it’s easy to figure out what story the narrative is trying to shape them into. The trouble was, increased iconography came with increased awareness. The more we write the stories down, the more they anchor themselves in the public consciousness, and the less they change.”

“Stories are like the sea,” said Ciara, jumping in. “They naturally ebb and flow and change. They’re tidal things, mercurial and wild. We put them in cages when we started the Index, and they’re angry. They grow stronger the longer they stay caged, which makes them harder to contain. They also grow more rigid, less capable of adapting to new situations and circumstances.”

“So like when this little girl in my first grade class got angry because I was cast to be Cinderella in my school play?” asked Demi hesitantly. We all turned to look at her. She reddened and ducked her head, but kept talking. “She said you couldn’t have a Mexican Cinderella. Our teacher said
anybody
could be Cinderella, but this girl just kept shouting how that wasn’t the story.”

“First grade racists,” said Andrew. “I hope you knocked that kid down on the playground.”

“Somewhat like that, although the narrative is less strict about race and gender than some children can be,” said Ciara. “The stories don’t change as much, because they’ve been written down, and the versions people tell one another come from those transcriptions. But when they do change, they have teeth.”

“None of this explains why we’re still keeping the Index,” said Andrew.

“Because we’d rather have a bunch of really nasty monsters that we know how to identify and fight than uncounted invisible monsters that can strike at any time,” I said wearily. “The mundane ATI covers Europe. Ours covers everything, because there was a period where only the European stories could be averted.” A Woman with Two Skins had stalked the streets of Boston once, when I was younger and less willing to ask for help; she had killed more than fifty people trying to enact her story, and would have killed more if one of the Archivists hadn’t convinced someone to tell him her story and let him write it down. The Index was our greatest weapon and our greatest burden, all at the same time.

“If Birdie gets the Index, she could rewrite any story to end in any manner she wanted,” said Ciara. “She could make it so that Snow Whites all died a true death upon eating the apple. She could make the Sleeping Beautys put entire continents to sleep. Her potential for mayhem would be unlimited.”

“It’s worse than you think,” said Jeffrey. He turned back to Henry as he spoke, like telling her would somehow hurt less than telling the rest of us. “She could write her
own
stories. The Index . . . it started off as a way for people to keep track of the narrative. We told each other about it. We taught each other to trust it. We gave it narrative weight, and there’s no way we can take that away again.”

There was a moment of stunned, horrified silence. Finally, Ciara asked, “Are you sure?”

“No.” Jeffrey looked up again. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. But am I right? I’m terribly afraid I am. If you want to save the story you call the world, you need to move, because you don’t have as much time as you need.”

We moved.

# # #

Birdie’s house had been roped off by the Bureau since the explosion that had taken out the living room, half the yard, and most of the back hallway. It helped that there weren’t any neighbors: she had been a loner, living on the edge of the forest in her own little fairy-tale cottage. That probably should have been a warning sign. It was definitely a sign that the Bureau had gotten too big to police itself safely. Back when I’d joined up—first as a prisoner, then as a curiosity, and later as an agent, when all the people who remembered my origins were safely in their graves—we’d been in one another’s business constantly. No one would have been able to hide a plan like hers.

“The modern world sucks sometimes,” I muttered, turning over a piece of charred drywall with the toe of my boot. That was one place where the modern world
didn’t
suck: The ready and affordable availability of sturdy footwear. I firmly believed that no one really understood the value of a good pair of boots anymore.

“What was that?” asked Andrew.

“Nothing,” I said. I kicked the piece of drywall across the room for emphasis. It hit the far wall with a thud; somewhere deeper in the house, Demi squeaked with surprise. “She’s not coming back here. There’s nothing in the Mother Goose framework that says she has to have a single nest, and this place is trashed. It’s not fit for human habitation.”

“So where’s she gonna go?” asked Andrew. “She has no job, no known associates, no credit cards. Her bank accounts were frozen after she was locked up in Childe. Face it, the lady’s out of options.”

“She has a Cinderella who can transform people into glass with a single shard, and a Rapunzel we still haven’t identified,” I said. “She doesn’t need anything else. Between the two of them, she can take over whatever she wants.”

“So where do
you
think she is?”

I paused, narrowing my eyes. “That’s not my job.”

“I know,” said Andrew. “You’re the lazy one. You go where you’re sent, and you do what you’re told. I’ve watched you for years, and I’ve never understood it. You don’t seem like the type who likes to follow orders.”

“I hate it.” I flipped another piece of drywall with my toe. “It makes me want to scream and slit throats. That’s why I do it. Sometimes you have to act against character if you want to have any freedom at all. Why are you talking to me, anyway? You don’t talk to me.”

“Henry talks to you.”

That was true. Henry talked to me, which was something hundreds of people had decided not to do since the day I became the Bureau’s problem. I would never have been as nice to her as I was if she hadn’t talked to me. I wouldn’t have been as mean to her either. She was a target because she’d made herself an ally, and if there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that I wasn’t allowed to have allies. The narrative wouldn’t stand for it.

“Henry doesn’t have the sense Grimm gave the seven dwarves,” I said. “Fuck off.”

“Nope.” Andrew crossed his arms. “Not going to do that, because we’re down two people for as long as Henry’s in the hospital, and I don’t know this Ciara lady well enough to trust her with my life. I’ve got a husband. I’m starting a family. Demi’s still just a kid. It’s time for you to step up, pull your head out of your ass, and do your damn job like the rest of us.”

I blinked at him slowly, trying to process his words. Finally, almost gently, I asked, “Do you know how long it’s been since somebody spoke to me like that?”

“Too damn long, apparently,” he said. “What do we do, Sloane? If Birdie isn’t coming here, where is she?”

I took a deep breath, forcing down the rage that struggled to rise up and overwhelm me. Anger was my constant companion, more faithful than my sister’s memory, more familiar than my mother’s faded voice. Finally, I said, “Rapunzels are only comfortable in towers. Cinderellas are drawn to glass. And Birdie’s going to want something that fits her whole ‘bird’ theme. Look for a skyscraper or hotel with an avian name.”

“Like the Swan?” Demi’s voice was hesitant. I turned. So did Andrew. She was standing in the hallway door, her flute clutched tightly in her hands. It occurred to me that she was holding it more and more these days. It was becoming her security blanket, and maybe that wasn’t such a good thing, considering what she was.

Then again, maybe we weren’t going to live long enough for her to turn on us. “Where’s the Swan?” I asked.

“It’s a tourist trap hotel outside of town, near the wineries,” said Demi. “My mom used to work there, before she quit to stay at home with me and the brats. It’s four stories tall, and the whole front of the building is glass, so the tourists can see the grapes growing while they’re sitting inside, drinking their wine. It’s really expensive.”

“Bird name, glass wall, near something that has vines?” I said. “That’s it. That’s where Birdie’s going to be hiding, at least for right now.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little on the nose?” asked Andrew.

I looked at him flatly. “Haven’t you learned anything from your time with the Bureau? The narrative is all about ‘on the nose.’ That’s what gives it the power it needs to do the things it does. The more ‘on the nose’ something is, the better position it’s in to serve the story. This place exists, so it’s where they’re going to be.”

“Then we need to be there too,” said Andrew. “Good work, Sloane.” He turned and walked away, presumably to find Ciara. I stared after him, unable to shake the feeling that he’d tricked me somehow, and that bad things were inevitably going to follow.

# # #

We pulled up in front of the Swan barely forty-five minutes later. Ciara wasn’t as aggressive a driver as Henry sometimes was, but let’s face it: neither was Mr. Toad from
The Wind in the Willows
. Henry never met a stop sign she didn’t feel needed to be run, or an unprotected left turn she didn’t want to take at top speed. Ciara obeyed traffic laws and brought the vehicle to a complete stop whenever necessary. It was just that somehow the car handled better for her, and the lights seemed to stay green just that fraction of a second longer than she needed to blow through every intersection that we came to.

She caught me looking at her speculatively as we pulled up in front of the hotel. Her grin was a cutlass slash across her face. “The narrative doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m a Bluebeard’s Wife. My story ends in either decapitation or widowhood. So it’s trying to fit me into something else. I think it’s hybridizing me a bit with Sweet Polly Oliver and a little bit with Anne the Pirate Queen. Any ship I sail finds calm seas and safe harbor, and that includes the cars I drive.”

“You should join NASCAR,” said Andrew.

Ciara laughed. “Believe me, I’ve considered it.”

The hotel looked normal, save for one thing: It was perfectly still. Nothing moved. Sunlight glittered off the glass front of the building, and a bird chirped somewhere in the distance, but apart from that, everything was still. Ciara stopped laughing. Slowly, the four of us got out of the SUV. Demi was clutching her flute again. I didn’t say anything about it.

The Bureau has used me as a story detector for years. I’m wound tight in the narrative without quite belonging to it—quite—and so I can tell, sometimes, when things are about to start happening. As I closed the door behind me, the sticky-sweet feeling of being wrapped in a hundred yards of cotton candy began to muffle my limbs, trying to tangle them and hold them fast. There was a story unwinding here. I just didn’t know which one it was.