The Book of Blood and Shadow (48 page)

“And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted out—to do what? Who would you be, if you weren’t Eli Kapek, demented warrior of the faith?”

He looked blank. “I …” He laughed sourly. “I have no idea. Pathetic, isn’t it? I like Stephen King. I like kickboxing. I like doing my laundry. Not exactly a recipe for a full and happy life. There’s no dream deferred, Nora. There’s nothing but what my parents gave me, which was no choice. About anything. From day one. I was done. And I was finally going to tell them. That’s when we got the call.”

“About me?”

“About Chris. The
Hledači
watch Voynich scholars. We watch the
Hledači
. Your professor’s attack was a warning sign. The murder was confirmation. And because the only people who knew anything were a bunch of teenagers …”

“They sent you.”

“It was supposed to be an honor,” he said bitterly. “I was supposed to thank them for it. Screw that.”

“But you did what you were told.”

“Yeah. Like a good little soldier of the faith.”

“And you used Chris’s memory to get me to trust you. Which is disgusting.”

“I did lose a cousin I barely knew to the
Hledači
. That was true.”

“But it wasn’t Chris.”

“No. It wasn’t Chris.”

All the things I’d told him, the stories of us—and the things I’d told him about Andy, about me. Things I didn’t tell anyone. For a moment, I wanted him dead. Not out of anger, or revenge, but because it was the only way to erase what he knew. To turn secrets back into secrets.

“And Chris’s parents?”

“They’re safe, like I told you. They think we’re the FBI, and they’re hiding out from the Mob.”

“So you were there to find the
Hledači
or something? That’s why you have all those files on Max?”

“Sort of.”

“What does ‘sort of’ mean?”

“By the time I got there, Max was long gone. We knew that. They didn’t send me to Chapman for him.” He stopped.

“They sent you for me.”

“Yes.”

“Because of this
vyvolená
crap.”

“Because they knew the
Hledači
would be back for you, and that would draw them out.”

“So I was bait.” I waited for fury to overtake me, but either I couldn’t be bothered to make the effort or some part of me knew I didn’t have much right to feel surprised, much less betrayed, as if he had owed me anything, much less truth. I’d been very clear
that he couldn’t be trusted, and eventually, clear that he wasn’t who he said he was. If I’d failed to reach the final conclusion, it wasn’t because he hadn’t left enough bread crumbs.

“I told them we should get you out of the country once we had Max. That it was enough.”

“Apparently you don’t carry much weight with the
Fidei Defensor
high command.”

“You didn’t want to leave,” he reminded me. “You wanted to win. So I tried—”

“The torn letter. That was you.”

He nodded.

“You stole the other half, to stop us from finding anything, and then—what? Changed your mind?”

“I went against the oath. And then … what I did today.”

I realized it wasn’t just his hands that were shaking. Faint tremors ran along his jawline, as if every muscle was straining to suppress some explosion from within. His skin, pale on the best of days, had turned a sickly paper white. His hands had receded into his cuffs, fingertips poking out like he was a kid who’d stolen his older brother’s sweatshirt, and his expression matched the crime, guilty and watchful. It was the face of a boy waiting to be punished.

“Father Hájek, he was, like, your boss or something?”

“You could say that.”

“And I’m guessing today isn’t going to get you employee of the month.”

His lips trembled more when he tried to smile. He didn’t volunteer any details about what condition he’d left the priest in.

He swallowed hard. “So that’s the story. Questions?”

“Why?” I asked. “Why help me?”

“What was I supposed to do, let him shoot you?”

“No, not today. I mean, yes, today. But when you changed your mind about hiding the last letter. And even before that. That first day in the church when you were arguing with Father Hájek. You were trying to help, weren’t you? Get them to lay off?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Maybe I don’t believe everything I’m supposed to believe,” he said. “Maybe I haven’t in a long time.”

“So do you believe I’m the
vyvolená
?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Not at first.”

I groaned. “Come on.”

“It was when you told me about your brother.”

“That’s why you weirded out,” I said.

“It’s a coincidence. Your brother; Elizabeth’s brother. But it’s more the connection between the two of you. I can feel it. I know you do.”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t have to. It’s the way you talk about her. The way you treat the letters. The way you won’t give up on her. How sure you were in the crypt.”

“I came here for Max,” I said. “I kept going for Chris. And to save myself. It’s got nothing to do with Elizabeth Weston, or some imaginary connection between the two of us.”

“You don’t feel any connection to her at all?”

I didn’t want to feel it; I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. So I forced myself to laugh, then held up my hand. “God is not guiding this. I think I’d know.”

“If you say so.” He stood up, brushing off the grime and, at the same time, any indication of vulnerability. “We have to get you out of here. Out of the country. Tonight. They’re not going to
stop coming after you, and neither are the
Hledači
. And I am not going to let them hurt you.”

I got to my feet. “Adriane’s waiting for me. I have to make sure she’s safe.”

“Oh. Adriane.”

“What ‘oh’?”

“We have to talk about that, too.”

“Careful, Eli.”

“She told you to meet her somewhere, didn’t she?”

“Because your crazy friends came after her. What else was she supposed to do?”

“I bet she told you not to bring me along.”

“She doesn’t trust you,” I said. “Shocking, I know.”

I couldn’t have this conversation, because this conversation meant feeling something, it meant thinking about Max and doubting Adriane, and it meant pain. More of it. I was too tired.

Adriane was waiting for me, and my only priority was finding her, making sure she was safe, and taking her home.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, and it’s nothing. Either way, I’m coming with you. And I’m staying with you until we get you out of here.”

I didn’t argue. As long as he was with me, I could be sure of what he was doing, if not why.

It had nothing to do with wanting his protection.

It had nothing to do with wanting him around.

“I have one more question,” I said as we walked.

“Ask.”

“What happens now? I mean, to you? After what you did?”

“What do you care?” he asked, in a low voice.

“You said anything I wanted to know. That’s what I want to know.”

The bridge loomed before us, a crush of people. I pulled Max’s coat tighter around myself, digging my fingers into the rough wool. A blast of cold wind gusted from the east.

“I broke my oath,” Eli said softly. “It’s not a sin they forgive. My parents were always very clear on that.”

“But they’re your family.”

He nodded, but not in agreement. It was more like he’d lost the will to hold his head up. “Yeah. They were.”

21

He had, after all, saved my life. So I humored him. Adriane was expecting to meet me at nine; we arrived at eight. The empty plaza that bordered the restaurant offered few places to hide, but Eli deemed a couple large Dumpsters tucked beneath a stone archway good enough, and so, feeling like an idiot, I crouched with him behind the brown plastic bins and waited. The perch afforded us a clear view of the plaza and the mouth of the alley leading down to the restaurant, and faint snatches of conversation floated toward us as the occasional diners made their way toward the scent of food. But at this hour, there weren’t many of them. And there was, unsurprisingly, no sign of Adriane, who had never been early in her life.

“This is stupid,” I whispered eventually, my legs cramping up.

“So go inside. I’ll wait here.”

“Right. I’m trusting you to lie in wait for her.”

“You know I wouldn’t—”

“Forget it. We’ll wait together. Just so I can be here to say I told you so when nothing happens.”

She showed up as the bells were chiming eight-thirty. Half an hour early, but she raced into the plaza, ruddy-cheeked and out of breath, spinning in a slow circle, her gaze a lighthouse beam scanning
the area—for us, I thought, though there was no reason for us to be there. Seeing her, knowing I hadn’t lost the last person I had left, knowing that Eli had been wrong, that despite everyone else’s lies and hidden agendas, Adriane was still simply Adriane, I could finally breathe again. Then I saw my mistake.

Actually, first I heard it, recognizing the irritated inflection of the words almost before I recognized the voice, so many times had I heard it directed at her. “You’re late.”

Eli’s hand was over my mouth before I could gasp. Or scream. Or whatever the appropriate response would be to your dead boyfriend taking your best friend in his arms and slipping his tongue into her mouth.

Eli grabbed my shoulders, holding me in place, or maybe just holding me up. He didn’t know me as well as he thought, if he thought I would fall.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, I thought, for the second time that day, as they came together, Adriane’s calisthenically honed body twisting around his, lithe arms caressing, Adriane up against a wall, perched on his narrow hips, Max’s greedy tongue roaming her lips, the nape of her neck, beyond, below.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, I thought, because Eli was right about the signs—Eli had seen them, Eli had read them, Eli wasn’t blinded by his desperation not to know. What else had I decided not to know? What other rock-solid facts of my life were a lie, and how many rocks could crack before the foundation gave way, and I fell through to whatever emptiness lay below?

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was.

Wait for me
, the note in the pocket had read, the pocket of the jacket that Max had slung over Adriane’s shoulders, though I was the one he claimed to love and I was the one who’d been cold.

“I was worried,” Adriane murmured.

“I told you I’d be fine,” Max said. “Did you do it?”

“She’ll be here.”

“Alone?”

Adriane nodded, then kissed him again. I forced myself not to close my eyes. We were so close, and dangerously obvious, peering around a corner like cartoon detectives; all they had to do was decide to look—but their eyes were locked on each other. We were invisible.

“I’ll be by the service entrance,” Max said. “Don’t wait too long.”

“I got it. But I still don’t see why we have to—”

“I told you, it’s safer if you don’t know. Safer for her, too. I promised you I could fix all of this if you just trusted me, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re good?”

She kissed him.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.

“Once this is all over, we’ll tell her about us, right?”

“Definitely. As soon as we’re all safe and this is over. We’ve waited long enough.”

“She’ll understand.” Adriane sounded unsure. That was a lie even she couldn’t pull off.

“We’ll make her,” Max said. There was no uncertainty in his voice.

The worst part wasn’t seeing his hands on her, or imagining the things I hadn’t seen, the things they’d done together, the things they’d said about me—or worse, not bothered to say. It may have been the straw that broke the camel’s heart, but it wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was knowing what this meant. It was all true. Max had faked his own death. Which meant Eli was right, and
Max was aligned with the
Hledači
. Which meant Max had done their bidding, had drawn me to Prague, had acted the victim, had manipulated us into tracking down the
Lumen Dei
, had cared only about the clues, the letters, the map. Which meant Max had been using me from the beginning, for my special
vyvolená
-ness and my stolen letter. Which meant Max, who had lied about who he was and what he wanted with us, had wanted only the
Lumen Dei;
the same Max who had stammered poetry and blushed at my touch and declared his love in a Wal-Mart parking lot, had killed Chris.

I wondered what Adriane had for him to take.

Some infinite time later, Eli grabbed my elbow and jerked me away from the sight of the two of them devouring each other.

“The service entrance,” he whispered, and I nodded, mutely obedient, happy to follow anyone who had a suggestion for where to aim myself, for how I was supposed to get through the next several seconds, and the next after that.

He circled the restaurant, and I followed him.

He slid into a narrow gap between two large, whirring metal machines: cooling units or freezers or backup generators, I didn’t know. I knew only that the entire area stank of fish and rotting fruit, and that I followed him there, too, squeezing in beside him. “ ‘What fresh hell is this?’ ” I murmured, but Eli only looked at me in confusion. I wondered whether Max recited poetry to Adriane, too, or whether he saved that technique exclusively for the pathetic lovesick girls he wooed on
Hledači
command.

“Did you know?” I panned my gaze back and forth between the service entrance, the parking lot, and the river that curled around it, avoiding Eli, who had seen me see them, which was too much.

“I didn’t know he was alive.”

“Not that.”

“I suspected something. I told you.”

“But did you
know
?”

Silence.

“You didn’t want to hear it from me.”

I felt the bile rise again, tangy and sour. Eli touched my shoulder.