The Violet Hour (12 page)

DEARLY DEPARTED

It took me an hour of searching the grounds before I finally found Adam.

“Hold up!” I yelled. He froze, his back to me, the gravel of the Wangs’ manicured drive crunching under our feet.

Four black-clad Watchers snapped to attention, gripping their semi-automatics tighter like they might knock a round into the chamber and fire a warning spray into the sky. You’d think the Wangs were preparing for a militant apocalypse instead of holding teenagers hostage. For the first time, I felt truly afraid.

Adam turned to me, his face a tempest of ragged emotion, and the reality of what had happened slammed into me. Mercy was dead. The Watchers had taken her, limp, from my arms. Maybe I could have stopped it if I’d told someone about my visions sooner.

Then Adam bent double, the way I’d seen him do the time he got sucker-punched by some gutter punks outside the Blue House who were harassing a townie girl on her way home from school.

“Tell me it was a vision,” he said to the ground. His voice cracked, and it looked like he wasn’t far behind.

My fingers and toes felt numb. This watered-down reality belonged in a REM cycle, not my life. I wanted to lie to him. But what would be the point?

“It wasn’t a vision. I wish it was,” I said.

“This is my fault.” The words wrenched themselves from his body.

I put my hand on his back. His body was wracked with silent sobs as he tried to swallow his sorrow. Tears traced rivers down my cheeks. Mercy shouldn’t have died.

“No. It’s not,” I said. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

He stood up, his head in hands, and let out a primal scream of anger and frustration. Then he looked at his hands like they belonged to someone else. They were covered in Mercy’s blood.

“Here.” I took my cardigan off and handed it to him, “Wipe it off.”

I watched him smear the VisionCrest logo red. It somehow seemed fitting. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.

Taking a step closer to him, I placed my hand against his chest.

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” I said.

A storm cloud descended over his features; the tortured look of defiance and solitude he’d been carrying for the past few months returned. I could see him physically shutting me out, and it made my heart constrict.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner about Sacristan Wang being a virologist?” he hissed.

“You didn’t give me a chance! And
why
won’t you tell me what happened to you when you were kidnapped? What’s the terrible thing you did?” I countered. His hypocrisy was infuriating.

“I’m not playing this game with you right now, Harlow. Mercy’s dead. Talking isn’t going to bring her back.”

“Adam, it’s important. I need to know what you know.”

He shook his head, “I’m going to see if I can help. Someone who cares about her should be taking care of things.”

He might as well have slapped me across the face. As he turned from me, I reached out and grabbed his arm, feeling the muscle tense against my touch.

“Don’t go. We might not have a lot of time.”

“Harlow! Harlow!” Dora’s breathless cries reached across the lawn, closing in.

Adam’s brow furrowed and he looked over my shoulder toward Dora. “All I care about right now is Mercy,” he said.

Before I could object, he stalked off across the grounds, shoving his hands into his pockets, his back rigid. I was left standing there alone, drowning in dread, confusion, and hopelessness. Dora came panting up behind me. As I turned, she crushed me into a mama-bear hug. She was crying.

“I wish I could take back every time I said Mercy Mayer should die in a fire. I was only joking,” she said. Stubin stood next to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

I could tell by the desperate wrinkles around Dora’s eyes that she was taking this really hard. “It’s not your fault,” I mumbled, watching Adam’s silhouette fade into shadowed edges of the woods beyond the house. Several Watchers followed him closely. As if there was any way to escape this place.

“What’s going on?” Stubin asked. “This is getting scary.”

It was a question with no answer. All three of us looked down at our feet.

“Do you think the Wangs have something to do with it?” Dora asked, hiccuping. It seemed like it was a thousand years ago that I’d talked to her about my spooky t
ê
te-
à
-t
ê
te with the Queen of Creepy.

“Not something,” I answered. “Everything.”

“That’s a serious accusation, Harlow.” Stubin was completely in denial. “Dora told me you think the Wangs are up to something bad, but an esteemed member of the Ministry like Sacristan Wang would never hurt any of us. Mercy must have eaten something rotten.”

“Oh really, Stubin? I didn’t realize you were such an expert on Sacristan Wang’s character. And last time I checked, rancid fish won’t make you puke up your intestines,” I snapped.

Dora stepped in front of me, wiping tears off her cheeks. “Hey! Put the crab claws away. This isn’t Stubin’s fault.”

“Well, Stubin Mansfield doesn’t need to know every detail I share with you in confidence.”

Turning on my heel, I strode back toward the house. Instantly, I felt awful for venting at Dora and Stubin; they had no idea about all the other stuff going on. The voice, the visions, the nighttime encounter with Mei Mei. I wanted to tell her now, but I couldn’t do it with Stubin there. I was terrified he would dismiss me and she would take his side. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

It seemed I’d officially alienated my only three allies, all in the space of a few hours and right when I needed them most. I kicked at the gravel, watching the white rocks scurry over their neat borders and into the lawn. Take that, landscaping.

The grounds were starting to look a little like
The Walking Dead
, kids ambling around like zombies. I guessed the adults must be dealing with the forensic situation inside, but things were rapidly devolving. As I neared the front of the house, more confused students wove their way uncertainly out the front door and congregated in cowed little groups on the lawn. Everyone was retelling the story of what they’d seen, as if there was some fresh angle or insight that was going to make it all make sense.

“She was clutching her chest when she ran in, like she was having an asthma attack.”

“I heard if you get bitten by a flea here, you’ll for sure get a hantavirus. I bet that’s what it was.”

“She’s probably in the iris of the Inner Eye right now. My father said you circle it for a while, and only when you unlock the last secret do you proceed into the pupil.”

“Did you see the way Adam ran to help her? There’s something so romantic about it, like Marc Antony and Cleopatra.”

Only children of the Fellowship could mind-warp barfing up your entrails into dying a poetic death, sealed with a righteous kiss. Their commentary was a revolting reminder of how twisted the world inside the Fellowship bubble really was.

A hush came over the group as Brother Howard emerged from inside, looking haggard. He clapped his hands once really loud and everyone fell silent. For a second, there was only the sound of crickets in the fading twilight.

“Everyone.” He gulped at the air like a fish, trying not to cry. Brother Howard was not the right man for this job.

A tear rolled down his cheek. He cleared his throat and his voice cracked. His body trembled, and he looked over his shoulder. Watchers stood behind him; one of them nodded. I realized that he wasn’t just shaken up. He was scared.

“Mercy Mayer was a precious snowflake, beautiful and special, too soon to melt from this world. She has now transcended the Eye and resides within the infinite truth.”

He was reciting the words as if reading from a script. My throat constricted. I wanted to find Adam and force him to talk to me; I wanted to make up with Dora; I wanted to know what the hell was going on here. Instead, I was struck just as useless as everyone around me.

Brother Howard held both of his hands up over our heads like he was healing the lame, then intoned the VisionCrest mantra, his voice shaking. “From your Inner Eye—”

“Attain your Inner Truth,” the crowd responded, me included. After seventeen years of conditioning, it was like tapping my knee with a plastic mallet.

“For now, return to your rooms and remain there to await instructions. Use this time to reflect on your Inner Truth. It’s what Mercy would have wanted.”

Yes, I’m sure that would’ve been a top priority for her.

A Watcher behind Brother Howard cleared his throat. Brother Howard fumbled to find words. It seemed like he had been coached on what to say, and, from the looks of it, threatened to the point of terror to deliver it right.

“There’s no cause for worry. Mercy was a very sick girl, with a rare blood disorder. She didn’t want her peers to know because she didn’t want to be treated differently. It’s not contagious. You have no reason to be concerned.”

Translation:
commence panic now
. I’d never seen Mercy so much as sneeze. She would have done almost anything to maintain her spot at the top of the social food chain, but I didn’t think chronic illness was within her power to disguise.

“Now return to your rooms. Send positive energy for a speedy passage into the infinite truth for our dear departed Mercy.”

Like lost sheep, everyone started to trickle back inside.

“From now on, I’m calling this place the Tainted Wang,” Dora said morosely, walking up behind me. The joke was her olive branch, her way of calling a truce. We had never been able to stay mad at each other. Our longest fight was two hours.

I was so relieved, tears came to my eyes. Stubin walked up on the other side of me and put a reassuring hand on my arm.

“That sounds like a bed and breakfast for pedophiles,” I said.

“This is so screwed,” Dora said.

“Completely,” I agreed.

We stood at the foot of the staircase. I turned behind me to look across the lawn for any sign of Adam. Nothing. Boys funneled left, girls funneled right. I had no choice but to fall in line. This time it was definitely like a funeral march. Dora pecked Stubin on the lips and hooked her arm into mine. He turned the color of a beet.

“See you later, alligator,” she said, then tugged me behind her up the staircase.

“I need to tell you something, D,” I said as we entered
our room, closing the door behind us. Mercy’s clothes
hanging in the closet were unbearably depressing.

“No apologies,” Dora said. “Our friendship defies convention. We’re the best thing we’ve got going, sugarpie.” She tapped the tip of my nose with her finger.

“There’s something else.”

“So let it out, sister. I know you’ve been holding out on me—tell me everything. Spill it.”

I told her everything. For our entire friendship, I’d never trusted her enough to tell her what was happening to me. I’d never trusted anyone enough. I always expected them to judge me the way I judged myself. To blame me, call me crazy, and reject me.

Instead, Dora put her hand over mine.

“I’m so sorry this is happening to you. We’ll figure it out. It’s not your fault,” she said.

The wall I’d built around my heart crumbled. I hadn’t given my best friend enough credit. I hadn’t given Adam enough credit. They were compassionate and kind. And they loved me. I let the tears go, and Dora let me rest my head against her shoulder.

Of all the moments of our friendship, this was the sweetest of all.

There was a stiff rap at the door. We both looked up as a Watcher let himself in.

“Sister Wintergreen, I need you to come with me. The situation is urgent,” he said.

Thanks for the newsflash, CNN.

Irritated at being treated like an idiot, I didn’t even look at him. “Yeah, I know. We were kind of eyewitnesses, so thanks for the update, but it’s a little late.”

The Watcher didn’t budge. “I’m afraid I have to insist.”

I followed him to the hall, irritated. “What’s this about?” I asked. “I really need to be with Sister Elber right now.”

“It concerns your father.”

My blood turned to ice. The other shoe had dropped.

“My father? What about him?”

Oh, please no.

“Come with me.”

TREACHERY

Snick-snick-snick-snick-snick.

The seconds ticked by on the grandfather clock in the Wangs’ library. My thighs were cling-wrapped to the calfskin chair facing Sacristan Wang’s massive desk. The shadows of unread books towered over me on all sides. I’d been sitting here for over an hour, just waiting.

Finally, the door clicked open and the two Wangs entered. Sacristan Wang was dressed like some kind of ship’s captain, an elaborate paisley ascot tied around his neck and gold tassels perching at the shoulders of his navy, brass-buttoned blazer. A white captain’s hat, with gold-leaf detail and an embroidered homage to the Inner Eye in its center, completed the outfit. Madam Wang looked even more bizarre, if that was possible. She was dressed in full bedroom regalia: ivory silk nightie tied with a cape, powder-puff kitten heels, mint-green face mask, thick red lipstick, zebra-print headscarf, and a miniature cigar.

The Sacristan took his seat at the desk and Madam Wang stood behind him. She puffed on her slim torpedo, emitting a noxious cloud worthy of government regulation.

I coughed, choking a little on the fumes of her traveling smokestack. The Sacristan’s fingers drummed against the top of his desk as his eyes stayed fixed on me.

“Sacristan Wang,” I tried to sound confident. “I want to know where—”

“Silence!” he yelled, slamming his hand down hard on the desk. Madam Wang puffed away behind him. “I will ask the questions and you, Sister Wintergreen, will answer them.”

He steepled his fingers and reclined in the leather wingback. “First of all, Brother Howard has been sent away. You and the other Ministry children are in my care now.”

I thought of poor Brother Howard—the jackrabbit panic in his eyes after Mercy’s death. “Lucky us,” I said.

“Are you aware that your father is an apostate of the true faith?” Wang asked.

“What does that even mean?” I said, clenching my hands in my lap to keep from leaping across the table at him.

Fzzzzzzzzzzzttt.
The dull buzz of the voice started in. Turning my concentration inward, I forced it down. Madam Wang snorted, like she knew what I was doing and how futile the effort was.

“Apostasy is the act of renouncing the faith,” he told me with a condescending smile.

“Nobody is more devout than my father. It would be ridiculous for him to renounce a religion he made up himself,” I said.

From outer blindness, inner sight.

“Like father like daughter, I see. The Patriarch began his abnegation of the true faith of the Inner Eye from the moment he formed VisionCrest. The organization is built on a foundation of lies, and there are those of us within the Ministry who have long worked to subvert his attempt to pervert it.”

Betrayal in the violet light.

“Did you kidnap my father?” I asked, clenching my teeth.

“The sect of the True Believers answers only to the Inner Eye herself,” he said.

“Herself?”

“Don’t play dumb, girl. You know exactly who I mean. My wife tells me you are well acquainted with Isiris,” Wang said.

That name again. It resonated with some deep part of me; a memory that taunted, just out of reach. I wanted to ask who she was, but that would mean admitting they were right.

“Hers is the voice you hear. The eyes with which you see, and which see you.” Madam Wang answered my unasked question, smoke curling from her nostrils.

“Why on earth would the Inner Eye be speaking to me?” I asked.

A promise and a sacrifice. Purity exacts a price.

The voice was coming through clearer every minute that passed. My stomach writhed like a snake charmer’s basket.

Sacristan Wang tilted his head back, looking up at Madam Wang puffing away. “Was I unclear about who was asking the questions?”

A gray cloud billowed around Madam Wang’s silk turban. “You were not,” she answered, even though the question was clearly rhetorical.

He tapped his cocktail weenie fingers together at his chin. The ruby in his VisionCrest pin glinted, as if winking at me.

“Very well. Here is what is going to happen next, Sister Wintergreen. Tomorrow morning, the Patriarch is scheduled to give a press conference at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Many members of the Ministry will be in attendance, and you will speak in your father’s place. You are going to indicate that your father has decided to take a short leave from his duties, and that in his place he has named me as his successor.”

It was impossible not to notice the surprised arch of Madam Wang’s overplucked eyebrows. It seemed that this was news even to her. The buzzing in my brain became a keening wail, microphone feedback and a crossword jumble of words stampeding over each other.

I stood up out of my chair, holding my hands to my head. “Where is my father? I’m not doing anything until I speak to him,” I managed to say.

A Watcher strode over and pressed my shoulder, forcing me back into my chair. The keening stopped.

There was no way I was going to let Sacristan Wang have VisionCrest.

“You are not in a position to negotiate,” Wang said. “And he is not in a position to entertain guests.”

He smiled. A chill whispered up the back of my neck.

“The Prelates would never allow it, not to mention the rest of the Sacristans,” I said.

“We’ll take care of that part, not to worry. You just do your part,” he said.

“And if I say no?”

Both the Sacristan and Madam Wang chuckled. “We have your father,” Wang said. “We have your friends. We have the virus that we tested so successfully on Prelate Mayer’s precious daughter. I think you will say yes.”

A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I thought of Dora and Adam, Stubin and the others. I couldn’t let what happened to Mercy happen to them, too.

“I’ll only do it if you let the others go—send them away or I say nothing,” I said, trying my best to sound confident.

Wang’s eyebrows raised a millimeter. “Never accept the opening offer, eh?”

I tilted my chin up.

“I’ll send the others back to Twin Falls in the morning,” he said. “I have no use for them. They are like so much vermin crawling through the halls of my home.”

I exhaled. It seemed too good to be true that my request was granted so easily.

Wang lifted a finger. “Except … there are two or three that I have grown fond of. I couldn’t possibly part with them.”

His words landed like a punch to my stomach. I may have saved my classmates, but my friends weren’t going anywhere.

“And what happens after this press conference?” I asked.

“Isiris chose us. We honored her with the blinding of Mei Mei, and she ordained us as her emissaries.”

“How do you know what she wants?”

“Madam Wang, as you already know, is gifted in the sight,” the Sacristan said. “Isiris communicates her wishes through my wife. What happens next, Sister Wintergreen, is that we embody Isiris’s will.”

“As it should be,” added Madam Wang.

My heartbeat whooshed in my ears. Isiris was the voice in my head, and now the Wangs said she was the Inner Eye. I’d never believed there was such a thing; I always assumed the General had just made it all up. Now I wasn’t so sure, but the only person who could clear it up for me was either in the Wangs’ possession or—well, I couldn’t think about the other alternatives.

“You’re both traitors to VisionCrest. You’re a disgrace
to the Ministry,” I said.

“The Patriarch is the traitor! He corrupts the purity of the Inner Eye with every breath he takes. But not for long.” Wang stood up, the military creases in his white polyester pants straightening. He walked around the desk and stood right in front of me. He was so small that he was precisely at eye level. “You underestimate me, Sister. It would be wise to be fearful.” His breath was sour.

“Oh, I know exactly what you’re worth. And believe me, I’m not afraid of you,” I said. It was a total lie, but the only power I had left here was the illusion of it.

“You should be afraid. Not of me, but of Isiris,” he intoned.

“Screw Isiris,” I spat back.

“It seems you would benefit from some time to reflect. Think of your friends, sleeping just over your head”—he motioned up to the ceiling—“unaware that their fate is in your hands. I hope tonight their dreams are sweet.”

He did a sharp about-face and marched from the room. Madam Wang eyed me lazily and walked around the desk. She blew a smoke ring in the air, then leaned down, her face so close to mine I could smell the minty-clay smell of her face mask.

“I told you not to tell your friends anything—now you have endangered them even more. Let us hope for all our sakes that they are keeping their mouths shut,” she hissed.

I had no idea how she knew I’d spoken to Adam and Dora about what happened at our tea, or why on earth she was suddenly speaking as if her lot was cast with us. All I could do was stare in stunned silence.

“Listen for Mei Mei. She will take you to see your father,” Madam Wang whispered, the thick sweetness of cigar smoke on her breath. Before I could react, she swept from the room in a dervish of silk.

I had no idea what to make of it, but she clearly hadn’t wanted the Sacristan to hear her. Maybe there was more to Madam Wang than met the eye.

The click of the lock felt like the lid of a coffin closing over me.

Five hours later, I was still listening to the
snick-snick-snick
of the clock ticking off the seconds, each one bringing me closer to the press conference. Five hours of isolation, worry, and torment. Five hours of not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do next.

I considered looking for a way out of the library. Maybe if I could find the others and warn them, we could escape from the Wang mansion and go for help. But I knew that was a pipe dream; there was absolutely no way any of us would get past the Watch unnoticed. And Madam Wang had said Mei Mei was going to take me to see my father. I desperately needed to see him; if he was okay, then there was still hope. And he was the one person who could confirm or deny Sacristan Wang’s assertions about the Inner Eye. He might be able to help me fix this mess.

I realized that Sacristan Wang had implied that he was not alone, that there were more traitors inside the Ministry. They were almost certainly behind the kidnappings—but was there really some larger force guiding their actions?

Pieces of my last exchange with Madam Wang kept coming back to me. I tried to decide if her words were a threat or a warning. I couldn’t tell if she was an enemy or some kind of twisted ally.

The voice you hear is your own. She plagues you because she wants you to return.

She’d been talking, at our tea, about the leader of the so-called True Believers. Was it possible that whoever this leader was, she was speaking to me? Invading my mind? It sounded crazy, but crazy was the new normal.

I see the mirror image of your soul.

The words suddenly clicked into place. All the times I’d thought I was hallucinating, seeing things in my reflection—it was Her, Isiris, becoming stronger. Breaking through to me. Seeing the world through my eyes. The mirror image of my soul.

Snick-snick-snick.
The room swam around me as the realization hit: there was some sort of truth buried in VisionCrest. It felt like the circumstances for this insight ought to be more dramatic, but it was in the quiet of an empty library, alone with my thoughts, that it happened.

The moment when I first believed.

It was both unremarkable and profound. I was the daughter of the Patriarch, and daughters didn’t have any power. And yet the General was a normal person—unremarkable—before he found me. I was the axis around which his life had changed. Around which the world changed.

Shrrrrk.

A scraping sound grated from the blockade of books on the wall next to me. One section of them began to move. I hopped out of my chair and cowered behind the side of the Sacristan’s behemoth desk. Was it Isiris? By accepting the truth of her existence, had I somehow conjured her? Or maybe I had officially lost my mind. Perhaps this entire day had been a figment of my corrupt imagination.

Shrrrrk.

My spine stiffened. I peeked over the edge of the desk, which reeked of lemon-scented furniture polish and made me homesick for my father.

The bookcase was cracked open; where a solid wall had been before, there was now the sliver of a darkened doorway to something beyond. I stood up slowly, an inch at a time.

Breath rushed from my lungs. Standing there, tiny and ethereal as ever in her white satin blindfold and crepe dress, was Mei Mei. Even though she couldn’t possibly see me, she beckoned me forward as if she could.

Just like Madam Wang had promised, Mei Mei was taking me to see the General.