Crossed (34 page)

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TABITHA:

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE HALL OF JUSTICE

(Seven days before Greta dies)

After Eric posed for a few seconds on the steps of the chapel and then inexplicably flew off to the top of the
donjon
in a huff, Luc motioned for us to follow him into the castle. I was much more interested in the castle than in whatever Bea claimed “happened here.” Even when I became a vampire, it never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that I’d get to go to Paris, meet immortals, and visit magic castles.

Before my trip to the Château de Vincennes, the only castle I’d ever been to had been the one in Disney World. It was a few years before Rachel died. Mom and Dad took us there for three days and I remember not being able to feel like we were really, really going until we were inside the park and I saw Cinderella’s castle.

In my head, I’d been afraid it was all going to turn out to be a big joke. Dad had come home late that Thursday night. We’d already been in bed and he’d made us get up and pack in fifteen minutes. In the back of the van, Rachel had complained about
forgetting her pillow and her toothbrush, but Dad wouldn’t have any of it. He had driven all night, and for the longest time, I’d watched him. Rachel had slept on my shoulder. Mom had dozed in the passenger’s seat. Miles Davis had played on the CD player, hypnotic music that made my eyes want to close. I’ve never been a fan of that sort of jazz, but Dad was, and instead of sending him into the lethargic state to which it often sent me, the music worked its way inside Dad, brightening his eyes, making him alive, making him smolder like the end of the cigarettes he used to smoke before Mom had made him quit.

“We’re heading to Florida?” I’d asked. A rhythmic pattern had set up as we’d crossed onto a rough section of highway.
Ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump. Ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump.
Rachel had squirmed against me in unconscious irritation at the vibrations that shook the car with each jarring
ba-thump.

Signs suggesting attractions at Disney and at Universal Studios had sprung up, punctuated by “We Bare All” signage and ads for Sea World.

Eventually, I’d slept. We’d stopped for gas once, the lack of motion pushing me awake. “Wha—?”

“If you’re awake you can have something.” Dad had looked back at us from his position near the gas pump.

“Can I have a Coke and a candy bar?”

He’d nodded. When he had come back, he’d presented us with two bottles of Coke and two Zero bars.

“They had glass bottles.” He’d been proud and excited. “Coke tastes so much better in a glass bottle.”

We’d talked about stupid stuff and had sipped our Cokes while he drove. I didn’t remember being awake very long, just long enough to eat the Zero bar and talk a little. Dad never talked about anything of real consequence, not with me or Rachel. We were just girls to him, as if “just” being girls was a bad thing.

He’d made the drive in eleven hours, and even when the
stop-and-go of the Disney World traffic had woken me up again, I’d still been convinced we were going somewhere else. We’d parked in Minnie 37. That was the parking section. Dad had told me to remember it and I still did.

Waiting in line at the ticket booth, I’d heard how much money the tickets cost and my mom had begun to complain that we couldn’t afford it, but Dad had bought us all five-day Park Hopper passes, the kind that never expire.

I remember having seen a topiary shaped like Mickey Mouse as we headed to the Ferry Boat. I’d been sure something bad was going to happen. The boat would sink and we’d all die in the Seven Seas Lagoon. But we hadn’t. Rachel had leaned over the side, smiling down at the water, and I’d walked up to the top level, admiring the palm trees and eyeing the resorts in awe.

When Eric asked me to marry him, and when I said yes, when I asked him where we were going for our honeymoon, I think I was hoping he’d say Disney World and that we’d stay at the Polynesian or the Contemporary Resort. Little did I realize when he said Paris that, in a way, it was the same thing.

As we’d passed through the turnstiles and walked under the train station, I had broken into a run. I’d ignored Main Street USA completely, running by the re-creation of old-time Americana, and had stumbled. I’d caught myself on a bench and run into the street, darting past a horse-drawn trolley. Mom had called my name, anger clear in her voice, but Dad’s laughter had spurred me on. I’d passed the ice cream parlor, heading into the square, and I hadn’t stopped until I was standing in the little park area where Main Street makes a circle, and I’d been able to see the whole thing.

“Well, what do you think?” Dad’s hand had touched my shoulder.

Behind him, farther back, I’d heard Rachel complaining. “We’re just going to have to walk back to get our picture taken.”

“It’s okay.” I’d been so full of teenage cool. Embarrassment had colored my cheeks at the thought of how I’d raced across the park. Going ga-ga for fantasy castles didn’t go with the black polish on my nails.

“Okay, huh?” Dad said.

He’d hugged me and, despite a plaintive cry of “Da-aad,” I’d hugged him back.

James, Eric’s war buddy, touched my shoulder as I eyed the real thing. The so-called dungeon looked more like a sand castle than a Disney castle. The outer wall was made from sections of small stone divided by narrow sections of larger stone in a pattern that looked a little like columns. I would have done that bit with seashells. The wall was topped with a roofed walkway, which stuck out a bit, and had a round tower with a cone-shaped roof at each corner, even though the base of the thing was square. On the side closest to me, four towers framed the drawbridge, with two short guard towers in front, and two taller towers set into the main wall behind. I couldn’t really see the moat yet, but from the gap between the guard towers and the entrance towers, I guessed it was wide. Inside the wall, an impressively large keep rose at least fifty feet into the air. As a sand castle, it could have been built tall and rectangular, and then had a big round tower placed around each corner. It seemed to me that King Arthur might have designed Camelot to look something like this. . . . It wasn’t ornate and lacy like the chapel, but it was pretty in a functional way.

I crossed the courtyard, walked the edge of the moat, and looked down into the murky water, not yet ready to cross the bridge into the stronghold proper. “What do you think?” James asked.

I watched Eric disappear over the edge of the
donjon,
surprised to see his reflection in the water. Magic water. Magic castle. Why shouldn’t it show a vampire’s reflection if it wanted?

“It’s beautiful, the second most wonderful castle I’ve ever seen.”

“Where was the first?”

My lips drew into a smile. “Disney World.”

We crossed the bridge and I saw a man sitting atop the wall. He wore a long leather duster and had a polearm of some kind slung over his shoulder and a pistol on his hip in a holster strapped on over his jeans. Long black hair hung in a braid that draped over his right shoulder down to his waist. His face was one of those movie-star faces, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses with silver frames. Casually smoking a cigarette, the man let his feet dangle over the edge at the top of the covered walkway that comprised the top section of an exterior wall protecting the
donjon
proper. Next to him, a trumpet gleamed in the moonlight.

“Who is that?”

“Christian,” Aarika answered. “He’s Lord Isaac’s paladin. He’s maintaining the wards this year.”

“What do you mean? He’s powering them?”

“Maintaining.” Luc broke in when it was clear Aarika wasn’t going to answer my question. “The wards themselves are powered by Scrythax. A maintenance person guides them . . . acts as a controller.”

“What would have happened if he hadn’t let Eric through?”

“I don’t think he
did
let the vampire through.” Aarika nudged James in the arm. “When was the last time you saw Christian smoking?”

“Maybe one of the Elders overruled him.” James studied Christian for a moment. “He doesn’t look happy.”

“Ho, Christian,” Luc called up at the immortal. Christian responded with a simple nod and a gesture to “come ahead.”

Moving through the wards felt like walking through a fine mist. Gooseflesh rose on my skin, subsiding as we passed through the doors into the courtyard. The stone bridge
continued beyond the wall, and my view opened up on the interior courtyard. Steep stairs led down from the walls to the lower courtyard, but the bridge led only one way, straight into the
donjon,
and we soon entered the meeting room.

Then I saw the head.

Three catlike faces were all attached to the same oversized head. The angle of feline faces allowed the head to be held level by the jaws of each open mouth. Its eyes were closed, the lids sunken in as if there were nothing left behind them. The tan fur was matted and tangled, even missing in spots, laying bare the shriveled muscle underneath. Dried blood was at its base where the head had been severed from the trunk. The gruesome thing was displayed on a stone pedestal in the center of a U-shaped table upon which laptops were scattered in various stages of active, screen-savered, or hibernating.

Several normal-looking guys and gals were standing about, broken up into little cliques—not a very united front. They stopped talking as we entered and turned to face us.

“Wait a minute.” I stopped, forcing Beatrice to halt as well or ram into me from behind. I walked up to the edge of the table, not wanting to walk into the open space and stand too close to the decapitated head. I pointed. “You want me to touch that?”

“Upon the conclusion of a three-day assessment, assuming you are found acceptable by the Council.” One of them, a fat man who looked like he belonged at a nerd convention, stepped away from the slight, swarthy brunette with whom he’d been conversing.

“Acceptable?”

“Do you agree to undergo a thirty-six-hour assessment, at the end of which you will, if found acceptable, be allowed to swear the Oath and join the Treaty of Secrets?”

I thought about it. If I said no . . . no honeymoon in Paris. Back to Void City. “What happens if I fail?”

“Luc, if you wouldn’t mind escorting our errant Emperor
down to join the rest of us?” An Asian boy, who looked like puberty might hit any day, gestured up at the ceiling. He wore a white T-shirt with some kind of robot dragons on the front, camo pants held up by a studded leather belt, a black hoodie, and a pair of those
Tatsu Ne
sneakers from Onmyoda that I only recognized because Greta had asked for some and had been mad that this exact shoe didn’t come in pink.

“Of course, Se Fue.” Luc bowed and took off at a fast walk.

“Se Fue?” I whispered over my shoulder to Beatrice. “What is that, Japanese for ‘little brother’?”

“It’s Chinese for ‘teacher.’” The young boy stepped toward me and smiled. “Not all of us become immortal at the same age, and few of us find it uncomfortable to dress according to the age of our bodies.”

“Do I have to call you Se Fue?”

A smile broke across his face. “Only if you want me to teach you how to fight. In twenty-five years, you’d have mastered the basics.”

“No thanks. I’m on my honeymoon.”

“Then you may call me Ji.”

Beatrice slipped past me to get a better look at the head. “Why does it look so human?”

“What?”

“The head.” Beatrice gestured at it. “It’s just a decapitated human head. Why is it so powerful?”

“The Head of Scrythax is actually quite alien-looking.” Aarika crossed the room as she spoke, moving closer to a blond man wearing a tailored business suit. “It takes remarkable concentration for even a supernatural being to see it as it actually is. It took me years.”

“Or a being who is truly noble at heart,” Master Ji corrected her. “Such beings cannot be fooled by Scrythax’s
huan xiang,
his illusions. One of the tests we administer early on is to see what appearance Scrythax takes for you. It—”

All of the immortals looked up at once, stepping back to their places.

Eric came into the room, Luc trailing behind him. “His brain glows?” Eric squinted and kept walking, sparing the assembled immortals little more than a glance.