The Thief (38 page)

“
So...we win?” I say
uncertainly.

“
Contract?” Meredith
exclaims.

“
Standard contract between a
mortal and an immortal,” Tailor says. “A very complex spell that
found its way to me just this evening. I was going to save it for
someone else, but desperate times call for desperate
measures.”

“
Um, guys...” Destin says,
concern in his voice.

“
Wait a minute,” Meredith
says slowly. “Are you...you’re not saying I’m a...”

“
Genie!” I whoop, suddenly
comprehending. “You are my very own personal genie!”

“
I AM NOT A GENIE,” Meredith
roars.

“
Where’s the lamp?” I want
to know. “Or is it a bottle?”

“
It’s a
verbal
contract,” Tailor corrects,
though sounding more than a little pleased with himself. “The
bottle’s an exaggeration.”

“
You!” Meredith says
suddenly, pointing a finger at Tailor again. “You’re one of those -
those - thingies!”

“
Excuse me?”

“
One of those human
thingies...ahhh...what are they called...the ones that make
everything awful...argh!” She kicks the wall of the cafe in
frustration. “This is for real, isn’t it?”

“
Very much so,” Tailor says.
“No more killing for you. Camille is safe.”

“
Um...guys?” Destin says,
louder this time, fear in his voice. “I’m not sure about
that.”

He was looking at Camille. She’s curled in
on herself, arms around her ribs as if holding herself together.
Her expression is unfocused and she’s sweating buckets.

Tailor reaches for her and she backs up, one
hand out. “Don’t touch me,” she says, breathing heavily.

Meredith makes a rude sound. “There it
is.”

Tailor glares at her to shut up. She merely
folds her arms and returns the glare with a grin. “I can feel your
blood burning, you little freak,” she taunts Camille. “Without that
sword, you’re coming apart at the seams. You think this is bad?
This is only the beginning. If you cared for these lives at all,”
she says, arms wide to indicate me, Destin, and Tailor - “you would
beg me to end you. If I could.” Her expression narrows as her gaze
flicks to me.

“
You’re wrong about her,”
Tailor says, but Camille sinks to her knees, curling up.

“
Your best boy Gabriel
abandoned you, you know that, don’t you?” Meredith tells Camille
nastily. “He gave you up to me. He told me the Wolf was at the
school, he sent me right to you.”

Hunched on the ground, Camille’s back
tightens, her hands fisting in her hair.

“
Camille...” I say,
approaching her slowly. “Camille, don’t listen to her.”

“
She knows I’m right!”
Meredith cackles. “You know why he held on to you? He thought he
could change you, the old softie, but he was wrong. The Wolf is the
enemy, and that doesn’t change. He gave up on you. Then all he had
to do was wait for me to show up and finish the job. And even if
it’s not me, soon enough, someone will...you’re a monster, you’re a
bloody monster, and nothing he ever did or said could stop it from
taking you over!”

“
Uruse,”
she mutters from behind her curtain of
hair.

“
He gave up on you,”
Meredith repeats.

“
Camille...” I reach for her
shoulder.

“
YAMEROU!”
she screams as she strikes out at me. I fall back,
and suddenly she’s standing over me, a feverish yellow gleam making
her green eyes unnatural. Her tangled curls spill over her torn,
filthy uniform. Her lips pull back slightly from her teeth. For a
brief, terrifying moment, I wonder if maybe Meredith is
right.

And then Camille is gone, the moon glinting
silver off her hair as she disappears into the woods.

Chapter 21

Jul

The pillar rose to dizzying heights. I clung
to Rhys as we shot higher. The walls of the Tower seemed to go
upwards forever, disappearing in a haze over our heads. I couldn’t
bring myself to look down, afraid of what I’d see. Finally the
ascent stopped, and Rhys said, “We have to jump.”

I looked up at him then, fingers curled
tight in his jacket. “Are you insane?”

“
He’s still coming,” Rhys
said, face white as he looked down, “and I can’t maintain this much
longer. I’m not a real Mirrormaker, Jul, I’m just a hybrid -
”

“
You have to get us out of
here,” I pleaded. “You’re the only one who can - ”

A high-pitched crack sounded from the glass
at our feet and I gasped. There was an open window in the Tower
only a small gap away, but the thought of missing that gap was
paralyzing. Swallowing my fear, I leapt, clearing the window and
tumbling to the floor inside. Rhys looked down at the vines
speeding up the pillar after him and jumped as well. A green
tendril caught his ankle at the last second and tugged him off
balance. His hands caught the window ledge and he cried out as his
body slammed into the outer wall of the Tower. I scrambled to my
feet and reached to pull him in. The glass pillar was collapsing in
jagged hunks, the vines falling with it and pulling taut on Rhys’s
ankle. I grabbed one of his arms, anchoring him.

“
Go,” he groaned. “Keep
going up, I’ll make a ledge or something I can land on -
”

“
Crash through, you mean,” I
snapped. “I’m not leaving you, now slice that thing free and get in
here!”

Eyes lighting in understanding, he reached
with his free hand to pull a stone free of the wall. It melted into
a jagged glass blade in his hand, and he struck at the vine,
severing it, and it fell to the terrace, stories below. I pulled
him through the window and he got to his feet, panting. “Good
idea,” he said. “Now what on earth is going on?”

“
I don’t even know!” I
exclaimed, looking around the room in panic. Where had we ended up?
“First Gabriel said we were going to save Camille from Meredith,
and then he switched bodies or something, and then he started
talking about using my powers, about how I was supposed to help him
change the world or something...” The reality of what I’d done
crashed over me and I pulled at my hair, taking large, unsteady
breaths. “I never should have brought him here - you were right,
you were right the whole time, oh god, Rhys, I’m so sorry -
”

He wrapped his arms around
me, pulling me close. I wasn’t safe, but at least Rhys wasn’t angry
with me
.
“I
shouldn’t have thrown you out,” he said into my hair. “If I hadn’t
- if you’d thought I’d help, this never would have
happened.”

Reluctantly, I pulled away from him and
looked around the room, taking stock of our situation. The room we
were in had no doors, and only the one window. There was a large
four-post bed in the center, draped with white curtains, and around
the walls stood a series of mirrors. Most had the same
rose-and-vine silver scrollwork as the one in the orchard, but some
were more plain. The sizes varied, too. Some were taller than me,
and stood on their own legs; others were hung directly on the wall,
shaped in ovals, rectangles, and squares. One was shaped like a
starburst, with four long and four short points. One hung empty, a
thick obsidian frame with no glass. One lay across the room’s only
table, broken pieces laid out as if awaiting reassembly.

I reached out to touch one of the mirrors -
wondering if the surface would change, like the one in the orchard
- but it merely remained reflective of the room.

Suddenly Rhys cried out, being snapped back
against the wall and wrapped in vines. They even twisted over his
mouth to silence him. Hemlock climbed into the window, using the
vines as handholds. He stepped gracefully to the floor and surveyed
the room. “The workshop,” he said appreciatively. “Fiona brought me
here once...now there was a talent. If you were Fiona this might be
going differently,” he grinned at Rhys, who glared and twisted in
his bonds. “Or even Soren. Everyone talks about Soren, but all he
did was build on her work. You Ryans and your patriarchy.”

Hemlock took my arm and pulled me with him
towards the line of standing mirrors. “One of these should do,”
Hemlock said, touching the surface of one briefly. “He’s turned
them all off,” he frowned. “He thought of everything, didn’t he?
Everything but you.” He gave me a shake. “Turn it back on.”

“
I’m not a Mirrormaker, I
can’t - ”

“
No, you’re a Harbinger,”
Hemlock said, his emerald eyes flashing. “And a Null besides. You
can - ”

He cried out, falling. The floor had
crumbled under his feet and he clutched at the edge of the hole,
dangling. I backed away, but another hand gripped my shoulder like
a vice. I turned to look up at the man I’d called my father. He
held the iron sword in his other hand - so plain a weapon - and his
expression was empty.

“
Dad,” I said, “What are you
- ”

A searing pain through my ribs. A heaviness,
a foreign chill. The crack of glass behind me as I knocked back
into a mirror. I looked down. The hilt protruded from my chest. My
hand came up to touch it, disbelieving. Blood flowed freely from
the wound, straight through my heart.

Oh.

Camille

Back across the lawn between the cafe and
the school. All the world is smell and sound. I am free,
unfettered. As I should be. I dive over hedges and sprint under the
trees, faster than the wind. I catch a branch above me and swing,
exulting in my power. It snaps and crashes to the ground, and I
twist in midair to land deftly on top of it. I grin, but then just
as fast the grin is gone. Trees are all well and good, but there is
no satisfaction in it. No justice.

I want to hurt someone who deserves it.

I’ve been holding back for
so long, trapped under words like
calm
and
temperance
and that most hated, most
limiting of all words:
compassion
. I never want to feel
sympathy again. I used to be like this all the time, back when I
had free run of the streets of Tokyo. Before Gabriel dampened my
blood. Why had I run from the cafe? I could go give that so-called
‘Ender’ what was coming to her...

I can feel lightning in my veins, and the
only iron I have now is in my fists. I smile at my own metaphor,
fingers clenched tightly as I inspect my knuckles. Small hands, to
be sure. But that made it all the better. No one would ever expect
me. They never did.

I catch a scent on the wind and my head
turns. My blood boils fresh as it conjures up images in my mind.
Her standing assured and haughty in her ridiculous hair and
expensive clothes, the snide little comments at Jul’s expense. The
way she sneers at Mac in public. Destin’s heartbeat going erratic
whenever she comes near, just to see her ignore him. If they gave a
prize for exploitation of love, it would be hers. Justice,
incoming. My fingers flex and a grin of pure certainty crosses my
face.

I am going to kill Hayley.

I bound across the
schoolyard, unencumbered. I don’t care if she hears me. It wouldn’t
matter. She’s human, human, human. I can smell it now, I am dead
certain. With a nose like this I know what everything is. Extra
human with human on top. She will be so easy. Too easy. I’ll just
have to remind myself of the wonderful irony that the girl who
thinks herself the most powerful within the walls of this building
is in fact one of the most helpless.
I
should tell her that,
I think.
I’d like to see the look on her face.

Then I catch sight of her in
the dusk and my blood pounds, ringing in my ears. I think,
just kill her.
Flesh.
Limbs. Claws. Justice. They’d thank me. Worthless girl.

She’s seated on a park-style bench in the
garden area between the gymnasium and the forest. Moonlight glints
off her honey-gold hair. Her head is in her hands and I can smell
the saline and mascara.

She’s crying. I laugh, and it startles her.
Looking up, she rubs her eyes quickly, calling out, “Who’s
there?”

“
All alone in the woods?” I
say, emerging through the trees.

“
Camille?” Her defiant look
becomes uneasy as she sees me in the light of the moon. “What’s
going on?”

A grin spreads across my face. She clutches
her purse to her, leaning away instinctively.

“
You’re a real bitch, you
know that, right?” I tell her.

“
I...I don’t understand,”
she stutters. Hayley, stuttering. And quivering like a rabbit. The
queen in all her glory. God, this was a good night.

“
You think you can get away
with treating us like crap.” I snarl in her face. “No more. I’m
ending your story right now.”

“
What are you saying?” she
exclaims, scrambling up from the bench. Let her try to run. She
won’t get more than two steps in those ridiculous heels before I
rip her throat open.

“
You’re speaking to her in
Japanese, you moron. She doesn’t understand you.”

I hadn’t smelled him. I whirl, and there’s
Kei Sakamoto standing behind me, hands in his pockets. Where had he
come from? And why couldn’t I smell him? It was like he didn’t
exist.

He stretches lazily, lacing his fingers over
his head. “You ducked out on your presentation, Lassie. Miller’s
really going to dock your grade.”