thinking?” Constance’s tone was biting, and it made Cora’s blood
run cold.
An enraged shriek shot through the air and echoed along the
stone walls until it surrounded them.
“Minnie,” Cora whispered in despair and frustration.
A percussive bang left her ears ringing.
“Nobody move!” Thomas shouted.
“Charles!” Cora whispered, clutching him tighter.
“They’re here!”
Constance’s smile shifted from biting to delighted. “By all
means, come in!” she said, waving coquettishly and moving to the
side in a swish of her skirts. “Do join us.”
His face a mixture of fear and determination, Thomas walked
into the chamber, his eyes immediately alighting on Cora and
then Charles. With a cry, he ran to them, dropping to his knees
and feeling for Charles’s pulse.
“I’m fine,” Charles muttered, eyelids fluttering. “Sleeping.”
“Sleeping!” Mary echoed in a singsong tone.
Thom looked at Cora and she nodded, trying to convey that
she was fine, too. He reached up and smoothed the hair back from
her forehead, and she leaned into his fingers, closing her eyes and,
for a brief moment, letting herself feel safe.
Minnie walked in next, a short knife from the kitchen clutched
in her fist. She let out a small sob when she saw Cora, but did not run
to her. Instead, she put herself between Cora and Alden, knife
held at the ready.
And finally Arthur, as pale as she’d ever seen him, expression-
less and holding the gun, came in. He leveled it at Alden’s chest
and pulled the trigger.
Marrakesh, Morocco, 1983
Venice, Italy, 1994
Okinawa, Japan, 1988
Jodhpur, India, 1999
Berkeley, California, 2009
twenty-two
T
he report of the gun echoed around the small
chamber. Alden looked down at his chest, frowning.
“Move the cage,” he growled. The other Ladon Vitae,
except Constance, melted back into the shadows of the cavernous
passageway.
Constance laughed, drawing Arthur’s attention. He leveled
the gun at her, but he didn’t think he could shoot a woman. “How
very like your father you are, Arthur!” she said.
“What do you mean?” He moved toward Cora and Minnie,
keeping the gun pointed at the members of the Ladon Vitae. This
was not going as he’d expected. He’d thought they’d run, or they’d
fight, or something.
There was an odd scraping noise coming from another branch
of the cave system, along with some grunts, but he couldn’t see
what the others were doing, and he wouldn’t leave Alden and
Constance to go find out.
Constance tapped her chin as though deep in thought. “I
seem to recall the elder Liska doing the same thing to Alden.
Amusing.”
Grimacing, Alden pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed it at
the blood. “It is less amusing to be on the receiving end of the
bullet.” Arthur had shot him in the chest. He shouldn’t still be
breathing, much less standing there cleaning himself up.
Constance waved dismissively. “Of course. Now, if you’ve got
that quite out of your system.” She raised an eyebrow and looked
pointedly at the gun.
Utterly mystified and at a loss as for what to do next, Arthur
lowered his hand.
The bearded man stomped into the cavern, glaring.
“And where have you been?” Alden asked, putting away his
ruined handkerchief.
“Had to change my shirt.” The bearded man leered at Minnie.
“It had blood on it.”
“That seems to be a common theme tonight.”
Minnie raised her knife, trembling. “I — you — I stabbed
you in the chest. And Arthur shot you! How is this —”
Constance clapped her hands together. “I do love it when they
try to wrap their little minds around it all. The moment they realize
what they are up against, and their hopes come crashing down.
You can see a bit of their soul shriveling then and there. You were
right, Alden — this is a fun addition to our gathering.”
“Can’t die, can’t die,” Mary sang, her tune mournful and eerie
in the cave.
“Yes, thank you, Mary.”Constance sighed impatiently. “Do be
a dear and go wait outside with the carriages.” Mary stood and
twirled, bare feet spinning slowly along the ground, as she left the
caverns.
Arthur staggered back as though he had been shot himself.
Were these the same people his father had traced through the ages?
The portraits, then, didn’t just look old — they really were that
ancient? Had his father figured it out? Had he known the true
secret of the Ladon Vitae?
“What happened to my father?” he asked. Here, at last, were
his answers, and dread and rage warred within him.
“This,” Alden said, snarling, as he raised a gun and pointed it
at Arthur’s chest.
“Stop!” Thomas roared, filling the cave with his voice. “If he
dies, you all go down!”
Alden pursed his lips in annoyance, but nodded for Thomas
to continue.
“We stole your papers. Lists, names, information. We took
some of Arthur’s father’s notes, too. I’ve sent them to a contact
somewhere far from here. If any of us — any of us — are harmed
or die in an unnatural manner, the information goes straight to a
newspaper I know will publish them.”
“Blackmail,” Cora said, her voice soft but her eyes hard.
Arthur could not take his eyes off Alden, off the man, the
monster, who had killed his father. His father, who had also tried
and failed to end this reign of terror.
“Well now,” Constance murmured. “This complicates things.”
“Let’s kill them and have done with it,” the bearded man
grumbled. “What’s an article in a paper?”
Constance put a hand on his shoulder, preventing him from
walking forward. “Yes, but think this through. Certainly no last-
ing harm will come from it, but it will draw eyes to our secrets.
We’ll have to lie low for a while. Years, maybe decades.”
Decades. It spun in Arthur’s head, impossible but true.
“So? We’ve done it before.”
“We have some rather large plans in the works in Europe right
now, if you’ll recall.” Her gaze on the bearded man was sharp, and
he winced under it. “I, for one, would hate to let things slip out of
our hands when we have been building this for so long.”
“What about the boy?” Alden asked, nodding toward Charles,
who had managed to sit up. “We still need a blood sacrifice for our
friend. And Wolcott owes us his debt.”
Constance glanced at the brothers. “You do understand now
what happened?”
“Our father,” Thomas spat, “made some sort of deal with you,
and Charles was the sacrifice. But I won’t let you touch him.”
“I think that settles our account with Mr. Wolcott. The price
was one son, and he’s now effectively lost
both. We can find the
blood we need elsewhere, in a less . . . complicated manner.”
“And they get away free and clear,” Alden said, matching the
intensity of Arthur’s glare. Arthur trembled with his desire, his
need to hurt this man. To kill him.
“Hardly. They’ll spend the rest of their lives looking over their
shoulders and having nightmares.” Constance paused as though
pretending to be in thought, then clucked disapprovingly. “Oh, I
forgot. You wanted the girl for a new plaything. Well, we all must
choose what is best for the group.”
The cutting edge of her smile hinted that she and Alden had a
history longer and more complicated than Arthur could ever
understand. But he didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about any
of them. He wanted Alden.
“Very well.” Alden let out a heavy breath, but did not lower his
gun. “Constance, see to the loading of the cage.” She nodded and
left with a swish of her skirts, followed by the bearded man, who
was still grumbling under his breath.
Alden half-turned to follow them, then paused. “Still, we
ought to give these children something to remember us by.”
Before Arthur could raise his gun, Alden had shoved him out
of the way and grabbed Minnie. He jerked her head back, whisper-
ing in her ear and holding his beetle pendant against her forehead.
Her voice cut off mid-scream as her shoulders slumped and her
gaze turned toward the ground.
“Get away from her!” Arthur roared, his heart in his throat.
Alden held Minnie in front of his body as a shield, the gun
in Arthur’s hand feeling more worthless than ever.
“She’s unharmed,” Alden said, a cruel laugh shaping his words.
“And certainly not dead, so our end of the bargain is upheld.”
Arthur rushed to Minnie as Alden backed out of the cave. He
expected her to fall, but she stood, completely still, where she was.
“Minnie?” he asked, his voice trembling. She didn’t look up.
Taking her chin, he tilted her face toward his own.
Her eyes were blank white orbs, with no soul or fire
behind them.
Minnie was gone.
One Month Ago
twenty-three
M
innie! Minnie!” Cora screamed her name over and
over, shaking her sister by the shoulders as though she
could wake her up.
Thom couldn’t look at either of them. He felt this was his
fault, that he had somehow traded Charles’s fate for Minnie’s. And
while he couldn’t be sorry about saving his brother, he couldn’t
help but wonder: How many months of life did Charles have left?
It wasn’t a fair trade, not in any world. Minnie and Cora should
never have been part of this. The rest of them had their chains they
couldn’t escape — two fathers, both damning their sons to colli-
sions with the Ladon Vitae in different ways.
But Minnie? Dancing, laughing, storytelling Minnie?
The air had been sucked out of the cave along with Minnie’s
soul, and Thom wondered if he’d ever be able to breathe properly
again.
“Please,” Charles whispered. “Please, you have to fix this.”
Thom looked at him, but found Charles with his head bowed. The
same brother who had never once bemoaned his own fate, never
once pled on his own behalf for divine intervention, was praying
for the girl he loved.
Cora looked up, her expression ragged and hollow. “How
did you fix Daniel? He stopped chasing you, right? Maybe it
wears off!”
Arthur sank to the ground, holding his head in his hands,
pulling at his hair. “I shot him.”
“You what?”
“He wouldn’t stop. I shot him in the leg, and he still wouldn’t
stop. He was crawling after us when we lost him.”
The blood drained from Cora’s face, and she trembled as she
pulled Minnie against her chest. Minnie didn’t resist. She didn’t
do anything.
“We’ll go get them,” Thom said, feeling a fierce, reckless cour-
age take root in his chest. “Alden. We’ll do whatever we have to do
to him to make him fix this.”
“Everyone is so sad,” a sleepy voice said from behind Thom.
He whipped around to find Mary, plucking at her thin dress and
biting her lip.
“You!” He rushed forward and grabbed the woman, pulling
her by her bony elbow into the room and shoving her against the
rock wall. “Tell us how we can fix this!”
She blinked, unperturbed by his use of force. It was that more
than anything that filled him with shame, made him let her go.
“You can’t,” she said, black eyes nearly as blank as Minnie’s.
Cora’s sob tore out of her throat, the sound going straight
through Thom like a knife.
“Tell me how I can kill him,” Arthur said, standing, his face
an unreadable mask.
Mary’s eyes lit at that, something burning deep within them.
“That is better. What would you give up to do that?”
“Anything!” Thom shouted. Maybe if they killed Alden, what-
ever spell he put on Minnie would be broken.
Mary’s smile grew, her expression dreamy. “I’ve been waiting.
So long. I tried to do it myself, a few times, but he always knew.
And I loved him, once. I forget when. And why.”
his shoulder against Thom’s.
“You must become him. Or me. I’m so very tired. I’d like to
sleep. Sleep and not dream.” Her gaze drifted away, eyes focusing
on something they couldn’t see. “It’s never been the right time,
because then no one would be here to hate them. But I can trust
you to do that.”
Arthur grabbed her shoulder, forcing her attention back on
them. “Tell us.”
“Alden thinks he’s the only one the boy will talk to. But the
boy and I, we’re kindred spirits. A cage of iron” — she paused and
gestured at her body — “or a cage of unbreakable flesh. Both
trapped. And so he talked to me. He gave it to me.” Her expression
lost its dreamy quality and became something clever and sharp.
She reached into a pocket sewn onto the front of her dress and
pulled out a scrap of paper, indecipherable writing in a dark brown,
rusty-looking stain on the paper.
Blood.
“What is that?” Thom whispered.
“This is the way to the path. The unending path. I stepped
onto it once, and I wish more than anything I could find a way off.
Will you make that step?” She looked at him, her gaze piercing, as
though she would see into Thom’s very soul.
“You mean . . . that could make us immortal?”
“Only one. I’ll only change one of you. And then you have to
help me.”
“What about Minnie?” Cora asked.
“If you’ll help me sleep?”
Cora nodded solemnly. “We will. I promise.”
Mary reached around her neck and pulled on a string. Out of
the front of her dress came a pendant, the dark green beetle.
“We mad
e them, you know. So none of us could hurt the others.”
She stroked the pendant. “But there are so many ways to hurt
someone, aren’t there?”
Humming off-tune, she walked past Thom and Arthur, and
slipped the necklace over Minnie’s head.
Thom held his breath, watching, and at first he thought he
was only seeing what he wanted to, but no — there! Minnie’s dark
eyes came through as the white slowly faded away.
She took a deep, shuddering breath as though coming up from
beneath water. “Arthur?” she asked, eyes finding him first.
“Oh, Minnie!” Cora pulled her into a hug, crying into her
sister’s hair. “Minnie, you’re back!”
“Thank you,” Charles gasped. Thom’s heart broke to see how
pale he was, how his lips were tinged in blue, but how happy he
managed to look at the same time. His prayers had actually been
answered.
And that’s when Thom realized — his brother didn’t have
to die.
“Do it to Charles,” he said.
“Hmm?” Mary asked, pulling the necklace back over Minnie’s
head and tucking it into her own pocket.
“Charles. Do the spell on him. It’ll fix him, right? He
won’t die.”
Charles’s frown matched Mary’s. She looked at him, consider-
ing. “I don’t think he’s right for it.”
Standing shakily, Charles walked over to take Minnie’s hand,
drawing her close. Arthur hung back from all of them, eyes half-
hooded, lost in thought.
“I don’t think I want it,” Charles said.
“Charles,” Thom hissed, pulling him away from Minnie.
“Don’t be daft. You won’t die!”
Charles shrugged. “Look at Mary. Does she seem happy to be
immortal?”
“That’s not the point!”
“You saw what being involved with this group made our father
do. Why would I want to have anything to do with them?”
“But —”
“He’s not the right one,” Mary said, standing with her back to
them and tracing her finger along the carvings etched into the
wall. “He’s not angry.”