Speed of Light (33 page)

“She was ready,” I insisted. I saw the longing in Faye’s eyes.

Delia nodded. “I’m sure she was. She’s held on longer than anyone has a right to expect. You’d think letting go would be easy when you love someone who’s hurting that much.”

It should be. It really, really should be
.

N
ightmares continued to plague me. Each time I woke, Fara’s open and vigilant eyes met mine. “Sleep, no one is here,” she repeated as often as I needed, and her eyes glittered in the darkness regardless of when I opened mine. Sometime later, I woke to my bedroom door ajar and the mumbles of conversation.
Meridian? Tens? Nelli? What are they doing here?

Grabbing a flannel shirt to use as a robe, I padded out as quietly as possible. Fara promised she’d let me tell them about Sergio and the book. I wasn’t quite ready to trust
her completely to keep her word. But then, she couldn’t possibly fully trust me either.

As I entered, Meridian said to Fara, “You look terrible. Are you sleeping at all?”

I cleared my throat, pulling the soft folds tighter around me. “What’s going on?”

“It couldn’t wait,” Nelli said in an apologetic voice, as if she feared I was dreaming of happily-ever-after.
Not likely
.

“Sergio is playing both sides. He’s feeding the Nocti information,” Tens repeated.

I wasn’t even completely awake.
I didn’t hear them right. I’m still dreaming
.

My legs collapsed and I slid down the wall, as if my bones melted. “What did you just say? How do you know?”

Fara grabbed my hand.

“But how? He saved us from Ms. Asura. Twice. He helped me!” The shrill in my voice gave me the taste of fizzy vinegar on the back of my tongue.

“You know this for certain?” Fara asked Tens.

“Bales followed Nelli’s boss. He’s got photographs of Sergio passing Ms. Asura a page out of Auntie’s journal and Rumi’s folio.”

“And Bales is good guy? For sure?” Fara asked.

“Yes,” I answered for her. “He’d die to protect Nelli. He knows how important we are to her.”

Bales proved himself. Me? I kept proving I’m not worthy.

Meridian and Tens nodded their agreement.

What did I say to Sergio? He asked so many questions
.
Did I trust him with too much information? What if he gives them details to use against us? There will be blood on my hands. Again
. I frantically tried to remember every word, every gesture, every interaction with him.

“Juliet?” Meridian knelt in front of me. “This is not your fault.”

“I told him secrets.” My voice was small and undignified.

“About?” Tens’s question was backed with steel blades in his tone.

“My father. I told him we were looking for my father. How could he do this to us? He said he was searching for his brother. Was that a lie too?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What if the Nocti promised him his brother in exchange?”

“That might explain how he got involved with them,” Tens said.

I sniffed back my tears and forced my spine to straighten. “Does he know we know?”

“We don’t think so.”

“He talked up the race and the parade. Wanted to get us volunteer tickets in a special area.”

“That was probably part of his assignment. To get us all in one place for the Nocti.”

“Oh, Nelli?” I turned to her. Puffy eyes and chapped cheeks told me Nelli was taking this betrayal especially hard.
She’ll be devastated to be the one to introduce us. She already takes way too much responsibility for DG
.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I should have known.”

“How?” Fara asked.

Nelli shrugged. “Somehow.”

I pushed myself up, making my legs listen. “Someone stole Rumi’s portfolio out of my bedroom. Was that Sergio or Ms. Asura?”

“Wouldn’t have to be, but probably.”

I filled them in on confronting Ms. Asura, Sergio’s rescue, and returning what we could to Rumi.

“Are you insane? Why would you go take on Ms. Asura alone?” Meridian gasped.

“It’s my mess. I was cleaning it up.” My chin notched higher. “Besides, I’m tired of fear. We burned our past, right?” I asked Fara.

“Yes.”

“Clean slate. Rumi says the Woodsmen found a book with a similar symbol in it. He’s making a fake one like it. I’ll deliver it.”

“That’s too dangerous.”

“We’ve never had the advantage with them. We do now.”

“No.”

“We do now,” I repeated. Between Ms. Asura thinking I’ll cooperate and then Sergio. “Yes.”

I began pacing. Thoughts whipped through my head too fast to hook on to any of them, but I knew what needed to happen.

“We both will deliver it.” Fara stood and wrapped her arm around my waist.

“You don’t have to,” Meridian said while Tens simply stared at me as if waiting to see if I’d crumble again.

“Yes, I do. We do.”
I can do this. I’m sure I can
.

“It’s a distraction to keep us from the race events.”

“Are you willing to risk the lives of innocents on that assumption? I’m not.” Not more innocents.

“We have to try to figure out what they’re planning for the race,” Meridian pointed out.

“So Fara and I will stall for time.”

“Can that work?” Fara asked.

“We will make it work!” I shouted.

“Let’s bring the others into the conversation. We’ll need their help.”

“But how do we ignore Sergio?”

“You can’t. You have to keep letting him help,” Meridian stressed. “Until we know everything he knows. We have to use him.”

Nelli nodded but didn’t seem convinced.

As we talked, Fara sharpened one of her knives while Tens whittled a race car with sticks in his bag.

Nelli bit her lip. “I guess we can try.”

“I need to.” I stomped away and felt everyone pause. “I’m sorry. Sorry,” I mumbled. I turned to Tony. “You told me if I learned to read, I’d be taking my power back. This is like that. I can’t risk them hurting anyone else.”

Tony was the first to speak. “Okay. If you feel that strongly, we’ll try, but we can’t guarantee anything. And only if Fara can be there with you.”

“Then Meridian and I will go back out to the Speedway and see what we can find,” Tens said. His phone rang. “It’s Rumi.” He clicked on the speakerphone and said, “Rumi, what’s going on?”

“Are you with everyone?”

“Yeah, you’re on speaker.”

“Good. Has Juliet explained our late-night rendezvous?”

“Yes, we know.”

“Okay, then. I’ve received a missive from my friend at the university about the writing on the headstones. She initially thought it was Sanskrit and then, unfortunately, discarded that idea. I think we might have a dead end. The Woodsmen only know what to write, not which language it is or even what the words mean.”

“Do you have it here?” Fara asked.

“Hang on, Rumi. Fara hasn’t seen that yet.” Meridian pulled a tiny notebook from her back pocket and flipped through it, then handed it to Fara.

Fara leafed through, squinting at the pages. “It’s from Avesta.”

“What did the lass say?” Rumi’s boom crossed the air as if he were in the room with us.

“My people’s words. Ancient words of protection and Light.”

“Well, what’s it say exactly?” Tens demanded.

She shook her head. “I do not know how to read it. My father had just started to teach me when he—” Tears
flooded her eyes and her usual bravado shriveled like an old apple.

I touched her arm.
She knows the pain of a dead parent. We share that
.

“I will try to remember. I am sorry.”

“At least it’s a place to start.” Meridian gave her a small smile.

“Call if you need anything, kiddies. I’ll let you know when the dummy book is ready to go.” Rumi hung up.

“What do I do about my boss?” Nelli asked.

“Don’t let him know you know anything. Act normal,” Tens instructed.

Her expression didn’t relax, and she didn’t seem comforted by that thought.

“Juliet?” Fara called, after insisting on making sure my bedroom was empty before I entered it.

I turned the corner and she held up a photograph.

“This was tucked into the window.”

The photograph showed a girl who could be my twin. And a blob of light next to her. “My mother?”

“She’s not a Fenestra.”

“My father?”

“Looks like he might be.”

She flipped over the photograph and showed me the writing on the back in faded, tiny lettering that matched
my mother’s notes in the book of sonnets.
Roshana and Argy Ambrose
.

In deep red, like blood, was also scrawled,
“A little incentive.”

“We need to show Meridian and Tens.” Fara was already grabbing her bag.

I traced my mother’s face with my fingertip and the lighted outline of a boy, featureless and blank. “Who are you, Argy? Where are you?” I whispered before following Fara out the door to the cottage.

C
ues were everywhere around us. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the race each year, and maybe even billions around the world watched the Indianapolis 500 on television or live streaming.

Snake pit. Driver. Artesian. Last yellow. What the hell does that mean, Mr. Woodsman?

The Nocti were the worst kind of evil. They had no boundaries. No checks in the universe, but Sangre Angels and Josiah weren’t answering my mental pages. I’d been trying.

If you wanted to create chaos, steal souls, and take lives? If you had no soul yourself and no compassion? It
made sense. I’d begun to think that part of my destiny was to try to think like my opponents.
Can I think like a Nocti and stay Light?

We spent hours updating the scrolls tacked to the cottage walls under prints Joi hung there, as overstock for the tearoom. We couldn’t risk hanging new ones up at Rumi’s after the break-in and their disappearance.

I wondered what Auntie would say about the rings of knowledge and influence spreading farther and farther out. We kept adding to our circle. Each new relationship brought information, but also risk. Consider Sergio—were we taking too many risks?

Tens added maps of the racetrack, blown-up satellite photographs of the area too. The cottage was beginning to look more like a war room at command central rather than a cozy guesthouse.

We were trying to learn as much about the Indianapolis 500, and the land and its history, as possible. “So that’s turn one, two, three, and four into the straightaway?” I asked.

Tens studied the list of drivers and team colors. “I wish they wore black and had ‘bad guy’ written across their chests.”

“Why would having a driver matter to the Nocti? What’s he going to do, lose the race?”

“Hit someone?” Tens asked.

I shook my head in frustration. “That wouldn’t take out a lot of people.”

“Not unless he ran into a crowd or had explosives on board.”

I glanced down at a book about race history. “This says the cars are sensitive and they’re checked very carefully before the race for all kinds of things. No way could there be a bomb in the car.”

“Nothing’s impossible, Supergirl. Keep looking.”

My eyes were dry and prickly as I chugged my fourth soda and the sun slid behind the trees in late afternoon.

Tens’s phone rang. “It’s Nelli.” He hit speaker. “ ’Ello?”

For a moment, all we heard was static, then muffled voices.
Rocks falling? Construction? Boxing match?

“Nelli?” I asked.

Tens frowned, shaking his head and putting his finger to his lips.

Juliet and Fara jogged up onto the porch. I opened the door, inviting them inside but motioned them to be quiet.

Tens hovered over the phone. We all leaned closer.

A voice that sounded like Bales called out, “The police know we’re at Jefferson Township School investigating. They’ll be coming—
Ooof
.” His voice broke off as someone else shrieked.

The response was quiet, almost muffled, and none of us could make out words.

My mouth dried. My palms itched.

I flinched, listening to scuffles and punches hitting a body.
Nothing sounds quite the same as a person being beaten
.

A woman cried out. Nelli? “Don’t hurt him!”

Juliet stuck her knuckles in her mouth and bit down. I clenched my jaw trying not to cry out.

“Too late. Why did you have to stick your nose in? This is none of your business.”

Fara mouthed, “Ms. Asura?” to us.

We nodded.

The argument grew more heated as it sounded like more bodies were thrown into the fight.

Nelli screamed, “Stop it!”

A large screech of metal or glass drowned out all other sounds as if something collapsed into a pile of rubble. A woman screamed and screamed and screamed. Nelli? Abruptly, the line went dead.