Love Charms and Other Catastrophes (29 page)

“Why,” he said, hesitating, “why are you giving it to me?”

“Love's stopping you from telling me secrets, but this charm is all about
showing.
This may be a way around your charmed throat.”

Ken rested the bottle against his chest. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “You don't know if it will work. If we don't have a missed connection…” His voice broke off with a cough.

“Don't you want to try?” Hijiri asked. “If it works, you'll be able to share whatever Love's made you hide.”

Ken deliberately plunked the glass bottle on the table next to the couch. Out of reach.

Hijiri flinched.

“Please leave,” he whispered. His hand drifted to his heart.

Hijiri stumbled over Sebastian's shoes as she ran out of the apartment. Her toes hurt from the impact, but that wasn't why she was crying.

*   *   *

The first time she had been on a dangerous adventure, Hijiri felt the delicious
wrongness
of it in her bones. Slipping away from the Welcome Love Festival to battle Zita. Breaking the rules in order to free everyone from Zita's clutches.

This time, she just felt cold.

Snow flurries dusted the town all day and got worse by the time school ended on Friday. To avoid suspicion, Hijiri had gone straight for her meeting spot at Verbeke Square rather than going back to the Student Housing Complex first. Mrs. Smedt had warned the boarders that she would be patrolling the complex for any students out after curfew. All doors had to be locked. Lights turned off. Hearts safe and snug inside their apartment walls.

A waffle and creamy hot chocolate served as her dinner. Then she went to her meeting spot while the square was still full of people.

She and Mirthe agreed to meet behind the shops in Verbeke Square. Tourists never wandered back there. Nothing to see but garbage bins, back staircases, and a small, cobblestoned walkway. Hijiri blinked back snowflakes as she pressed herself against the back of a lace shop. She was only a few feet away from the door to the sewers that the twins had discovered last year—the door that had led them down into the darkness of Zita's hideaway.

Hijiri stamped her feet and rubbed her shoulders. Waited. She shivered in her thin, royal-purple coat, even though she had tied the belt at her waist and buttoned the collar up to her chin. Her sweater, black jeans, gloves, and boots did little to keep her warm, but sitting still was not on her agenda anyway. She had pulled her hair into a loose bun with a knitted headband over it to keep her ears warm. Her crossbody bag held a plethora of charms she had crafted for the stakeout.

With five minutes until curfew, the square emptied. She heard the last few footsteps and locks clicking as the shop and café owners closed early.

“Sorry I'm late,” Mirthe whispered, creeping around the back of the shops. “I parked the moped over there, 'cause we're going to need it.”

The belfry bells rang. Hijiri counted the six strokes.

Mirthe unzipped her backpack. “Take this,” she said, handing Hijiri a pin. “Nico's communication charm. The others should already be wearing theirs. We're late to the conversation.”

The golden pin had been shaped to look like one of the Barneses' canal boats. She pinned it on the collar of her coat and the charm activated, allowing her to hear the other rebels from around town.

“Hijiri and I are at the square now,” Mirthe said, leaning into her pin. “No sign of Stoffel.”

Nothing is happening at the high school
, Fallon said.

Good
, Bram said.
It would take too long for the rest of us to get there if the charm makes an appearance.

He's right. We can't take a cab
, Ms. Ward said.

Unless we want to ride in the back of a police car
, Sebastian added dryly.

Hijiri listened as the others chimed in. The sunset bled the world orange and bruising purple.

Mirthe peeked around the corner of the building, checking the square for any sign of police officers. She wore all black, from her boots to the cap hiding her hair, except for the shiny velvet-red mask over her eyes. Hijiri wondered if Femke was wearing the same clothes.

An hour dragged by. The weather made waiting worse. At least the police force sat cozy in their heated cars.

Mirthe didn't handle the boredom any better. She stared at the dark rooms above the shops and paced. “Stoffel
has
to find us,” Mirthe muttered, too low for the charm to pick up. “We have stormy enough hearts to attract it.”

Hijiri couldn't feel her nose. She blew on her gloved hands and rubbed them together for warmth.
Mirthe has a point. She's extremely upset with her sister and I'm hurting because of Ken. If Stoffel seeks out heartbroken people, there's no way that robot will miss us. Unless …
Hijiri gasped. She unpinned the communication charm so the others wouldn't hear her. “Femke isn't as vocal as you, but she must be just as distressed that you're both fighting, right?”

Mirthe grudgingly agreed.

“Then there's Ken,” she said. He was much worse than she was. Kentaro had been nothing but gentle and easygoing from the moment he popped out of the gift box. But his broken heart had changed him dramatically. The purple scar. The moping. How desperate he'd been to push her away. “I tried to apologize. He just brushed me off.”

Mirthe sighed. “Apologies don't fix everything.”

“You don't understand,” Hijiri said, her panic growing. “That's not Ken. He never shuts me out.”

Her brain and heart reached the same horrifying theory:
What if he was letting his heartbreak fester on purpose to attract Stoffel?

“Stupid,” Hijiri whispered, curling her hands into fists. Tears stung her eyes. How selfless and stupid of him to draw the robot away from her. “We have to go to Femke and Ken,” she said fiercely. “They're in danger!”

Mirthe threw up her hands, startled by Hijiri's outburst. “Okay, just hold on…”

Hijiri pinned the communication charm back on and listened. Then the bells rang for seven at night.

Femke's short gasp broke the silence.
A flyer just tumbled past us.

Four more flyers underneath the bridge
, Ken said.

“Where are they coming from?” Mirthe asked.

“That's not important right now.” Hijiri spoke over Mirthe. “What do the flyers say?”

They waited a few breathless moments. Then Femke said,
I can read them quite clearly. They have Stoffel's message written on them, just like you said, Hijiri
.

STOFFEL'S HUGS HEAL HEARTS

Hijiri grabbed Mirthe by her coat collar. “We have to go
now
.”

Mirthe nodded, too excited to speak.

They both ran for the moped. The other rebels scrambled to get moving also. Their words melted in the background of her racing heart.

Mirthe peeked around the corner of the shop while Hijiri put on the spare helmet. Mirthe muttered something under her breath and kicked the side of the building. “What luck. I think I see two policemen at the entrance.”

Be careful
, Anais said.
They could still check the back of the square.

Mirthe shrugged off her warning, but Hijiri tensed when she heard the police officers talking. They were drawing closer, lazily making their way through the middle of Verbeke Square.

Hijiri panicked. How would they escape without being seen?

Mirthe rolled her eyes. “I didn't come into this empty-handed. Get on the moped.”

She did as the twin said, lifting one leg over the side of the moped and finding the dip in the seat for a second passenger. She noticed a familiar charm tied to the handlebars. Bram's silencing charm. It was shaped like a pair of lips stitched together with thread. When the threads were tied, a thick and overpowering silence would blanket everything nearby.

Mirthe reached into her bag and pulled out a trembling, midnight-blue vial. She pitched the vial like a bowling ball toward the police officers, then ran over to put her helmet on and tied the strings on the silencing charm.

In seconds, Hijiri couldn't even hear her own heartbeat. The pure silence made her grip Mirthe's waist tighter.

Mirthe started the engine and they shot out from behind the shops. Hijiri turned in time to see the vial collide with one of the café tables. Upon impact, the vial shattered and released a tremor that shook hard enough to knock the policemen to the ground. Neither officer saw them escape as Mirthe drove them through the empty square, impervious to the earthquake illusion.

Wind whipped Hijiri's body as they sped down barren streets and over lonely bridges. She had never seen Grimbaud looking so dead. Without the energy and lights, it looked more like a model of a town rather than a real one.
People
made Grimbaud as magical as it was. Not just the shells of buildings and parks.

They were riding in the dark thanks to the silencing charm. No one could hear the moped's engine or the tires rolling against the earth, but it went both ways. The communication charm wasn't working. Hijiri tried not to panic as the minutes passed.
Ken has to be all right
, she thought, gritting her teeth.
We're almost there.

When Mirthe turned a sharp right, bumping against the sidewalk in her hurry, Hijiri caught sight of Detective Archambault. The detective leaned against the front of the police car, parked on the opposite end of the street. Her eyes narrowed when she saw Hijiri and Mirthe fly by. Mirthe flashed the detective a thumbs-up as they passed.

The detective shouted a curse smothered by the silencing charm and climbed into her police car. No doubt she'd be following them. Hijiri held on tighter. Mirthe wasn't going to make it easy.

 

Chapter 21

CROSSFIRE

The moped flew across town. Mirthe took the shortest route possible to the Tunnel of Love, careful to use her mirrors to keep an eye out for flashing lights. Mirthe drove her moped down alleyways too tight for the police cars to fit through. Leaves cracked like bones under the wheels. Hijiri pressed her face against the twin's back, wishing as hard as she could that the detective wouldn't stop them. Stoffel was moving. She needed to reach Ken and Femke.

Mirthe chose footbridges that a car wouldn't have access to. Hijiri almost bit her tongue as the moped trembled over the cobblestones. To her left, she saw the canal stretching into the night and Stoffel's flyers littering the water's surface.
Where are they?
Hijiri thought, squinting across the water to the bank where the Tunnel of Love's boats had been tethered.

When they reached the other end of the footbridge, Hijiri could make out three figures crossing under the streetlamps. The largest one, Stoffel, in hot pursuit of two teenagers running for the water.

“Ken!” Hijiri bellowed. “Femke!” Her words were lost in the silencing charm.

The moped sliced through tendrils of fog as Mirthe headed for the closest streetlamp to park underneath. “A fog charm, really?” Mirthe growled as soon as she killed the engine and untied the silencing charm. “What was she thinking? That's not going to help!”

Hijiri's heart caught in her throat when she saw Ken and Femke leap into the water. The canal water only came up to their waists, but their clothes got wet and heavy as they weaved between the boats.

Water should have stopped the robot. But this was a charmed hunk of metal. It didn't fear breaking. Stoffel dipped one skeletal leg into the water. Then the other. The robot shoved the boats aside and waded farther out into the canal.
Thanks to charms, no doubt
, she thought.

Hijiri stumbled off the moped and ripped off her helmet. “Come on!”

She and Mirthe sprinted for the bank. Hijiri shoved her hand in her bag as she ran, searching for the charm she needed. Her fingers wrapped around a knot of bracelets. She untangled one and tossed it at Mirthe. “Put this on,” she yelled, “but it'll only work once.”

“What's this one?” Mirthe puffed back, pumping her legs.

“This one,” Hijiri said, breathing fast, “encourages personal space.”

When they reached the edge of the bank, Hijiri called Ken's name and threw a bracelet at him; she had a terrible arm, so the bracelet plunked into the water a few feet away from him.

Ken ran to where it fell and plunged his hands in the water.

Femke whispered a few words and a cloud drifted down from the night sky to wrap itself around them. This fog was thick enough to completely mask her and Ken.

Stoffel's heart-shaped head spun on its axis, red eyes scanning for its lost victims. Flyers spilled from its mouth.

Bram and Ms. Ward came running toward the bank. Bram must have felt nostalgic about the adventure because he wore the same fedora and trench coat from last year. Ms. Ward carried a book in her arms, her cheeks flushed from running.

“Who's in the water?” Bram shouted, pulling a handgun out of his trench's pocket.

“Ken and Femke. They're hidden in the cloud. Don't you dare shoot,” Mirthe said.

“Every time,” Bram muttered.

“Get out of the water,” Ms. Ward shouted. “If Stoffel breaks…”

Electrocution.
Hijiri couldn't find her lungs.

“Will you put down that book?” Bram yelled, stuffing the gun back in his pocket. “I don't know why you brought the thing.”

Ms. Ward hugged the book closer. “It's an electrician's guide—more useful than you right now.”

Bram's mouth twitched. He looked hurt. A sharp, old kind of hurt. The kind that Stoffel would pick up.

The robot locked on Bram, its body twisting to face the bank. It spewed more flyers and trudged through the water.

Bram cursed and reached for his gun again.