The Keepers (33 page)

Mrs. Hapsteade checked her watch, but Horace didn't need her to tell him. It was 12:06.

“And did you see anyone here?” she asked.

“No. The shed was empty.” He pointed. “But I saw the tire of that bicycle spinning, like someone had just been here.”

“Leave the message,” Mrs. Hapsteade said. “Quickly.”

Horace just stood there, stunned. “What?”

“Leave the message you saw, Keeper.”

“No, no . . . the message was from Chloe.”

“Clearly it wasn't. She's not here and she's not coming. What you saw was a lie. And now you know who told that lie.”

“That's not possible,” Horace said, trying to fight off the words even as he was realizing they were true. There was no other logical option—the message he'd seen the night before wouldn't come from Chloe after all. It would come from Horace himself. The sudden weight of this knowledge crushed him, made him dizzy. “No, no, no. I don't like this.”

“There's very little to like about the Fel'Daera at moments
like this,” Mrs. Hapsteade replied. “But we're in its grasp now, whether we like it or not. The message has to be left. Now.”

Horace remembered Mr. Meister, his talk of free will—how he'd said Horace should try not to fight whatever future the box had revealed. He remembered the uneaten sandwich, and the sickness that had fallen over him afterward. Numbly, Horace moved into action. He rummaged around on a shelf until he found the wooden handle of a hatchet, the blade broken off. He grabbed it and crouched on the floor. He dug into the dirt with the splintered tip of the handle, beginning to carve out the big letters he'd seen.
Dear Horace
, he wrote.
Safe
.
Your friend
. Each new line he scratched out was like a slow, angry stab of guilt. His fault, all his fault. At last he finished the final word—
Chloe
—and he stood up, tossing the hatchet handle away.

This was the message he'd seen. It looked exactly the same. There could be no doubt now—he'd been the message sender all along. Horace backed away, still not wanting to believe it. He bumped against the hanging bicycle and set its rear wheel spinning. He stared as the spokes flashed beneath the light. “Me again,” he said. “My fault.”

“Come now,” Mrs. Hapsteade said, and she shut off the light. “Beck is waiting, just up the street. We have to hurry.”

It was 12:08.

They left the toolshed behind. They piled into the backseat of the cab. Mrs. Hapsteade said, “The girl's house, quickly,” and they were away from the curb almost before
the words even left her.

They sped through the darkness, streetlight washing over them. Mrs. Hapsteade said nothing. As the cab swung through the streets, Beck's shapeless bulk barely shifted, thickly wrapped arms spinning the wheel effortlessly. After a block or two, Horace realized Beck was humming faintly, almost inaudibly, and gradually he understood that the driver was humming in concert with the roaring engine of the car, mimicking its rises and falls. In the mirror, Beck's eyes shone brightly, sharp as a bird's.

Horace, meanwhile, felt wretched. He threw his head back against the seat and tried to piece together what had happened—trying to figure out what he'd done wrong. He'd seen a future that allowed Chloe to leave, and in doing so had put her in harm's way. But how?

He turned to Mrs. Hapsteade. “You said there were Mordin watching Chloe's house.”

“Yes. They arrived last night. One of the Wardens followed them there.”

Horace's misery grew deeper, something he didn't know was possible. “Do you know what time they showed up?”

“A little before midnight. They came in a hurry, but we don't know why.”

He should have known. How stupid of him—how stupid of them both. “I know why.”

And then he told Mrs. Hapsteade about the malkund. She listened in silence, gazing down into her lap. Quickly as
he could, Horace described trying to destroy the malkund, sending it through the box, Chloe's mysterious plan to deal with it when it rematerialized. When Horace had finished, Mrs. Hapsteade took a deep breath and asked just a single question—a single question out of all the questions she could or should have asked him.

“If the two of you choose not to place your trust in us, Keeper, where else will it stand?”

It was a question Horace couldn't answer.

They saw the fire from two blocks away. A surly glow over the horizon, amber and shifting. And when they got closer, the glint of red and blue lights too, swinging in the night beside the train tracks at Chloe's corner. A line of somber silhouettes, a paper-doll chain of spectators, and beyond them rivers of flame, ribboning into the night sky. Chloe's house was all but gone, wrapped in the grasp of a monstrous, many-fingered blaze.

Horace was out of the cab and running. He vaguely heard Mrs. Hapsteade calling his name. He could smell the smoke, thick in the air—not clean like a campfire but a crowded, chemical stink. He could hear men shouting through the roar of the fire. He pushed through the line of gawkers into the street. A fireman stopped him, speaking words Horace couldn't understand. The heat of the fire pressed against Horace like a wall. Flames poured from the windows of the house, feathered up through a ragged hole in the roof. Two firemen were dousing the flames with thick beams of water,
but they weren't going to save the house. Horace turned to the watching crowd.

“What happened?” he said to no one in particular. “Where is she?”

“Place just went up,” a man said. “Happened fast. Didn't see them bringing anyone out.”

Along the street and in the front yards, floodlights illuminated a flurry of activity, two gleaming fire trucks, and an ambulance. The ambulance doors were closed. Its lights were dark.

“The ambulance. Who's in the ambulance? Is she dead?”

A tall, gaunt woman in a nightgown stepped down from the curb in front of Horace. “No one's in the ambulance, dear. The firemen can't get into the house.” She glanced back into the crowd, as though she were speaking for them all. “We're hoping no one was home.”

The smoke and heat and the smell of the fire stung Horace's eyes and nose, making them run. Horace pushed past the woman and back through the crowd. He spotted Mrs. Hapsteade and headed toward her. He heard a fat man in plaid shorts say, “Don't know why they need the ambulance. Too late for anybody inside there now.”

Horace shot the man a furious look and turned to Mrs. Hapsteade. “We have to go back.”

“Back where?”

“You know where. This didn't have to happen.”

The fat man frowned down at Horace, his face twisting
in confusion. Mrs. Hapsteade put a heavy hand on Horace's shoulder and steered him toward the back of the crowd.

“We can go back,” Horace insisted. “We can go back and change the message I saw. We can make this not happen.”

Mrs. Hapsteade shook her head. “That's not possible, Horace. It has already happened.”

“But if we change it to say Chloe's not safe. If we say there was a fire.”

“You're being foolish,” Mrs. Hapsteade replied, pushing him on. “You're not thinking clearly.”

“You're the one being a fool!” The words startled him even as they came out, but he wasn't about to wish them back.

Mrs. Hapsteade yanked him to a stop. She grasped his shoulders and shook him once, hard. “This isn't some image seen in glass, Keeper! This isn't an illusion! This is real. This is happening. It has
already
happened. Wake up to your present, Horace Andrews.”

Horace wanted to yank himself free but wasn't sure he could. She was so strong. And of course she was right. The fire had already happened. It couldn't be undone. Horace couldn't change the past. He turned to look again at the smoke spiraling up out of the reach of the lights.

Mrs. Hapsteade let go of him. One of her hands reached up and found his head. She stroked his hair, a startling gesture. He pulled away, but her voice went soft. “It's done, Horace. It's done. But let's not fear the worst. We don't yet know everything about the events of tonight. Have hope for your friend.”

His friend. Brave Chloe. She should never have been here. “I did this.”

For a moment, he thought she wouldn't reply. But then she said, “No. They did this.”

“We have to find her. Maybe they took her. Or she had to have escaped, right? Maybe she's alive.”

“Maybe she was never here in the first place. Regardless, all we can do is wait. Let's be patient, and try not to draw attention to ourselves.” Then she leaned back and looked into the sky, as if searching for stars. But there were no stars—the glow of the fire drowned them.

Horace watched the fire despairingly, still reeling from the discovery that he had been the one to leave the message. To tell the lie. It had all gone wrong somewhere, but he didn't know where. After a few moments, he turned to Mrs. Hapsteade and was shocked to find her whispering animatedly with a girl. The girl looked to be about fifteen—tall, with brown hair and wide eyes. And there was another figure behind her, he saw now, dark and still—Gabriel! Where had they come from? He heard Mrs. Hapsteade say, “Find him. We will meet him in the Great Burrow.” The girl nodded. She glanced at Horace curiously and backed away, melting into the darkness. Gabriel gave one of his formal little bows and slipped away with her.

“Who was that?” Horace asked.

“A friend, obviously,” Mrs. Hapsteade said meaningfully—a Warden, of course. “Hurry, come with me.” She turned, marching back down the block.

Horace fell reluctantly in behind her. “Wait. Are we leaving?”

Mrs. Hapsteade grasped his wrist hard and pulled him onward. The cab sat waiting. Beck had gotten out and now stood watching them, somehow managing to look urgent. Mrs. Hapsteade hurried to the cab and pulled open the back door, Horace at her side.

A small figure was huddled in the back seat, a dark ball. The skin was gray and dusty, clothes charred and burned in patches. The hair was ragged and filled with debris, blacker than ever, the tips singed and frayed. White eyes stared straight ahead, seeming not to see. The figure leaned back, mouth curling into a painful O, pink tongue flashing through a frightening, wracking fit of coughs. A shuddering breath, and then the figure bent back into a tiny ball, turning to look at them. A white cross-shaped pendant swung loose from the figure's neck, dangling and impossibly bright.

“Get me away from this place,” Chloe said.

A
S THE CAB RACED THROUGH THE DARK STREETS
, C
HLOE
kept asking for water. Beck handed back a bottle of water, and she upended it into herself. Dragonfly whirring, she poured the water in through her forehead and let it spill down through her throat and chest and out all over the seat. “More,” she said, but there was no more.

At last they pulled up in front of the Mazzoleni Academy, and again Mrs. Hapsteade led them underground, across the dark waters of Vithra's Eye. Chloe took the middle, clinging to Mrs. Hapsteade's dress through the Nevren while Horace brought up the rear. For Horace, the urgency made the Nevren seem shorter, more tolerable—halfway across, he forgot why they were there, but then his concern for Chloe roared back, pulling him through. Body-wrenching coughs broke out of Chloe every few seconds, and she held her arms out at her
sides, as though she could not stand to have any part of herself touch any other part.

Mr. Meister was waiting for them on the far side of Vithra's Eye. Two small owls took turns swooping in low above his head. The old man looked a bit like an owl himself, round glasses shining in the gloom.

“She needs water,” Mrs. Hapsteade told him as they approached.

“She escaped from the fire. But what of the Alvalaithen?” Mr. Meister peered at Chloe. “Safe, I see. And you, Keeper. Are you harmed?”

“My house is gone. It burned down around me,” Chloe said. “I need water. A bath.”

“Come,” Mr. Meister said. He and Mrs. Hapsteade swept into the Great Burrow, heads coming together as they moved, voices low and solemn. Twice Mr. Meister glanced back at Horace and Chloe, a look of angry surprise on his face.

When they arrived at his doba, Mr. Meister led them inside. He plucked a small blue-green cube made of interlaced panels out of a compartment above the door and handed it to Mrs. Hapsteade. “Take her to Ingrid's doba and let her wash herself clean,” he said. “Afterward, I will speak to her.”

Mrs. Hapsteade herded Chloe out and away. Mr. Meister leaned back against his desk, bony hands folded in his lap, regarding Horace calmly. Above them in the round red room, the little black birds were silent, probably asleep.

Horace stood there, feeling drained and untethered, a
foreign body in a foreign place. Suddenly words burst out of him before he could stop them. “It was my fault.”