The Sixteen Burdens (26 page)

Hughes paused and sipped his tea. He became lost in his own speculation.

“But Newton must have discovered that the Eye was too powerful to use, which is why it went into hiding almost immediately after it was made. My guess is that other Burdens were trying to steal it from him, just like they are today. History loves an encore.”

The struggle for the Eye reminded Gray of
The Maltese Falcon
, a story that had been serialized in
Black Mask
. It involved a jewel-encrusted statue so valuable that death followed it at every turn. In the end, the object so many people had died for turned out to be a fake.

“So how do we destroy it?”

“It’s quite simple,” Hughes said. “It took a willing Burden’s life to create the Artifact. It will take a willing Burden’s life to destroy it.”

“You mean…?”

Hughes nodded.

“Simple didn’t mean easy.”

Gray’s heart sank.

Someone would have to die just to destroy this thing.

It was an impossible request. He couldn’t ask it of any of his…friends? Is that what they were? He couldn’t think of another word to describe them.

“That’s the only way?”

Hughes nodded.

“And unfortunately, I love life too much to volunteer.”

He handed the Eye back to Gray, who put it around his neck.

“But how would someone do it?”

“It’s a simple matter of infinite reflection,” Hughes said.

Lulu was watching two kids play with a giant inflatable ball and appeared to be only half listening to the conversation. Even so, Howard leaned over and whispered instructions into Gray’s ear.

“What should I do?” Gray asked.

Hughes shrugged.

“My expertise is in the
how
of things, not the
should
.”

Gray stood up; Lulu followed suit.

“Little girl,” Hughes said, “could you fetch my sunglasses? I think I left them inside by the pool.”

Lulu went inside in search of the glasses. Hughes waited until she left.

“I wasn’t going to tell you, but under the circumstances…”

“What?”

For the first time Gray had seen, Hughes showed something that looked like compassion.

“It’s difficult to understand you fully,” he said. “It’s as if you can block my talent somehow. Even so, I believe I understand what you are.”

“You told me already,” Gray said. “I’m a dangerous Artifact who’s an aberration and should be killed. It’s done wonders for my confidence.”

Hughes stared into Gray’s eyes with an intense interest, as if he were the most complex airplane engine on Earth.

“You’re an Artifact, yes, but that’s not all.”

He tapped his fingers on the table as if counting to himself.

“You’re a Burden, too.”

There was no humor in Hughes’s comment. It was no joke, and no trick. He was serious.

“Wouldn’t I know if I had some kind of talent?” Gray asked.

Hughes shrugged.

“Some talents are less obvious than others.”

“So lay it out, then. Which of the sixteen am I?”

“That, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s the part of you that resists me.”

Hughes leaned in. He looked at the Eye, then looked back at Gray.

“I just thought it was important that you had all of the information. Now good day.”

Gray said nothing, but nodded. He walked to the pool to find Lulu. As they left the beach club, Gray wondered what Hughes had meant about having all of the information. So what if he was a Burden? It wasn’t useful unless they could figure out what he was. Or was it?

Gray stopped in his tracks. Suddenly he understood the meaning. Only a Burden could destroy the Eye.

Hughes wants me to destroy it.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-S
IX

G
RAY
WALKED
SOUTH
on a dirt path between Pacific Coast Highway and the beach. Lulu skipped along behind him, picking up shells and pieces of trash she found interesting. She seemed completely unburdened by their situation, as if she trusted Gray to sort everything out. But he had no idea how.

Newton’s Eye couldn’t be destroyed, not in any practical way. Neither could Darko Atlas. It was a problem with no solution—or, at least, a solution he wasn’t willing to entertain. If that made him selfish, then so be it.

The ocean to their right was dark, with waves growing larger as the tide rolled in. They pounded the beach like angry fists, grabbing handfuls of sand and dragging it back into the water. Gray could see them lining up out at sea, like bullies waiting for their turn to wallop the new kid in class.

Up ahead he saw a large building floating above the water. Behind it was a curving backbone of metal, like the skeleton of a dinosaur. It was a roller coaster.

The pier.

Gray headed toward it. He had always wanted to stand over the ocean. Lulu followed behind, though she started to drag. The poor girl hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He bought her a dippy dog from a cart at the base of the pier.

They walked down the pier, which was empty except for a few fishermen packing up for the day. The smell of the crisp ocean air was refreshing, and there was a magic to being completely surrounded by water.

Lulu didn’t seem to share the exhilaration. She was scowling when he turned around.

“You don’t like the ocean?”

“I used to like it.”

She dropped a pinto bean over the side and watched it plop into the frothy water.

“Our parents used to take us to Clacton-on-Sea every summer,” she said. “We’d build sandcastles and ride the carousel. I miss my mum.”

Lulu looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Gray became uneasy; he didn’t know if he should hug her or say something encouraging. He resorted to patting her on the head.

“Will we finally go home?” she asked. “Once Elsie is better?”

“You mean to England?” Gray asked. “I don’t know. I guess.”

Gray hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what would happen to Elsie and Lulu now that they had escaped Jack Siegel. He had been too concerned thinking about himself and what he would do.

“Will you come with us?” Lulu asked.

“To England?” Gray mused. “I doubt that. I’ve never even had a whisker outside Los Angeles.”

Lulu’s eyes grew big, as if on the verge of tears again.

They reached the Looff Hippodrome, which housed a grand carousel inside of it.

“Hey now, there’s a carousel. Why don’t you go check it out?”

Lulu got on her tip-toes and peered though a dirty window at the carousel inside, its carved animals chipped and worn but beautiful. She forgot her sadness and squealed.

“Can I?”

“Sure, but I don’t think it’s running.”

“I don’t care!”

Lulu pulled on a door; it was unlocked. She ran inside, hopping on the closest horse. Gray could imagine warm summers of the past, when the carousel was bursting with shrieking children, but on this brisk winter day it looked like the pre-Depression relic that it was.

“I’m going further down,” Gray shouted, hoping she was listening.

The end of the pier was empty. Gray leaned over the low wooden railing and peered into the water. He thought he saw the silver flash of a fish below.

Tugging the Eye off from around his neck, Gray dangled it over the water. He would toss it into the sea. As he watched the waves rolling toward him, he paused. How many days—hours, even—until the Eye washed back onto shore? Someone would find it on the beach, and sell it or pass it along until it found its way back into one of their hands. He knew this to be true. The energy it gave off, it was magnetic.

It wants to be found.

He stuffed it in his pocket, resigned to keeping it.

“Most people think the ocean is beautiful. I hate it.”

Gray turned and saw Sugar looking over the edge of the pier only five yards from him. He didn’t try to run; it was pointless. But he could talk and buy some time.

“Why don’t you like it?”

“It’s just salty water filled with dirt and fish poop.”

“It’s so big,” Gray said. “I think it makes people’s problems seem small.”

Sugar removed a small knife from her belt.

“Who wants to feel small?”

She began carving something into the railing. She hadn’t even looked at Gray once.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

She focused intensely on the wood, making swift, tiny marks.

“We have new friends with eyes. I been following you since the swimming club. You move terribly slow.”

She made a few final scratches and then blew the splinters away.

“There! Come look.”

Gray approached her warily, trying to remind himself that she would have killed him already if she had wanted.

“I carved my initials,” she said. “Isn’t that what you Americans like to do?”

He saw the letters “A.W.” scratched into the wood.

“Alice Williams. Such a boring name. But not uncommon in Jamaica.”

Gray nodded in agreement. He’d agree to anything with that knife in her hand. He’d agree to dance the jitterbug if she asked.

She leaned over the railing and spat in the water.

“For you, who grew up in a big city, the ocean is an escape,” she said. “But for someone who grew up on an island, the ocean is a prison. Especially for someone fast.”

Gray had no idea how big Jamaica was, but he had an image of a young Sugar running circles around the island.

“You’re the fastest person on Earth,” Gray said. “You should be an Olympic runner or something. Folks would love you. You’d inspire millions.”

Sugar barked out a nasty laugh and stabbed her knife into the wood.

“You know so little. Women weren’t allowed into the Olympics when I first wanted to compete. I used to wonder why I was gifted with speed but then cursed to be a woman. And a Negro at that. It seems cruel, don’t you think?”

Gray shrugged and nodded reluctantly. Chaplin had said that every Burden had a reason for being born in their place and time. Maybe it was true; or maybe it was wishful thinking.

“You could have changed people’s minds,” Gray said. “About Negros, and about women.”

Her mouth tightened at that suggestion.

“No!” she said. “I had no opportunity. None until I met Darko, who didn’t care who I was, only what I could do. If I have any purpose it is that: To serve him.”

“You’re wasted talent,” Gray said. “You had a purpose, but you rejected it.”

“It rejected me!”

She reached over and tugged at Gray’s collar, finding no chain on it.

“Where is it?”

“Somewhere safe.”

She eyed him suspiciously, but asked no more.

“Darko wants to make a deal. A bargain for you.”

“What?”

She turned her back to the railing and leaned her elbows on it.

“A talent swap. All of the known Burdens meet together. You bring the Eye. Everybody exchanges abilities. That way we’re all equal, with no one person being able to overpower another. Once it’s done, you can keep the Eye yourself, and do whatever you want with it.”

“And that’s all?”

Sugar opened her hands and showed her empty palms.

“That’s all.”

It sounded like a good deal. It would solve Pickford’s fears of an unstoppable army. Atlas himself would be nearly unbeatable, but so would Pickford, and Chito, and Elsie, and Chaplin. And him. If Atlas and Sugar started causing trouble, there’d be plenty of people to stop them.

“What about the other actresses you’ve kidnapped?”

“They’ll all be released too,” Sugar said. “Safe and sound.”

Gray thought of Nina Beauregard’s head in Chaplin’s foyer.

She’s lying.

“Let me think about it,” Gray said.

Sugar grabbed him by the throat.

“There is no thinking about it. You decide, now.”

Gray could barely breathe.

“What if I say no?”

Sugar grabbed his arm and twisted him into a half nelson. A cry escaped him.

“Then I kill you now, and I take the Eye back to—”

She became distracted at the sound of something small rolling along the wooden planks of the pier. It sounded like a pebble being blown by the ocean breeze, but it was rolling in the wrong direction. Gray heard it stop against her shoe. She looked down at it.

“What is that?”

With his head forced downward, it was easy for Gray to see what it was. A pinto bean. The wind blew it back toward shore, but it hit up against Sugar’s shoe again. It did it a third time, even harder. She momentarily let go of Gray to pick it up.

“A bean?”

“Magic beans!”

Sugar looked up as a barrage of beans assaulted her. Lulu appeared from behind a wooden barrel, concentrating hard.

It was like a swarm of flies. Nothing hit Sugar hard, but it must have been annoying.

“This is your great talent?” Sugar said. “You are a sorry lot.”

Sugar swatted at the beans, but they blew back at her face.

“Stop this, little girl!”

One hit her directly in the eye, and she winced, then angrily swiped at it.

“I said stop it!”

She swung so hard and fast she lost her balance, tripping against the wooden railing and toppling over the side of the pier, into the water below.

“Help!” she screamed.

Gray and Lulu ran to the railing and looked over it. Sugar flailed in the water. She began kicking her arms and legs with incredible speed. It was so fast her limbs looked like the propellers of a motor. It managed to keep her above water, but the strokes were so frantic she didn’t move anywhere. Gray saw panic in her face.

She never learned how to swim.

Gray didn’t know how to swim either.

“Keep kicking!” Gray said. “I’ll try to find something to help!”

Sugar flailed harder than ever, rising out of the water and nearly hovering over it before sinking back down. She looked as if she were going to fly out of the sea entirely. She turned on one side and whipped around in small circles that wound her farther and farther from the pier, deeper into the ocean.

Gray looked around the pier. There was no life preserver. The barrel Lulu had hidden behind was securely bolted to the pier. There was nothing else around. He tried to rip a piece of wood from the railing, but it wouldn’t budge.

Sugar was obscured by the vortex of white water she created. Gray thought about jumping in after her but he was afraid her limbs would chop him up if he got too close.

“Slow down!” he said. “Let the tide pull you back in!”

But Sugar either wasn’t listening or couldn’t hear through the roar of the churning water. She circled farther away. After only a minute or two she was a tiny speck in the sea, visible only by the bubbling turbulence she was creating. It looked like a geyser erupting out of the water, or maybe the head of the Loch Ness Monster slowly surfacing from the depths of the ocean.

Gray looked up and down the coastline. There were no boats on the water this winter afternoon.

Sugar flopped about in her small frenzied circles for minutes. But eventually she slowed, and her splashes became more muted. She was tiring. They continued to watch, until finally the whitewater disappeared entirely, and there was nothing but the smooth black undulation of the ocean.

She was gone.

Gray turned to Lulu, who continued to watch the ocean with a blank face.

“You saved my life,” Gray said.

That wasn’t, however, what he was thinking.

You killed her.

But he didn’t want to scare the poor girl.

He was grateful for what Lulu did, but he knew this would only make Darko Atlas furious. Whatever deal they might have struck was now almost certainly ruined.

Lulu continued to watch the ocean, as if Sugar were hiding beneath it and would suddenly pop up.

“I killed her,” Lulu said.

“It was an accident,” Gray said quickly. “You didn’t mean to.”

“Yes, I did.”

Lulu turned away from the water.

“She was going to hurt you. Just like she would have slit my sister’s throat. I won’t feel bad.”

Gray looked at this young girl as if discovering she was a foreign spy.

She slipped her hand into Gray’s, as natural as if he had been her older brother forever.