When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) (24 page)

After what seems like an hour, I manage to emerge on the busy main street, regain my balance, and struggle my way toward the inn at the end of the street, just past Cathedral Reims. I stay on the sidewalk to avoid being trampled by horse-drawn carriages and the pointed boot heels of the fine aristocratic ladies. I’ll be like them one day soon after I have my season and Father manages to find me some rich barrister who will dote on me with the finest furs and jewelries. Oh, how lovely, how joyous that will be! We’ll have beautiful children we can spoil silly. And why stop there? We’ll buy out of all Malva and get rid of the stinking streets that make this place the cesspit that it truly is.

“Miss…Miss!”

I snap my attention to a gentleman who hovers over me with a worried look on his clean-shaven face.

“Are you all right, miss? Do you need me to escort you somewhere? You seem out of sorts.” He sniffs the air. “You don’t look like the type who has been in those dens on the back roads. You’re a bit messy, but I can still see your finery beneath that grime. Got yourself in a bit of trouble, have you? Oh, we’ve all been there. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

He proffers his arm to me. In my deluded mind, I forget what this simple gesture means, and stare at him as though he is some mythical creature with three heads. “Pardon?” I ask.

He proffers his arm again. Because nothing wants to make sense to me, I refuse his gesture and push down the sidewalk, taking in deep breaths of the frigid winter air to clear this haze from my mind. Comely’s Inn soon comes into view, and with it Father and his pipe. I remember so many warm evenings of nights spent by the fire, Father puffing on the pipe while Mother knits and Nathaniel and I study our day’s lessons. The nostalgia clears some of the clouds in my head, making me realize I need to apologize for never having come home last night.

Feeling a bit more sober, I hasten toward Father with a hug at the ready. But as I come upon him, I see he is not in his usual mood. His eyes are red, and his pipe is not filled with tobacco. Perhaps I worried him too much with my absence. I tend to forget what a fuss this world makes over privileged women such as I.

“Father,” I say, looking up at his face as I did when I was a child, “it’s all right. I’m here. I’m so sorry for not coming home last night. I guess I just became so consumed in my own thoughts I walked around forever.”

Father pulls the pipe out of his mouth and throws his arms around me. “Oh, thank Deus, Amelia, you’re all right!” He squeezes me much tighter than my corset ever has. Sobs overtake him. “Amelia, Amelia, my sweet girl, Amelia. I was so afraid….I paced our room all night and said to myself ‘Not both my children, not both my children. If you can’t give me both, Deus, at least give me one.’”

I pull away from Father, the winter air pushing away more clouds. “What are you talking about, Father? Where is Nat?”

“Nat has been gone since last night. But he never left, or so I thought. Maybe--”

The clouds part entirely, leaving not a sunny day but a day drowning in rain and thunder and lightning and hail. “Nathaniel is missing? Where did he go? Where was he last?”

“He went to bed after you left. I went outside to clear my mind. When I came back, he was gone, nothing left behind. I searched the main road of Malva, but there was no trace of him.”

“And I haven’t seen him!” I try to think of the myriad of places in Malva where Nathaniel could have gone, but he had no reason to run off last night. After the burning, all he wanted to do was curl up in darkness and sleep. “Father, you stay here. I’m going to search for him.”

“Amelia, no. I’ll alert the authorities.”

“It might be too late!” I doubt Nathaniel would go off anywhere dangerous, or do anything awful to himself or anyone else, for that matter, but I refuse to wait around for him to come back, and I refuse to let Father to do the search himself. If Nathaniel truly is missing, then I know the blame is to lie with me. “I’m going to look for him, Father. You stay here.”

Without another word, I hitch my skirts and hasten down the sidewalk, my mind torn to pieces over where I should even start looking. Then an obvious thought comes to my mind: Isis. Of course! He might have gone off to see her, which means he might be in her dormitory. He hasn’t seen her in a while, and we’re in Malva, so why wouldn’t he chance to get even a glimpse of her? After all, she might prove to be more comforting to him than I have lately. I’m a wretched big sister. To the back streets again, I suppose.

I pick up into a full sprint on the dirt roads. The only inconvenience is the slush that splashes on the hem of my dress, shooting icicles through me that make my bones feel like they’ll splinter from the chill. The more I run though, the warmer I become, so the chill no longer courses through me but becomes a lingering nuisance on my skin.

The plum orchard comes into view. I breeze through the cemetery and run to the north transept, which feels like a mile, eventually coming upon Isis’ dormitory, with its single rose window set into a gothic facade. As I come upon the building, Oliver is exiting the dormitory in his white priest’s robes. His simple presence brings back the sickening words Colette told me about him: How he means to kill me because of some ridiculous Exaltation. And of course she wants me to seek help to cease the rebellion the Shadowmen Alliance has planned. But then Colette has never lied to me. But then she is also a Shadowmen. But then--

I groan inwardly and take heavy strides toward Oliver. I block his path. “Olly, my brother is missing. Was he in that dormitory?”

His eyes widen. “Amelia!” He scoops me up in his lanky arms, and though I want to pull away, I can’t. I can’t even refuse the deep kiss he captures me in. He pulls away. “I was worried you were angry with me, that you hated me for last night. I--”

“Not now, Olly. My brother is missing!”

“Oh, yes, right. No. He wasn’t in the dormitory.”

His calm response maddens me. Nathaniel is as much a younger sibling as he is to me--at least he is supposed to be. “Have you seen him at all? What about Isis?”

“Isis is in class now. I saw her just this morning, so he can’t be with her.”

His negative answer makes the nerves in my body stretch to the point of tearing. I’m so panicked I can’t even think to cry over a situation that seems so futile. Where else could Nathaniel be? He will turn up. He has to.

“Olly, you have to help me find him, please.”

“Amelia, I will. You know I would do anything for you.”

His lack of hesitation, his eagerness to help me, brings back those warm feelings I had for him last night before our fight. In fact, his warmth brings tears to my eyes, and I throw my arms around his neck, shouting apologies. “I’m sorry, Olly! I’m so sorry for fighting with you last night. It was silly and selfish of me, and I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank you so much. Thank you.”

“Amelia…” Oliver gently pushes me away and stares deeply into my eyes with his silver ones. “As I’ve said, I will do anything for you. Now where do you think we should start?”

“I can only think to travel back to the main road. I thought Nat would want to see Isis, so this is why I stopped here first. But there is a toy store on the road, isn’t there? I’m just trying to think of all the places he would go to comfort himself.” I start ticking off my little brother’s hobbies on my fingers. “Toy stores, sweets, book stores, probably the florist because he loves flowers…We’ll check all those places.”

Oliver nods and laces his fingers through mine. The gesture is scandalous, especially because he is dressed in his priestly robes, we’ll be doing this in public, and he could be suspended from the church for such a gentle gesture. I should pull away and tell him I don’t want to risk his position, but after last night, after what Colette told me, I want to do everything in my power to prove her wrong. Oliver doesn’t want to kill me. His Exaltation is not me.

I nod in return, and we take off running toward the main road, which I soon discover is more crowded than it was this morning. More carriages pack the road, more people dressed in winter garb are crammed against one another, and the confusion of people moving to and fro has me stumped on where to check first. A gentle touch on my shoulder, though, reassures me that I am not alone.

“We’ll find him,” Oliver tells me. “We’ll spend all day, all week, all month…we’ll spend forever looking for him if we have to.”

His words stay with me until after we’ve searched all the places I mentioned. Nathaniel is nowhere to be found in any store. I slump down on an icy bench outside the florist’s, and bury my head in my hands, holding the tears back with the pads of my fingers. Oliver sits next to me and pulls me toward him. Though he is a cold-blooded Shadowman, he brings some life into my glacial body.

“Olly, where on earth could he be?”

“What if he’s back at the inn?”

I pull my hands away. “I suppose he could be, but I don’t want to get my hopes up that he is.”

“Then we’ll go there together, Amelia. You’re not alone in your feelings. I’m just as worried about Natty as you are. He is our little brother, after all, and perhaps my future brother-in-law.”

This comment brings a small smile to my face. “But you can’t marry, Olly, and in any case, Father will foist me on someone else. That doesn’t mean I can’t cuckold my husband though.” My smile turns into a smirk. “He’ll probably be doing the same to me anyway. That inevitably happens in arranged marriages.”

“Except you’ll be considered an adulteress for it, and he’ll just be considered a man.”

“As if I care.”

He kisses me on the cheek. “Well, marriage is a social construct, an institution. What matters are the feelings we have toward each other. Who knows? Maybe your Father will marry you off to some man near death. It’s socially unacceptable to re-marry once one is widowed. You’ll be free.”

I laugh. “I suppose I will be.” Talking of our future sends a bit of hope through me. I pull myself off the bench, and hold out my hand to him. “Let’s check the inn, Olly. Then we’ll go to Parson Hill, and if we can’t find him there, I’ll have to re-trace my memory, and possibly some steps.”

We do check the inn; I leave Oliver outside and check our room. Nathaniel isn’t there, and neither is my father. I do, however, find Father at the back of the inn in the smoke room all by himself. Instead of smoking his pipe, he has a tin of cigarettes clutched in hand. Ten come with those tins, and Father appears to have smoked about half of them. He usually smokes his pipe because he enjoys tobacco--now he appears to be using it as a form of escape.

“To Parson Hill it is,” I tell Oliver upon exiting the inn, doing my best to find cheer in this simple sentence.

Parson Hill has not been cleaned since the burning yesterday. The oak tree bears deep gashes and scars from the flames, and ashes still litter the ground, almost warding off any snow that wants to make home there. Nathaniel isn’t here, but as I search around the base of the hill and around the tree, I do discover footprints almost half the size of mine that could be his. They’re even boot imprints. Many boys wear boots--of course, I doubt many children would want to play around this tree after what it bore witness to.

“He may have been here,” I say, bending down and putting my hand on a print.

Oliver looks down at the boot prints. “There are a lot of boys who wear boots, Amelia.”

“But then where could he have gone?”

“Why don’t you ask Oliver where he has gone?”

Footsteps sound behind me, then stop, and the familiar voice causes me to look over my shoulder. Oliver looks as well.

“Colette?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”

She ignores my question and darts her eyes toward Oliver. “This is all your fault, Oliver, that Nathaniel’s gone. And you’re trying to act innocent with Amelia. You were going to kill her here, with her back turned.” She looks at me. “Maybe it was too much of me to ask you to earn his help. I never thought he’d stoop this low.”

Colette walks toward Oliver and starts towering over him as she shouts a string of insults his way. “Kidnapper! Murderer! Liar! You know Nathaniel is with the Shadowmen Alliance. It’s your fault for telling the Shadowmen Alliance about him at all. Why did you have to mention he was Amelia’s brother? Why did you have to mention the close relationship they have? Now the alliance figures his greatest strength is his love for his sister, and this alone could turn into some phenomenal power they could use against us all!”

I cringe over her words, but they do more than that to me--they make me livid. I stand, approach Colette, and deliver a hard slap to her cheek. She stands there and stares at me, bringing two fingers up to the bright purple hand print that stands out on her cheek like a testament to how far my trust for her has fallen. As in life, though, she composes herself, closing her eyes against what she believes to be a false reality.

“It’s true, Amelia. The Shadowmen Alliance kidnapped your brother because of what Oliver told them. And Oliver wanted that, don’t you understand? He knows what kind of weapon Nathaniel can become. The Shadowmen Alliance has individuals with remarkable powers, but none quite so remarkable that this little rebellion of theirs will be made any easier. With Nathaniel though, they’re certain their work will be finished.”

I stomp my foot on the ground, my heel catching in the earth. “Quiet, Colette! You don’t even sound like yourself. Do you realize how irrational and silly you sound? Out of all the witches out there, why my brother? Why not me? Why not some other witch? You’re being ridiculous.”