Part 24 (1/2)

While they were gone, I breathed in the scents of the kitchen. Millicent's kingdom. A place where I'd been comforted for years. Milk and cookies when Will and I crashed into each other riding bikes when we were seven. A dark chocolate cupcake to improve a fifteenth birthday that sucked. A lemon cake the day Will's parents found out about his job and nearly disowned him. Cinnamon was the prominent scent today, from the coffee cake on a cooling rack on the counter.

I decided I hated the smell of cinnamon.

Will came back in, his phone pressed to his ear, his expression harder than granite. ”He's right here, sir. I'll let him try to tell you.”

He held out the phone and I took it. My hands shook so badly, I could barely hold it. ”Archer here.”

”Chief?” Mike's voice was beyond worried. ”Will said you need me.”

I did. I needed him here, not two thousand miles away. But that couldn't be helped, so I told him everything, down to Dad pus.h.i.+ng me out of the house with blood still on my clothes. I looked up to see Millicent standing behind Will with a hand over her mouth. She was using the doorjamb to hold herself up.

Mike was silent a long, long, long time. Then there was an anguished shout, and the sound of gla.s.s shattering. A moment later, I heard Aunt Julie calling to him in the background asking what was wrong and Mike incoherently telling her how our family had been fractured. She took the phone from him.

”Matt?” Aunt Julie, like Will, didn't go to pieces. She turned to steel. ”I'm sending a ride for you and I'm calling the other wielders back to D.C. immediately. As of right now, Mamie is priority number one. We know how important she is to the other side, and we need to get her back as soon as possible.” Her tone softened. ”The ride won't be there for a few hours yet. Take this time. We'll need you ready to go once you're here.”

She hung up, having given me an excuse to grieve now, along with an order to pull it together afterwards.

I laid Will's phone down. ”I'd like to clean up, please.”

Will and Millicent shared deeply concerned glances, before he nodded and took me upstairs to the guest suite. ”I meant to tell you-you left your duffel in Penn's car. I'll bring it up.”

I went into the bathroom, stripped, then sat naked on the tile floor and stared at my hands. They'd done so much, saved so many people. But they hadn't been able to save my brother. Worthless, stupid hands.

I don't know how long I sat there, but Will knocked at some point. ”You okay?”

”Yeah.” I rose, wincing as I unfolded stiff knees. ”Give me a minute.”

The shower was blistering, but the heat helped clear my mind. I scrubbed my skin raw, trying to figure out where to start our search. Finding Mamie would be my sole reason for drawing breath until I found her again. I'd bring her home and kill as many of the Shadow Man's soldiers I could in the process. I owed it to Brent.

But where was she? Mamie disappeared with that minion-literally disappeared, like they had teleported her somewhere. She could be anywhere in the world. Anywhere in the universe.

Or not in the universe at all.

When I came out of the bathroom, wearing clean BDUs from my duffel since I didn't have anything else, I picked up the piece of paper my sister had left behind. It had been torn from Zenka's journal-one of the bits of code she'd been working on. At the top was the encrypted verse. Underneath it, in Mamie's handwriting, was the decrypted version, or so I guessed since it was still in Latin. Underneath that ...

”She translated it,” I breathed.

Words that meant nothing, just like Jie said. This was what the other side had been after: For the Sentinel, Guardian of Light Herself To bring her home, to stop the war Look to the stars To the Sentinel, to me. That much I knew, who I was, and what I was protecting. But what this fragment told me changed everything else I knew to be true. To the guardian of light herself-not itself, but a specific person, a girl I'd known my entire life. One in ten trillion. The Archer.

Mamie was Light Herself.

This verse explained everything-why Xing Li said she was ordained by the stars, why Colonel Black's last words were to keep her safe from the dark, and why he said the light was beautiful. This was why the Dark master wanted her and why we had to bring her back at any and all costs. Because I wasn't Tink's proxy.

Mamie was.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Someone knocked on the door. When I opened it, Penn handed me her cell phone without a word and left.

Clenching my jaw to keep from falling to pieces, I whispered, ”Is it you?”

”Yes,” Ella said, her voice choked with tears. ”Matt, there aren't enough words in the world to say how sorry I am.”

”Where are you?”

”New Jersey. I'm, um, I'm visiting Rutgers.” She sniffled. ”I wanted to check out schools near West Point.”

I sank down on the bed. Today had been a catastrophe of tragic proportions and somehow, Ella knew exactly what I needed to hear. ”I love you.”

”I wish I was there. Is there any sense in me coming home? Penn said you'd be leaving for D.C. tonight.”

”No, don't come here. I don't know ... I don't know if it's safe to be around me.” And G.o.d knew I couldn't stand to endanger anyone else. Then, for some reason, I blurted out, ”I lost the St. Christopher medal.”

”I'll find another one,” she said, suddenly fierce. ”Because obviously the first one was faulty.”

”No, it wasn't. It saved me a bunch of times.”

”Then I'll be glad its luck held as long as it did while I search for a new, stronger one. One that will help you find Mamie and bring her home, both of you safe.”

Knowing how much she cared-it would be enough to see me through. ”If you find one, hang on to it. Keep my luck in your hands. I know it'll be safest there.”

She drew a shaking breath. ”I'll love you forever. I want you to know that.”

”I do.”

”Then go find her, and I'll be waiting at home when you come back.”

If I came back, which was unlikely. That realization hit me like a truck-this was probably it for me. I couldn't tell her that, though. ”I'll love you forever, too. In this life and the next.”

She went very quiet on the other end of the phone. A long moment pa.s.sed before she said, ”Are you trying to say goodbye?”

Yes.

”I don't know what's going to happen over the coming days. I just know it'll be hard.”

”Then don't say goodbye,” she said. ”Keep hope, because I know I'll see you again.”

My breath caught. I couldn't lie to her, but I didn't want her to be hurt. And maybe it wasn't lie. Maybe I would see her again. In this life, or the next. ”Until next time, then.”

”Until next time,” she whispered, then the call cut out.