“Lake, are you okay?” I held her hand when she stumbled a bit over her high heels—something I’d never seen her do.
“It’s true. So what? My parents didn’t want me to fight,” she said in a low whisper. “They still don’t. They don’t want me to die. What’s so wrong with that? Jo . . . She couldn’t possibly understand.”
I squeezed her hand as we continued down the red carpet through the glaring flashes. Lake tried to recover by taking selfies with fans and signing autographs. I followed suit the best I could.
“Chae Rin! Chae Rin!”
We looked for the voice. It was faint, but soon we could see someone pushing her way through the crowd to the barricade. Chae Rin’s whole body seized up, her lips parting as soon as the girl broke free from the rest, her hand touching the glowing metal bars.
“Unnie?” Chae Rin dropped her clutch purse and rushed to the metal bars. “Oh my god!”
The girl looked very much like Chae Rin, though her sleek black hair was longer and rather limp over her buttoned-up blue blouse—a little stuffy for an event like this. She was only slightly taller, and a bit chubbier, her round cheeks as rosy as the girl whose fingers she clasped. I’d seen her face before in Chae Rin’s electronic file, which Rhys had shown me on the way to Montreal. She was one of four faces on Rhys’s tablet screen as he told me all about Chae Rin’s family.
Her sister?
“Unnie!” I’d never heard Chae Rin’s voice like this, almost childish as she jumped up and down and hugged her big sister. “What are you doing here?”
“I know I’m not supposed to contact you, but I saw that you were nominated and I had to try to get here.”
She had a slight accent, which I could only assume came from living in Daegu for longer than Chae Rin had. She looked at us, her eyes stretching into beautiful crescents as she grinned. “You’re the other Effigies, right? I’m Ha Rin, big sis. Thanks for keeping my little sister in check.”
“Hey, nobody keeps me in check.” Chae Rin folded her arms brattily as her sister rubbed her head, messing up her hair.
The only thing I knew about Ha Rin was that she was studying to be meteorologist at the University of British Columbia. She certainly looked the part with her professional dress blouse, thin white sweater, and black dress pants—an odd combo in the middle of sweaty, screaming children in rocker T-shirts.
“Seriously, though, what are you doing here? Did something happen?” Chae Rin looked suddenly concerned when her sister’s smile fell. “Mom. Mom’s okay, isn’t she? Or did she have another—”
“I can’t explain here—I’ll meet you in your hotel room after the show, okay? Text me when you’re done. Don’t worry, it’s nothing really bad . . . ,” she added, though unconvincingly, when she saw Chae Rin’s expression begin to twist with worry. “You’ll be up onstage, right?” she added quickly. “I’ll try to work my way there.”
“How?” I said. “I’m sure the pit’s already completely occupied.”
“I have my ways. Okay, kids, move it!” What her mousy blouse didn’t show was the sheer brutality of the sharp elbows concealed within the fabric.
I laughed, hoping Chae Rin would follow suit, but she stayed quiet down the rest of the length of the red carpet.
? ? ?
The rest of the evening passed by like a dream. Backstage, celebrities I’d only seen before on television came up to me, asking me what it was like fighting monsters, telling me how cute my dress was, though obviously there were others who didn’t seem that willing to share the spotlight even if there were no cameras around. That clique of willowy socialites-turned-models every girl at Ashford High was obsessed with completely ignored me when I said hello. And that one British blue-eyed soul singer was too busy throwing his half-empty coffee cup at a volunteer’s face to even notice me trying to talk to him. At least pop sensation Aaron Jacobs spared me a minute. He’d gotten much nicer after coming back from rehab.
It was all well and good. Belle was off being chatted up by a young actor who’d once professed to be her fan, not that she seemed very engaged in the conversation. Chae Rin was off by herself, eating half the tray of tiny sandwiches left on a table full of food platters. It was a little bit of respite from everything I’d been through in the past few weeks. Taking pictures with celebrities, watching people go crazy online. For a few blissful hours, I could forget that there were monsters chasing me. I could go back to being just a fan again.
Maybe it was all the noise, but my head was suddenly throbbing. I grimaced and bent low. GBD had just returned backstage from performing “Scandalous,” and in the midst of glaring at Jo, Lake noticed me wincing.
“You okay?” Lake asked when I pressed my hand against my forehead.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I’d have been more worried if it were the back of my neck again. This was probably just the aftereffect of the mind control. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Well, it’s almost over.” Lake seemed relieved at the thought as the mechanical female voice called out the nominee list over the sound system. The crowd went wild after every name, but they gave a resounding cheer when the Effigies were listed. Even though I was backstage, I was still streaming the show on my phone—I could see images of us fighting phantoms spliced together in an awesome montage they showed on the jumbotron.
“And the winner is . . .” The presenter of our award paused for effect. “The Effigies!”
“Yes!” Lake pumped her fist in the air. “Yes! I told you, bitches!” she said, turning and giving Jo the finger before grabbing me and pulling me up the stairs.
Everything hit me at once. The lights. The biting cold. The herd of fans, the sound of their screams echoing in the night sky. The jumbotron behind us had a split screen of our profiles, our faces plastered against different-colored backdrops with our names scrawled under each one. The host handed Lake some kind of strange silver trophy as Belle, Chae Rin, and I lined up beside her.
Lake was babbling her thanks as the rest of us posed and just tried our best to look good. That’s why we were here, at the end of the day. Be pretty. Be a role model. Be a celebrity. Gather your fans and make the Sect look less menacing. That was the task we’d been given, and even knowing what we knew about the Sect, it was too late to skip out on the event Sibyl had okayed. Lake wouldn’t have let us, anyway. I could see how much holding the trophy and waving to her fans meant to her. She clung to the moment as tightly as she clung to her new award.
“Ugh.” My head was throbbing again. Even in front of so many cameras, I couldn’t stop myself from wincing.
Maia . . .
No. My hands fell at my sides. I could hear her. Natalya. I thought I’d buried her deep after that last time she’d tried to take me.
Maia . . . Don’t be fooled. . . . Pay attention. . . .