Actually, when Naomi had said his name, I hadn’t been expecting the gray hair and small eyes sinking into a bed of wrinkled skin. A black bowler hat obscured most of his head, but his large white mustache covered his lips as it drooped down like a fishtail from his large, bulbous nose—a nose that twitched every time he sneezed from the dust in his room. Natalya was stealthily covering hers, and I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t feel much of anything in this memory, not even my own body. But I could see the particles of dust as they caught the light trickling past the curtains. That was the only distinguishing aspect of this bare-bones space. Besides a bed, a chair, and a table, Baldric hadn’t done much to decorate. Who knew how long he’d even spent here.
“You don’t have to do this,” Natalya said as Baldric beat his hand against her long legs so she would move out of his way. His wheelchair arm brushed against her skinny jeans on his way to the table. “You don’t have to run away. I can go back to Prague and try again.”
“You said you had to leave the Little Room quickly because you were followed.” His voice was low and raspy, his proper British accent mangled by barely concealed panic. “Followed by Sect.”
“Not followed.” Natalya picked up a book that had fallen off the bed. “I bumped into Aidan Rhys.”
Rhys. Like the dream I’d had in Marrakesh. My heart sped up, but I knew the consequences if I couldn’t calm myself here. Natalya’s will was growing. Whatever I heard, I’d have to deal with it if I was going to make it out of this memory in one piece.
“Followed.” He snatched the book out of her hands. “By the Sect.”
Natalya shook her head incredulously. “Aidan is my friend—”
“He is no friend of yours. He’s the son of Director Prince, and believe me, he’s had loyalty beaten into him, the poor boy. It’s in his bones now.”
“He was there with a few others visiting.”
“Visiting? Just happened to be there at the same time, did he? You fool.” The cantankerous man looked like he could throw the book at her, but he dropped it into a suitcase. “He is Sect. Probably an Informer, sent by the Sect to watch you. Which means they’re already onto you. They’re already onto me.” A shadow of fear passed over his face as he considered the implications. “If what I suspect about the Sect is true, then I need to leave. Now. And we must leave the volume where it is. It would be too dangerous to go back there now. You would only lead the Sect right to it.”
“The thirteenth volume.” Natalya narrowed her eyes. “You said that it contained secrets not even the Sect knew. Secrets about us.”
“Among many things. It doesn’t matter. We keep the volume where it is. But to truly keep those secrets out of the Sect’s hands, I need to disappear. Mr. Boones!”
A few moments later a man younger than he, though not by many years considering the gray tinge of his hair, appeared in the doorframe.
“Please proceed to bring the car around,” Baldric ordered. “We’re leaving within the hour.”
“Very well, Mr. Haas.” The man bowed forty-five degrees, his black butler suit crinkling on his way back up, and then left.
“You promised you’d tell me,” Natalya said. “That’s why I helped you in the first place.”
“Helped.” Baldric snorted as he rested an artifact on his gray flannel trousers. It looked like a statue.
“I tried,” Natalya said. “I tried because I wanted to know, and you promised you’d tell me.”
“However you look at it, the Sect’s secrets aren’t for you to know.”
“Not for me to know?” I could see Natalya’s fingers curling into fists. “Baldric, by chance, do you know what my number is?”
Absently, Baldric grabbed another book off of his bed. “Number—”
“Fourteen. Fourteen years I’ve fought for the Sect. And I will probably die for the Sect. I’ve given everything to them. I let them turn me into a child soldier because they taught me to believe it was the right thing to do. And I tried to trust them. I tried. But then Naomi tells me that the Sect could be corrupt. And I— Listen to me.”
Natalya stood in front of him, blocking his path. Baldric strained his neck to look up at her, but he matched the power of her stare nonetheless.
“I deserve to know. I deserve to know if everything I’ve been fighting for has been a lie. I deserve to know what I am. No matter the cost.”
Baldric cast his gaze to the floor. Silence stretched between them until his mustache twitched again, his lips parting to speak. “And among the shadows,” he said, “you will find them.”
Natalya narrowed her eyes. “. . . Deoscali? What does this have to do with that foolish cult?”
“The cult may be foolish, as is anyone who worships the phantoms. However, there’s more to Emilia Farlow’s old teachings than you would expect. The secrets of the shadows . . . and the secrets of the beings who dwell among the shadows.”
“What do you mean?”
Baldric rolled his wheelchair back away from her and over to the open door. With a swift movement, he reached for the knob as if to shut the door quickly, but unexpectedly, his hand rested there.
“Have you heard of Allegory of the Cave, my dear?”
Natalya nodded. “Plato. Of course.”
“Yes, Plato.” Baldric’s fingers tightened around the doorknob. “The unlearned men and women chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads to see the puppeteers behind them. All they can see are the shadows dancing across the cave walls.”
“The shadows are lies,” said Natalya.
“But these shadows are all they’ve ever known. How can they know that the shadows have been cast by the puppeteers under the light of a fire burning behind them? How can they not help but think the shadows real?”
“I don’t take well to riddles.” Natalya scowled. “Tell me plainly.”
“The Haas family has had to speak in tongues since the day the phantoms appeared.” Baldric let go of the knob. “1865 . . . perhaps the skeletons of those days cannot stay buried forever. The sins of those little girls . . .”
He must have lost himself in the riddles of his thoughts, because he trailed off for a moment before snapping himself back to reality. “Don’t go there again,” Baldric told her. “And forget what I’ve told you. When the true battle begins, you will not find me.”
Natalya had just begun to speak again when I felt her hands wrap around my mouth and pull me out of the memory with a violent tug. Baldric’s room ripped away from my sight as I fell into a black void. I should have known she’d take her chance when I least expected it. No matter how hard I struggled, Natalya wasn’t letting me go. We struggled and sank deeper into the ever-expanding darkness. Scenes stretched past my vision as I sank deeper into the depths. Natalya fighting. Natalya speaking to news reporters. Her duties to the Sect. The empty bottles of alcohol around her apartment living room.
And then I saw Belle. Little Belle. Couldn’t have been more than thirteen, though still lanky for her age. Her legs were bent at odd angles as she crouched near a dirty toilet, barely conscious. She was losing too much blood. It was Natalya who’d found her, but it was all she could do to keep pressure on her bleeding wrists. Her phone was on the ground, the paramedic still trying to speak with her on the other end of the receiver. Natalya, whose tears did the speaking for her.
“It’s my fault.” Belle slurred her words. “I killed the phantoms but I couldn’t save them. The agents tell me every night when I close my eyes. They say, what good are you? What good are you? I don’t want to hear them anymore. . . . Please let me die. . . .”
“Let go of me!” I struggled against Natalya until finally my eyes snapped open and the bright white overwhelmed my sight.