ADDIE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, vibrating with outrage.
“I take it you talked to Mom and Dad,” I said.
She stomped inside, Laurel behind her looking amused and resigned in equal measure.
“Cocoa?” Eliot asked her. “This part takes a while, sometimes.”
Laurel stifled a laugh.
Addie ignored them. “You should not be working for Lattimer.”
“You are,” I pointed out. “You asked me to help, remember? How is this any different?”
The project is done. I’m back to regular apprenticeship work.”
I hadn’t known that. “Did you have any luck? Find any Free Walkers?”
Her complexion cooled from feverish to impassive ivory. “No. We ran out of leads to follow.”
The best lies look identical to the truth, only better. It’s not about telling people what you want them to think—it’s about telling people the story they want to believe. Addie was too straightforward to be any good at it; she assumed a lie was truth’s opposite instead of its mirror. I’d had years of experience. I knew better.
Eliot did too, thanks to my terrible influence, and didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “You didn’t find anything?”
Her eyes were a murky green instead of their usual jade. “Nothing we could pursue. The point is, you shouldn’t be working for Lattimer.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a kid. You don’t even have a license.”
I stifled the urge to remind her she was no longer in charge of me. “I will soon. Aren’t you the one who wanted me to think about my future? If I do this, I can write my own ticket.”
“Technically speaking,” Eliot put in, “we all work for the Consort. This is a specialized assignment.”
“This is Monty,” Addie snarled. “And a terrible idea.”
“What does he think Monty knows?” Laurel asked. “Even if he had been working with the Free Walkers, they would have scattered as soon as he was arrested.”
Her tone made it clear she knew the truth about the anomaly—and Simon. I glared at Addie, who nibbled a thumbnail and avoided my eyes.
“A weapon,” I said into the sudden quiet. “The Consort thinks Simon’s dad built a weapon before he was captured, something the Free Walkers would use against them. Lattimer thinks Monty has information about it.”
“I don’t care if he does or not. Find a way to get out of this,” Addie said. “Digging around in Free Walker stuff is dangerous.”
“We’re not.”
Addie arched her eyebrows. “And you’re looking at Rose’s journals because . . .”
“Homework,” Eliot said quickly. “For Shaw.”
“Leave the lying to Del,” Addie said dryly. “In fact, leave this alone completely, both of you. Before somebody gets hurt.”
“Too late,” I shot back. “Somebody already has, in case you’ve forgotten. His name was Simon. Ring a bell?”
Eliot put a hand on my arm, but I shook him off.
Addie’s shoulders sagged. “Del . . .”
“Oh!” said Laurel, overbright and obvious. “This is cute! Did you two come up with it?”
“With what?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from Addie.
“This song.” She tapped the list of frequencies and hummed lightly. “Sorry. It’s a thing I do when I’m bored at work.”
“We didn’t write a song,” Eliot said. “What kind of thing?”
“I get stuck doing a lot of data entry—coding navigation reports and cleavings paperwork and stuff. Which is okay, I guess, but they all start to look the same after a few hours, so I made up a game. Each frequency corresponds to a note, more or less. Like this one is a G-flat.” She sang it, her voice a clear, sweet soprano. “And this one’s a D. Put enough of them together and they make a song.”
“Like sight reading?” Eliot asked.
“Yeah. It’s not hard; the trick is to remember which range of frequencies correspond to each note on the scale. A generator would do the job, but it sounds nicer if you sing it.”
“Can you sing this one?” I pushed the paper toward her. My pulse was thrumming so loudly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear her.
She looked over at Addie, shrugged, and began to sing—just the notes, not the words—but I knew the tune immediately. Judging by the look on Addie’s face, so did she.
Nothing’s done that can’t be un-,
Nothing’s lost that—
Laurel broke off. “Where’s the rest?”
“We know the rest,” I said softly.
“Where did you get those frequencies?” Addie demanded, reaching for the last remaining journal. I snatched it away just in time.
“It’s mine,” I snapped. “Monty sang it to me, not you.”
“That is brilliant,” Eliot said. “Freakishly brilliant, but still.”
“Well, Monty’s a freak,” Addie said. “It fits.”
Laurel glanced around—me clutching a twenty-year-old book to my chest, Addie grim as death, Eliot staring at the mess of papers like he couldn’t tell if they were a bomb or a birthday present.
“Somebody should explain to the new girl,” she said.
“Rose left us a code,” I said. “She converted the frequencies to notes and made a song out of it. But she only put the first few measures in the journal.”
“And Monty taught the rest to Del when she was a kid,” Addie said.
“What’s the message?” Laurel asked. “Rose’s location?”
“No way. Monty knew this was here,” Eliot said. “If it could have helped him find Rose, he would have used it a long time ago.”
“It’s not a map,” Laurel said. “But it could be.”
We all looked at her blankly.
“Every note on the scale resonates at a different frequency. But they’re rough approximations—a plain middle C won’t match an Echo. The frequency needs to be much more specific.”
She took a blank piece of paper and drew a staff, then sketched in the melody she’d sung. “See? Individually, they’re too general. But if you combine them into a single chord . . . an octad, I guess you’d call it . . . they’ll generate a more distinct frequency.” She drew a chord, eight notes stacked together like a blobby, upright caterpillar. “It might be enough to pinpoint a specific Echo.”
“Not from a piece of sheet music,” Eliot argued. “The range of possible frequencies would be too broad. It’s dependent on who’s singing, or what instrument you play it on. Middle C resonates differently if you play it on a guitar or a flute or a cello.”
I touched his hand. “Or a violin.”
“Exactly,” Eliot replied, and looked at me again. “Oh. Oh.”
“Rose’s frequencies,” I said. “Rose’s violin.”
Every violin has its own voice; like fingerprints, no two are exactly alike, which is why people will pay millions for a genuine Stradivarius. Monty had given me my grandmother’s violin as soon as I was big enough to play it. I didn’t know if I should be touched that he’d trusted my eleven-year-old self with something so irreplaceable, or furious he’d been manipulating me for so long. I was leaning toward the latter.
I led the way to the music room and took the violin out of the case, the burnished wood familiar as an old friend. I used Rose’s pendant to tune it, trying to keep frustration from stiffening my fingers.
“I can record your playing and combine the frequencies digitally,” Eliot said, laptop at the ready. “It shouldn’t take too long to process.”
I tucked the instrument under my chin, lifted the bow, and Addie spoke.
“Even if you’re right—and I refuse to believe that the Free Walkers would be so stupid as to use a nursery rhyme as a secret code—but if this works, what are you going to do? Chase down the frequency? Find this weapon, if that’s what it is? What then? Lattimer will know you’re up to something. So will the Free Walkers. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll be in?”
She knotted her fingers together, face pinched with worry. “Del, stop and think. Haven’t you learned anything?”
The lessons that stick are the hardest to learn. Simon had taught me how to see the truth of a person, because he’d seen me. He’d taught me how to sacrifice—to look beyond myself and focus on the good. But he’d also taught me how to fight. You play until you hear the buzzer.
I looked up at Addie—really looked—and saw the fear behind her anger. She’d never been scared before, not like this. I wondered what she’d seen during her special assignment to frighten her so deeply.
“Don’t you want answers?” I asked.
Laurel took Addie’s hand, the gesture so simple and automatic my throat ached.
“Of course I do,” Addie said.
I rubbed my thumb along the ebony frog of the bow. “The Consort’s not going to hand them over like a bag of jelly beans. We have to find them ourselves.”
“And what happens when you get caught?”
“All I’m doing is playing the violin.”
Before she could protest further, I nodded to Eliot and drew the bow over the strings, the notes rich and clear. I tried to envision my grandmother standing in their room, playing for Monty, sending out a message that might never be found. Had she meant it for me?
I played the song three times, stopping at Eliot’s signal. “Got it,” he said, and tapped furiously at the keys. “Give me a minute.”
A minute was all it took for Addie to start in again.
“Let’s say you find this weapon. You’d have to give it to Lattimer. Who you hate. Is that really your plan? The Free Walkers won’t let it go without a fight.”
The sound of Eliot’s typing stopped abruptly, then started again. The comment needled me. Finding Simon wasn’t my endgame. Being with him was, and unless the Free Walkers succeeded, that wouldn’t happen. If keeping Lattimer from finding this weapon would help, I’d do it—even if it meant leaving this life behind.
I tucked the violin back into the case, lazy and cool. “I can handle the Free Walkers.”
“You won’t need to,” Eliot said, his voice a mixture of disappointment and relief. “It didn’t work.”
“What?” I peered over his shoulder. “It didn’t generate a frequency?”
“Not one specific enough to identify an Echo. This one is too short.”
I sank onto the arm of the chair. “It worked. It made perfect sense. And it was totally wrong?”
“Not wrong.” Laurel said, studying the screen. “Incomplete. You’d need at least one more frequency, maybe two.”
“Monty lied. Again,” I said flatly. I’d fallen for it. Again.
Eliot shook his head. “He’s playing a game. Bet you he’s got another puzzle waiting for your next visit.”
“He’s in for a long wait,” I said. “I’m not asking Monty for a damn thing.”
Not when I could ask Ms. Powell instead.