CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Orphans’ Oath

APRIL COULDN’T GET CLOSE TO SLEEP. SHE LAY ON HER BED, IN her own room, in her own home. Everything was just as it was when she’d left.

Everything but her.

It wasn’t late—not even ten o’clock—and she’d only been back for an hour or so. The Warden’s mysterious cab driver, Beck, had driven her home, with Gabriel as an escort. April had envisioned this trip home as a kind of good-bye, a chance to spend time with Derek and mold things into the right shape before leaving to join the Wardens. She’d imagined over and over again how the conversation with her brother would go, but when the actual moment arrived, with Derek actually in front of her at the kitchen table tonight, she couldn’t re-create any of the clever or compelling things she’d thought to say.

“Too tired to talk about it” was all she’d said, when Derek asked about her visit with Maggie. And then she’d fled awkwardly upstairs.

Once in her room, she’d placed the leestone Mr. Meister had given her—a beautiful green-and-golden stone carved into the shape of a bird’s skull—atop her bookshelf. It would protect the house and anyone living in it from the Riven. And there was another protective leestone in her pocket, just for her, as warm as a sun-baked rock—a raven’s eye. A very appropriate name, all things considered. On the drive up in Beck’s cab, Gabriel had repeatedly asked her to check the color of the raven’s eye, which was worrisome, but he seemed satisfied every time she reported that it was still black.

Mr. Meister thought there was little danger of the Riven showing up here. The Riven knew where she lived, of course, but it seemed the leestones would take care of that, in time. Meanwhile April—vine repaired—was no longer the target she had been a couple of days ago, when the Riven hoped to follow her bloody trail straight to the Warren.

Or at least, that’s what Mr. Meister seemed to think. What his logic amounted to, strangely, was this: now that April was whole again, she wasn’t nearly so valuable. It was kind of insulting, in a way, but April took it in stride. It made sense. And after all, she firmly believed it was better to be small and safe than big and in danger.

No, there was no real reason to think the Riven would show up tonight. Nonetheless, precautions were always necessary, and so Mr. Meister had not only sent the leestone and the raven’s eye, but Gabriel too. Gabriel, in fact, was outside somewhere right now, staking out the house in secret, keeping watch. He didn’t talk much, but April liked him. He seemed like a person who only spoke when he had something worth saying, which was a quality April herself aspired to. However, now that she was here, now that there were things she had to say to Derek, she had absolutely no idea how to go about it.

It didn’t help that the newly repaired Ravenvine continued to bring her oceans full of wonder. Arthur was doing his half-brain dozing thing on the roof. She basked in the sensation of the night breeze ruffling his feathers, the rise and fall of his powerful chest muscles as he breathed.

Her senses wide open, she startled as a bat fluttered into range higher up, echolocating like mad. Her own throat and tongue seemed to vibrate as the bat fired a rapid series of chirping clicks, like the chattering teeth of some tiny, rusty robot. The sounds rose and fell as the bat zeroed in on flying insects. She did her best to ignore the sensation of bugs squishing juicily in her mouth, the taste of their guts on her tongue. She tried to catch a glimpse of Gabriel through the bat’s sharp night eyes, but never saw him.

A little past ten, Uncle Harrison creaked heavily up the stairs for bed, just like always. Not long after, Derek followed. As April lay there—hiding, to be honest—a singular and unfamiliar urge grew in her belly. Escape. She would go outside and find Gabriel, and then Beck would drive them back to the Warren. The urge shocked her. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t. She would try talking to Derek again tomorrow, keeping it simple. She had Mr. Meister’s folder, packed with brochures and letters and applications to fill out and forms to sign. She would show it all to Derek in the morning and she would . . .

She would lie.

She imagined all the lies she’d have to tell, tomorrow and the day after, and on and on, until her stomach churned with doubt and her head buzzed with angry contradictions and her legs ached to run and before she knew it she was out of bed. She eased her door open into the dark hallway and slipped down the hall to Derek’s room. She knocked twice, heard nothing, and let herself in.

She groped her way toward Derek’s bed and fumbled for his lamp. When she turned it on, he slurred out a mumbled question:

“Whosit?”

“It’s me. Wake up.”

“I just fell asleep,” he said, opening his eyes. “What’s going on? You okay?”

“Not really. I mean yes. Yes, I’m fine. It’s just . . . I have something big to ask you. And you’re going to say no, but I need you to say yes.”

Derek sat up straight, crossing his legs. He rubbed his eyes and looked at her hard. “What is it?”

“I need to go. Away.” She laid the folder for the Mazzoleni Academy on the bed.

Derek eyed the folder warily. “What are you talking about? Go away where?”

“There’s a school in the city. I’ve been invited to attend—to live there—for free. But the thing is—”

“No,” Derek said, not even opening the folder.

“—there’s more to it than just school, I—”

“Absolutely not. What do you mean you ‘got invited’? You’re thirteen years old! You just mysteriously got invited to go to school in Chicago for free. In the summer. For no reason.” He flipped the folder open and slapped it shut again without really looking.

“No. Not for no reason. Something’s . . . happened.”

Derek pressed one hand against his forehead, his thoughts clearly racing. His face turned stern. After several deep breaths, he said, “Pill, tell me you were at Maggie’s house the last few days.”

April took a deep breath of her own. “I was not at Maggie’s house.”

The muscles in Derek’s jaw clenched and unclenched. His eyes were steely but sad. “You swore,” he said at last. “I made you swear you weren’t lying to me, and you swore. Orphans’ oath.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I had to lie.”

“Why? Where did you go—to this school of yours?” Derek turned away, tugging at his hair. “I can’t even look at you. I can’t understand what you’re even telling me.”

“Then listen. Forget the school. The school is just an excuse for what’s really going on with me. And I’m trying to tell you—it’s important. I need you to listen.”

“I’m listening.”

This was the moment. She knew that the school story wouldn’t be enough. It would be enough for Uncle Harrison, but not for Derek. She would have to tell him more.

She would have to show him more. And she could do that. Yes, she could.

The thought of stepping out from under these lies and into her newly found power emboldened her, made her stand up tall. “There’s a reason I lied to you—you know I wouldn’t break the oath without a reason.” Wordlessly, heart pounding, April turned her head and pulled back her hair, revealing the vine.

Derek leaned in, squinting. “Jewelry,” he said, his voice dripping with skepticism.

April let her hair fall. “Not jewelry. It’s an instrument.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It belongs to me. It’s called a . . . Tan’ji. It’s magic, I guess you could say, except it’s more like science, but it’ll seem like magic. To you.”

Now Derek sat back. “I have . . . nothing to say to that. Nothing at all.”

“You won’t believe me unless I show you.” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him out of bed. She knew what she had to do.

She led him through the kitchen and outside. The night was hot and moonless and still. They passed beneath a spider, and for a moment April swooned as her vision blurred and multiplied. A vast spray of white filaments appeared before her—the spider’s own web, as seen from the center. But she pushed the spider’s sight away, grateful for the new control she had over the vine.

Arthur stirred and strutted across the roof to perch on the gutter directly overhead. Out in the darkness of the backyard, April could feel First Baron, edging fitfully up from sleep. She’d been avoiding the dog so far, both in person and through the vine—the last time she’d seen him, she’d cried, and she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t do it again. The dog got slowly to his feet as the porch light came on, his sleep dissipating in a polite swell of happy excitement. He came toward them, tail wagging.

And as he approached, she realized she needn’t have worried about crying. The moment she opened herself to the dog with the newly repaired vine, she was overwhelmed with a flood of sensation that swept everything else from her mind, a thick and complicated stew that drowned her mouth and nose. It was his sense of smell, even more rich and astonishing than Arthur’s razor-sharp sight. She’d known that dogs’ noses were incredibly keen—she’d researched it—but she’d never really realized just how dominant Baron’s sense of smell was, how much of his brain was devoted to it. For him, smell far outstripped sight and even sound. With some difficulty, she groped her way through the busy cloud, clearing her head.

April grabbed the dog by his jowls and gave his head a friendly shake. He sniffed and licked her face, a bizarre sensation through the newly attuned vine. She smelled like salt and dirt and girl, and fast-food grease and cheap chocolate shake, and—undescribably but undeniably—worry and hope and sadness. In other words, exactly like herself in exactly this moment. Again she struggled not to let it engulf her. How strange to think that emotions had a scent.

“Is this the magic part?” Derek said.

If you only knew, she thought as she rose and faced him. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to read Baron’s mind.”

Derek paused, then laughed out loud. “Hell, I can read his mind. Food food food, bark bark stranger, food food food, wag wag poop. Oh, and then food.”

“That’s about half right,” April said, staying calm. “But to be fair—from what I can tell—every animal thinks mostly about food.”

Derek stopped laughing. “From what you can tell? What does that mean?”

“Like I said.” She pulled back her hair, revealing the vine again. “With this, I can read the minds of animals. I can . . . hear what they’re thinking. What they’re feeling, and sensing.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’ll prove it.” She began backing away, the crisp night grass crinkling under her bare feet. “Just wait. Stay here with Baron.” She crossed the lawn. As she moved deeper into the shadowed woods ahead, she began to feel the usual assortment of nocturnal animals out there among the trees. Rodents, mostly, and a solitary sentinel hidden in the branches up high—an owl, patient and predatory. Cautiously, unable to resist, she took in the owl’s eyes for a moment, and its ears. The forest lit up like day. Her own footsteps sounded like a dinosaur’s. A moment later, the owl flew away on powerful, soundless wings, but not before she lost her breath at the sight of a figure on the edge of the owl’s keen vision, crouched motionless twenty yards out among the trees.

Gabriel.

April sighed with relief. At the yard’s edge, she stepped behind a large hackberry tree, leaning back against the rough bark, hidden from Derek’s sight. She pulled her attention away from the woods and back toward the dog. “Okay,” she called out, “Now . . . do something.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Move around or something. Just make sure Baron sees you.”

“You’re telling me you’re going to see what the dog sees?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yes.” Defocusing on the dimly illuminated trees before her, April let the dog’s vision become her own. She saw her brother’s face through Baron’s eyes, the colors strangely muted. He looked deeply doubtful. “Stop shaking your head and just do something,” she said.

Derek leaned down to the dog, his face full of consternation. He held up his hand.

“Four fingers,” April said.

Through Baron, she saw Derek’s surprise. He glanced over in her direction—her actual direction—then turned his back to her and bent down again. This time he made a circle with his left hand and brought it to his right eye, staring hard into Baron’s face.

April felt a little catch in her throat. “The oath,” she tried to say, but even Baron could hardly hear her. With effort, she found her voice. “The oath. You’re doing the orphans’ oath. And I swear I’m telling you the truth this time.”

Derek dropped his hand. He looked back once more at the shadows where April was hidden, then up at the porch and the house. “You’ve got me on camera or something. You must. Why are you doing this?”

April practically boiled with frustration. “There’s no camera. This is real.”

“Oh, yeah? Then prove it.”

Gritting her teeth, April opened herself more fully to the vine, to the torrent of information pouring from the dog. He was content, happy for the attention he was getting, but confused about why April was so far away. With his ears, she could hear a complicated blanket of sounds—far-off cars and Uncle Harrison’s air conditioner and the steady buh-thump, buh-thump of Derek’s pulse. It occurred to her that Derek was much more unsettled than he was letting on.

She could discern the aftertaste of dog food in Baron’s mouth, earthy and oddly spicy. She could feel the grass beneath his rough paws. But above all, she was awash in that ocean of smells, rich and overpowering and for the most part unidentifiable, like colors that had no names. A few of the scents were recognizable, but even these took shapes she could never have imagined. She could smell the night trees, and somehow she knew that morning trees had a different scent than this, and that morning trees in June were different yet again from morning trees in September. She could detect smoke from some distant fire, acrid and chemical, and realized she could even tell what direction it came from, as if the dog were smelling in stereo. There was also a deeply pungent odor that was very distracting, and vaguely unpleasant, drifting in from the woods to the north. It took April a moment to realize that it was the smell of something dead, and that to Baron the stench wasn’t unpleasant at all—just another rich note in this omnipresent swarm of odors.

As she struggled to make sense of it all, she slowly became aware of an extra dimension Baron’s nose opened up—specifically, the dimension of time. She grasped that this dead thing, for example, was nothing new to Baron; he’d been smelling it for days or weeks, tuned in to the evolving states of decay. He could smell April’s recent passage through the grass, fading slowly from house to tree in the direction she had walked. Because of his sense of smell, Baron wasn’t locked into the here and now . . . almost like Horace. And of course—sights and sounds disappeared at once, but smells lingered. Every object in Baron’s world, April realized, oozed with history, telling a story.

And that included Derek.

April stepped out from behind the tree. “Did you know a dog’s sense of smell is tens of thousands of times stronger than ours?” she said. “If you translated that into sight, it would mean that whatever humans could see from three hundred feet away, dogs could see from eight hundred miles away. From here to New York City.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

April closed her eyes and started walking toward him, homing in on First Baron’s location like a beacon. “You haven’t showered since yesterday,” she said firmly. “And when you did, you used my strawberry shampoo.” She watched herself through Baron’s eyes, tall and willowy and gray. The porchlight threw the dog’s and Derek’s shadows across the lawn at her feet. “You ate something with peanuts today. And you were around people who were smoking cigarettes, but you didn’t smoke one yourself.”

“None of that is news,” Derek said unsteadily. “I have peanut butter sandwiches a couple of times a week. Half the guys I work with smoke.” He hesitated and then said, “And I’m out of shampoo.”

April dug deeper, hardly listening to him, coming closer still. She caught new smells, and identified them. Blood. Plastic. She opened her eyes. “You cut yourself somewhere,” she said, gesturing along her left side. “You had a Band-Aid on, but I think it’s gone now. You didn’t put any medicine on it.”

Derek glanced down at his left elbow, silent.

“You were out with a girl. Last night, I think.” April focused hard, trying to separate and translate the scents that were thick in Baron’s mind. Butter and salt. Flowers and fruit. “You went to the movies. You had popcorn. The girl was wearing perfume or lotion or something . . . it smells like peaches. She has a cat—no, not a cat.” April stopped just in front of Derek and the dog, trying to ignore her own powerful scent in Baron’s nostrils, concentrating instead on this foreign animal odor. Musk and wildness. Meat and mischief. At last she thought she had it. “A ferret? You’re dating a ferret owner?”

Derek slowly sank to the ground, his eyes ablaze with confusion. “How did you . . . ? And anyway we’re not dating, we’re just—”

“Friends, I know. But . . .” Just then Baron sniffed amiably at Derek’s face, and the peachy scent April had been catching blossomed wondrously, unmistakably. “She kissed you,” April said, and pointed to her right cheek, just below the corner of her eye. “Right here.”

Derek reached for the same spot on his own face, his mouth open in amazement. “No one saw that,” he murmured.

April cleared Baron’s thoughts from her mind and sat down in the grass beside them. A moth fluttered by unseen overhead, headed for the bright beacon of the porchlight, where a mindless swarm of insects already droned dizzily. Baron lay down and put his head in her lap, exhaling noisily, his jowls flapping.

“This is real,” Derek said.

“Yes.” April watched her brother, knowing she’d done enough.

After a few minutes Derek spoke again, softly. “Tell me,” he said.

So she told him. She held nothing back—or at least, almost nothing. She told him about Isabel and Joshua and the daktan, about Morla and the Riven, about Horace and Chloe and Mr. Meister. And Arthur, of course. She gave him a vague account of the vine being repaired, so caught up in her story that before she knew what she was doing she mentioned Brian and Tunraden. These were secrets she knew she shouldn’t share, even with Derek. From inside the house, the grandfather clock suddenly began to chime, as if to warn her off. April ended her story awkwardly. “Anyway, that’s what happened,” she said lamely. “And now here I am.” She counted the rest of the clock’s chimes as they sounded. It was eleven o’clock.

Derek took a deep breath and let it out, but didn’t speak. He watched the night sky. They sat there for a few minutes, April knowing she had to let him absorb everything. She’d had days to absorb it—weeks, really. He’d had scarcely half an hour.

Suddenly, a jolt of alarm shot through the vine. Baron sat up straight, ears perked, staring out into the dark yard. A thin, whining growl leaked out of him, and his nose pulled at the air, twitching. April opened herself up to the dog’s senses. Her hand fell involuntarily onto the raven’s eye in her pocket.

“What is it, boy?” Derek asked lightly, clearly unconcerned.

A stinging scent. A memory of a bad shadow in the woods. Anger. Fear. Foulness. That cruel stench, sulfurous and vile, filling April’s head—brimstone. It was faint and far away, even for Baron, but unmistakable.

She rocketed to her feet. “Gabriel,” she called, and then, louder: “Gabriel!”

Derek stood. “What are you doing? Who’s Gabriel?”

Then the sound of footsteps, sprinting across the yard. Baron’s protective rage exploded. The dog lunged and barked ferociously, powerful motors churning in April’s legs and chest. Derek took a step forward as he spotted Gabriel running toward them. “Whoa, whoa!” he called. “Who the hell are you?”

“It’s okay,” April said, to dog and brother alike. She grabbed Baron by the collar, feeling the worn leather digging into her own throat. “It’s okay—he’s a friend,” she said, quieting the dog and reassuring her brother.

Gabriel came to a stop twenty feet away. He held the staff like a weapon. “What is it?” he said.

“Brimstone.”

Gabriel lifted his chin and sniffed the air. “I don’t smell it.”

“I do,” she said. “The dog does. But we have the raven’s eye. Shouldn’t we be—”

“Check it.”

April yanked the still-warm stone from her pocket, holding it up in the light. No longer solid black, the raven’s eye was now clear around the outer edges, with a spiky cloud of violet in the center. The cloud pulsed faintly, contracting, almost seeming to shrink as she watched.

“What’s going on, Pill?” Derek insisted. “What is that thing?”

“Well, I’m no expert,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s bad news.”