Samantha
“IF THEY WEREN’T READY TO before, your parents are going to absolutely murder me,” says Kirsty. “I swear, being a Finder isn’t normally this exciting.”
“Oh really? I’m disappointed,” I reply with a small half-smile. We’re back in Pahara, in a small but cozy hotel. Kirsty filled me in on how she, Jedda, and Zol struggled to get back down to base camp, and how Emilia escaped yet again, back down the other side of the mountain with her Sherpa. The others didn’t want to leave the mountain but knew they couldn’t find us on their own. Jedda’s leg needed urgent medical care, but he was now recovering. I don’t know what Zol must have paid to get a helicopter up to us. He probably could have bought the mountain with that amount of money.
It was Zain’s attack on the abominable—his useless attempt to use the wand—that helped us in the end. The spell worked like a flare. That, and the abominable scattering pieces of our orange tent to the wind. Of course, when Kirsty spotted the first sign of a ripped-up tent, her mind jumped to the worst conclusion. In her head, we were as shredded as that tent. Luckily, though, for his sins, Zol refused to believe that his son wouldn’t make it down from the mountain alive.
As for my parents—they were beside themselves, but there was no point in them coming out to Bharat when I was going to be on the next flight home. (After my near-death ordeal, they weren’t going to let me port anywhere—and there was no way I’d have the concentration anyway.) Other people did make the journey—namely, the media. There was no hiding from them this time, no reflective material to ward them off. Cameras flashed in Zain’s and my faces as we descended from the helicopter, and we rushed into the hotel to sounds of their shouting:
“Zain! Zain! How close are you to curing the princess?”
“Sam, what does your family think of you allying with ZA Corp.?”
“Are you together now?”
We’re not allies, I don’t think Zain and I are together, but thanks to me, we both have the ingredient.
Yes, I shared the fur. Of course I shared. Even though my pride won’t let me entertain Zain’s idea of working with him toward a cure, I wasn’t going to thwart his attempts. Someone has to win the hunt—and we can’t let it be Emilia Thoth.
Admittedly, that’s not the reaction I get when I speak to Dan and Kirsty that night.
“You gave ZA half the abominable fur?” says Dan. His voice is laced with scepticism. He’s taking notes for his big piece, but I don’t care how I come across.
“Of course I did. Zain helped save my life. Twice, in fact—once from Emilia, once in the cave.”
“It sounds to me more like you saved his life,” says Kirsty, her arms folded across her chest.
She’s right about that. All Zain can go on about is how I saved him on the mountain with my impromptu mix of mountain sweet and wand fire. To the press, to his parents, to everyone, Zain’s been insisting that I’m the hero.
I can’t get his story out of my brain. Hearing it has filled in pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t realized was incomplete. Great-grandma Cleo’s missing diary. Granddad’s outright refusal to entertain even the idea of synths. His virulent hatred of the Wilde Hunts.
But without Cleo’s diary, I fear I’ll never know the truth.
I always thought that the Kemi legacy was to be stuck in the past, rooted to our ways. Bound to our traditions like eluvian ivy around our hearts. But what if that wasn’t true? What if being a Kemi meant being known for progress, for innovation? I think back to that picture on the wall of the Mount Hallah base camp. My great-grandmother made it all the way up that mountain over a hundred years ago, without all our modern supplies and gear. She was an adventurer, a hero.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. I gave it to him, so it’s done,” I say.
“Of course it does,” says Dan. “Especially now that only you and the Zs are the only real Participants left in the competition.”
My face drains of color. “There’s really no one else? What happened to Arjun and Anita?” I ask, dreading the answer.
“The reports say everyone is fine.”
I breathe a sigh of relief.
“It was a close call,” continues Dan. “A spell was delivered by courier to their lab. Luckily, Mr. Patel had been called away and wasn’t caught in the explosion.”
I drop my head in my hands. “That’s awful. Wait, please, I have to call Anita.”
I dial her number but she doesn’t pick up, and neither does Arjun. I email, Connect, text, and basically bombard them with messages, to no avail. I don’t blame them. I can’t imagine what they must be going through.
I just thank my lucky stars they’re safe and unharmed.
“I hate Emilia,” I say when I look up from my devices. My whole body is shaking with rage. “We have to stop her.”
“No one has caught her in the act yet,” says Dan. “I’ve heard that some people are even starting to take her side. Saying that we are all scapegoating Emilia because of her past and that she deserves another chance . . .”
“After what she did to us on the mountain? She almost killed us!”
“But no one saw it.”
“Of course they didn’t, we’ve been hiding from the media, remember!”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
Kirsty nudges Dan. “That’s enough for tonight. Sam, you should hit the sack. You’ll be back home tomorrow, and then we can tackle the next ingredient.”
The next ingredient. Now the pressure is on.
I ready myself for bed, taking extra care over everything that has previously seemed routine—brushing my teeth, for example, and putting on my favorite polka-dot pajamas.
Every moment feels like a luxury, but especially climbing into a proper bed and snuggling under a duvet. I make a resolution for tomorrow. The second thing I’m going to do when I get home (after the first: give my entire family big hugs) is go over to the Patels’ house and apologize. Profusely. Grovel, if I have to.
Despite my tiredness, I can’t shut my mind off. I pick up my diary, thinking of Granddad. I think he would be proud of my trick with the mountain sweet. I scribble down a few notes on a separate page:
Abominables. Characteristics: lonely, stubborn, reclusive, slow to anger—but long to hold grudges. Deep sleep can be triggered by fumes from mountain sweet. Abominable hair (coarse, brittle, 10 cm long) can be used in love potions.
Once I finally flick off the bedside light, there’s a gentle tap at my door. I wonder if Kirsty has forgotten something. I turn the light back on again and walk over to the door.
It’s Zain.
“Hey,” he says. His glamours—the normal ones—are back on. I feel a tinge of disappointment, and it makes me even more self-conscious in my pj’s.
“Hey,” is all I can manage back.
“Can I . . . ?”
“Oh, sure, yeah.” I shuffle backward, bumping into the furniture. We perch awkwardly on the end of my bed.
“How are you doing?”
“Better now. I still . . .” I close my eyes, just for a moment, but behind them is the abominable and its claws. The scratch marks are almost healed now, magicked away with a potion they have here. I made a mental note of the ingredients, of course. Witch hazel—for scarring. Millefolium—for blood clotting. But the memory is still there. I shudder, despite myself.
“You were amazing yesterday. Honestly—I thought I was going to have a complete freak-out when we got to that dead end . . . but you kept your head.”
“Your smoking wand gave me the idea.”
Zain turns red with shame. “I keep thinking about what my dad said on the mountain. It was awful.”
I put my hand on his. “Your father said whatever he thought he needed to say to save your life. He was just trying to protect you. He was desperate.”
“It was pathetic.”
“You know what? I don’t blame him. It’s less stupid than walking up to someone with a gun.”
A smile tugs at his lips. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Lucky I picked that mountain sweet when I did.”
“Well, you saved my life.” He holds my hand tighter. “Seriously, you are one amazing girl.”
“Stop it,” I say.
He lets go and looks a little hurt. “Sam, I mean it . . .”
“No, I heard what you said yesterday. You don’t like me. You like this idea of me. You’ve been waiting for the right moment to talk to me because you think that since I belong to this ancient family, I’m somehow special. Let me break it to you, Zain: I’m not special. Evelyn is special. She’s a princess. I’m just me. So either I need you to like me for me, or you need to leave me alone.”
“It is you I like, Sam.”
“You don’t even know me,” I throw back.
“Okay, fine. You’re right. My grandfather was obsessed with you Kemis and it made me want to meet you. He thought you had some kind of mystical powers, some source of alchemical knowledge. But now I know the truth. You’re just smart, Sam. So smart.
“That’s why I like you. And I want to get to know you, if you’ll let me.”
I stare down at the pattern on the duvet, unable to look up at him. He’s said everything I want to hear, and I can’t help my treacherous heart from swelling. He reaches out and touches my cheek.
“And plus, you saved my life.”
I look up at him, and he winks. I laugh; I can’t help myself.
“We saved each other,” I say.
“Exactly. You’re the only person in the whole world who knows what we’ve been through. Really knows.” He takes his hand away, and my face burns from where he touched it.
“It was kind of a crazy first date,” I say.
“A story to tell the grandkids.” He grins and looks awkward. “I’ve got to transport back to Nova in a couple of hours. My father—”
I don’t want to hear this, but even before I can let it sink in, there’s a big bang as the shutters of my hotel window are thrown against the glass by the wind. It makes us both jump. Ordinarily I would have laughed, but I’m too tense after the abominable.
“Can you stay with me till I fall asleep?” I ask, hating how small my voice sounds. But he’s the only person in the world I want to be with right now.
“Of course.”
I head back into bed, resting my head on Zain’s chest, listening to his heartbeat pound beneath my ear. I close my eyes and drift into a deep sleep.
* * *
When I wake up, there’s a cup of coffee on the side table that he’s enchanted to keep warm. I mutter something about Talented flirting techniques, but I have to admit: His tactics are pretty good. As I sip the coffee, warmth spreads from my mouth down to my toes. I catch sight of something on the cup—words, glamoured to appear just underneath the coffee line:
You are special to me, Samantha Kemi.