Crunch, crunch. Lucy’s ears pricked as a few twigs snapped beneath Ravi’s loafers. His tread remained uniform, purposeful, as he approached. She dipped one foot over the edge of the cliff, swinging it above the Sunfish below.
Ravi circled a hand around her upper arm and pulled her toward him, away from the steep drop to the lake. With his shield firmly in place, Lucy could only guess at what he was thinking—but she had a pretty good guess.
“It’s later,” she said. When Lucy had walked out of his apartment yesterday, she’d figured he wouldn’t delay their talk for long. “Thanks again for intervening with Principal Petersen.”
“It was my pleasure.” He released her arm. “That wanker Cole got off lightly.”
“I’ve hurt enough people,” Lucy said.
“Lucinda.” Ravi spoke her name low and rough. She captured his gaze, daring him to deny it. “You didn’t leave your house yesterday,” he said. “I’ve been worried.”
“I’m grounded until we land a manned mission on Mars. But why were you watching my house?”
“I was doing my job. Like I should have been from the start.”
“I’m your job now?” Lucy retreated a step.
Anguish streaked his face as Ravi grabbed her hand and swung her well away from the cliff’s edge. “You’re much more to me than that,” he said like it cost him, dropping her hand to cup her cheek. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s why I was too distracted to see the threat right under my nose. The Freelancers never should have been able to get so close to you.”
His touch made Lucy feel so alive, and that was dangerous. Ravi meant something more to Lucy too—even if she didn’t know how to quantify or qualify that more. What she did know was having these kinds of feelings—desires—for someone she couldn’t completely trust was dangerous.
Jess’s taunt on the High Line came rushing back.
You’re too valuable. For now.
Ravi flicked his tongue across his teeth in response to her silence.
“Why?” Lucy asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you care about me?”
He rubbed his thumb along her cheekbone. “Do you really have to ask?” Ravi said softly.
Lucy raised her chin. “Yes.”
“All right.” He inhaled. “Because you’re fiercely intelligent. Brave. Selfless.” Ravi tilted his face downward. “Beautiful.” He wrapped his other arm around her shoulders. “Whenever I’m around you, all I want is to be closer.”
Lucy really wished he didn’t have the same effect on her.
“But how do I know you’re not just telling me what I want to hear?” she said. “Seducing me to your side?”
“Seducing you?” Hurt flared in his eyes and Ravi straightened. “Falling for you was not part of the plan.”
“You sound like Jess.”
Lucy felt a pang of regret as soon as the words flew out of her mouth and, from the way Ravi’s chest lurched, they’d hit their mark.
“I’m sorry you think so little of me.” He stumbled back a pace. “I thought—I thought you knew me better than that.”
“How could I possibly know you, Ravi? You haven’t exactly been forthcoming!” Lucy fired back. Her unkempt curls began to rise with her pulse. “You showed up at my school all charming and British and talking about Replicants. I liked you from day one—even when I shouldn’t have! When I still had a boyfriend!”
Lucy tried and failed to pat down her wayward curls. “Then I find out you’re not who you say you are—”
“I made a mistake,” Ravi said, almost guttural. “I thought you’d forgiven me.”
“I’m not finished!” she shouted at him. He folded his arms. “We have this amazing kiss, which you say can’t happen again, but you rent tails for my prom,” she went on, the words pouring out of her. “My best friend gets kidnapped, we kiss again—a lot—and then I find out you’ve got snipers at your disposal. Snipers, Ravi!”
Lucy exhaled a short breath. “Every time I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of the mystery of Ravi Singh, I discover another secret. So you tell me, what would you think if you were me!”
Her chest heaved as she ended her rant, and Lucy had to admit she felt better for it.
“Are you finished?” Ravi asked quietly.
“Yes,” she replied, trying to get a hold of her oscillations. She squeezed the tourmaline.
“When you collapsed on the High Line, my world stopped.” His words were weighted, like they were dragging him down. “I failed to train you. I failed to protect you. And I’ve given you good reason to doubt me, and my motives.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“For that I’m more sorry than I can say.” He took a step toward her, but his hands remained at his sides. “I asked you to meet me here because I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us.”
Lucy’s breath hitched at the severity of his tone.
“I have things to tell you,” Ravi continued. “Some of them will be hard for you to hear.” He jammed his lips into a thin line, briefly closed his eyes. “The first is that, because my professionalism has been compromised, Professor T has tasked a pair of Initiates to watch you and Claudia,” he said.
“What? Why are they watching Claudia?”
“At my request. I thought it’s what you would want.”
“Is she in danger?” Lucy asked breathily.
“Nothing will happen to her again. I swear. I hold myself responsible for putting you and the people you care about in danger.”
Lucy placed her hands on her hips. “I put the people around me in danger, Ravi. Not you. In fact, I put you in danger.”
“I chose this life.”
But had he really? Lucy wondered. The Sophists killed his parents and he joined the Archimedeans to get revenge when he was fourteen. It was the only life he knew. Like Rick had said, eventually a side chooses you.
Ravi scrubbed a hand across his face and threw his shoulders back, posture becoming rigid. Sunlight danced on his finely whittled cheekbones. When his gaze met hers again, it was guarded.
“Professor T—” He coughed into his hand and started over. “Professor T would like me to reiterate his offer to intern at Chrysopoeia Tech. We could help you develop your powers so that you can’t be used against your will.”
“Develop my powers? Ask Jess if she thinks they need any further development!”
“Develop and stabilize. Besides, you acted in self-defense. But the Archimedeans can train you to control your powers. Use them with precision.”
“Oh great. That way I can electrocute someone more precisely!”
“Lucy, your oscillations were off the chart when you fell unconscious. You— I almost lost you.”
“What?” The look on Ravi’s face filled Lucy with foreboding.
“Your heart stopped. It stopped, and then restarted itself—as if you had an implanted defibrillator. But you weren’t breathing for thirty seconds.”
Lucy sucked in a breath, almost to prove that she still could. No wonder Claudia had been so upset by Lucy’s seizure. Her symptoms were getting worse.
Ravi dared to extend a hand and twirl one of her dark strands around his forefinger.
“My heart stopped when yours did, Lucinda. I never want to go through that again.” He stared at Lucy with mounting intensity. “Sod it,” he said under his breath, and his lips found hers.
Surprise was replaced swiftly by desire. She raked her hands through Ravi’s short, soft hair, tugging him nearer. She devoured him with hungry kisses and he moaned against her mouth, pressing one hand into the curve of her spine. Lucy arched to meet him. She wanted to lose herself. She wanted to forget what she was, the damage she could do. The damage she could do to herself.
When Ravi broke away, they were both breathing hard.
“Work with us—with me,” he pleaded. “We’ll figure out how you can live a long and healthy life. There’s so much good we can do together. So much potential for understanding the power of the mind. The way the universe works.”
Lucy let out a desperate laugh. “No pressure.”
The Freelancers had wanted Lucy’s powers to benefit their criminal activities, the Order of Sophia wanted to destroy her, and the Order of Archimedes wanted her to, what, unlock the secrets of the universe? She laughed again.
“Have you heard of the fifth element?” Ravi asked.
She did a double-take. “The old Bruce Willis movie?”
“No.” He smiled. “Quintessence. Newton believed it was the link between spirit and matter that comprises the other four elements. The invisible energy that breathes life into all things.”
“That sounds like mystical hocus-pocus to me.” Although it might explain how she’d heard Claudia’s voice in her mind, grabbed a snatch of the hotel room from her friend’s perspective.
“Newton didn’t think so. He conducted many experiments to prove quintessence was a magnetic force that coaxed life from chaos,” Ravi explained, tone patient. “Professor T has long asserted that the true philosopher’s stone isn’t a stone at all, but the ability to tap into quintessence, manipulate it even.”
Lucy’s mouth went dry. The Flower of Life smoldered in her mind. She had hallucinated it on the High Line, right before her heart stopped.
Could it actually mean something?
“If Newton proved the existence of quintessence,” Lucy said, “then why aren’t there any records of his experiments?”
Ravi exhaled. “The Royal Society suppressed the papers. They believed his association with alchemy would taint the public’s view of his science. But the Order of Archimedes has kept them safe.”
“And you think the lightning gene is what allows me to access quintessence,” Lucy said, voice wobbly. “I suppose Newton also possessed the lightning gene.”
“It seems unlikely. But from the records of his experiments we believe he must have had access to someone who did.”
“So I’m supposed to become, what, your personal lab rat?” Lucy said, arching a brow. Then something occurred to her, something she should have realized before. “Your parents, Ravi—if they were researching the lightning gene, they must have had access to blood samples. And since there aren’t that many of us around…”
Rick’s remorseful tone as he’d told her he knew another woman like her echoed in her ears. “Your parents were collaborating with a female carrier of the mutation, weren’t they?”
Hope lit inside Lucy that she might be able to find someone else with her condition. Someone who could understand what she was going through.
“Is she still alive?” she asked, breathless.
Taking in Ravi’s crestfallen expression, Lucy instantly knew the answer was no.
“Did she die in the fire?”
He dropped his voice. “Not in the fire.”
“The Sophists?”
A shake of the head. Lucy didn’t want to know any more. This other gene carrier must have died from the condition. Lucy’s condition. She was a ticking time bomb. “Why do you think I had such a violent seizure on prom night? The tourmaline had been helping,” she said, trying to keep her panic in check. “I thought I’d been doing so well.”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps because you were forced to use your powers so much in the space of only a few hours? Maybe it had something to do with the Tesla Egg?” Ravi fiddled with one of her curls. “But these are questions we can answer together. You won’t be a guinea pig. You’ll be a partner. A researcher.”
“Even if I wanted to, my parents would never let me leave the country or take time off before college.”
“You’re eighteen, Lucy. An adult. You can make your own decisions.”
Her parents’ distraught faces wavered behind her eyes.
“I can’t. I’ve upset them enough already. And I can’t explain what I am to them without putting them in danger from the Order of Sophia, right?”
Ravi’s eyes darkened a shade. “Come sit with me.” He extended a hand and she allowed him to lead her to the boulders where he’d first demonstrated how to build a shield. Lucy’s gaze tripped along the ripples on the surface of Lake Windermere.
They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the wind stir the water below. He kept her hand tucked in his, absently tracing the bandage he’d tied.
Slanting his gaze to hers, Ravi said, “Tell me again why you chose Gilbert College.”
Not a question she’d anticipated. “It was where my parents met. And they have a terrific physics department. It just made sense.” Gah. Lucy had become a parrot. “It was their dream,” she admitted.
“Not yours?” Ravi squeezed her hand. “Lucy,” he began with his battlefield calm, “Gilbert College is a Sophist institution.”
She almost swallowed her tongue. “Excuse me?”
“This all started with the photo in your father’s office. You’ve been looking for a complicated answer but the truth has been staring you in the face.”
“What are you saying?” Lucy tried to pull her hand away, but Ravi wouldn’t relinquish his hold.
“Your father works for the Sapientia Group. What does sapientia mean in Latin?”
“Wisdom,” Lucy choked out. From the Greek sophia. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The photo was sent to my dad’s company, which means they didn’t know about me.”
Ravi frowned. “You never told me that.” There was a hint of regret in his voice.
Dammit. “And I wasn’t going to—not after what I’ve seen the Initiates can do.” She should have made the photo disappear. “I’m not involving my parents in this.”
“But they are involved, let’s look at the facts.” A slight snarl infused his reply. “Your mother is a classics scholar. Not many homeschooled students are taught to be fluent in both Latin and Greek these days.”
“She translates ancient poetry!”
He canted his head. “Is that all she does?”
The Pharmakon of Kleopatra. The secret to the philosopher’s stone. Fools’ gold, her mom had called it. But what if it wasn’t? If Professor T was right, then Lucy was the philosopher’s stone. Could the Pharmakon contain the key to understanding her condition? Or controlling her? Her palms grew sweaty.
“Your middle name—Minerva,” Ravi forged ahead. “Who is she?”
Of course he knew Lucy’s embarrassing middle name. Another Roman goddess. The goddess of … “Wisdom,” Lucy said, voice shaking. “She’s the goddess of wisdom. The Roman version of Sophia.”
The horizon smeared.
“My parents are not Sophists, Ravi. They may be mad at me right now, but they’ve always loved me.”
“Is it so impossible?” Ravi said gently.
“Of course it is! The Sophists shot at me the other night. My parents would never hurt me.”
“They shot at the Freelancers after they raided one of their safe houses.”
Lucy stared at him, disbelieving. “You’re defending them?”
“Not at all.” A muscle in his neck flickered. “I’m simply saying that you might not have been their target—that night.”
“The Sophists are murderers, Ravi. My parents are good people. Overprotective, yes. But not killers.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why you were homeschooled? Why they wouldn’t let you enter any science fairs? Or apply to the best universities in the country?” he said, each question becoming more pointed. “You’re too brilliant to be hidden away.”
“Because of my condition. Because they want to keep me safe.”
“No.” The word was solid as a rock. “Because they didn’t want us to know you existed. They didn’t want us to find you.”
“Find me?” Lucy croaked.
“Lucinda,” he said, and traced the line of her jaw. “Your parents stole you from the Order of Archimedes. We’ve been searching for you for years.”
Adrenaline made each one of her muscles spasm.
“Why would they steal me? They didn’t know about my mutation—they still don’t! You’re not listening, Ravi. The photo was sent to my father’s company. If my parents had kidnapped me, they would have already known!”
Launching to her feet, Lucy ripped her hand from his. “I can accept that I’m some kind of mutant, but not that my parents are kidnappers, Ravi. Kidnappers!” She backed farther away from him. “If you’ve known this whole time—why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“We had to be sure.”
“And how are you sure now?” she charged, very close to hyperventilating.
“I performed a DNA test.”
“With what?”
His cheeks colored. “The bloody clothes you left at my apartment.”
“You’re unbelievable, Ravi!” Lucy shouted. “Absolutely unbelievable! And I am so stupid. I was actually starting to trust you again!”
“I told you that you wouldn’t like some of what I had to say, Lucinda. But it’s the truth.” Ravi smoothed his face into a mask of calm. “The Order of Archimedes will never force your hand. However, I urge you to perform your own DNA test.” He paused, inhaled quickly. “I will stay in town until graduation and wait for your decision. A good scientist should want to have all the facts.”
“You’re wrong,” Lucy said as her knees trembled. “You’re dead wrong, and I’m going to prove it.”
A crack appeared in his façade. “Lucinda,” Ravi said in a way that tempted her to remain exactly where she was.
“Stay away from me, Ravi. And my family.”
She ran. Lucy ran down the hill, lungs burning, because it would also be a challenge for her to stay away from him. But she didn’t have a choice. Her parents came first.
She would protect her family no matter what it cost.