Fate of Flames Read online

  I turned up the synth-pop music pounding through my headphones.

  Apparently, Natalya’s death hadn’t been mentioned yet anywhere in the forum. Interesting. Then again, Natalya did only die two days ago, and Belle herself had only just found out about it. I probably wouldn’t have known either if I weren’t Natalya’s successor.

  Successor.

  Natalya’s successor.

  My hands froze.

  It’d been happening like that for the past two days, my mind oscillating between acceptance and utter disbelief. Letting my jaw slack a little, I looked down at my hands. It was curious, really, the way they trembled ever so slightly against my laptop keyboard. I loved all things Effigy. Worshipped them. Now I was one. Badass. Dream come true, right?

  Growing up, I had always imagined what it would be like if I ever turned, or got called, or whatever the term was. I’d always figured that I’d go full-on town crier, running down the streets of New York with a bell in hand. And yet, in a bizarre twist of fate, as of now I was the only one in the world who knew about my secret. Almost two days of being an Effigy, and nobody knew but me.

  Well, okay, no. That wasn’t entirely true.

  Check the thread, moron. Just do it. My inner voice was unusually nasty today.

  Drawing in a deep sigh, I finally searched for my thread in the Rec Room subforum. Instead of using my normal account, I’d created a new one to write the post, just to make sure the thread couldn’t be traced back to me. It was an experiment, after all. I just wanted to see what the responses would be. I wasn’t ready for a coming-out party just yet.

  I’m the Next Effigy.

  I could have come up with a better title. Oh, well.

  Hi, everyone.

  I can’t tell you my name. You probably won’t believe me. I don’t expect you to with the amount of trolls we’ve gotten here in the past, but . . . I literally swear upon my family’s graves that I am seriously not lying when I say this.

  Natalya’s dead. I’m the next Effigy.

  Seriously. I’m not lying.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . cool, right?

  I’m serious, though.

  . . . that’s it. Please don’t kill me.

  Needless to say, I hadn’t been thinking too deeply when I wrote the contents of the post, and I wasn’t surprised to see the replies, either:

  [+500, -0] Go to hell.

  [+ 430, - 1] Did you literally just e-kill Natalya? Wow, fuck you.

  I had already suspected that they wouldn’t believe me. It was stupid to start the thread in the first place.

  So then why the hell did I?

  Becoming an Effigy is generally a very strange thing. You can’t fight it. You can’t pick it. And you can’t stop yourself from being picked by whatever it is that does the picking. There’s no warning, no trigger. The power just fills you, strange and silent, as if you’d drawn it into your own body with a breath. And only four girls at a time could be one. What were the odds?

  At first, I really had wanted to tell everyone. Then, after picturing a terrifying swarm of news cameras in my face, I’d settled on telling my uncle first, but when I tried, my entire body had seized with panic.

  I still couldn’t put into words why I’d reacted that way, especially since I could clearly remember that shattering need to say something to someone, anyone, as well as the frustration I’d felt when the words just wouldn’t sound. Maybe that was why I’d ended up typing them instead. When it came to sharing an earth-shattering secret, anonymity was the safest option for sure.

  But apparently, it was also very pointless:

  [+299, - 11] LOL bye.

  [+ 285, - 2] Mods lock this thread please.

  [+177, -25] You know what’s really sick about all the people on the internet pretending that they’ve been ~chosen~ and creating these elaborate fantasies with fake icons and “proof shots” and wishing so bad those fantasies were actually real? Like, you wish so bad you could be an Effigy, but do you know what that actually means? It means the last girl would have had to DIE for you to become one. Do you get that? So you actually want some girl to die so you can have your moment in the sun? Psycho.

  My fingers found my keyboard right away, readying my defense, but the tirade wasn’t over. I kept reading.

  Like seriously, some people here act like Effigies are indestructible Super Barbies or something—but they’re people. THEY DIE. THEY DIE SO FUCKING OFTEN.

  My hands froze.

  THEY DIE A LOT. NOBODY should be making light of that.

  “I’m not . . . ,” I whispered.

  [+54, - 373] Hey, OP wants to be an Effigy so bad, how about we start a Death Watch Thread? Fifty bucks says OP’s dead by Memorial Day.

  I clicked out of the thread.

  Funny, I thought it’d gone away, but it had never really left: the fear, that same fear I’d felt while helplessly watching a phantom barrel down the street toward me. It wasn’t gone at all, just hiding, nestled deep into the crevices of my bones.

  Dead by Memorial Day.

  I wasn’t Belle. I couldn’t tear through monsters while looking fabulous. Hell, I couldn’t even save one kid today. But I’d be expected to save them all, wouldn’t I? Once the world found out. Once they knew I was the one chosen to succeed Natalya Filipova, one of the greatest Effigies of this age, I’d be expected to fight.

  Fight, and maybe die.

  Pressing my lips to keep them from trembling, I took off my headphones just as the music’s frantic beat had begun to chip away at my senses. After rubbing my temples, I checked some of the other threads because, as usual, only the internet could keep me from spiraling into the terror of my own thoughts.

  Phantoms Attack New York

  I clicked the title. Amid the poorly timed and painfully obvious Why does every monster ever hate New York? jokes was thinly veiled panic:

  I’m watching CNN right now trying not to tear my goddamn hair out. Phantom attack in New York. Is nobody seriously making the connection yet? This all started with Seattle. Then four years ago Moscow happened, then Incheon, then Frankfurt, should I go on? These aren’t developing areas with shoddy APDs. What the hell is happening? Isn’t anyone gonna do anything about this?

  It was true. New York had one of the most powerful antiphantom devices in the world. I could accept today as a freak accident, but how would that explain all the other freak accidents that had happened sporadically over the past few years?

  Stupid, I berated myself. Don’t get caught up in conspiracy theories. It was best not to dwell, best not to dwell. That was the mantra I’d been clinging to ever since my moving van had pulled up to Uncle Nathan’s front door. Just try not to think about it was stapled to my brain like one of those pointless motivational posters on my wall.

  Instead, I wrote my own comment: I was there. Belle showed up in New York today. She saved a lot of people. As usual.

  I thought of the ghostly sheen of Belle’s skin, drained white of blood as she uttered Natalya’s name.

  I just wish she could have looked at me. I mean, I was right there. She could have looked at me. Even if it was just once. I don’t know, I just thought . . .

  My gaze slipped from my laptop screen to the picture of my family on top of my disorganized bookshelf. Mom, Dad, myself, and June. June with her long, bird’s-nest chestnut hair—same as mine, because she was the only person in the world who shared my face. June, smiling with the rest of us as we all stood in front of the Astro Tower at Coney Island for the last time.

  I just thought it would be nice, I wrote, now acutely aware of the vast emptiness of my room, if she would look at me just once.

  I deleted everything and exited the thread. Just in time—a new one had popped up mere seconds ago:

  OH GOD, NO . . . RIP NATALYA.

  TICK, TICK, TICK.

  Natalya Filipova was dead. To every twenty-four-hour news station, the headline had fallen like manna from the heavens. The Matryoshka Princess. Russia’s pride, de
ad at twenty-five. Why? they asked. How? What’s next for the Sect as an organization, its agents, its Effigies?

  Who would succeed her?

  For the next week and a half, it was all the media could talk about. Why hadn’t the Sect confirmed the cause of death yet? When would the family release a statement? Why hadn’t they buried her? Nine days. And each day was a ticking clock, whittling down the time I had left.

  I need to tell him, I thought for the thousandth time on Friday morning as I descended the stairs to the kitchen below.

  Uncle Nathan’s cooking weighted the air with too many sinful aromas: bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs. Plates of them were already on the table. He even had his ASK ME ABOUT MY MASCULINITY apron on, which, along with his floppy brown hair and thick black glasses, finished off his sensitive-hipster look.

  Right now, the sensitivity thing was kind of the problem.

  It never took the Sect too long to find the next Effigy. And then once they found me, how long would it be before my obituary ended up on the evening news? Maia Finley, sixteen, murdered fulfilling her duty in battle. Uncle Nathan had already lost his brother, his sister-in-law, his niece. Hell, he’d cried more than I did at the funeral. How long would it be until I was just another dead family member?

  Regardless of how Uncle Nathan discovered the truth, his reaction would be the same: terror. He knew what being an Effigy meant. Still, it was better to find out from me and not some headline. Right?

  “Maia! Great, you’re up on time!” He grinned with all his teeth, looking even younger than he actually was. He was so tall and scrawny that sometimes I forgot he was thirty. “Hungry?”

  My lips felt dry. I turned away. To bide some time, I grabbed the remote control out from in between the cushions of our sofa, turned on the television, and there it was: Natalya’s funeral, broadcast on nearly every station.

  “Oh, they’re doing that today?” Nathan asked. “It’s been a while since she died, hasn’t it?”

  “The family wouldn’t release the body at first,” I said. “No clue why.”

  A long procession was already making its way through the streets of Moscow, hundreds, maybe thousands of mourners lining the barricade for one final glimpse at the world’s heroine. Maybe Belle was there too, somewhere among the crowd, weeping with them. Crying over a dead loved one. An all-too-familiar scene for me.

  The controller almost slipped from my hands.

  “Maia?”

  “I’m okay,” I said quickly. I couldn’t look at him. Instead I kept my eyes on the ivory horse-drawn carriage carrying Natalya’s body.

  Uncle Nathan stayed silent for a time. “Maia, why don’t you turn that off and eat something before you go to school? I know you were a big fan of Natalya, but . . .” He paused, trying to find the right words. “You know. The whole . . . funeral . . . death thing.” He stopped.

  I knew what he was trying to say in his own extremely clumsy way. I also knew why he was frying half the contents of our fridge, even if he wasn’t consciously aware of it himself: The anniversary was coming up. It would explain how uncomfortable the wailing from Natalya’s funeral had suddenly made him—the sound of televised grief blanketing him in painful memories.

  Not just him.

  The smell of burned pork pierced the air; Uncle Nathan had left the bacon on the pan for too long. Flicking off the heat, he hurriedly shifted the smoking pan onto the next burner.

  I just watched him. “You okay over there?”

  “’Course,” he answered hastily before wiping the sweat from his brow. “Anyway.” His face was still ruddy from the heat. “You really should turn that off. We’re already going to have enough gloom tonight, don’t you think?”

  “Oh god,” I muttered under my breath. “So we’re still going to that dinner thing?”

  “It’s the yearly benefit.” Nathan wiped his forehead again.

  “And?”

  “Your dad was in the company. Plus, didn’t your mom help organize the last two?”

  “But she didn’t make me go then, and I don’t want to go now. Honestly it’s a bit hard to get excited at the prospect of being surrounded by stuffy people shooting pity glances at you when they think you’re not looking.” I slumped over the seat. “Then again, if either of us breaks down, I suppose it’ll make for good gossip. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the real reason they want us there.”

  “Hey, I’m not thrilled about it either.” Uncle Nathan came around the counter. “Probably should have just said no in the first place. But I . . . I don’t know. The head organizer called me herself and insisted. I think they’re planning some kind of commemoration thing.”

  “Oh, great.” Shine that spotlight even brighter. “And that made you say yes?”

  “I guess they just wanted to honor them somehow. So do I.”

  I stayed silent as he approached.

  “Look.” Once he was close enough, he placed his hands on my shoulders. “It’s been almost one year since . . . since it happened.”

  It. The “thing.” It was really the only way we could mention it around each other.

  “It’s been hard,” he continued. “There’ve been lots of changes, for both of us. Tonight’ll probably be pretty hard too. But, hey, look at us.” He pointed at the mirror at the side of the wall, where his reflection gave me a smile so forced I had to lower my eyes. “We’re fine. Things are okay, right? Things have pretty much settled down.”

  “Settled,” I repeated lifelessly.

  “Right. We’ve survived a whole year. We’ll survive another. So don’t worry about tonight, okay? Or any other day for that matter. We’re okay, and it’s going to stay like that.”

  During my third night living here, I’d snuck into Uncle Nathan’s room while he was sleeping to grab something for my headache. That’s when I’d noticed the self-help books. The lamp was still on, so I could see each of them strewn about the floor. Coping with Grief. Dealing with Loss. Exactly how many would he read once I was announced as the next Effigy? Once the Sect whisked me off to one of their training facilities to learn how to avoid being torn to shreds?

  How many would he read once I died in battle?

  Maybe some people were just supposed to lose everything.

  “Maia? Hey, are you okay?”

  I couldn’t tell him. I turned, hastily wiping my eyes. “I’m late; I should go.” Keeping my face hidden from his, I grabbed a single pancake off a plate, pulled my bag over my shoulder, and headed out the door.

  Tick, tick. It was only a matter of time.

  • • •

  Seven o’clock. Just survive the night, I told myself in front of the mirror after strapping on my short peach dress like battle armor.

  My dad had worked at Seymour and Finch, one of those research and development firms. They held their benefit dinner on the fifth floor of La Charte, some swanky hotel on the Lower East Side. All I’d have to do was survive a few hours and I’d be back in my room playing my PC games in peace. I couldn’t get out of it now.

  “I think I left the water running,” I tried anyway as we rode the elevator from the underground parking lot. “Seriously. The whole house could be flooded by now. I don’t think the sofa can take it.”

  Uncle Nathan fidgeted with his black tie like it was a ground-dwelling ectotherm coiling lovingly around his neck, which was why a dry cough came out of his mouth instead of the laugh he’d probably intended. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  “He said before delivering the injection.”

  “Truthfully?” Uncle Nathan sighed as the elevator slowed to a halt, live music muted behind the metal doors. “I think this’ll be more painful.”

  Great. The doors opened. I kept my head down, steering clear of whatever black loafers and silk hems crossed my path. I navigated the halls, stepped over the ballroom threshold, and—

  “Holy crap,” said Uncle Nathan.

  The closest I’d ever been to luxury was streaming Celebrity Homes on my la
ptop instead of finishing a two-page essay on Hegel. So when I stepped into a ballroom made of pure white marble, I knew I was in over my head. Patrons clinked glasses underneath the high coffered ceiling, gossiping and laughing conspiratorially near columns that glimmered red under the cast-iron skylights. In front of a wide stage and translucent podium were rows of long tables covered in white linen, each one supporting a dozen neatly set crystal dishes. On the other side of the room, a photographer snapped pictures by a set of Victorian windows, the glass only partially veiled by champagne-colored drapes. What in the Gatsby hell?

  I gripped Uncle Nathan’s arm, suddenly self-conscious enough to feel each swish of my dress against my legs. Thankfully, he chose a table near the back. I read off a card propped up on the white tablecloth. “Fourth Annual Global Orphans Foundation Benefit.” Of course it was.

  Near the front stage, a live band played thirties-era swing over the chatter. Maybe it was a theme. I’d stupidly left my phone at home, so I couldn’t mindlessly peruse the internet. I would have been perfectly fine with spending the night quietly listening to the band from my seat, but I unfortunately ended up spending the next half hour suffering through the inanities of far too many people who, despite being at a benefit for orphans, didn’t seem to have the tact required to have a functional conversation with one.

  Are you okay, do you need anything, how have you been, how are you holding up, oh she’s so young, oh it’s such a tragedy, isn’t it a tragedy?

  I’d have appreciated the sympathy if it weren’t for the way they all gazed at me as if I were a stray in need of feeding and bathing and maybe regular sessions with a psychiatrist.

  As innocently as I could make it look, my ginger ale tumbled out of my hands and crashed against the floor. “Uncle, would it be all right if I go get another one?”

  “Go ahead. Really.” Uncle Nathan sounded seconds away from pulling the same line himself.

  “Be right back.”