She looked out ahead at the door to Izabel’s room, pushing down her grief, it seemed. “I do hope that she’ll be OK,” she said moments later, and with all my heart I knew she was being sincere. “I don’t know her, but I’ve heard a lot about her, and I admire her. She’s strong. She’s what I strive to be every day.” There was a sadness in her voice, and I found myself wanting even more to open that book, but we were still in the same time and place. It felt strange to me, to want to reach out to her, to comfort her, to understand her, to protect her, my beautiful and soft baby sister who I could not for the life of me picture being in such a dangerous line of work—it incensed me. But Izabel was my priority, and so I left it alone. Nothing incensed me more than what Artemis did to Izabel.
Naeva stood from the bench. I did the same.
“You need to go into hiding, Victor,” she warned. “Too many know where you are in Boston; you and your people, you shouldn’t all be under the same roof for more than minutes at a time. Vonnegut may not want you dead, but the longer you stay in the same place, the easier it’ll be for someone to figure out how to capture you.”
I had known this all along, but it took my sister reinforcing it for me to finally make the decision to do what needed to be done.
Then Naeva reached up and plucked a strand of hair from her head, and then handed it to me. Instinctively knowing what it was for, neither of us commented on it. I tucked the hair away deep in my pants pocket.
As she started to leave, I asked, “Naeva, have you ever seen Vonnegut?”
She looked at me as if I had asked a ridiculous question; she even smiled a little.
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
I shook my head. “I was only curious,” I said, choosing to be vague about the truth. It was apparent to me, just from the little time I spoke with Naeva, that she was an expendable operative, someone who knew nothing, and probably always would know nothing. Like myself and many others, Naeva only believed she had ever seen the face of the real Vonnegut. And I let her leave that night, continuing to believe it—for her safety, the less she knew, the better.
I turn from the window; everyone is looking at me, waiting for the rest. My brother, as expected, is staring the hardest; the cold and unforgiving look in his face that was there for Izabel’s well-being before, has now deepened to include his sister.
Niklas never asked about Naeva after we were taken away from our families and forced into The Order; he pretended not to care about the little blond-haired girl who seemed to favor me as her brother. “I don’t give two fucks about that girl,” he had told me once or twice when I brought her up over the years. “Why should I care? And why do you keep asking?” But the truth was, Niklas cared more about what happened to Naeva than I ever did.
And Naeva loved him as much as she loved me, despite what he thought. “Why is Niklas so mean to me?” Naeva had asked the day he slapped her across the face with a dead snake. “He loves you, Naeva,” I had told her, “but he doesn’t know how to show you.” Naeva dragged a finger underneath her eyes, wiping away her tears. “Well, I love him too,” she had said. “I just wish he wasn’t so damn mean.”
Niklas scoffs and crosses his arms. “Wow,” he says, “you really think you know me—you didn’t have to lie to the girl; she’s probably not even my real sister.”
I turn to Woodard. “The results of Naeva’s hair sample?”
“They were a match,” Woodard answers. “She is your sister.”
I turn to Niklas again.
He snarls, and chews on the inside of his mouth.
“Whatever,” he finally says. “What I’m looking at is how you handled it—you just let the girl leave? Rookie move, Victor. Should’ve killed her.” There is accusation in his voice. But I do know my brother, and he is only using accusation to cover up pain.
“Yes,” I answer. “I let her go. She works for The Order, and unless we want a bounty on her head like you and I have, we should stay away from her.”
Niklas sneers.
Izabel steps up. And steps in.
“This has to end, Victor,” she snaps, pointing her index finger at the floor. “We can’t continue to live like this; we can’t keep hiding from Vonnegut and his thousands of employees”—she put a lot of emphasis on the number—“I won’t continue to live like this. We never should’ve spread ourselves so thin, taking on other jobs, wasting time and resources on other things when we should’ve been doing everything in our power to find and eliminate Vonnegut.”
Eliminate—it troubles me how much more like me she sounds every day.
“She’s right,” Niklas puts in. “France. Washington. Italy. A waste of fucking time, Victor. I’m tired of always feeling like someone from The Order is standing right behind me, just waiting for me to bend over. We need to take him down before we get fucked.”
I look across at a quiet Gustavsson, giving him an opportunity to put in his two cents.
“Victor and I were discussing this before the rest of you showed up,” he says. “I’m in agreement.”
Niklas scoffs. “You want to take time away from catching your serial killer?” He smiles, shaking his head with disbelief.
Gustavsson looks to me, and once again I have the floor.
I explain to everyone what I spoke to Gustavsson about, and for the next fifteen minutes they all debate and converse and agree and disagree.