She’s right. Of course she’s right. I shake my head. “Then maybe we go to my mom’s house? Maybe Ariel sent me something.”
“You don’t think your mom’s house is triggered with all sorts of alarms, too? Iris, you’re falling apart on me.”
“Well, then I don’t know what to do!” I raise my hands and press the heels of my palms into my forehead. Something jingles.
“Oh my God,” I say. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” Yellow asks, but I’m already clawing away under the sleeve of the itchy gray dress. My fingers loop around my bracelet, and I shinny it to my wrist and undo the clasp. I hold it up for Yellow.
“Ariel gave me this,” I tell her. “The first Hanukkah I spent with Abe’s family.”
“And there’s a clue hidden in your bracelet?”
“There is.” As soon as the words escape my lips, I know it’s true. Ariel hid the information we need to know in this bracelet. My Ariel. My Abe’s grandfather. The man who opened his arms and his heart to me when he knew who I was but also knew that I had no idea. He would help me. And the answer is in this bracelet.
I hold it up to my eyes and squint. It’s a silver bracelet with a number of charms dangling from it. There’s a mini Eiffel Tower—not that I’ve ever been to Paris—next to a mini poodle—not that I’ve ever owned a dog that wasn’t a mutt—then a silver key, a birdcage, and a—
Hang on. I squint my eyes even more so that they’re almost closed. And then they pop open, and I gasp.
“It’s here!” I tell Yellow. “Right here!”
“What’s here?”
I hold up the birdcage, which can’t be more than half an inch tall. “Look!” Inside of the tiny cage, behind the thin metal bars, is a small scroll of yellowed paper.
Yellow’s eyes cross as she peers in. “You’re sure that wasn’t there all along?”
“If it was, I never noticed it. I have to get this open.” The charm is purely decorative. There’s no door on the birdcage, and the bars are only a few millimeters apart. I’m going to have to break it. “I need your bag!” I tell Yellow. “Do you still have that scalpel you swiped?”
“The one you used to butcher my arm?”
“Hey, you told me to—”
“Dude. Joking.” Yellow roots around in her bag and pulls out the scalpel. She hands it over, and I slide it through the bars and twist. Two of them pop right off. It’s a pretty bracelet, but not very well made. In a matter of seconds, all the bars litter the ground, and I’m holding the tiny scroll of paper in my hands. And I mean tiny. I unroll it, then unfold it, and it’s like two inches by two inches.
There are four things written on the paper. Four things. Four CE missions.
“He did it,” I whisper. “Ariel came through.”
Yellow peers over my shoulder at the paper. I hold it close so we can both make out the tiny writing.
280 Fenway, Boston, MA, March 18, 1990, 1:24 a.m.
Palais des Tuileries, Paris, France, April 30, 1803, 4:21 p.m.
100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD, October 21, 1939, 8:00 a.m.
1100 Western Avenue, Lynn, MA, June 2, 1890, 9:12 a.m.
Yellow takes a breath. “What is this?”
“I think it’s the exact locations and times of the other four big CE missions.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Yellow leans in closer to the paper. “Catch the next flight to Paris and head to the—” She grabs the paper. “Palais? That means ‘palace.’ We don’t have the money for that, and I’m fresh out of things to sell. Not to mention, how are we going to get inside a palace?”
“Look,” I say as I point to the first entry. “That’s the Gardner. We know that one. It’s a nonstarter. There was nothing about a CE or a Cresty. We can count it out, as well as Paris, because . . . well, yeah. But”—I point to the last one—“Lynn is, like, not even ten miles from here. Maryland is farther but still doable. We’ll take those two and see what we can figure out.”
Yellow shakes her head. “But I don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“Yeah, me either.” Which is the truth. I have no idea what we’re supposed to be looking for. But in this moment, I’m going to trust Ariel. I should have trusted him from the beginning. “That’s what we’re going to find out. I think we should split up this time. Do you want Lynn or Maryland?”
“Neither,” Yellow says.
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“Look,” Yellow says with a huff in her voice. “What if . . .” She takes a breath. “What if the entire organization is corrupt? Every single member? What if my dad is working with Alpha? I don’t know if I can face the fact that my father might be a . . .” Her eyes get big as she realizes what she’s about to say.
“A traitor?” I finish. “Like my father was?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupt. It’s not fine. Nothing my dad did will ever be fine. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think your dad knows. I mean, Alpha had my dad and then Beta, and then when they were . . . taken out . . . he had to move on to someone else for these two.” I tap the last two locations on the list. “I don’t know what happened to that person, but now, all of a sudden, Alpha is trying to get the ability to project himself. That’s why he sent me back to get Ariel to change his design. The whole entire thing was one big setup to give Alpha the ability. If someone else was in on this CE thing, Alpha wouldn’t be so desperate.”
“That’s Eta or Gamma,” Yellow says.
“Huh?” I know she has to be talking about two members of Annum Guard Two, but I have no idea who they are.
“Eta and Gamma. They both died only a few years ago. Gamma’s—well, she was Blue’s mother. I’m going to doubt it’s her. She did a lot of the early lifting on missions, before the gravity chamber was invented. Lots of repeated projecting.”
“You mean like we’re doing?”
She ignores me. “Her body gave out on her. Just stopped. She lost the ability to walk, then even to stand. Her muscles atrophied. She—”
I hold up my hand to stop her. I don’t want to hear any more. I’m picturing Epsilon as she was in my orientation, her body twisted and broken by years of unprotected projections. How much damage am I doing to my own body trying to bring down Alpha? I’m young and healthy now, but how many years do I have left before I suffer the same fate? I don’t want to think about it.
“Eta?” I prod.
Yellow nods. “Eta seems most likely. I—I hate saying this because she is—was—Violet’s mom, and Violet’s been my friend like forever; but I can see Eta being swayed by the idea of money and power.”
“What happened to Eta?”
“She died,” Yellow says, looking down at the ground. “On a mission.”
“Or do you mean Alpha had her taken out during a mission because she knew too much?”
Yellow’s head snaps up, and her mouth falls open. “Do you think? I mean—oh my God—he really could have, couldn’t he?”
I shrug. Because now that the words have come out of my mouth, all I can think about is my dad. That maybe Alpha set it up so that Beta would kill my dad on the mission. So that he wouldn’t have to split the money with him. Maybe my dad was just a pawn. He got caught up in something he didn’t understand and got too far in. Or maybe he was just pretending on the Kennedy mission. It was a sting operation to bring down Alpha and Beta, and Beta got him first.
Or maybe that’s just the wishful thinking of a girl who doesn’t want to know the truth about the man who’d fathered her.
I look down at the piece of paper Ariel smuggled into my bracelet. “Okay, so we go back and look for Eta,” I mumble. “Lynn or Maryland?”