Page 15 of Siege of Shadows

“But then he became an Effigy,” Belle said.

“Alice is the more vicious personality,” I said, thinking back to that terrible night in New York, the bodies strewn across the lobby of La Charte hotel. Saul had stood atop his serpent-like phantom as if it were his personal steed, lapping up the sight of the corpses like it were the only oasis that could quench his thirst. But it was Nick I’d faced in France, a boy who’d maintained an almost gentlemanly etiquette even as he held me against my will while threatening a train full of innocents with the phantoms at his beck and call. It made no difference. “Even still, they’re both murderers.” My lips pursed as I stared at Nick’s gorgeous face beaming in monochrome.

“But then who’s Alice?” Lake asked. “Did you find any information on her?”

Director Chafik shook his head. “We have not found anything so far. With only her first name to work with, we’ve cross-checked the name against all known Hudson associates and acquaintances, but nothing has come up.”

“But if he’s an Effigy, then she was the last one before him,” said Chae Rin. “The little voice in his head. Only she is the one driving.” And after a short pause, she laughed as the joke dawned on her. “Grand theftbody,” she said with a little chuckle. “Whoever Alice is, she sure took the poor guy out for a joyride and...”

The words died on her lips once she turned and looked at me. She must have seen the way my body was hunched over, my head lowered, my eyes downcast as I recalled the feeling of being ripped away from my own flesh and trapped inside my own mind. Another perk of having someone else’s consciousness bubbling just under the surface. One wrong move—

I held my arms tightly, squeezing the flesh for reassurance before lowering them again. “If Alice is really the last Effigy in his line, then she would have lived and died in the same time period,” I said. “But people aren’t immortal. Even as an Effigy, Nick should have died by now.”

“What is Saul?” Lake said. “What else can he do beyond teleporting? Oh, wait, he can control phantoms!”

“Nah, he used the ring to do that,” said Chae Rin, and she would know because her old circus boss had used the one she’d stolen from Natalya’s apartment for a phantom-Effigy performance act. I always wondered whether Chae Rin missed the feeling of riding phantoms for fun and profit. Having recently done it myself, I could safely say it wasn’t an experience I wanted to relive.

“Accursed,” I whispered, thinking back to that night in France. “He’d called himself accursed. Like us. He said his life span was just one part of his burden. Maybe he can live forever.” A terrible thought. What if we couldn’t kill him? “We have the power of the elements, but for him... teleporting and immortality... it’s almost as if he can bend space-time.”

“One of the researchers at your London facility, Dot Nguyen, has a theory,” said Chafik. “For hundreds of years, philosophers have been theorizing the existence of a fifth element: ether. Experiments were conducted in the nineteenth century to examine its properties as a medium for gravitational and electromagnetic forces. Nguyen believes it’s possible that there were originally five Effigies created, not four, and that Saul has the elemental power of ether. But all we have are our theories. What we need is a way to test them.”

He brought up the satellite image again. “Like you said, Saul can appear and disappear at will. Weeks after Saul’s signal went dead in Greenland, London Communications once again caught hold of an Effigy frequency, this time in the Sahara desert. Of course, they thought it was his, which is why they sent you to capture him. But this time something was different. This time, the signal did not just appear at the location. Rather, it developed gradually tens of meters away from the site before resting at the location.”

He played the footage sent over from the London facility, and sure enough, I could see the red blinking dot materializing from nothing, fadingintoexistence as it traveled through a phantom-infested Dead Zone. It grew brighter and brighter until it came to a resting point, a bloodred heartbeat.

“We know from the time that Langley had Saul in custody that his ability to mask his spectrographic signatureonlyappears when Alice’s personality is in control,” Chafik said. “It would have been Nick that we tracked after your battle in France. Like Sibyl suggested, the fight may have destabilized him. However...”

He trailed off, pursing his lips tight, his exhale seeping out from his throat in another deep grumble.

“However?” I prodded him.

“He can still appear and disappear at will,” Chafik said. “Indeed, it would make little sense for Saul to risk traveling through a nest of phantoms to reach that location, especially since he was injured from your fight.”

“So the signal you tracked to the desert may not have been Saul’s, but that dead guy’s,” I said, my mind filling in the blanks. “I mean, if the guy can’t vanish and materialize at will, then he’d have to gothroughthe Dead Zone. Vanishing is Saul’s power, after all, and Effigies...” I raked my tongue over my dry lips. Effigies each had their own unique ability. “There really are more Effigies out there....” I shook my head. No matter how many times I thought about it, I couldn’t accept it.

“Perhaps. However, an Effigy’s signal does not fade or grow stronger, nor is it ever unstable,” Chafik continued. He tapped the screen again, and three silver dots appeared just a few miles away from the desert hideout. In Marrakesh. The blinking lights were us. “This is why the Sect can track you once you have come into your powers. Wherever you go,” Chafik added, unhelpfully. I don’t think he realized how creepy it sounded.

“So, number one: That signal we chased out into the desert probably wasn’t even Saul’s.” Chae Rin counted it off with her fingers. “And number two: Even if itdidbelong to that soldier we found, he may not be an actual, legitimate Effigy? He may be something else?” She pressed a hand against her forehead, fingers sliding against the sweaty black hair matted to her skin. “Then what the hellwashe?”

“We need answers.” Chafik stared at the monitor. “How was this soldier able to travel through the Dead Zone on his own? And what are the circumstances behind these unstable frequencies—Saul’s signal in Greenland and the one that appeared in the desert hideout? Is masking a frequency one of Saul’s abilities? Or is it a special property that appears only upon the reappropriation of the current Effigy’s body by the previous Effigy in the line?”

Still too many riddles. Effigies, like the phantoms, were discovered in the nineteenth century. Even after all the studies, all the research, there was so much we didn’t know about them. But I was more concerned over where this conversation was heading. Especially once Chafik’s eyes were on me.

“The truth is, Sibyl Langley spoke to us while you were waiting in the Sect van. We both think it may be time to use our own assets in order to seek out the answers to these questions. For that, we need you.”

My breath hitched. Some of the agents from the bench in front of us were listening even as they worked at their terminals. I caught the shift in their heads as they waited to see how I’d respond.

“What... exactly do you need me to do?” I asked, my hands feeling strangely numb.

“It’s our understanding that you have scried before.” Chafik scratched his black beard as he considered what he must have been told by Sibyl. “In New York. Intimate contact with Saul forced you to prematurely open up the connection between your mind and the scattered psyches of the fire Effigies inside you. It is perhaps because of the connection between Nick or Alice and an Effigy in your line. The contact might have awoken that girl, if even just for a moment.”

“Marian,” I whispered. The girl both Alice and Nick were desperate to find for the answers she carried with her.

“Whatever that ‘connection’ was,” Lake said, “had to have been pretty intimate if a kiss woke her up.”

Intimate. Romantic? It seemed so by the way Nick had talked about her the last time we faced each other in France. That faraway look as he said her name...

“In either case, Maia’s ability to cross through the psychic barriers into another Effigy’s consciousness can give us a way to study this issue with the frequencies. Are both Saul and the now-deceased soldier you found Effigies? Is it the unstable crossing of two personalities—in Saul’s case, Nick and Alice—that makes the difference in the ability to mask one’s signature? Langley has proposed that we use you, Maia, to look into the matter. And I agree.”

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