Page 37 of Siege of Shadows

Pete lifted off the cover. “Half a phantom’s toe.”

“What?” Lake spat as Rhys walked up to the desk next to me. Close.

“For real?” Rhys narrowed his eyes, peering through the glass. “It looks crystallized.”

Indeed. Phantoms had the ability to harden their hides into an impenetrable shield. Saul had called it “petrification” during the battle in France, and using his ring, he’d forced the phantoms to demonstrate. I’d never forget the way their bodies cracked and crystallized in the night.

The toe looked like a curved tree branch with a sharp, hooked tip—a claw maybe.

Rhys leaned over the table for a better look, and I could feel his arm grazing mine as he touched the glass. My body reacted before I could stop it. I pulled myself away with an awkward spasm. It was only when I caught the shocked look in his eyes that I realized how it must have looked. Lake was watching me too. I said nothing as Rhys silently backed away from me.

“What’s the other thing?” Lake asked slowly, though her quizzical eyes were still on me.

“A sample.” Pete’s silly grin came back. I figured it was probably related to the way he devoured the sight of Lake standing next to him. “Of the ring. We shaved off some of the stone. We’ve been doing different things to figure out the relationship between the stone and the phantoms, putting both through different stimuli. Particularly, we’ve been trying to figure out if both materials share certain chemical properties.”

“See,” Dot explained as Mellie stared at dark blue diagrams of the shard and toe on her monitor, “we’ve tried everything we could to figure out just what the heck the stone is. Where it came from, how it worked. If Saul were around, I’d ask him a few questions, but unfortunately for us, he’s still in the wind. So we did experiments. Many, many experiments, which, by the way, took more time than necessary, considering a handful of our agents got arrested two months ago after that whole letting-Saul-go fiasco. Days and hours and seconds and charts and graphs and computers and looking at monitors—”

“They get it,” Mellie said next to Pete.

“The stone isn’t from this world.” Dot whipped around so suddenly Rhys jumped back a bit, probably out of self-preservation. The woman jittered as if she survived on oxygen and espresso alone. “That’s the conclusion we came to. It simply doesn’t exist in the natural world—or we haven’t discovered it yet.” She ran her gloved hand through her messy black hair, yanking it out again when it got stuck in the knots. “It’s either an alien ring or there’s much more to this world we don’t understand yet.”

A world of shadows. Secrets veiled in darkness...

“We know that Saul used the ring to control phantoms and focus their attacks on targets of his choosing,” Pete said as Mellie continued examining all the numbers and bars littered across the touch screen of her monitor. “But there could be more to it. Bystanders reported that Saul’s phantoms petrified around that train when he attacked in France two months ago, and then unpetrified to attack you.”

“He did it purposefully to hold the passengers hostage,” I said.

“Willing it to happen by using the ring, I’m sure,” Pete continued. “So not only can you use the stone to control phantoms, but you can also use it to force phantoms to transition between natural and petrified states. Whatever the ring is made of, it can control the phantom’s biology down to a molecular level. The stone and the phantoms. There’s definitely a deeper connection between them we don’t know about.”

Dot sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to pick Saul’s brain. You guys have no idea how much you screwed up by letting him go.”

Lake scoffed. “Wescrewed up? The traitors that let him escape the facility in the first place were inyourdepartment.”

Dot cocked her head to the side. “Oh, right,” she said with a shrug. “Still, it would have been nice if you could have brought him back.”

“Not exactly easy when you’re being attacked by a bunch of phantoms, but whatever floats your boat,” Lake said.

I would have shared Lake’s indignation, but I was too busy contemplating what we’d heard from Director Chafik back at the Marrakesh facility. “You’re the one who came up with the ether theory, right? That Saul represents a fifth element?”

Dot perked up. “Oh, so you’ve been reading up on me?”

“We heard about it in Morocco. Saul’s powers—living forever, disappearing and appearing at will? It’s like he can bend space-time.”

“Well, it’s just a theory I had. The four of you girls can manipulate different elements. For a time we thought that there wereonlyfour of you. But then Saul appeared—a fifth Effigy.”

A fifth. And that dead soldier could be a sixth.

“For centuries,” Dot continued, “scientists have theorized ether as a medium necessary for the very propagation of gravitational and electromagnetic force. The raw essence of all space... the mysterious foundation of the universe. Is this Saul’s element? And is the ring tapping into the same force?”

Dot was lost in thought for a moment before heaving her shoulders with a sigh. “We need to learn more about him.” The smoke drifted past Dot’s safety glasses as she continued to solder. “What’s more, we need to find the connection. Among the stone, the phantoms, and the Effigies. Those three very mysterious variables. If we had more information, we could find out where all three came from. Maia, I know you were debriefed after your mission in France, but sometimes we think of things after everything’s settled. Are you sure Saul didn’t tell you anything else about the ring when you faced him last?”

I placed my hands behind my back like a child who’d just been caught with her hand in a cookie jar. I wanted to help. And I could have. The ring controls the phantoms. The ring uses the deaths they cause to magnify its power. That was why Saul had been using the stone and its ability to control phantoms to go on a killing spree. Somehow, when he used the stone to force phantoms to kill, it added to the stone’s ability.

Its ability to grant wishes.

All these facts would surely be of use to Dot and the R & D department. And if the Sect hadn’t been involved in Natalya’s death or Saul’s escape, I would have told them happily.

Dot sighed when I shook my head. “Well, that’s fine, I suppose. But anyway, that’s not really why I called you here. Wait a second.”

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