Page 90 of Siege of Shadows

An old man in a respectable suit lay bound and gagged at Saul’s feet, his chest heaving, his gray hair shaking with the rest of his body. His eyes bulged as he watched the black wolves leave Saul’s side and circle him silently.

“Oh my god!” The host dropped his mic, and the sound interference split my ears.

Lake scrambled back to her feet. “What’s happening?” She tugged my arm. “What’s going on?”

“I recognize that man,” whispered Belle. “I think... Is he not... the Ontario premier?”

I had no idea one way or the other. Belle paid more attention to politics than I did. I could see her hands twitching, aching for her sword, aching to fight, but she couldn’t fight an image on-screen and she knew it. Frustration crinkled the skin around her eyes.

Chae Rin immediately turned to us. “We can catch him. We should try to figure out where he is. We can save him, can’t we?” She grabbed Belle’s arm and a little too violently yanked her around to face her. “Come on! We have to do something!”

Belle didn’t appreciate being manhandled, or maybe it was the tension of the situation itself. She pulled her arm out of Chae Rin’s grip and shoved her back.

“What?” Chae Rin spat, once her feet stabilized onstage. “We’re just going to stand here looking like morons? Oh, I guess if it’s not aboutNatalya, you don’t give a shit, right?”

Belle responded to Chae Rin with a livid glare, which Chae Rin matched.

“You know me. My name,” Saul said, grabbing our attention once more, “is Saul.”

His voice, though forceful, carried with it the kind of well-mannered, gentlemanly lilt I’d associated with Nick. But this brutality... The premier’s face had been bludgeoned; his saliva was dripping over the white binds in his mouth. That was Alice.

The last time I’d faced Saul in France, he’d made it clear that the drives of both were the same: to find the rest of the stone from which the rings had been made. To find Marian. To make a wish. Even if their wishes were different, both personalities, the body and the Effigy ghost inhabiting it, had proven well enough that they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their goal. A relationship that had started out with antagonism now seemed to have become a begrudging partnership—the kind Natalya and I had shared, for a fleeting moment, before she’d tried to take me over again. Nick’s calm, calculating personality with Alice’s vicious bloodthirst.

“My name is Saul,” he declared again. “I am an Effigy.” He shoved the point of the knife into the desk behind him, his eyes never leaving the camera. “And you should fear me.”

In that moment he raised his arms. Black smoke dripped up from the floor, limbs forming before our eyes. More shadow wolves shivered into existence, their dead flesh clinging to their bones, the smoke curling off of their black furry hides into the air over the trembling body of the poor man I knew we wouldn’t be able to save.

“I come to tell you that I am not acting alone. I come to give you a message.”

I clenched my hands into fists.

“And that message is this.” Saul sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “The pain and terror you’ve experienced thus far is only a shade of what lies ahead of you. And the people you’ve foolishly trusted to protect you can’t save you. No. Theywon’tsave you. They’ll betray you.” He flicked a hand and his wolves descended on the senator.

His screams rattled the walls as the wolves tore apart his flesh.

No.I looked away, my heart rattling, my body limp and heavy as his screams joined that of the crowd. And through it all I could hear Saul’s promise. It was unmistakable. “You’ll see. In seven days, we’ll come. And death will follow.”

22

“LOOK, I DON’T BLOODY KNOWwhat happened, Henry. Just try tospin this.” Lake paused. “I don’t care if you don’t work for the other girls; the press is killing us. Do something, yeah?”

In our hotel room, she wasn’t the only one yelling into her phone. Belle was by the heavy, drawn window curtains shouting angrily at Brendan on the other end of the line. Chae Rin sat with her feet on the couch and her knees to her chest, picking the skin on her lips distractedly. Next to her, Ha Rin watched the news with bloodshot eyes, listening limply to terrified pundits collectively implode while they tried to make sense of what had just happened.

What was there to make sense of? John Walsh, a Canadian premier, had just been torn to shreds, his death streamed internationally. There was no news of any city’s antiphantom defense systems being compromised, so Saul must have taken him to a Dead Zone. It had already been declared an act of terrorism. And while it was happening, the four Effigies whose duty it was to protect the world had been standing onstage at a teen awards show, collecting a spray-painted trophy for being role models. The headlines wrote themselves.

I was pacing back and forth by the door, unable to calm myself. Natalya’s voice had receded back into my mind, but I was still disturbed, still on edge, which is why I jumped at the sound of a few swift knocks at the door.

“It’s me,” came Uncle Nathan’s voice from the other side of the door. I let him in.

“What are you doing here?” I shut the door fast as he stalked inside with his laptop underneath his arm. “Nobody can see you here.”

“It’s okay—nobody saw me.” He set his laptop down on the table a few feet away from the minifridge. The sounds of pundits screaming over one another drew his attention, and after mere seconds of watching the television, he shook his head. “This is bad. Very bad.”

“You saw it, right?” I said.

“Yeah. I don’t drink much, but I definitely felt like knocking back a couple of those complimentary mini-scotches in the fridge.”

“Seven days,” I said.

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