Antiphon

for routine checkups. And something had happened. Somehow they had stumbled across the data coded into that song and had created a new script for themselves based upon it.

And it changed them. As it was now changing Isaak.

Isaak spoke, drawing Charles back to the present moment. “I am confident of my direction.” He reached into the leather satchel he carried over his shoulder and drew out the book that the mechoservitor had given him. “There are rudimentary maps ciphered into the text of this book.” He extended it to Rudolfo. “The mechoservitors attached to your operation should be able to decipher at least some of them. When they are finished, the book should be destroyed.”

Charles felt his own eyebrows rise. Rudolfo raised his as well, a hand moving instinctively to his beard. “You would destroy a book?” the Gypsy King asked.

Isaak nodded. “I would destroy this book.”

Charles saw the question on Rudolfo’s face but asked it first. “Why?”

Isaak blinked, his eye shutters clicking. “Enemies of the light beset us. They must not be permitted to prevail.” He paused, his body shaking slightly as his bellows wheezed. Charles saw water at the lower corners of his eyes, where he’d installed the tear ducts as per Rufello’s Book of Specifications. “My analysis of your physiological and verbal cues indicates that you are displeased with me, Lord. It was never my intention to-”

Rudolfo raised his hand again. “Isaak,” he said. His voice was low, and Charles thought for a moment that he might’ve heard it crack with emotion. “I am not displeased with you. I am displeased with this outcome and concerned by your decision.” He waited a moment. “You understand some of my concerns, I think. Those that I have discussed with you.”

Isaak nodded. “I will guard it, Lord. I swear. And the library will function adequately without my presence. I have reproduced from my memory scrolls all appropriate holdings contained therein and have left them with Mechoservitor Number One.”

All appropriate holdings. Charles had not seen the scrolls but felt confident that all matters regarding the spell and the dream had been carefully expunged from the scripts Isaak had left behind.

“But there is another concern,” Rudolfo said, “that I have not discussed with you.”

Isaak cocked his head, and Charles was struck yet again at how human his creation seemed. No, he realized, not seemed. Was. And becoming more so. “What concern is that, Lord Rudolfo?”

Charles watched the hardness soften in Rudolfo’s eyes and watched the line of his jaw relax as the Gypsy King stepped closer. Isaak towered above the shorter man. Stretching himself to full height, Rudolfo embraced the metal man. “That I will miss my friend until he comes home to me.”

For a moment-just a moment-the arch-engineer thought there were tears in the man’s eyes. There was no mistaking Isaak’s tears.

And when he was partway down the ladder, wrapped in the warmth of an unexpected wind that rose from beneath them, Charles discovered his own tears.

Blinking them away, he followed his dreaming son into the Beneath Places and wondered what they would find there.

Chapter 16

Frannie

I can’t remember once in my life ever hating that it was the weekend. But this weekend was hell. There were nightmares about alien body snatchers and convicts with hooks for hands. There were dreams about Luc and Gabe that I blush just thinking about. And twice I was sure I saw a black ’68 Shelby drive past my house.

Belias, Avaira, me, we’re all from.

And all day today at school I’ve felt like I was on some kind of possessed seesaw, up and down with Gabe and Luc. But after last-period government, I waste no time grabbing Luc’s arm and dragging him to the parking lot. We climb into his car, and, as soon as the doors are closed, his lips are burning into mine. It feels amazing, so it’s really hard to push him away.

“Tell me,” I say into his lips.

“What?” he says into mine.

I force myself to push back from him. “What you were going to say Friday-in my room-before my mom showed up.”

He reaches for me. “I don’t remember.”

I push back harder. “Belias, Avaira, me, we’re all from. ” I say to jog his memory.

For a second, his face pinches in a wince. “Later.”

“Now.”

His eyes grow hard, like black obsidian. “It’s nothing.”

“It didn’t seem like nothing Friday.”

He leans back in his seat, closes his eyes, and blows out a sigh. “You really don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I really do.”

He pulls his head off the headrest and looks at me with tortured eyes. “I’ve done some pretty awful things.”

I feel my gut knot. “So who hasn’t?”

“I mean it, Frannie.”

But all I can think is that there’s nothing he could have done that’s even close to what I have. And suddenly my throat is closing and my chest is tightening. And there’s no air in the car. I push the door open and sort of stagger out onto the pavement.

Luc is there in a heartbeat. He pulls me to him, keeping me from falling over. “Frannie, what’s wrong?”

Secrets.

I lean into him for a long time, gasping for air, then shove him away. I hate that he’s here, seeing this. And I hate more that he thinks I need his help.

“I’m fine,” I lie.

I can tell he doesn’t believe me, and I don’t care. But when he wraps his arms back around me, I let him. He sits me back on the seat of the car as my breathing eases.

“Sorry,” I say without looking at him.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” I spin my legs into the car and grab the door handle. “Let’s go.”

He steps back and I close the door.

He’s right. I don’t really want to know his secrets. The ones I already have are enough.

Our bodies move together to the pounding rhythm of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” As hard as it is, I push Luc’s burning body away from mine and sit up on his big black bed, working to catch my breath. “I don’t think Mr. Snyder is gonna accept ‘we were too busy messing around’ as an excuse for this outline not being done.”

Luc grabs my hips and pulls me back down next to him. “We could try ‘my dog ate it,’ ” he says hopefully, wrapping his arms around me again. I glower at him for a second before he groans and says, “How fast can we get this thing done?”

I slide up and prop myself against a stack of pillows on the headboard. “We only have the last few questions. It should go pretty quick.”

He gets his composition book off the floor and sits against the headboard next to me, but he’s not writing. He’s staring at me. “You’re going to have to put your shirt on, or I’m not going to be able to concentrate on this,” he says after a minute. “That red bra is way too hot. I didn’t think the pope let good Catholic girls wear red bras.”

“I’m not a good Catholic girl, remember? I got thrown out of Catholic school.”

“I remember,” he says, and his smile makes my heart skip.

As Depeche Mode urges me to “reach out and touch faith,” I trace the coil of the black serpent tattooed around his upper arm and ogle his bare chest.