Page 5

4

“And he was a native English speaker with an American accent?” Counselor Avellino asks me for the third time.

“Yes,” I confirm, trying to sound polite instead of pissy. I’ve been interrogated by the Families about every single interaction I had with Michael and then asked to repeat it all again. And despite my promises to Michael, I’ve told them everything. Well, besides the fact that I went on a date with my mark before I realized who he was.

“And he said only some of the exiles traveled to the Americas?”

Counselor Avellino is the Families’ lawyer and, let me tell you, he knows how to cross-examine a witness.

It’s been hours of this. My head is pounding, and I just want to go home.

One might think that after the crippling trauma of being abducted and the exhaustion of an international flight, I would be allowed to go home to recover. But if one is now a spy for a historic order, they apparently cannot expect such treatment. Instead, as soon as my plane touched down at JFK, I was whisked to the seat of the Families’ Inner Chamber—which is hidden in the basement archives of the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park—to be debriefed.

The flight back had not been easy. I was constantly looking over my shoulder for some unknown threat. When I attempted to use the lavatory on the plane, I almost had a panic attack from the small space and had to ban myself from drinking so I wouldn’t have to go again. And it’s not like anyone here has offered me a drink since, so my mouth feels as dry as the ancient illuminated manuscripts displayed in the Cloisters museum upstairs.

Despite being in a building renowned for its epic architecture, the actual room where the Inner Chamber convenes is just a boring boardroom with a long table seating a lot of Very Important People. Not all of the Inner Chamber is present, but those that are include members as illustrious as a US senator—who if the Families get their way may be our next president—the French minister of culture, a big deal film director, an even bigger deal Italian fashion designer, and my mom. They are each a representative from one of the families that have been stewards to the memory of the exiles—or the “Makers,” according to Michael—for hundreds of generations. The order is built around this stewardship, with the intent of recovering the exiles’ lost innovations and sharing them with mainstream society. And now that I finally have a seat at the table, I don’t want to screw it up.

“I’d like to take another look at the golem bird,” the senator says.

Kor bumps my knee with his, and when I glance at him, he gives me an encouraging smile. Just a little longer , he mouths silently.

Despite the subtlety of Kor’s actions, they’ve still drawn the table’s attention, and now everyone’s watching us uneasily. I’m used to this when I’m in public with Kor.

With his dramatic cheekbones, pale skin, and almost-black hair, Korach Chevalier is the kind of person who always attracts a lot of admiration but seems completely unapproachable. Whenever someone who thinks they know him sees him acting close and comfortable with me—an average person in every way—it shakes their image of his cool, enigmatic nature.

It’s hard for me to see Kor through the eyes of the masses. To them he’s a mysterious paragon of artistic genius. To me he’s just Kor, one of my closest friends, who is two years older than me and technically a distant cousin. (Very distant. Through marriage.)

Kor clears his throat, and the activity around the table resumes.

“We’re sorry for the repetition,” Dr. Ambrose says to me. He’s a kind physician with salt-and-pepper hair and gold-rimmed glasses. When my mother had grudgingly allowed the Inner Chamber to assess my abilities, he’d been patient and transparent through the whole process. “We know you have been through an ordeal, but we must make sure we have all the proper facts for the sake of our research and for your safety. If we decide to send you to study at this institute, we need the whole picture.”

The Inner Chamber is split on whether I should be sent to infiltrate Genesis. Most of them are in favor of it, but there are a few who don’t trust me to pull it off.

“Not to mention that your story doesn’t add up,” the loudest in the Ada-can’t-be-trusted contingent interjects.

Alfie Avellino: son of Counselor Avellino and the most annoying person in my acquaintance.

“You still haven’t answered why you didn’t follow the protocol when you first encountered the exile.” He glares at me accusingly as he pats down a strand of his perfectly parted hair—a shade of brown just light enough that he’ll try to tell you it’s blond.

Alfie liked me fine when we first met a few years ago. In fact, he worked hard to ingratiate himself with me to get closer to Kor, but the moment he realized I wasn’t going to be initiated into the Families, I slid below his notice like runoff into the sewer.

“She couldn’t follow the protocol because she was kidnapped .” Kor comes to my defense. It’s clear that Alfie has more to say on the matter, but he won’t talk back to Kor. He will, however, straighten his ugly paisley tie and scowl down his nose at me, trying his best to make me feel like I don’t deserve to be here.

He doesn’t have to work very hard. I’m already pretty sure I don’t belong.

Nothing can make me feel quite as hazy with inferiority as being surrounded by these people who have shaped their lives around the values of the exiles by actively improving the world through innovation and art. The abilities that earned me my initiation might mean I need fewer Band-Aids than the average person, and sure, I’m good with plants, but no one’s looking for a ficus at the Met. Everyone else at this table gained their seats by pushing themselves to be masters of a modern Renaissance.

Okay, maybe not Alfie. I’m pretty sure he just earned his seat through generations of nepotism and his family’s deep pockets. But even he went through years of training after being initiated. Whereas I was never even good enough to be considered until the Families needed to use my abilities as bait. Whatever, at least I have abilities. It’s not like Alfie’s bringing anything new to the table, besides his seemingly endless collection of hideous ties.

If he deserves to be here, so do you, I remind myself as I try to muster up the confidence of a mediocre trust fund white boy.

“Not only did Ada succeed beyond our wildest expectations in Italy,” Kor says, “she did so despite having incorrect information about the mark.” Whenever Kor speaks, everyone listens with rapt attention. The French minister of culture is making doe eyes at him and twirling her hair around her finger. Even my mother—whose eyes always seem to shift away from me when I speak up—is listening intently to Kor.

Kor has transformed the Families in recent years.

The order’s influence had been steadily growing over the centuries as they reintroduced some of the exiles’ lost innovations––derived from the order’s extensive archives and from centuries of hunting down relics––back into society. They’ve funded a lot of research based on their knowledge, which has contributed to everything from health care to agriculture to clean energy. But most of that was based on ancient knowledge. Now, because of Kor, the Families have a path to the exiles’ actual living descendants and whatever far-more-advanced innovations they may have since developed. And it’s all because Kor made contact with Prometheus, the anonymous informant from among the exiles who provided the information about how and where they would be recruiting. Between Kor’s success with Prometheus and the influence that’s come with his recent fame and public advocacy, the entire Inner Chamber is basically as obsessed with Kor as the teens who run his online fan clubs.

“Ada has the perfect cover, a direct invitation, and has already proven herself to us,” Kor continues. “Having her infiltrate the institute is the best course of action.” He sounds so sure of this plan. So sure of me. I, on the other hand, am the farthest thing from sure.

“She has no training,” Alfie argues. And he’s not wrong.

“What of our training would have better prepared her for this?” Kor challenges. “The tutoring in Aramaic and Latin? The art restoration and document preservation techniques?”

“She’s an immature and undisciplined teenager, and she could put us all in danger if she blows her cover.”

I do so love being discussed as if I’m not in the room. If Izzy were here, she’d tell me to assert my femininity and not let myself be talked over.

Speaking of which, where is Izzy? I’ve been expecting her to show up. Her older brother, Roman, is already here, sitting quietly at the other end of the table.

Izzy King is my other best friend. She’s half Korean, an avid gamer, and one of the cleverest people I know. Growing up, she was the only girl around my age from the New York branch of the Families, so we were always together. I was really hoping to see her before she goes back to Massachusetts at the end of winter break.

“Ada won’t have trouble with her cover,” Kor assures the room. “She’ll need to blend into a school where they already expect her to be an outsider. If anything, her being an average teenager will make her cover stronger.” Average teenager . Ouch, Kor. “Regardless of everything else, she was abducted because of her abilities. For that reason alone, we should send her to Genesis, where they can keep her safe.”

“I agree,” Dr. Ambrose says.

“So do I,” my mother says, speaking for the first time this whole meeting. She has otherwise been perfectly content to let all the other people in the room plan my life out for me. And how does her makeup and blond bun look so fresh? It seems impossible that she’s been stuck in this room for as many hours as my sweaty, frizzy, haggard self. Everyone here has probably forgotten we’re even related.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s what she wants, for them to forget. Maybe I’m an embarrassment for only getting initiated into the order on a technicality, for not having any of the accolades her friends get to brag about their talented kids having.

As I mope, the argument that I should go to Genesis as a matter of safety seems to be winning over most of the table.

“We will have to consult the Grand Master,” Councilor Avellino says, with the snobbery of knowing he’s one of the only people in the room with the security clearance to speak directly with the head of the Families.

As I let the Chamber continue their decision making about my future without bothering to ask my opinion on the matter, I lean over to Kor and whisper, “Where’s Izzy?”

“She’s not coming,” he whispers back. “I’ll explain later.” His eyes hold a sadness that makes my rib cage tighten with alarm.

Right before I left for Italy, Izzy had texted me that she didn’t think I should go, though she didn’t tell me why. When she didn’t respond to any of my messages while I was gone, I figured it was just because of the time difference, or that she was being pissy that I was missing our annual winter break snowboarding trip. Now I worry her silence was due to something more significant.

I hide my phone in my lap, prepared to message Izzy on every single one of her social media accounts until she finally responds. Except, for some reason, none of her profiles will load. I must have a bad internet connection. But… no, everything else seems to be working fine.

What’s going on? I reload and then reload again.

Nothing. All her profiles are gone.

She’s either deleted her accounts or blocked me.

Why would she do that? My breath feels trapped, my mind ping-ponging between worry and hurt.

I pull up the last text message Izzy sent me.

Please don’t go to Italy. I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, and now I have a really bad feeling about your trip.

When she hadn’t responded to any of my follow-up questions, I’d put her warning out of my mind and chalked it up to a drunk text. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first. But now I’m not so sure.

Kor sees the look on my face and takes my hand under the table with a comforting squeeze.

“We’re starting to talk in circles,” Kor says to the rest of the Chamber. “Let’s continue this discussion tomorrow. Ada needs to go home; she’s been through a lot.”

Alfie objects. “She’s been exposed to incredibly sensitive information. We can’t just let her go home!”

“Of course we can,” Kor says with finality. And because Kor is Kor, everyone listens and the meeting is adjourned, giving me free rein to leave.

As soon as we’re out of the Chamber, I try to ask Kor about Izzy.

“Not yet.” He shushes me and pulls me after him. He uses a bright orange keycard to exit the Families’ private archives—I’d asked for my own keycard but was denied—and leads me up the stairs into the museum.

It’s closed to the public at this late hour, and in the low light, the echoing stillness of the ancient chapels and galleries is haunting enough to give me chills.

The Cloisters—a building designed by combining different architectural elements taken from medieval abbeys, monasteries, and convents—houses a huge collection of medieval art and architecture. But only part of the collection is open to the public. Up in the tower and down below in the archives are many more pieces, including the Families’ private collection of relics tied to the existence of the exiles.

My mom texts me saying she needs to get some things from her office and will be ready to go in fifteen minutes, so I let Kor lead me through the silent, spooky halls of the Cloisters until we reach his favorite gallery, the Unicorn Tapestry Room. Seven beautifully detailed tapestries with life-size figures depict a story that has puzzled art historians for years. The tapestries are infamously mysterious; no one even knows who commissioned or made them.

I have so many questions for Kor, but my exhaustion is catching up with me. I lie down on the floor in the center of the room, arms and legs outstretched. With a loud groan, I close my eyes.

And then there’s a warm body lying next to mine, and Kor is pulling me against his chest. I blink against his soft cashmere sweater, inhaling the smell of his expensive sandalwood cologne and a hint of charcoal that tells me he’s been sketching.

I suppress the familiar tug that comes whenever Kor is sweet with me. Of course I’m a little bit in love with him—it’s impossible not to be. But he’ll never feel that way about me. It took me a few too many years to realize that. Luckily, our friendship managed to survive my painfully one-sided crush, and I came out on the other end of it relatively unscathed. Competing with an ever-increasing number of fans and groupies is excellent for crush-squashage.

Lying in his arms with our bodies pressed together is not.

Kor takes one of my hands and grazes his fingertips over the crescent scar. “I’m sorry about what happened in Italy,” he says. “It’s my fault you were there in the first place.”

I get that he’s feeling guilty that I was kidnapped, but I can’t help but bristle at the implication that he should have known I couldn’t take care of myself.

But maybe that’s the truth. Maybe Alfie is right about everything. I wasn’t ready for Italy, and I’m not ready for Genesis. I don’t have the training, and there’s no way I can pull this off.

“Out of curiosity,” I ask Kor. “If the Inner Chamber decides I should go to Genesis, would I be able to… choose to not go?”

“You’re in danger. That’s reason enough for you to go. The school can protect you from whoever abducted you.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t answer my question.

“Do the Families have any idea about who took me?” I roll myself away from Kor’s body. Now’s not the time to let him play the harp with my feelings. Izzy says he does it on purpose because he needs me to be in love with him. Kor needs everyone to be in love with him. To be obsessed with him. He was born to be adored.

“We’ve been investigating it nonstop since yesterday,” he says.

The museum floor is cold and hard beneath me. Kor and I are no longer touching, but our faces are close enough that, even in the dim light, I can see the small scar that bisects his upper lip. The one Rolling Stone described as “the wound the world wants to kiss better.” (I have not stopped teasing him about this and don’t plan to anytime soon.) I turn away and stare up at the dark museum ceiling. “Michael said there have been other Sire abductions besides me.”

“Yes, we’ve confirmed that to be true. Right now, our most likely suspect is Nora Montaigne.”

“The CEO of Ozymandias Tech?” I sit up.

Kor nods.

The French billionaire is always in the news for designing clean-energy private jets that are making waves in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Not to mention, she’s the CEO of the company that just bought Izzy’s app. But it’s wild to think that Nora Montaigne could somehow be involved in any of this. Despite the ethical ambiguity of her being a billionaire, her public image is generally quite positive—environmentally friendly, philanthropic.

“How could she be connected?”

Kor stays on his back, talking up to the ceiling. “Ozymandias Tech has been performing genetic experimentation that would benefit from knowledge of abilities like yours,” he explains. “And the Families have long suspected Montaigne is aware of the exiles. The Families lost a slew of auctions for items assumed to be exile relics to shell companies that were all traced back to her.”

“Izzy works with her company now. Can she help find out more?” And maybe now Kor can tell me why she’s not here.

This makes him sit up, but he doesn’t meet my eyes as he says, “Izzy’s not going to help us with anything.”

I feel cold all over. “What do you mean?”

He lays his hand on my thigh. “She’s left the Families, Ada.”

The throbbing in my head returns with a vengeance. “I… Is that even a thing you can do?”

He shrugs.

“But why?”

“She just said she wanted out, and she hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s part of why the Inner Chamber is hesitant to trust you after such a recent betrayal. Especially since you and Izzy are close.”

Why would Izzy do something like this? And why wouldn’t she explain herself to me and Kor?

I pull out my phone and look at her last message again.

P lease don’t go to Italy. I saw something I wasn’t supposed to, and now I have a really bad feeling about your trip.

The thing she wasn’t supposed to see, could that have been at Oz Tech? Did she realize they’re abducting Sires and that’s why she didn’t want me to go to Italy? It makes sense. Are the people she’s working with dangerous?

“I hope she’s okay,” I say.

“Roman has been in touch with her and said that she’s doing fine.”

I’m so confused. I need Izzy. Quite frankly, I don’t have a lot of close friends. I mean, when you’re from a family that’s part of a weird secret society, it can be hard to connect to people outside of it.

“Don’t worry,” Kor says. “She made a ton of money selling her app, and she just wants to focus on other things now. She’s been pulling away ever since she went off to college. This isn’t that big of a surprise.”

But that doesn’t explain why she would ghost me. Or why she would keep working with a company that she thinks is harming people.

“Hey.” Kor gently kicks my foot with his. “We should be celebrating.” Once I pocket my phone, he takes both of my hands in his and stands, pulling me to my feet. “You’re going to learn how to use your abilities.”

My abilities.

It’s so weird to think of them as something positive that can be trained and used for good. Aside from the easy healing and my talent with plants, I’ve rarely ever felt different from other people. Because of my parents’ fear, I’d gotten used to suppressing anything peculiar about myself over the years. And it mostly worked. It’s easy enough to turn yourself into someone else when your true self scares the people you love.

But in recent months, it had all become harder to ignore. The stress of college applications was making my hands hot and tingly all the time, and keeping it in check was taking way too much emotional energy. I knew from experience that talking to Mom about it was not an option. I finally confided in Kor and Izzy, thinking maybe they could find the book that I had seen so many years before in the archives to help me learn more.

I haven’t gotten over the whiplash of what followed.

Kor had been elated, and he immediately convinced me that I had to tell the Families and be initiated.

When I’d asked Mom why she hadn’t told me sooner that the Families needed someone like me, she brushed it off, saying that she hadn’t realized it was the same condition they’d been researching. But as soon as the idea of trying to get me into the institute had been suggested, she’d agreed, as if she couldn’t wait to have the problem of “What is Ada going to do with her life?” off her plate.

Kor is giddy now like he was that same day I first told him about my abilities. “Do you have any idea what you’re capable of?” he asks me, squeezing my hands tightly.

No. I have no idea.

“If our research is correct, abilities like yours could change the face of modern medicine. And Prometheus has implied there might be a way to share these abilities with non-Sires. You can help us find the way. You’re going to help change the world .”

I’ve always known Kor would change the world. Now he seems to think that I can too.

“You’ll learn directly from the descendants of the most talented masters. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Of hundreds of lifetimes!”

It’s true. And it feels too big to believe, especially when it’s so obvious that Kor is the one who should have this opportunity, not me. He would fit right in at Genesis. It feels like some cosmic mistake of fate, the abilities given to the wrong one of us. He has the talent and the drive to use them correctly, unlike me.

“I can tell that you don’t understand yet.” His hazel eyes shine with excitement. “But I’ll show you the archives. Once you see the scrolls, the paintings—the innovations we believe these Makers have…” He spreads his arms wide, looking from wall to wall at the tapestries. “Like these unicorns!”

“What about them?”

“They were real.”

“Oh, come on. No, they weren’t,” I scoff.

But there’s no trace of humor on his face. “The information passed down through the Families suggests they were real. That they were experiments.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Whether inspired by the myths of previous generations, or for a utilitarian purpose—perhaps military—the unicorns are an example of the kind of science practiced by the exiles that was deemed heretical and led to their expulsion. They successfully bred these magnificent creatures, and now the world thinks they never existed.”

I stare at the tapestries, beautiful but creepy in the low lights of the dark museum. They illustrate a hunt for a unicorn and the unicorn’s resulting death. But the last tapestry shows the unicorn alive and domesticated in captivity. I think about everything Michael told me, but this still feels like too much to be possible.

There are endless benefits to being part of the order. All the members use their connections to rise to powerful positions and to influence global change. I’ve often assumed that’s the real reason most members remained involved, not that they truly believe all the fantastical stories of these mysterious people and their wondrous, mythical lives. But it’s clear that Kor truly believes it all.

“Look how the tapestries tell the story of the exiles,” Kor says. He steps up close behind me, and with his hands on my shoulders, he spins me slowly around to take in all seven illustrated scenes in succession. “Like the unicorn, the exiles were hunted.” He points to the tapestry depicting the hunt. “And they were eradicated.” He pivots to the illustration of the hunters with the dead unicorn. “But they weren’t really.” We look together at the most famous of the tapestries, the one of the unicorn wearing a collar surrounded by a fence. “They’re still alive somewhere. But they’re not truly free.”

I see it. I want it to be true.

“We’re going to be the ones that set them free, Ada. We’ll reunite our two societies and usher in the next Renaissance.”

It sounds pretty great, in theory.

“But what if they don’t want to be reunited? They seem intent on staying hidden.”

“If that’s what they want, it won’t matter once we have you in there. They don’t have the right to keep their knowledge from us, and you will be able to share what you find with us, whether they know about it or not.” His breath, warm on my neck, sends chills down my spine as I let his words sink in.

The Inner Chamber talked a lot about me learning from the exiles, finding out what they’ve been up to and what kinds of things they know. But Kor is clearly saying more than that. He’s saying he wants me to steal from them.

“What you’re implying, that’s not what the Inner Chamber said would be my job.”

Kor turns me to face him, and his eyes, glittering with flecks of blue, yellow, and gray, are fierce with passion. “They don’t all know,” he explains. “You going to Genesis, it will be the most important thing the Families have ever accomplished. You will be receiving instructions that come directly from the Grand Master himself, and some aspects may be classified to only the highest echelon of the Inner Chamber.”

“Are you talking about the Oculus?” The Oculus is the most restricted inner circle of the order. It’s based somewhere in Europe, and I hadn’t even been sure the Oculus still existed, as I’d never known anyone ranked high enough to confirm it. Despite knowing how important he’d risen in the Families, it hadn’t occurred to me that Kor could have possibly gained that much seniority.

“Yes,” he confirms. “While the rest of the Families have been focusing on stewardship of the memory of the exiles and on bringing their ideas into modern society, the Oculus has always been seeking the exiles’ physical location in order to work toward reunification.”

“How do you know all this? How did you get involved?”

He pulls a thin chain from under his shirt, absently toying with the pendant. It’s a silver cross entwined with a gold vine. The emblem of the Families. It belonged to Aragon, Kor’s father, before he died. “My father was a member of the Oculus.”

That makes sense. I know Aragon was very high-ranking in the Families, and Kor has always strived to follow in his footsteps. Though I can’t ignore the pang I feel knowing that Kor has kept this from me for so long. I suppose I can’t blame him, as I only recently told him about my abilities. We all have our secrets.

Kor gets back down to business. “To the rest of the Families, your mission will be reconnaissance only. In actuality, we hope to be able to rely on you for more practical matters.”

Of course, I haven’t been consulted about any of this. Do I even want to go to Genesis if I’m supposed to lie and steal from them?

Kor, as always, can read my mind. He squeezes my shoulders. “Ada, there is so much humankind is capable of, unknown potential buried in our genetics, untapped and untrained. Instead, we’re living half-lives.” There’s a flash of anger in his eyes now. “I don’t understand why the exiles have been so selfish until now. I really don’t. Just the Sire abilities and medical science alone—we’re slaves to viruses and disease, but not them. There’s so much suffering that could be mitigated.”

I’d asked Michael why the Makers hadn’t shared their medical knowledge, and his answer had been vague. If they do have the information that the Families claim, then I know Kor is right.

Kor sniffs, then sniffs again. He releases my shoulders and swipes his knuckles under his nose. They come away streaked with blood. He groans in annoyance as he pulls tissues from his pocket and tips his head back to stem the flow.

“You’re still getting those?” He’d told me his nosebleeds had stopped.

“They cabe back a few weeks ago,” he explains, his voice coming out distorted as he keeps his nose pinched shut. “Dr. Ambrose said it’s norbal frob all the stress, with planning the charity bedefit at the sabe time as studying for biterms. That’s why we postponed the album release tour.”

Because Kor is the type of guy who works himself until he’s sick, and then when something has to give, he deprioritizes his entire career to give all of his focus to his charity work and his commitment to the Families.

Meanwhile, I’m here whining about not being sure I’m ready to give the bare minimum.

As Kor wipes away the last of the blood, the determined gleam is still in his eyes. “Ada, the Families have spent centuries trying to live by the values of the masters, but that’s not enough anymore. Now that we know what’s out there, it’s our obligation to use that knowledge to help the rest of the world, even if the descendants of the masters themselves refuse to do so. And you are the key. This is your chance to crawl out of your comfort zone.”

My comfort zone, which is safely tucked into his shadow.

Kor has always asked for my help and advice. Feedback on his art and his songs, support behind the scenes during his tours and before interviews. Sometimes, when I feel crappy about my mediocrity, I take comfort in that. That I’m making a mark by being part of Kor’s journey.

And now he’s telling me I can have my own.

I want to be worthy of our order’s mission, to be able to prove all the doubters in the Chamber wrong.

The problem is that the biggest doubter is me.