The Ruby Circle

  “If you’d help me—really help me—we’d only have to do it once. If we can corner her, we can make the dream show us where she’s at.”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said, sitting beside her. “Where’d you learn to do that? Make the dream show where she’s at?” That would’ve been incredibly useful when I’d been trying to find Sydney.

  Nina shrugged. “You can make a person appear as they are in real life, right? I was experimenting one day and channeled the spirit through her in a way that made the dream’s setting simply mirror the place she was in.”

  “I’m not sure ‘simply’ is the word I’d use,” I remarked. “That involved a lot of spirit too. And I wonder . . . did she start controlling the dream afterward? Did you inadvertently give her control?”

  It was obvious Nina hadn’t thought of that. “I . . . I don’t know. Maybe I did . . . but how else am I supposed to find out where she is?”

  “Try talking to her?” I suggested.

  She slammed her fist on the wicker armrest. “I have! She won’t see me. This is the only way. Something’s wrong, and we need to find out what. We need to try again. Only next time—”

  “Whoa, whoa. There can’t be a next time,” I warned. “You’ll burn yourself out. You’ve done this every day for how long?”

  Her gaze grew distant. “I don’t know. Months.”

  I winced. No wonder she was losing it. “No more spirit.”

  She looked up at me, her gaze pleading. “I have to. Can’t you understand that? Do you know what it’s like to not know what’s happened to someone you care so much about?”

  Jill, I thought with a pang. Nina must have seen something in my expression because she suddenly lit up.

  “Help me! Help me, Adrian, and together we’ll have enough spirit to overcome her. I can stop doing this every day. I’ll find out what’s happened to her. Please.”

  I thought of Sonya’s worries for Nina. Then I thought of Sydney, cautioning me to be careful with spirit. I’d be in enough trouble already if she found out about this burst of spirit use. I slowly shook my head. “I can’t. I shouldn’t have even done this.”

  “If we work together, it won’t require as much from either of us,” Nina begged. “Please help me. I’ll help you in return. Is there something you need? Help me find Olive, and I’ll do anything.”

  I started to shake my head again, then paused as an idea hit me. “No,” I said, more to myself than her. “No.”

  She jumped to her feet. “There is something, isn’t there? Tell me!”

  I hesitated, knowing I really shouldn’t be going down this path. But her offer of help had made me think of one thing I did want very badly: getting back to Sydney. “I need to sneak out of Court without anyone knowing. And then I need to make people think I’m still here, back with my mom.”

  “Done,” said Nina. “I can do that. Easy.”

  “Nina—”

  “Look,” she said. “I can help you right now—right this minute—get you out of Court. It’d be an easy compulsion spell. Then you can meet me in a dream to find Olive, wherever you are.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said wearily. “But that’s not going to convince people I’m still living here.”

  A mischievous smile crossed her lips. “I can do that too. If your mom’ll let me stay with her. I’ll compel anyone who comes looking for you into thinking they saw you. I’ll make the workers at guest housing think they see you coming and going. No one’ll suspect a thing. Please, Adrian.” She squeezed my hand. “Let’s help each other.”

  I took my hand back, unwilling to admit how tempted I was. She was offering me the only shot I had at joining Sydney, something I wanted badly enough to consider ignoring all warnings about spirit use. But how could I subject either of us to more magic? Especially her. It was selfish. “It’s too dangerous,” I told her.

  “I don’t care,” she said obstinately. “I’ll just keep trying whether you help me or not. Olive is everything to me.”

  And Sydney’s everything to me, I thought. Desperately, I tried to find a way to reconcile the guilt I felt about taking Nina’s help. She’d said she’d keep going after Olive, right? Well . . . if I helped her find Olive and made her stop, it’d result in Nina actually using less spirit. That was a good thing . . . right?

  I took a deep breath and looked her squarely in the eyes. “If we try this again . . . let me wield the bulk of the spirit.”

  “But we both—”

  “We both will,” I said. “And we’re only doing it once—not every day. If I do the heavy lifting once, it won’t affect me as badly. You augment—a little. But that’s it. You can’t keep hurting yourself.”

  She reached her hand toward mine again, then drew it back, though her expression had softened. “You do care about me, don’t you? I knew it. Even though you’re married—”

  “Nina,” I said firmly. “It’s not like that. I care about you, but I love Sydney. And if we’re going to do this again, we’re doing it my way.”

  Her eyes remained dreamy a few moments longer, and then she gave a reluctant nod. “Your way,” she reiterated. “And I really will help you.”

  “I’m counting on it,” I admitted. “But hopefully you can pull off what we need using as little spirit as possible.”

  She gave a meek nod and then turned curious. “Okay . . . but are you sure you aren’t worried about your sanity in all of this?”

  I hesitated. If Sydney were here, I knew she’d tell me this was foolish, that I was frivolously using spirit I didn’t need to and possibly damaging myself. But there was no way I could abandon Nina to insanity, especially if there really was something wrong with Olive. And I certainly had to seize a chance to get out in the world to help both Sydney and Jill. I just hoped what I’d told Nina earlier, that a one-time use wouldn’t hurt me, would prove true. I managed a stiff smile.

  “Hey, I’m not showing any signs of insanity yet,” I told her. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  Me too, whispered Aunt Tatiana. I’m sure you’ll be fine too.

  CHAPTER 6

  SYDNEY

  WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE SANDSTONE BRICK MEANT. There was no enchantment that we could detect on it, no indication of what its role in this mystery was. The only thing we knew for sure was that we needed to get to the Ozarks or, at the very least, Missouri. Once Ms. Terwilliger had settled things with her rental car company to prolong her lease, she suggested we drive to St. Louis and then make a plan of attack. Instantly, my stomach sank.

  “Not there,” I said swiftly. “There’s an Alchemist facility in St. Louis. I didn’t go to all this trouble just to walk right back into their hands.”

  Eddie’s eyebrows rose in consideration. “Maybe that’s part of the plan? What if this scavenger hunt is part of an Alchemist plot to lure you out and has nothing to do with Jill at all?”

  It was a sobering thought, one made more alarming when Ms. Terwilliger suggested, “Or what if it does have to do with Jill? There is the lock of hair, after all, which certainly looks like Jill’s. Would the Alchemists have taken her as a way to trap you?”

  For a moment, I dared give the idea credence. Jill was taken right when Adrian and I had managed to escape and hide at Court. The Alchemists were among the few people who knew Jill’s location, so they could have easily sent someone after her. I pondered the possibility and analyzed it every way I could with lingering Alchemist logic. At last, I shook my head.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “They might have had the means, but not the motivation. The Alchemists are guilty of a lot of things, but they don’t want the Moroi turning on each other—which would happen with the death of a royal princess, one whose life influenced the throne. I also can’t see the Alchemists resorting to human magic, even to get to me. It goes against too much of their doctrine.”

 
Even if this wasn’t some elaborate Alchemist trap, I still didn’t want to risk walking into an Alchemist on their lunch break in St. Louis. With that in mind, we set a new destination. It took an entire day of driving, but we finally called a halt the following night in Jefferson City, Missouri, putting us well past St. Louis. It also positioned us toward the Ozarks in a slightly out-of-the-way trajectory that we hoped might throw off someone waiting for our approach. Of course, we still didn’t know exactly where we were going. The Ozarks consisted of a very large expanse of land, and thus far, our brick hadn’t yielded any clues.

  We went out to dinner after checking into a hotel, all three of us weary in that way you got from sitting in a car all day. It was nearing midnight, but we’d skipped dinner in order to make better driving time. I was tired more than anything else, with food simply being a formality. Across the table, Ms. Terwilliger stifled a yawn, and even Eddie, despite his perpetual vigilance, seemed like he was looking forward to bed as well. We had the brick sitting on our table as we waited for our food to arrive, all of us staring at it as though we could make it yield some answers through sheer force of will.

  I finally dragged my gaze away from it and glanced at my cell phone, hoping I’d missed a text from Adrian in response to one I’d sent earlier with our status. There’d been little communication from him throughout the day, which seemed odd after yesterday, when he’d sent almost constant updates. I knew it was unreasonable to expect him to do nothing except sit by the phone to talk to me, but I couldn’t shake the difference. After the troubling way things had been between us this last month, I found myself getting caught up in weird fits of paranoia, thinking that maybe once the shock of having me gone was over, Adrian found he kind of liked the freedom.

  The waitress arrived with our food just then, and I tucked the phone back into my purse. As she set down our plates, her breath caught at the sight of the sandstone brick.

  “Did you guys steal that from Ha Ha Tonka?”

  We stared her as though she were speaking another language.

  “I mean, that’s cool if you did,” she added hastily, unnerved by our silence. “It’s a sweet place. I see lots of people going to and from there. Wouldn’t mind a souvenir myself.”

  Ms. Terwilliger recovered herself first. “Can you say that name again? Ha Ha Wonka?”

  “Ha Ha Tonka,” the girl corrected. She glanced between our faces. “You really haven’t been there? That brick looks just like the one the ruins are made of. You should check it out if you’re going into the Ozarks.”

  The instant she was gone, I looked up Ha Ha Tonka on my phone. “No way,” I said. “There’s a castle in Missouri!”

  “Do you think Jill’s being held there?” Eddie asked, eyes aglow. I could already tell he was envisioning himself rescuing her from some tall tower, possibly battling a dragon or a robot dinosaur in the process.

  “Not likely. She was right about the ‘ruins’ part.” I showed them a picture of Ha Ha Tonka, which was an impressive structure, despite having seen better days. It had no roof, and some sections of the walls were gone, making it all open-air and easy to walk through. The building was technically a mansion, not a castle, and the whole area had been turned into a state park full of trails and other natural attractions. If Jill was there, it wasn’t obvious where she could be held captive . . . but at least we had a destination now, because the waitress was right about one thing: Our brick looked exactly like those from the ruins.

  The new knowledge reinvigorated us, and we nearly forgot our food as we began making plans. According to the park’s website, it opened at seven in the morning. We decided to get there as soon as we could get in and do some preliminary scouting. If there was a chance we might have some showdown akin to what we’d faced at the robot museum, then we’d go to the trouble of sneaking in after hours. With the way this weird scavenger hunt was unfolding, there was really no telling what we might be facing or what the person running it expected of us.

  We woke up energized the next morning, even after only five hours of sleep, eager to get on the road and see what secrets Ha Ha Tonka held. The park was only an hour away, but we stopped at a gas station to fill up the car before getting on the highway. While Eddie took care of refueling, I headed inside the station to make sure Ms. Terwilliger and I had more coffee for the road. As I was approaching the door, I came to a screeching halt when I saw someone familiar inside.

  My dad.

  He was standing at the counter, taking money out of his wallet. His body was angled away from me, so he couldn’t see me on the other side of the glass door. Yesterday’s conversation came back to me, and I suddenly wondered if this really was all some Alchemist plot to catch me.

  For a moment, I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t react. Despite the awkwardness of my living situation at the Moroi Court this last month, there was no question that it was a million times better than what I’d faced in re-education. I’d thought that I’d been able to put that awful experience behind me, but as I stood there, staring at my dad’s back, I suddenly found it hard to breathe. For all I knew, fifty Alchemists were about to spring out from all directions, dragging me back to a tiny dark room and sentencing me to a lifetime of physical and psychological torture.

  Move, Sydney, move! some part of my brain shouted at me.

  But I couldn’t. All I kept thinking about was how the Alchemists had overwhelmed me before, and that was with Eddie by my side. What chance did I stand here, all by myself?

  MOVE, I told myself again. Stop feeling helpless!

  That spurred me to action. I began breathing again and slowly backed away, not wanting to do anything that might catch attention in his periphery. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I spun around and prepared to make a mad dash back to the car.

  Instead, I ran into my sister Zoe.

  She’d been walking toward the gas station, and my panic shot back up as I looked at her. Then, as I studied her expression of complete shock, I realized something: I was the last person she’d expected to see here. This wasn’t some sort of elaborate trap. At least, it hadn’t been until I walked into it.

  “Zoe,” I squeaked. “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes were impossibly wide as she attempted her own recovery. “We’re on our way to the St. Louis facility. I’m starting an internship there.”

  Last I knew, she’d been in Salt Lake City with my dad, and I couldn’t help but pull up a mental road map. This wasn’t a direct route between the two places. “Why didn’t you take I-70?” I demanded suspiciously.

  “There was construction and—” She shook her head, almost angrily. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be stashed away with the Moroi!” Increasing my astonishment, she grabbed my sleeve and began steering me farther from the station. “You have to get out of here!”

  Cue more astonishment. “Are you . . . helping me?”

  Before she could answer, I heard Eddie’s voice. “Sydney?”

  It was all he said, but as Zoe and I turned around, I could see the apprehension and battle readiness all over him. He stayed where he was but looked as though he could instantly leap up and throw Zoe against the building if she tried to hurt me. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that, because no matter what had happened between us, no matter how much she’d betrayed me, she was still my sister. I still loved her.

  “Is it true?” she whispered. “Did they really torture you in re-education?”

  I nodded and cast another anxious glance at the gas station. “In more ways than you can imagine.”

  She blanched but drew a resolved breath. “Then get out of here. Hurry—before he comes out. Both of you.”

  I was stunned at this complete reversal in her behavior, but Eddie didn’t need to be told twice. He took hold of my arm and nearly dragged me to the car. “We’re going—now,” he ordered.

  I caught
one last glimpse of Zoe before Eddie shoved me in the car, where Ms. Terwilliger sat waiting for us. A thousand emotions played over Zoe’s face as we peeled out, but I could only interpret a few. Sadness. Longing. As we quickly got back on the road, I found myself shaking. Eddie was driving and kept anxiously checking the rearview mirror.

  “No sign of pursuit,” he said. “She must not have been able to see which direction we went to tell him.”

  I slowly shook my head. “No . . . she didn’t tell him at all. She helped us.”

  “Sydney,” said Eddie, in a stern-but-trying-to-sound-kind voice, “she’s the one who turned you in the first time! The one who started that whole re-education nightmare.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  I thought back to Zoe’s face just now, looking so serious and upset about the notion of me being tortured. I thought back also to the day Adrian and I had first arrived at Court, when we’d been hauled in front of the queen and found a group of Alchemists already waiting there to try to get me back. My father and Ian, another Alchemist we knew, had spoken plenty about the wrongness of what I’d done and how I needed to be removed from the Moroi. Zoe had stayed silent, her face stricken, and I’d been too overwhelmed to think much about what she might be feeling. I’d assumed she’d been too outraged by my marriage to speak—not to mention the fact that my dad didn’t really let anyone else get a word in edgewise.

  Now I suddenly realized there might have been something I’d missed altogether: regret.

  “I really think she was trying to help,” I insisted, knowing how crazy the words sounded—especially to Eddie. He’d been there the night I was taken, the night she’d betrayed me. “Something’s changed.”

  He didn’t contradict me but was still on edge. “I wonder if we should change our plans, in case they start scouting the area for us.”

  “No,” I said firmly, feeling more and more confident of my suspicions. “She’s not going to turn us in. Unless you see active signs of someone coming after us, we’re pushing on to Ha Ha Tonka.”