The Ruby Circle

Chapter 6 Syndey

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.”

I was reeling as the drive continued, still in awe at this new revelation that Zoe might be having doubts—if not about the Alchemists, then at least about what had been done to me. Once I recovered from my initial shock, I found myself feeling an emotion I hadn’t felt about her in a very long time: hope.

Clouds were thinning out when we reached Ha Ha Tonka State Park, and the early morning temperatures were already promising a sweltering day ahead. We parked and stopped by the visitors’ center, clustering around a map of the park. Although there were extensive grounds and trails, we decided the ruins of the massive stone building—which even the park referred to as the “castle”—were the place to start, seeing as that’s what our clue directly connected to.

No one else was out this early, aside from the staff at the visitors’ center. Ms. Terwilliger and I walked around the stone ruins, looking for signs of magic and occasionally casting detection spells. Eddie stayed near us protectively, doing his own searching as well, but mostly relying on us to find whatever it was we were looking for. The part of me that had long loved art and architecture couldn’t help but get caught up in the ruined grandeur around us, and I wished Adrian was with me. We hadn’t officially had a honeymoon after our wedding, but we’d often talked about all the potential places we’d like to go, if only we had the freedom. Italy was still high on my list, as was Greece. But honestly, I would’ve gladly settled for Missouri, if only Adrian could be with me, free from pursuit.

After a few hours of searching, we were hot and sweaty but had yielded no results. Eddie, still not convinced of Zoe’s intentions, was growing nervous about us lingering and wanted to be on the road soon. As lunchtime neared and we contemplated calling a break, something flashed in my periphery. I turned and looked up at one of the castle’s dilapidated towers and saw something small and golden shining in the afternoon sunlight. I touched Eddie’s arm and pointed.

“What’s that gold thing?”

He put a hand above his eyes and squinted. “What gold thing?”

“On the tower there. Right below the top window opening.”

Eddie looked again and then dropped his hand. “I don’t see anything.”

I beckoned Ms. Terwilliger over and tried to show her. “Do you see that? Below that window on the tallest tower?”

“It looks golden,” she said promptly.

Eddie was incredulous and turned back to where we indicated. “What are you guys talking about? There’s nothing there.” I could understand his disbelief. Dhampir vision was superior to that of a human.

Ms. Terwilliger scrutinized him for a moment before fixing her gaze back on the tower. “It’s possible we’re looking at something that can only be seen by those who perceive magic. This could be what we need.”

“Then how do we get to it?” I wondered aloud. The tower itself was little more than a high stone wall, and I wasn’t confident it offered great footholds for climbing. It was also in a section of the castle behind a fence, warning visitors to stay on the outside. With a few more tourists wandering through, plus the occasional park ranger, I knew there was no way we could covertly jump the fence.

Eddie surprised us both with a magical suggestion. “I could climb it. Can’t you guys do an invisibility spell?”

“Yes . . .” I began. “But it won’t do much good if you can’t see what you’re looking for. I wish I could climb it . . . but I think it’s a bit beyond my abilities.”

“Can we both be invisible?” he asked. “You stand at the bottom and spot me. Tell me where to go.”

Ms. Terwilliger turned Eddie invisible, and I then cast the same spell on myself. It wasn’t a particularly strong invisibility spell, and anyone looking for us would be able to detect us. We didn’t want to cast a stronger spell, in case we had to defend ourselves later, and we were taking it on faith no tourist or ranger was expecting to find someone climbing the ruin walls.

Unseen, Eddie and I easily hopped the fence and approached the tower in question. Up close, I now had a better sense for what the golden object was. “It looks like a brick,” I told him.

He followed my gaze, still unable to see what I saw. “I’ll take your word for it.”

The tower’s surface was rough and irregular, with erratic handholds and other openings left behind for long-gone windows. I wouldn’t have been able to climb it, but Eddie managed it deftly, the strong muscles in his body working as he grappled for places to rest feet and hands as he slowly made his way up. When he arrived at the top window, he at least had a place to rest and stand on the opening’s edge. Reaching up, he placed his hand on a brick at random. “Now what?”

“It’s three bricks to your left and two up,” I called.

He counted and moved his hand, setting it on what I saw as a golden brick. “Is this it? It’s loose. I can pull it out.”

“That’s the one.”

I tensed as he pried the brick from the wall. I sensed no obvious traps from this distance, but for all I knew the entire structure would crumble down around us when he removed it. With a little wriggling, it came free. Both Eddie and I froze, waiting for a deadly fotiana swarm or some other disaster. When nothing happened, he tossed the brick to the ground beside me and began scaling his way down. Once he was safely back, we hurried out of the enclosed area and took the brick to Ms. Terwilliger.

All three of us crowded around it, hoping for revelation—but got nothing. We cast more spells on it and tried pairing it with the original brick we’d brought from Pittsburgh. Still nothing. Wondering if there might be more gold bricks around, we did another search of the property but came up empty. Hot and hungry by this point, we decided to call a break and get some lunch. We went to a German restaurant and were surprised to see how crowded it and other restaurants in the park’s small town were.

“There’s a fishing convention in town,” our waiter told us. “Hope you’ve got a hotel if you were planning on staying.”

We hadn’t gotten one yet, actually, though we had been discussing staying overnight to possibly search the park again tomorrow. “Maybe we can find another nearby town,” I mused.

The waiter brightened. “My uncle runs a campground that has vacancies right now. He’ll even rent tents and everything. Cheaper than a hotel.”

Cost wasn’t an issue, but after a brief discussion, we decided to follow up on the offer and go out to the campground, simply because of its proximity to the park. We were able to rent what we needed, get set up, and then make another trip to Ha Ha Tonka before it closed for the night. Once more, we found no answers in either the park or the brick. We tried to tell ourselves that morning would bring fresh perspective, but none of us would give voice to the burning question hanging between us: What were we going to do if we weren’t able to find the gold brick’s secrets?

I longed to discuss it with Adrian, but there’d still been no communication since my last update. Dutifully, I sent him another report about what was going on and then prepared for bed, unwilling to admit how much his radio silence bothered me. Exhausted from a long day, I soon fell asleep in the rented tent . . .

. . . and was awakened a few hours later by a panicked Eddie.

“Sydney! Jackie! Get up!”

I opened my eyes and instantly sat upright. “What? What is it?”

He was standing in the unzipped opening of the tent, pointing outward. Ms. Terwilliger and I scrambled to his side and looked where he indicated. There, out in the moonlight, a glowing puddle of what seemed like molten gold was oozing over the ground, coming toward us. Where it touched, it left scorched grass and earth behind.

“What is that?” I exclaimed.

“The brick,” said Eddie. “I was on watch inside and noticed it starting to glow. I picked it up, and it nearly burned my hand. I threw it outside, and it melted into that.”

Ms. Terwilliger murmured a quick incantation as the blob nearly reached our tent. An invisible wave of power shot out and knocked the golden glob back a few feet. Then it began making its way back toward us.

“Wonderful,” I muttered. She repeated the spell, but it was clear that was only a temporary fix.

“Can we trap it?” I asked. “There are a lot of stones around. We could make some kind of enclosure?”

“It’s burning right through the stones in its path,” said Eddie grimly.

Ms. Terwilliger gave up on the force spells and cast a freezing spell similar to what she’d used in the robot museum. She directed a blast of bitter cold toward the molten puddle, which halted in its tracks. Half of the blob began to solidify, though the other half was still liquid and mobile and tried to wriggle away, dragging its frozen half with it.

“Sydney, get to the other side!” Ms. Terwilliger said.

I hurried to obey, running out of the tent and standing on the other side of the blob, which had liquefied now that she’d momentarily dropped the spell. The ooze moved toward the tent again, and Ms. Terwilliger held up her hands to cast. “On the count of three,” she ordered. “One . . . two . . . three!”

Simultaneously, we released freezing spells, attacking the molten gold from opposite sides. The mass wriggled and writhed in the grip of the magic but slowly began to solidify. I’d never sustained the spell for a long time, but Ms. Terwilliger wasn’t letting go of the magic. I followed her lead until, at last, the gold was still, completely solidified into an irregularly shaped puddle. We let go of the magic and carefully walked up to it. The gold stayed as it was.

“That was weird,” I said. “Not quite as bad as the last attack.” I still had a few cuts from the little magical fireflies that had come after us in Pittsburgh.

“Only because it didn’t get to us,” warned Ms. Terwilliger. “I hate to think what would’ve happened if we’d all been asleep in that tent when it liquefied.”

I shuddered, knowing she was right. “But what does it mean?”

No one had an immediate answer, but Eddie surprised us when he spoke a few seconds later. “I’ve seen this before.”

“A golden brick that turned into a deadly, rampaging puddle of molten metal?” I asked.

He shot me a wan smile. “No. Look at that shape. Doesn’t it seem familiar?”

I tilted my head to study the golden form before us. There didn’t seem to be any design to the shape. It was an amorphous, vaguely ovalish shape that looked like it had hardened that way by coincidence. Eddie’s intense look of concentration said he believed otherwise. After a few more moments of concentration, revelation lit his features. He pulled out his cell phone and tapped in something. With shoddy coverage in the park, it took a little while for the phone to find what Eddie needed, but when it did, he was triumphant.

“There, take a look.”

Ms. Terwilliger and I peered at his screen and found a map of the greater Palm Springs area. Instantly, I realized what he’d tuned into.

“It’s the Salton Sea,” I breathed. “Good recall, Eddie.”

The Salton Sea was a saline lake outside of Palm Springs, and the metal puddle before us was exactly the same shape as that body of water. Ms. Terwilliger shook her head and gave a snort of dismay.

“Wonderful. I left Palm Springs to warn you, got caught up in a magical scavenger hunt, and am now, after all that effort, simply taking you back home.”

“But why?” asked Eddie. “Has Jill been there the whole time? And who’s the one pulling the strings behind all—”

“Get back!” cried Ms. Terwilliger, holding her hands in a warding gesture.

Not even Eddie could move fast enough from what she’d spotted. The golden blob had begun to tremble, like it was suddenly filled with energy that needed to get out. I tried to cast a shielding spell, but even as the words formed on my lips, I knew I wasn’t going to be fast enough. The blob exploded into a hundred little golden razor blades that came flying toward us—and then stopped. They hit an invisible barrier and fell harmlessly to the ground.

I stared at where they lay, my heart pounding as I thought of the terrible damage they would have caused if Ms. Terwilliger hadn’t been fast enough. So it was a surprise to me when she said, “Excellent reflexes, Sydney. I couldn’t manage it in time.”

I jerked my gaze up from the blades. “You didn’t cast that?”

She frowned. “No. I thought you did.”

“I did,” a voice behind us said.

I spun around and gasped as, incredibly, Adrian emerged from the trees. Forgetting the tragedy that had nearly taken place, I ran into his arms, letting him lift me off my feet. “What are you doing here?” I exclaimed. “Never mind.” I kissed him hard, so overwhelmed that I didn’t even care that Eddie and Ms. Terwilliger were nearby. Being away from him these last couple of days had made my heart ache more than I’d expected, and I think we were both surprised when he was the one who finally broke the kiss off.

“I told you I’d find a way to get here,” he said, grinning. His gaze fell on the blades, and his smile faded. “Not a moment too soon, I guess.”

With his arm still around me, I turned back to the razors, which glittered ominously in the grass. A memory slowly surfaced within me. “I’ve seen those before,” I said, sounding much like Eddie had earlier.

Ms. Terwilliger exhaled a shaking breath. “It’s a nasty spell. Not one to be cast lightly.”

“I know,” I said softly. “I cast it once.”

Everyone turned to me in astonishment. “When?” she asked. “Where?”

“At your house . . . your old house, before it burned down,” I corrected. A thousand memories crushed down on me, and the world swayed a little as I suddenly made connection after connection. I’d thought I didn’t know anyone capable of using this kind of human magic—anyone who’d want to come after me, at least. I’d been wrong. I met my friends’ expectant gazes. “It’s the spell I used to kill Alicia,” I explained.