The Fiery Heart

CHAPTER 23 ADRIAN

IF EDDIE WAS THE DRINKING TYPE, I’m pretty sure he would’ve joined me at a bar. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was as upset as me about the disaster we’d fallen into, but he probably took the next spot on the list.

After he’d burst into Jackie’s with his story that night, we’d immediately tried the obvious things. We’d called Sydney’s phone, multiple times. We’d driven out to the closed-down restaurant. There wasn’t a trace of her there—or even at Amberwood. In barely two hours, her room had been completely cleaned out, and the administration had been notified that Sydney Melrose and Zoe Ardmore were withdrawing, effective immediately. No forwarding address. Our confusion was understandably perplexing to the staff, seeing as we were all supposed to be related.

Marcus had waited for us back at Jackie’s, uneasy about showing his face at the dorm, just in case the Alchemists were still in the area. He stood up as we entered the living room, agitation all over him. Jackie had already been up, pacing around.

“Anything?” she asked. Eddie shook his head, and I strode over to Marcus.

“Where is she?” I demanded. “Where would they have taken her?”

“I don’t know,” he said, face drawn.

“Yes, you do! It’s what you’re all about.” I had to resist the urge to shake him. “You know these things, damn it! You’re supposed to be some great big mastermind! Where is she?”

Eddie came up and caught hold of my arm. I think he was afraid I really would attack Marcus. “Easy,” Eddie warned.

Marcus looked pale. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know where she’s at. I can make guesses, I can make calls . . . but without anything to go on, it’s the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

Real people didn’t use the word “proverbial.” Only smart people like Alchemists did. Sydney would have. Groaning, I flounced back into an armchair.

“They said they were going to save her from damnation,” said Eddie. He still looked like hell and hadn’t made any attempts to clean himself up.

“Yeah,” said Marcus darkly. “I’m sure that’s what they think they’re doing. And there’s any number of places they could hide her—many, no, most of which not even my contacts know about. The places they take people like her to . . . well, they’re not really on the public Alchemist grid.”

People like her.

I felt ill and buried my face in my hands as I thought back to the frantic story Eddie had told us. “That phone. That goddamned phone.” It was my fault. My fault she’d been caught. If I hadn’t been so careless, I wouldn’t have lost it wherever I had. When I glanced up, I saw everyone looking at me, puzzled. Even Eddie, who’d related the story, didn’t entirely understand the phone’s role. Marcus suddenly sat straight up.

“Wait. We can find her. I know how.”

I stopped breathing. “How?”

“You,” said Marcus eagerly. “Your spirit dreams. She has to sleep sometime. Find her, and have her tell us where she is.”

I sank back into the chair. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to punch something. “I can’t. My spirit’s kind of out of commission right now.”

And there it was. The fear of being unable to heal Sydney if she got injured had haunted me from the first day I took the mood stabilizer. Never, ever, had I imagined that it was a dream I’d need. Even though I knew it was hopeless, I tried to reach out and touch spirit the way I used to. Nothing happened. It wasn’t even like I could sense it and not reach it. It just wasn’t there at all.

I had failed her. I’d been weak, too weak to handle spirit’s dark side. I’d given in to the pills, and now I was useless. Would spirit come back if I stopped taking them? How long would it take? In this moment, the questions were pointless. Sydney was gone, and none of us could do anything when we most needed to.

Jackie cleared her throat. “I might be able to help. I can scry for her—the same kind of spell she did for your Moroi friend. I’d need a lock of her hair.”

Wan hope surged in me. “I’m sure there’s plenty at my place.” Marcus’s eyebrows rose at that.

“I might have some too . . .” Jackie turned and hurried toward her workroom. I followed and watched as she knelt down to the shelf where she’d let Sydney store things that couldn’t go to her dorm room.

Most of it was magical paraphernalia, things Sydney couldn’t risk Zoe finding. There were a few changes of clothes too, in case Sydney spilled anything on her while working, Jackie explained. It was the kind of precaution Sydney would take. There was also a velvet cloak and some spell books. We carefully unfolded the clothes, desperately searching for any stray hairs that might have fallen. I found one at last, as fine and brilliant as real gold, lying near the collar of a purple T-shirt. I handed the hair to Jackie and opened up the shirt fully. I had to stop myself from breaking down then and there.

It was the shirt I’d made her, dark purple with a flaming heart painted in silver. For the space of one breath, I saw us back in a crowded, smoky sorority house. We’d sat on the floor side by side, and when I’d looked into her eyes, I’d seen my own longing mirrored in them. Her kiss had unbalanced my world, and I’d known from that moment that no matter how hard she denied it, we were bound together.

I clenched the shirt and pulled it to me. It still held the fleeting scent of her perfume. “I’m taking this.”

Jackie nodded. “Go join your friends. It’s going to take me a while to set this up.”

“You have to find her,” I said, grabbing her arm. I knew I sounded crazed and desperate . . . but, well, that’s kind of what I was in that moment. “You have to. If something happens to her . . . I can’t . . . that is . . .”

Tears glittered in Jackie’s eyes, and to my astonishment, she hugged me. “I’ll do what I can. For now, you need to get a hold of yourself.”

I didn’t know if I’d achieved that by the time I came back to Eddie, Marcus, and the others, but they were all so lost in their own worries that no one really noticed mine. Eddie glanced up at my approach. His face was still lined with grief.

“I tried,” he whispered. “Adrian, I tried. I never would have ever left her if I’d known. I would have stayed with her to the end. I would have laid down my life and—”

I had to forcibly hit the pause button on my own feelings as I dealt with his. Eddie had lost another person. It was bad luck, that was all. He was one of the most badass, capable guardians out there, but he couldn’t believe that about himself, not when he kept seeing these failures laid at his feet. Looking into his eyes, I recognized the intense self-loathing consuming him. I knew the feeling well because I was carrying around a fair amount of it myself.

“I know you would have,” I said. “There was nothing you could do.”

He shook his head and stared off with a haunted look. “I was an idiot. I never should’ve bought into that spell stuff. After what I’d seen her do with fire, it just seemed so . . . well, real. I believed her. It made sense.”

I smiled without humor. “Because that’s what she does. She’s trained to make people believe things. And outsmart them. You didn’t have a chance.” She also was willing to trade her own life to save her friend’s, but no one had trained her to do that. It was just something within her.

Eddie wasn’t going to be swayed so easily, and I left him to his grief as I huddled with mine. Einstein had said even with the mood stabilizer, sad things would make me sad and happy things would make me happy. He’d been right because as I sat there, with my world completely falling apart around me, I felt as though I’d never taken any of those pills. The dark, smothering despair that I thought I’d banished crashed down around me, seeping into every part of my being. I hated myself. I hated my life because Sydney wasn’t in it.

My misery swirled around me, and it was just like the old days of spirit—except that I didn’t have spirit. If I’d had it, I wouldn’t have been so goddamned worthless. I had nothing to offer Sydney. I never had.

But Jackie does. If I couldn’t pull myself out of that choking despair, I would at least look for light in someone else. Jackie would pull this off. She would find Sydney, and somehow, maybe with Marcus’s voodoo and Eddie’s fists, we would get Sydney back. I clung to that spark of hope, nurturing it into a small flame that chased some of the shadows in my heart away. The blame and self-hatred eased up, and I told myself to be strong. I had to for Sydney. She had believed in me.

But when Jackie returned, I could tell by her face that the spell hadn’t worked.

“I tried,” she said, her eyes red. “I thought I connected to her, but I couldn’t grasp at anything substantial. No images. Just darkness.”

“Is she alive?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.

“Yes,” said Jackie and Marcus together. I glanced between them questioningly.

“If she were dead, I’d be able to tell in the spell.” Jackie didn’t elaborate.

“They won’t kill her. It’s not their style,” said Marcus. “They prize their people too much. They’ll just try to change her, make her think differently.”

“Re-educate her,” I said dully.

He spread his hands out in a helpless gesture. “Well, that is where the name comes from.”

“How much can they really change her, though?” asked Eddie. “I mean . . . she’s Sydney. She’ll be the same . . . right? She can fight them.”

Marcus took a long time in answering. “Sure.” He wasn’t nearly as good a liar as Sydney. To me, he asked, “She never gave herself the salt tattoo, did she?” I shook my head but could tell from his face he’d already known the answer. I didn’t say anything about the possible but unproven protection Sydney could have from her magic use. We’d had nothing more to go on than Inez’s word, but Sydney had remained optimistic about conducting some experiments on herself when she had time. Which we were now apparently out of. “Once everything’s settled down,” she had told me. “Then we’ll have some time.”

I stayed up all night, unable to find rest. The next day, our entourage was summoned to a meeting at Clarence’s with an Alchemist named Maura. She was about Sydney’s age, with her brown hair cut in a blunt style. She wore an Amberwood uniform. “I’m the new Alchemist assigned to Palm Springs,” she said, her voice prim. “I will be your liaison to handle any Moroi friction that might rise. Since I understand you’ve mostly adjusted, Princess, I doubt there’ll be any reason for us to have excessive interaction.”

The rest of us stared morosely. Everyone else knew by now that Sydney had been taken, though all the reasons weren’t widely known. Those who didn’t know about Sydney and me believed they’d snatched her for getting too close to us—which, really, wasn’t that far from the truth.

Maura handed us all business cards. “Here’s my e-mail and phone number if you need to get in touch. Do you have any questions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Where are Sydney and Zoe Sage?”

Maura’s smile was as polite as a politician’s, but I could see that Alchemist ice in her eyes. I doubted she’d be able to stay in the same room as me if she knew Sydney’s backstory, but it was obvious Maura still had the usual disdain and distrust for my kind.

“I’m sorry,” she said coolly. “I just go where my orders send me. They don’t share classified information with me. You’d have to check with my superiors to get any details about where the Sage sisters’ new assignment is.” From the tone of her voice, she didn’t think anyone would tell me, and that, at least, we could agree on.

I hadn’t taken the mood stabilizer that morning and had felt little change throughout the day. Jackie had told me she’d be able to try some other location spells during the dark moon in two weeks, and that and the hope I might recover spirit were all that kept me from a case of vodka. The biggest feat of all was going to class. I wanted to stay home and curl up in a ball. Or keep nagging Marcus for updates. It was only the thought of Sydney that got me to Carlton each day. She would want me to keep up with it, not just because of her educational convictions but because she’d hate to see me plunging into despair. I trudged around campus like a robot, and my palettes strayed to gray and black.

Three days after I’d stopped the pills, I was pretty sure the dark moods were here to stay. It was just like before.

Five days in, I woke up in the morning and felt the first glimmers of spirit.

I nearly cried. It had been so long, and as I extended my senses, brushing them against those glittering, brilliant strands of magic, I felt as though I’d been unable to breathe until now. It was an essential part of me that had been missing. How could I have given it up? I couldn’t fully grasp or wield it yet, but the sweetness of that power was heady and restorative. It gave me my first surge of hope since Sydney’s disappearance, as well as the initiative to call Lissa. I flipped the switch on my malaise and suddenly had enough energy to take on the world.

“You need to get in touch with the Alchemists and find out where Sydney is,” I told Lissa when she answered.

“What . . . are you talking about?” she asked, understandably bewildered.

Apparently, no one had bothered to tell her about the regime change in Palm Springs. As long as Jill was safe, the Alchemists hadn’t felt Lissa needed to know the logistics. I kept our relationship out of it and explained how the Alchemists had freaked out and carried Sydney away for getting too friendly with us. Again, it wasn’t that far off from the truth.

“That’s awful,” she said. I could hear the compassion in her voice. “But there’s not much I can do. That’s their business, no matter how terrible it is. I can’t go make demands of them, any more than one of them could come ask about one of my subjects. Alchemists and Moroi work together, but we don’t have control over each other.”

“Can you please just ask? Please?” I tried to keep my voice level and was glad this wasn’t a video call. I couldn’t even imagine what my face would reveal.

“I’ll ask,” she said reluctantly. “But I can’t promise anything.”

“I know. Thank you.” A flash of inspiration hit. “You met her . . . could you go to her in a spirit dream? I’ve been trying, but with the pills . . .”

“Ah.” She paused. “I’d like to . . . I can try, but I’m not as good as you. I have to know someone really well to visit them. Maybe you can ask Sonya.”

It was a good idea, and I followed up on it, once more clinging at whatever threads I could. Sonya and Sydney had become good friends, but Sonya was also a weak dreamer. When she called me a couple days later, the news wasn’t uplifting. “I tried,” she said. “I couldn’t reach her. Maybe I don’t have the skill after all. You’re the best at this.”

“Maybe she was awake,” I said, not sure I believed it. My hopes plummeted down to endless depths once more, but they didn’t stay down for long because the next morning, I was able to touch spirit.

There it was again, that sense of recovering some intrinsic part of myself. I gasped at the feel of it. The magic burned within me, euphoric and glorious, and I ran outside in boxers and a T-shirt. Not many people were out, but a man walking his dog across the street gave me a surprised look. Without hesitation, I drew on spirit’s power, and the man’s aura flared within my vision, orange and blue.

“My God,” I breathed. I had my magic back. I could do this. I waved at my neighbor and then hurried back inside. Once I was in my bedroom, I settled down on the bed and tried to summon spirit’s dreaming state. It required a fair amount of calmness, and my excitement and agitation made it hard to relax. When I finally managed the trance state, though, I couldn’t reach her.

I shifted back to the waking world and tried to be reasonable. If she was anywhere in the United States, it’d be daytime for her too. And there was also a chance I still had to strengthen my powers a little. But the darkness was temporarily cast aside, and I felt myself carried upward on wings of hope, possibly into the state that Einstein had warned was too up. I couldn’t imagine that, though. For the first time in days, I felt as though all wasn’t lost. I could save Sydney.

The rush of it gave me so much energy that I hardly slept at all for the next four days. I was too wired. That, and I didn’t want to waste any opportunity to seize on when she might be asleep. My control of spirit was back to full strength, and I constantly flipped into dreaming mode, hoping I’d catch her. But it never came. Sometimes I made no connection at all. Sometimes I’d have the sense of darkness or a wall. Whatever it was, the result was always the same: no Sydney.

My mood was starting to fall again when Jackie finally called and said she could attempt her next spells. I dutifully went over, but my high had shattered, swinging me down to the other extreme. It wasn’t so much our failures (though those weighed on me), as it was other things. I’d focused so much on my efforts that I’d had little time to spare for Sydney herself. What was happening to her right now? Marcus hadn’t offered much illumination on what they’d do to her, and my imagination ran wild. That self-hatred returned. Sydney was suffering. She needed me, and I wasn’t there for her.

A strange car was in Jackie’s driveway, and when she let me in, I was surprised to see Jill and Eddie. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I wanted to see the spells,” said Jill. She gave me a long, appraising look. “And I wanted to talk to you.”

“How did you know we were—” I stopped. Of course. Along with everything else, the bond had been restored. Jill was in sync with me again, and judging from the haggard look on her face, she was being dragged along with my wild moods.

“Adrian,” she said softly. “You need to sleep.”

“I can’t. And you know why. I can’t risk missing her. She has to sleep, and I have to be awake to catch her.”

“You’ve been trying for days. It’s time to admit something’s wrong. Something’s blocking you.”

She had a point, but I didn’t want to admit to it. I wanted to believe that if I just tried a little harder or caught the right moment, I’d reach Sydney. I’d spoken to Lissa in a dream recently when she’d reported no luck with the Alchemists, so I knew I still possessed the ability.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said obstinately. “Jackie’s going to find her. She’ll pull this off. You’ve got two things you can do, right?”

Jackie nodded. “One can only be done at this time of the moon. The other can be done almost any time . . . it just requires an extensive expenditure of magic and some rare ingredients I was out of. It took time to get them again.”

“Then let’s do this.”

The dark moon one had to be done outdoors. She’d set up an altar covered in incense and other components, and we kept our distance, waiting in tense silence. It was nothing but unintelligible words and gestures to us, and I found myself thinking of the times I’d been with Sydney when Jackie had worked magic. Sydney could sense it, and there’d always be a catch in her breath and wonder in her eyes as she watched her mentor. I felt nothing, only a war of hope and fear within me.

When Jackie finally rose and returned to us, she shook her head sadly. “Nothing. I’m sorry. Let’s try the other.”

She cast the other one inside, a spectacular feat that created a large spinning disc in midair. The power it required nearly made her pass out, and I caught her as she started to collapse. “Still nothing.” It was only then, seeing her on the verge of tears, that I understood just how deeply she cared about Sydney. “I thought one of these would work. But all I get is a dark wall.” We helped her back to the living room, and I dug through her kitchen for food. One thing I’d learned was that depleted magic users needed calories. “I had a similar experience when my sister was in a coma.”

Jill flinched. “Do you think Sydney is? Would they have hurt her?”

“I don’t know enough about it or their methods,” said Jackie, gratefully taking a glass of apple juice from me. “I’m still certain she’s alive, but that’s it.”

I sat back on the love seat and shifted into a dream trance. It seemed unlikely I’d reach anything if Jackie hadn’t, but I had to try. As I’d feared, there was just more darkness. It was getting hard to tell where hers ended and mine began.

When I came back, the others were watching me with grim looks. “Go home, Adrian,” said Jill. “Get some rest. You’re of more use to her if you’re at full strength.”

“I’m no use to her,” I said.

When I’d been with Sydney, whether it was in the heat of passion or simply sitting around and talking, I hadn’t thought it was possible for my heart to hold any more love. Now, I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to hold any more despair. No, not just my heart. Every part of me grieved so much. People used to tease me about alcohol poisoning, but this was the real stuff, the toxin that would finally win.

And speaking of alcohol . . . for the first time in a month, I wanted a drink. I wanted a lot of drinks. I wanted to drink until I passed out into my own darkness, until I was beyond feeling because I couldn’t go on for another moment feeling like this. It would numb me from spirit and the ability to dream, but at this point, the dreams I had weren’t helping Sydney anyway.

“Don’t,” said Jill, guessing my thoughts. She came over to sit beside me. “There’s still hope.”

“Is there?” I leaned against her shoulder, wondering how she could still feel that way—especially if she had a direct line into my heart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Hopper lying on an end table. I’d left him here after the night Sydney had been taken, which had been bad form on my part. “What’ll happen to him?” I asked Jackie. “Is there any way you can bring him back?”

Her eyes fell on the glittering dragon. “No. She’s the only one who can summon him. Keeping him around you, even in this form, might help, but if he ever comes out of this state, he’ll be weak and sick. Of course, after the year is up, he’ll fade back to his realm anyway . . . but it’s a miserable, trapped state to be in for that long.”

“I know how he feels,” I muttered. Too bad I couldn’t take Hopper out drinking with me. He could have become Bar Hopper.

Eddie stared at Hopper with contempt, but I suspected it was for himself, not the dragon. “I’m so stupid,” he muttered. It was a refrain I’d heard from him a lot. “I never should have believed it. I shouted that ‘spell’ over and over in that field, and all I did was give them more time to get away with her.”

“She was just protecting you,” said Jill.

“It was my job to protect her,” he growled.

Jackie finished off her juice and turned to a package of cookies. “What spell did she tell you to recite?”

Eddie’s brow furrowed. “Cent . . . centrum permanebit. Is it even a real spell?”

“Not that I know of.” Jackie gave him a sympathetic look he didn’t even really notice. “But if it makes you feel better, it is Latin. A lot of spells use that language.”

“What’s it mean?” asked Jill. I was still leaning into her, but my mind was wandering to an analysis of nearby bars. Downtown’s were nicer, but I might run into people I knew if I went to Carlton. Did I want to be alone or not?

“Well, centrum means center,” said Jackie. “Permanebit is a future tense verb. ‘Remains’ is one translation. Or maybe ‘endures.’ Together it’d be something like, ‘the center will endure.’”

I jerked my head up. “Hold,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “The center will hold.”

Sydney’s last words. Not for Eddie, but for me.

The last of my self-control shattered, and I abruptly stood. Jill reached for me. “Adrian . . .”

“I’ll see you guys later.” I moved toward the door, pausing to scoop up Hopper and put him in my jacket.

The center will hold.

Will it, Sydney? I wondered. Because I’m falling apart.

“Where are you going?” asked Eddie.

“Out,” I said. “Escape plan number eighty-two: Go some-where where I don’t have to feel anything for a while.”

He exchanged a worried look with Jill and asked, “When are you coming back?”

Centrum permanebit.

I shook my head and turned away. “It doesn’t matter.”