“Lincoln sends his best,” I said with a grin.
A few minutes later, I walked Trey to the door, since he still needed to get across town for our meeting. “Unbelievable,” he said, when I kissed him good night and slipped the last little sliver of the mint into his mouth with my tongue. “You taste like minty onion rings. I was going to surprise you, but it really doesn’t seem like a surprise now.”
“It was very sweet of you and it will be a surprise. Or was a surprise,” I amended. “Take your pick.”
13
Trey left around ten on Saturday, a bit earlier than his usual weekend departures. I wanted him to get a good night’s sleep, since he would be picking me up bright and early the next morning at the Lincoln Memorial. I’m personally more of a night owl, and it would be easier for me to “sneak out” when Katherine and Connor were asleep, so I planned to head down to the kitchen around midnight. It would have been safer to make the jump from my room, but I was reluctant to add another stable point to the list. I wasn’t exactly sure how to delete them and didn’t really want to draw attention by asking.
I constantly found myself forgetting that my closet and dresser didn’t hold the same contents as their counterparts in my old room, so it didn’t occur to me until shortly after Trey left that I had no appropriate “church clothes.” I sorted through the few outfits that I’d ordered online and selected the dressiest shirt in the bunch, which was a loose floral tunic, and a pair of slim black jeans. My only shoes, other than a pair of sneakers and a pair of sandals, were the black flats I’d last worn to school. I couldn’t entirely remove the scuffed mark from where Simon had smashed my foot on the Metro, but they would have to do.
I put on a bit of makeup and some small gold hoop earrings, then pulled the sides of my hair back with a peach-colored clip that matched the blouse. The pocket copy of the Book of Cyrus that I had ordered a few weeks earlier was on the nightstand, where I’d left it the night before. It was one of two core documents of the Cyrist faith—the other, the Book of Prophecy that Connor so wanted to get his hands on, was an internal document available only to higher-echelon members. Cyrist International was very protective of its copyright on the Book of Prophecy, and the few disgruntled members who had leaked sections of the book online or in exposés about the church’s leaders had landed in the middle of costly lawsuits. In every case, the Templars had won.
The Book of Cyrus, on the other hand, would have lost any copyright battle, were it not for the fact that the scriptural sources it cribbed content from were well past the copyright expiration date. The short volume was a mishmash of quotes from the Bible, the Koran, and other religious texts, with a few original ideas added in here and there. I’d found it much more effective than a sleeping pill—five minutes of reading and my eyelids began to droop.
I tucked the small book into the back pocket of my jeans, slipped the CHRONOS key inside the tunic, and surveyed my reflection in the mirror. From what I remembered of the service I’d attended with Charlayne, I’d never be mistaken for a devout Cyrist—with or without the lotus tattoo—but I looked presentable enough that I might pass as a prospective convert.
At the last minute, I turned back. I’d gotten used to seeing the blue glimmer of the CHRONOS medallion through the fabric of my clothes on the rare occasions I ventured beyond the protective zone, but it occurred to me that I might actually encounter others who could see the light from the key once we were at the temple. I slipped off the tunic and began layering camisoles over the top. The first two were thin and I could still see the glow pretty clearly. I pulled a third from the dirty clothes hamper and added it, and then finally a black tank top—pretty much every item in my limited wardrobe. When I was finished, I could still detect a very faint blue, but it was masked by the floral pattern of the tunic and I decided it would have to do.
Sneaking out felt wrong. I’d never so much as broken curfew, although there had been a close call after a party at the house of one of Charlayne’s cousins. If Katherine or Connor saw me headed downstairs, it wouldn’t usually be a big deal—I often got the urge for a midnight snack, but never fully dressed and in makeup. I kept all of the lights off and was still nervous when I reached the kitchen. My hands shook slightly as I pulled up the Lincoln Memorial, locking in the location and setting the time for just over seven hours later.
Trey was waiting in the same spot as last time. He looked very handsome in a dark blue shirt and gray dress pants.
“What, no onion rings?”
“I have something even better planned,” he said with a smile. “Services don’t start until eleven, and I know that Katherine and Connor’s culinary skills are… well, limited.” That was putting a polite face on things—on the few occasions that he’d eaten a full meal at Katherine’s, I’d been the one doing the cooking. “So what would the birthday girl say to a real home-cooked breakfast that she doesn’t have to cook?”
My face fell. “Oh, Trey—I don’t think we should. What if…” I didn’t think breakfast at his house increased the chances of me getting caught—but I was terrified at the thought of meeting his family, and I could tell from the look on his face that he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Dad is going to love you. Don’t look so scared. It’s too late to call and cancel, because Estella is already cooking. And you really don’t want to cancel anyway—her huevos divorciados are muy delicioso.”
“Divorced eggs?” My Spanish wasn’t nearly as proficient as Trey’s, but I was pretty sure that’s what he’d said.
“You’ll see,” he said, laughing.
Estella was well under five feet tall and very round, with vivid red curls that were clearly not part of the natural color palette of her native Guatemala. She gave me a quick up-and-down appraisal when she opened the door and, her judgment apparently complete, broke into a huge smile and pulled me down for a hug.
“Lars is in the shower—Sunday is his only day to sleep in—but he’ll be down soon. I am sorry that Trey’s mama is not here to greet you, but I welcome you for her. When she is back from Peru, she will be so happy to meet the young lady who has made her baby smile.”
Trey’s blush at that statement matched my own, and Estella laughed, leading us both into the big yellow kitchen. I was relieved that breakfast would be an informal occasion in the kitchen rather than at the long, formal dining table I had glimpsed from the foyer. Estella put us to work setting the table and slicing fruit as she scurried between fridge and stove, shooing Dmitri (who was clearly in search of his breakfast) out of her way and asking me a steady stream of questions as she worked. I answered as best I could, piecing together bits of my old life (Mom, Dad, and Briar Hill) and my new one with Katherine and Connor.
By the time breakfast was ready, Estella had managed to make Trey blush three more times. I learned about his first steps and an unusual encounter with the tooth fairy when he was six, and she had just finished telling me about Marisol, the first girl he’d had a crush on—“not nearly as pretty as you, querida”—when she broke off to greet Trey’s dad. “Sit, mijo. I will bring you coffee.”
Mr. Coleman was nearly as tall as his son. He had darker hair, but it was instantly clear where Trey had gotten his smile. The gray eyes were also the same, if slightly distorted by the horn-rimmed glasses that made him look a little bit like an older version of the lead singer from Weezer. “Kate!” he said, the smile growing a bit wider. “I’m glad to see that you’re real. I was beginning to think Trey had invented a girlfriend to keep Estella from trying to fix him up with girls from her church.”
“Ha. Very funny, mijo.” Estella slid a plate of huevos divorciados—two eggs, one covered with green sauce and the other with red—in front of him. Trey was right; they were delicious. In fact, the entire breakfast was so good and Estella so insistent we eat more, more, that I was amazed Trey could actually live there and still manage to stay thin.
The four of us engaged in breakfast chitchat for a few minutes while we focused on our food, and then Mr. Coleman surprised me with a more pointed question. “So I understand you’re off to do some detective work this morning?”
I gave Trey a startled glance and he jumped in to explain. “I told Dad that you’re worried about Charlayne’s sudden interest in the Cyrists.”
Estella’s expression gave little doubt about her opinion on the matter. “You are a good friend to be worried, querida. Those Cyrists are no good. Always going on about the riches God will give you here on earth if you are strong—never anything about how you should treat others. I watch that preacher on TV one morning—Patrick Conwell—all the time he asks for my money and says I will get it back ten times over. Same thing they say in Atlantic City. I don’t trust him. Don’t trust any of them.”
“Charlayne has a good heart,” I said, “but she can be a bit… easily influenced, I guess? That’s why I’m concerned.” I hadn’t caught the televised worship services, due to the lack of TV at Katherine’s, but I’d seen several segments from Cyrist ministers, including Conwell, the current Templar for the Sixteenth Street congregation, that were posted online. His smile was too polished and everything about him screamed fraud to me. When I’d attended the services earlier in the year with Charlayne, an older man had given the sermon, so I assumed that Conwell was his replacement in this timeline. The older guy hadn’t been particularly memorable as a speaker, but he didn’t give off the used-car-salesman vibe that I picked up from Conwell.
Mr. Coleman spooned some of the fruit salad onto his plate and smiled at Estella. “You know that I agree with you on philosophical grounds, Estella, but as your financial advisor, I have to tell you that your odds would be much better with the Cyrists than with any of the dealers in Atlantic City. I have several colleagues who are devout Cyrists and let’s just say that their stock portfolios are very healthy—one might even say suspiciously healthy. I’ve never been one to buy into conspiracy theories, but…” He shook his head. “Not something I’d discuss too much in public—Cyrists have some pretty major political connections—but I ran a statistical analysis of their primary stock holdings last year. Just out of curiosity. If you’re interested, Kate, I can show you next time you’re here.”
“I’d be very interested, Mr. Coleman.” I was sure that Katherine and Connor would find that information useful, too, although I wasn’t sure how I would manage to visit again before I left for Chicago.
Trey apparently had the same thought. “I’d actually be interested in seeing that research myself, Dad.”
“Sure. I’ll email you what I have after breakfast. But don’t share it with anyone other than Kate, okay? I wasn’t kidding about Cyrists having friends in high places.”