Chapter 83: Chapter 28: Into the woods

> “I stared at the boy. He is sure, yet unsure of himself. ‘But you have the fire of Newton within you, do you not?’ I said. He considered my declaration for a moment and then nods. ‘Then, what does Duff say?’”

“How long have you known?” I asked Hugo as we flew over the last of the mountain ranges on the way to our apparent destination of Fresno.

“A while now. For all of J.P.’s traits, being quiet is not one of them. He’s been yapping about an alliance with Van Asch for what seems like forever.”

“You didn’t think to mention that to me?”

“I did, but decided it was better for you to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were.”

“Wait,” I said, “so this whole stopover was a set-up? You knew he was going to be there?”

My indignation at being played began to rise, but before I could do anything, Hugo hit a bunch of buttons on the console and beckoned me to join him in the back of the plane.

“Don’t you need to … you know … mind the seven thousand dials and gauges in here so we don’t crash?”

“Nah,” he said as he fixed himself a martini from the well-stocked bar before plopping himself down on one of the enormous leather chairs. “If something goes wrong, I’ll have at least a minute to run back to the cockpit.”

“How reassuring,” I said. “Now, would you mind explaining why you told J.P. what we were doing?”

“As I explained to you the other day, I’m on no one’s side but my own. You’ve come to the assumption that just because I’m helping you means I want to help Dalia. So let me correct that now.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“J.P. is correct about one thing. Things need to change. We’re stagnant and it’s not good.”

“And you think this merger is the right idea? Ty shot me down pretty fast when I suggested getting help from the VAC.”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” said Hugo. “And of course she did. Dalia has a sordid history with them. Same with her grandmother before that.”

“You mean Thera DeWitt, who she named her fashion line after?”

Hugo nearly spit up the generous sip of his martini he had taken, before calming himself and checking our bearing with his watch.

“Signal’s getting stronger,” he said. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to find her once we land. And if you believe that sappy tale, I have a gambling den under the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, recalling Dalia’s keynote speech at the Met.

“Thera DeWitt was the Guild Chair before Dalia. Which I’m sure J.P. will be happy to point out. Between the two of them, they’ve been head of the Guild for the past 75 years.”

“Did her home actually burn down?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Thera’s. Dalia said her grandmother lost everything when her family’s hundreds-year old house burnt down.”

“Is that what she’s telling the normals? No, I’m afraid that’s another fanciful fable. Maybe it works on her investors, but we all know the truth.”

“Which is what?”

“Thera’s manse on Fifth Avenue is still standing strong. I think Dalia donated it to an all-girls’ private school sometime back. Didn’t want to pay the real estate taxes. As if it were even her money.”

“Why lie about that?” From the limited time I had spent with Dalia, caring about what others thought about her seemed like something that would be far beneath her.

“Dalia is a mythmaker. And it works wonders on the right people. Who wants to support another spoiled Upper East Side denizen charging inflated prices for clothing you could get at any fast-fashion outlet? But if it’s a bootstrapped, hard-working stepped-on-her-whole-life girl from the Lower East Side gutter, who worked her way up from nothing, well, that’s something else. It’s too bad for her she couldn’t pull the same trick on us. She might find herself in a different position right now.”

“Do you think she has the votes?”

I tried to recreate the tally that Ty and Dalia had come up with, but gave up after realizing I still had no clue how anyone really felt about the state of the Guild. Hugo evidently was having the same problem, as I watched his eyes twitch back and forth, presumably sorting everyone into columns.

“It’s going to be close. Dalia was very astute in sending you to retrieve the Compendium. It may turn the tide in her favor, or worse, leave things in a draw.”

“Ty told me if it’s a tie, then draconian measures would be necessary.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” said Hugo.

“What’s the other way?”

“I’d rather not say,” he replied. “You have enough pressure on you as it is. And don’t let my feelings for Dalia get in the way of your quest. I hope you do succeed so that our vote isn’t just a formality.”

Before I could press further, the plane lurched downward, causing Hugo to spill the remaining portion of his drink all over the front of his shirt.

“This was brand new! Serves me right, I guess. Back to the cockpit, please.”

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We returned to the cockpit, and Hugo for the first time concentrated solely on flying the plane. The turbulence was like nothing I had ever experienced, almost as if someone on the ground was controlling the weather, trying to force us off course. But somehow we landed in one piece, and as soon as the wheels hit the ground, I ran to the back and threw up in the most spacious airplane bathroom I had ever seen.

“You couldn’t have waited until we were on the runway?” Hugo asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “You know what they are going to charge me to clean that, especially here?”

“Sorry,” I croaked. “Nice flying, though. I really thought we were going to—”

“Oh, that? I’ve flown through much worse.”

Through the bravado, I saw the small beads of sweat that were still resident on his forehead and dropped the matter. We rented the nicest car left available, an old Acura RSX that Hugo fell in love with immediately, and soon we were cruising down Route 99 toward our (unknown) destination, past miles of green farmland.

“This place is super random,” said Hugo, as we approached an interchange. “She ever mention anything about wanting to travel to middle-of-nowhere central California?”

“No,” I said. “She preferred to keep things closer to the vest. One time I stepped over that line and she didn’t talk to me for a month.”

“What’d you do?”

“What I thought was the right thing. She knocked herself unconscious trying to punch through a vervorium portal, and I brought her home.”

“Hmm,” said Hugo, shaking his wrist back and forth. “She’s east of here, maybe in the mountains.”

We curved around the interchange loop like a street racer drifting through the Tokyo highlands before Hugo kicked the car into another gear once we hit the next highway.

“And did you say she tried to punch through a vervorium-backed door? Where? Why? How?”

I contemplated coming up with a fanciful tale about how we were searching for a long-lost cache of dodo beak powder, but instead offered a diluted and edited version of the truth.

“That’s quite an adventure,” said Hugo, after I finished explaining how I had dragged Beatrice out of the burning lighthouse, leaving out the part about Frankie. “So we have you to thank for getting back half of the Compendium, it seems.”

“What’s so important about it?” I asked. “Beatrice thought it was this tome of incredible knowledge, but you already have this crazy library with lifetimes of memories and skills. What does Dalia need a dusty old book for?”

“The library is great, don’t get me wrong, but that represents a fraction of what was held by the Guild and its predecessor.”

“What predecessor?” I asked.

“How well do you know your American history?”

“I thought I knew it well,” I said. “Until I read Rita van Asch’s diaries.”

“How did you … you know what? I don’t even want to know. If you read those diaries, you understand the Guild has been here since the beginning. But before that, it was something else, over in the Old World. It’s those records, plus the early Guild exploration of the New World, that has been lost for several hundred years.”

“I see. And you never wonder what Dalia would do with that knowledge?”

Once again, I returned to Frankie and her dying words.

“For 200 years, my family has kept the cave and that box hidden from the Guild.”

Someone had gone to great lengths to hide the Compendium, and I still had no idea why.

“That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one,” said Hugo. “Did she put you up to it?”

“What? No! I just … I feel like I’ve been thrown into Mariana Trench with a two-ton weight strapped around my waist, with no choice but to sink to the bottom.”

“And in that lovely metaphor, Dalia is the weight or the trench?”

“I don’t even know,” I said.

We drove down the highway in silence for another half an hour; me having exhausted my desire to pump my escort for information and Hugo having exhausted his desire to be interrogated. Towns passed us by with no end in sight, and I wondered if we were truly headed in the right direction.

“We’re about to run out of road,” said Hugo. “After that, it’s mountains and forest. And I really didn’t sign up for a trek across the Donner Pass.”

“That’s thousands of miles away!” I said.

“Good, no cannibalism for us then.”

A bright green sign indicating we were entering Three Rivers appeared, and Hugo shook his wrist again.

“We’re close!” he said, a chipper note in his voice. “If we end up finding her, I think this will go down as one of my most successful trackings. Cross-country location based on nothing but a memory. A quest worthy of recordation in the Guild library!”

“I’m glad you’re pleased,” I said. “Finding her was the easy part. Getting her to part with the Compendium will be the true challenge. And don’t make a quip about-”

“I wasn’t, I wasn’t!” said Hugo, chuckling. “Looks like this is the place.”

We turned off of the highway onto a barely present gravel road that wound its way up a hill. Several minutes later, we were parked next to a small, simple house that couldn’t have been more than three rooms inside. The front door was surprisingly unlocked, and a quick walkthrough confirmed the abode was a far cry from her Madison Avenue palace. However, something was else was missing besides the fancy furnishings: the woman herself.

“She’s not here,” I said, after the fifth sweep through the first and only floor. The place appeared barely lived in. The kitchen sported a linoleum table that looked older than the house, the bedroom had a tiny cot supported on a metal frame, and the living room had a dumpy couch that would probably swallow me whole if I sat down on it.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Hugo. “It’s weird, because … of course, why didn’t I realize it sooner?”

Hugo glanced at his watch and then shook his head several times in exasperation.

“You gave me a memory, so the watch is tracking the memory of her. Who knows far behind we are?”

“Not that far, I think,” I said and ran to the bathroom, where a tortoise-shell handled hair brush was resting on the edge of the cast iron white sink. I brought the treasure back out to Hugo, whose eyes widened.

“As meticulous as she kept this place, she wasn’t meticulous enough,” I said, pulling out a strand of jet-black hair from one of the brush bristles.

“I thought you said she was blonde?” Hugo asked. “As a rule, I’m not into-”

“Is that the only reason you came along on this trip? To try to hook up with her?”

“No,” said Hugo, sheepishly. “I mean, not going to lie, the thought crossed my mind several … dozen times.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll make sure I only ask for your help in the future if it involves someone you can-”

“Point taken,” he said. “I will keep things above the level until we’re done. Now, let’s get reoriented.”

Hugo removed the memory bead from the watch and carefully placed the strand of hair inside the empty slot. He flicked the cover shut and did his whole “I’m becoming one with the watch” routine before opening his eyes and pointing at a random wall in the house.

“That way,” he said.

“She’s here?”

“No, that direction, but close. Come on.”

We returned to the car, and I watched the unpretentious house retreat into the distance. It seemed completely out of character of Beatrice to have maintained such a threadbare existence. Could she have actually abandoned alchemy for a such a simple life out here in the middle of nowhere? Something didn’t add up.

The watch led us up into the mountains and we soon reached a small booth guarding the entrance to Sequoia and Kings National Park. Hugo dutifully paid the entrance fee, and we continued onward, snaking around the winding road that meandered through the park. Finally, we pulled over at the head of the Sherman Tree Trail and continued on foot for close to an hour through the woods. Trees stretched up into the heavens, and I wondered what Beatrice had discovered about this place that had made her set up shop so close.

We rounded a bend and there, standing at the base of the largest tree I had ever seen, was Beatrice Taylor. Her long blonde locks were gone, replaced by a bob of black hair that matched a spandex workout ensemble that had seen better days. She had her palm pressed against the bark of the trunk, as if she was trying to commune with the giant sequoia.

Hugo stayed put as I approached her with extreme trepidation, unsure as to the welcome I would receive, but before I could say anything, Beatrice broke out of her trance and stared at me with those piercing green eyes.

“Jen,” she said, a confused look on her face, “why are you back so soon?”