Page 76 of The Lies We Conjure
“I have it too,” Kaysa adds. “It’s totally cool. Doesn’t need Wi-Fi or cell data, so you can really use it in the middle of nowhere.”
Evander leans in to inspect and Lavinia gestures to it, maybe a little sheepish. Over the fact that she hoped she might enjoy this trip enough to stargaze or that as a Blackgate she’d even think of doing something soromantic,I’m not sure. Now that I’m really looking at it, I notice the phone is nearly obsolete, which is odd, but who am I to judge someone who likes old things when I grew up within the halls of Hegemony Manor?
“It might be too bright now, but it could be worth a shot because I bet you Shadrack painted the sky how he saw it,” Lavinia explains, before looking up. “So, if we comb the night sky above, we can transfer the location of the Great Bear and go from there?”
I nod. “Genius.”
Lavinia smiles tightly, and her cheeks pink further. Without hesitation she points the phone straight up, her brows furrowed in thereflection of her shiny screen as the gyroscope within the phone syncs to the app’s features.
“Please work,” she whispers to it.
It sounds a bit like a spell spoken aloud, and maybe it is, because the second it’s out of her mouth and into the air, the app springs to life, and the darkening sky above is overlaid with the names of the constellations and stars of note above.
Ursa Major does not appear.
Lavinia slowly moves the app up and around. “Okay, there’s Ursa Minor… with the North Star, soooo… Ursa Major would be over there.”
She’s turned toward the western wall now, almost exactly opposite from where she was when we began.
“Wait,” Kaysa pipes up, with a little note of triumph right where she’s standing. “It’s a mirror. Ursa Major is in the northwest sky, but the mural is on the east wall and facing west.”
“You’re right,” Evander agrees.
And then we’re all nodding as Lavinia takes a screenshot of the location of Ursa Major and spins around. She holds it up to the ivy-draped mural, brows furrowed to touching and lips bitten in thought. “So, if we go southeast on the wall…”
And that’s when I see it. Right where the last fingers of daylight touch the ivy. It’s as if the sun itself is giving us a clue with the pointed direction of a penlight.
With Lavinia manning the app and Evander holding our shield, I turn to the youngest Blackgate. “Kaysa, do you think you can kill the ivy here?”
“What?” she gasps. “I can’t do that—that would be horrible!”
It would, but—
“Dehydrate it, Auden,” Evander suggests, gruffly.
I don’t argue, I just press my hands to the ivy and draw every ounce of water from the stems and leaves. The vines shrivel and peel back. The dried plants fall away, too brittle to put up a fight. Lavinia is on her tiptoes helping me reveal the constellation.
“You’re going to rehydrate the ivy, right?” Kaysa asks, voice small.
“Of course. I’m not a monster.”
The Blackgates of old would’ve taken my attempt at humor and flipped it back at me, barbed and well-aimed—I’d asked them to kill it outright, after all. The sisters don’t. Focused on the task, and perhaps truly changed.
Together, we scramble and pull and twine the dried pieces together and…
There it is, the Great Bear, Ursa Major.
Unlabeled, but just as Lavinia’s screenshot promised—hundreds of stars forming the larger of the two bear constellations. And there, literally highlighted by that final falling strip of sun, is the beast’s representative paw.
“Is that a niche?” Lavinia asks, fingertips brushing the paint.
I smooth my hands over the brick. There is most definitely a piece that doesn’t fit. I knock it and a hollow thrum sounds back. “It is.”
“Open it,” Evander urges, still holding fast to our shield enclosure. He knows if we’re right, the security wards will detonate, and we’ll need it. There’s no use in changing places now, though I would if he asked. I’m surprised he hasn’t ordered me to do so yet. That he’d demand to hold it first. Maybe that’s progress.
Kaysa inspects it, nose scrunched. “Howdowe open it?”
The entry has to be hidden, but well-made if it’s lasted this long, blending in with the side of the house. Brick isn’t an element, but it is made ofpiecesof the elements. That, I can work with.
