Chosen Ones Read online

  When she reached the little campfire of boys pretending to be men, they had finished cooking their hot dogs and were now listening to music, but Sloane could only hear the thump of the bass. The ringing in her ears was too strong at that point for her to hear much of anything, including Ines calling out her name behind her.

  She noted the hunting knife on top of a pallet of bottled water nearby and planted her feet in front of the portable grill, staring down at the man who had almost but not quite called her bitch earlier. It was not the first time she had been called that word, and it wouldn’t be the last, but there was a certain violence in it—the way it made her anger small and petty, the way it reduced her entire self to some narrow, foolish thing.

  “Hello there,” she said, her voice sounding oddly unctuous all of a sudden. “Do you recognize me?”

  She could tell by his wide eyes that he did. And just as they were narrowing, just as the word bitch was likely taking shape in his mouth again, she bent and picked up the hunting knife.

  “What—” the man started, but she had already unsheathed the hunting knife and plunged it into the side of the tent, right through the RIGHT in MAKE THINGS RIGHT.

  “What the fuck?” the man shouted. They were all on their feet. Sloane only heard ringing.

  “You idiot,” she said. “You think he would welcome your loyalty if he came back, that he would reward you? If he comes back to life, he will rip your guts out just like everyone else’s.”

  “He only targeted the weak,” the man said. “Your boy over there got lucky the first time—”

  His eyes shifted over Sloane’s shoulder to the golf cart, to Ines and Matt. But she didn’t hear what he said next. She just punched him in the face.

  The ringing in her ears stopped. Pain crackled in every knuckle. She shook out her hand, gritting her teeth against the ache that spread all the way up her arm. The man’s nose was bleeding, and his friends were on their feet around him, shouting obscenities at her but not quite ready to fight back. She was still a girl, after all.

  She had thrown punches before, but she always forgot how badly it hurt. Ines grabbed her arm and dragged her away. She yelled “Eat shit!” over her shoulder before getting back in the golf cart.

  Scott was staring at her when she sat down.

  “What?” she said, and he just shook his head and drove on, going as fast as the little cart could carry them.

  TOP SECRET

  AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL

  MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

  TO: DIRECTOR, AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL (ARIS)

  FROM: OFFICER [redacted], CODE NAME BERT

  SUBJECT: DEEP DIVE AFTERMATH

  Dear Director,

  I very much appreciated your letter regarding the Deep Dive incident. We are deeply saddened by the loss of some of our finest agents, and it has been difficult to carry on with Project Ringer without them. But as you noted in your message, we must soldier on for the sake of the cause. The Dark One is too potent a threat.

  I understand your concern about Sloane Andrews’s ability to move forward after such a trauma. I am writing only to give you my observations; the decision is, of course, up to you. I have thought it over carefully, and I must recommend against releasing Sloane Andrews from Project Ringer for the following reasons:

  Despite costing the lives of multiple agents, whose value cannot be estimated, and upward of one million dollars (money we can’t recoup, obviously), Project Deep Dive was technically a success. We were able to retrieve Koschei’s Needle, which is currently buried in Sloane Andrews’s hand. Which brings me to my next point.

  Though we have discussed the possibility of removing the Needle surgically, everyone here at Project Ringer is reluctant to interfere with a force we don’t fully understand. We don’t know how the Needle will behave if it is disturbed. Therefore we can regard Sloane and the Needle as inextricably linked. To dismiss Sloane Andrews now would be a tremendous waste of resources, as well as a waste of the lives lost retrieving the Needle.

  Though Sloane herself has asked to be relieved of duty, I don’t think it will be difficult to get her cooperation. I have been observing her for years now. She trusts me. She has come to regard me as something of a paternal figure. If I tell her to stay, she will stay.

  The behavior of Koschei’s Needle suggests that Sloane has a strong affinity for magic. Though the events of the Deep Dive were tragic, they were also indicative of tremendous power, which we may need to defeat the Dark One.

  I suggest, therefore, that we encourage Sloane to employ the same techniques that soldiers (often unconsciously) use in active combat, compartmentalizing trauma so that they can continue in battle and suppressing those parts of their personalities that do not serve them in intense situations. Sloane Andrews functions well alone and with a high degree of personal responsibility and autonomy. I will foster her independent streak by assigning her solo missions while I form the others into a functioning team under the leadership of Matthew Weekes. We can instruct Sloane’s psycho­therapist, Dr. Maurene Thomas, to combine drug therapy with compartmentalization techniques so that Sloane is able to maintain a reasonable level of stability in the short term.

  Let me know if you’d like to discuss this plan or offer any suggestions. Thank you again for your concern and for the flowers. We can but endeavor to move forward.

  Sincerely,

  [redacted]

  TOP SECRET

  TOP SECRET

  AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL

  MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

  TO: DIRECTOR, AGENCY FOR THE RESEARCH AND INVESTIGATION OF THE SUPRANORMAL (ARIS)

  FROM: OFFICER [redacted], CODE NAME BERT

  SUBJECT: RE: DEEP DIVE AFTERMATH

  Dear Director,

  In my previous letter, I offered my observations about Sloane Andrews in the aftermath of the Deep Dive incident and presented to you a plan of action. In response, you expressed frustration with my “psychobabble mumbo jumbo” and told me to “speak plain English.” While I would appreciate a more amicable tone moving forward, I understand the necessity of simple language in matters such as these, so I will try to put this in terms you can understand:

  I previously observed about Sloane Andrews that she was a bit like a stray dog. Feed a starved dog and you will have its loyalty, even if you don’t treat it well. For Sloane, her need for approval will be the leash I keep her on even while she feels like she’s roaming around free.

  We can’t lose our Project Ringer subjects. It’s too late for that now. Either they defeat the Dark One for us or we all die.

  I hope that this English is plain enough for you, sir.

  Sincerely,

  [redacted]

  TOP SECRET

  10

  SLOANE WAS AT THE ENTRANCE to the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago at 9:30 a.m.—time for her friend Rebecca to let her in, though the museum didn’t open to the public for another hour.

  She saw Rebecca through the glass doors, tying off the end of her braid. Rebecca yawned, unlocked the door, and waved Sloane in.

  “You’re too prompt,” Rebecca said. “Why aren’t you hung over like everyone else our age?”

  “First of all,” Sloane said, “ ‘our age’ is not a thing because you are twenty-two. And second of all, it’s Tuesday.”

  “So?” Rebecca said. “Monday-night booze tastes just as good as Saturday-night booze.”

  Sloane’s presence in the art museum at odd hours had become commonplace. The staff knew her, and no one had ever objected to someone letting her in early. It was, possibly, the only perk of being a Chosen One that she actually enjoyed.

  This was part of her weekday rhythm. She didn’t have a job. The government had paid them for their years of service, and Sloane had handed the money over to an investment bank. The interest would keep her going for a while, provided she spent carefully. />
  The others had found more financial stability, but at a cost. Matt had sold the rights to his autobiography and partnered with an experienced writer, and that money was plenty to coast on—not that he did. He was always traveling, speaking at conferences and universities, appearing at charity balls and philanthropic galas, meeting with politicians and community organizers. Esther, too, had turned her fame into money, cultivating her Insta! following as she would a garden. Ines had illustrated her own graphic novel about her story, rendering the Dark One’s death in swirls of color. Albie, meanwhile, was in some commercials abroad, using his face to make back the money he had lost by going to rehab.

  One day, Sloane would have to find a job for which her identity wouldn’t be an issue—one that required no qualifications or experience—or she would have to sell off pieces of herself one by one, the way everyone else had. She didn’t blame them for it—not much, anyway—but part of her felt like she would sooner live in her mother’s garage than sacrifice what little privacy she had carved out of her own fame.

  The Modern Wing was bright and open, a wide corridor of white with galleries on either side. She climbed the stairs to the third floor, which was where she always began the visitation, in the architecture and design gallery. The space was empty, of course—it usually was, regardless of how packed the rest of the museum was. She wandered past the chairs made of twisted wire and the vase that looked like spilled milk to the sketches of proposed Chicago buildings. Then she sat on a nearby bench and stared at the drawing from the Burnham Plan, the proposed city design for Chicago that had never come to fruition.

  Her brother, Cameron, had been studying architecture when he answered the call to fight the Dark One. He had died in one of the Drains, in Minneapolis. They had fought over his decision to put school on hold, even though she had been young at the time, only twelve. You’re not a soldier, she had told him. You’re a skinny nerd and you’ll get yourself killed. A rare moment of prescience, maybe.

  She had taken all of Cameron’s things from her mother’s house and pored over the sketches in his journals so many times she had them all memorized. Everything from a child’s drawing of a doghouse to a detailed, carefully measured floor plan of his dream home. He had wanted to make places that felt interesting and warm. Places that didn’t feel like home, she had joked with him once. At least, not like their home.

  He had liked it here. So now Sloane came here, not to the Drain site where he had lost his life, not to their central Illinois haunts, but here, to visit him.

  She rarely stayed long. A half hour, maybe, and then she would drift through the other exhibits. The new one downstairs was a series of photographs of big-rig trucks. After wandering through them for a few minutes, she said goodbye to Rebecca, who already looked bored out of her mind, and left. She turned right, walked to the lakefront path, and did a few stretches before jogging north, toward Ines and Albie’s place.

  The lake reflected steel blue back at her. It was a cloudy day, and there was mist over the water, blurring the horizon line. The run was about six and a half miles and would take her an hour if she kept up her usual pace. She passed a small fleet of spandexed people on bicycles and a woman in hot-pink leggings walking a spotted hound. A man in short shorts breezed past her.

  She watched the crashing of the waves against the breakers, the dogs chasing tennis balls on the dog beach, the speed-walking women in visors with their fists pumping at their sides. No one paid any attention to her, not here, where she was just another jogger. She turned away from the lakefront path and toward Java Jam.

  She ordered the coffees breathlessly, then carried them down the street to Ines and Albie’s apartment, a second-floor corner unit in a grand two-flat. The stairwell carpeting was dark green and worn down the middle where too many shoes had trodden; the walls were covered with wallpaper that had tiny flowers on it in purple and red and blue.

  Ines was already at the door when Sloane reached the landing, her glasses on and her hair piled on top of her head. “Little early, aren’t you?” she said, grabbing her coffee from the tray and turning away from the door.

  Sloane followed her in, sipping the coffee that was left. She got a mouthful of cinnamon. “Switch.”

  They traded cups. “Don’t know how you drink that; it’s pure milk.”

  Sloane’s sneakers squeaked on the floor, which was the standard Chicago yellowish oak that creaked no matter where you stepped. Albie’s door was closed, and so was Ines’s, but in different ways. Albie’s was closed like he just wanted to keep the noise of the hallway out. Ines’s was locked and bolted from the outside, as secure as a bank vault. Up until a few years ago she had been booby-trapping it—even though it was illegal—and Sloane didn’t have the heart to ask if she was still doing that. She pretended to be fine, but Sloane had seen the neat row of medications on her dresser, the twitch of her body at certain sounds and gestures.

  The apartment was warm and comfortable, with a colossal beanbag chair that was always leaking pellets; the curtains on the two windows facing the alley that were just a Canadian and a Mexican flag, respectively.

  Ines went back to the stove, poking at her eggs with a wooden spoon. The whole room smelled like onions.

  “You know, once you hit thirty, this whole living-like-a-college-junior thing is going to be less charming and more creepy,” Sloane said.

  “What do you mean, like a college junior? Are you referring to Frodo?”

  “You mean the giant beanbag you decided to name Frodo Baggins? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m referring to.”

  “Just because you refuse to enjoy your life doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t,” Ines said. “You have white bathroom towels and you’re invigorated by early-morning runs in the sleet. You’re like the dad from Calvin and Hobbes.”

  “I always liked Calvin’s dad.”

  “Of course you did.” Ines snorted. “Have you talked to Matt yet?”

  Sloane shook her head. “He had the mass-incarceration thing last night and a meeting this morning. Why?”

  Ines sipped her coffee.

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I,” Sloane said.

  Ines shrugged.

  “If he thinks I’m going to apologize to him for punching that asshole . . .”

  “I’m not here to have your fight with Matt before you have it,” Ines said. “Just don’t assume he’s going to thank you for being his little white knight.”

  Sloane scowled at her.

  “Yeah, I said it,” Ines said. “Did you see the Essy Says update?”

  “No. How bad is it?”

  Ines took her phone out of the pocket of her sweatshirt and handed it to Sloane. Esther’s Insta! account was already on the screen.

  Sloane recognized the familiar setting of one of Esther’s videos—her office, which was decorated like someone’s Pinterest dream, draped in stylish fabrics with muted colors, a string of pale pink fairy lights, and an expensive camera that captured all the shine in her hair and every knickknack on her shelves. And in the middle of it all, Esther, dressed in a heather-gray sweater that bunched up at her wrists as she drank from a teacup with a little bird carved into the side. The video was titled “Essy Says Is Going Places!”

  As Sloane watched, Esther introduced a clip from the day before, showing her skin care and makeup in fast-forward as she got ready. Sloane was always perversely fascinated by how many steps Esther’s skin-care routine had. Sloane could never have remembered that many things in the morning. Not without coffee. And maybe amphetamines.

  “I’m not watching her put on makeup; it’ll give me hives,” Sloane said, but Ines was already reaching over the island. She skipped forward on the video, past the impressive powdering and lining and staining, until there was Esther back in her gray sweater again, sipping from her teacup.

  “I have some news to share,” Esther said with a waggle of her eyebrows. She was talking in her video voice, chipper and unctuous—similar to her speaking voice, but m
ore. “No, I’m not talking about the big punch from my girl Sloane—the link to that is in the caption.”

  Sloane sighed. “Fantastic.”

  “February thirteenth, I’ll be launching Essy, my very own lifestyle brand!” Esther’s perfectly lined eyes sparkled. “That’s right, you’ll now have a one-stop shop for all the product recommendations and reviews you could ever ask for! And you know you want to be an Essy girl.”

  “Well,” Sloane said as Ines stopped the video. “That was inevitable, I guess.”

  Ines turned off the stove and tipped the eggs onto a plate that waited on the counter. “I invited her to come down with me in a couple weeks. You should come too. Get away from the cold.”

  “I love the cold,” Sloane said. “It’s my Nordic blood.”

  “No, it’s your determination to love what everyone else hates and hate what everyone else loves,” Ines said. She jabbed the rubbery eggs with the tines of her fork. “You should still come. I’m going to kidnap Albie.”

  Sloane winced at the word kidnap. “Have you seen him since . . .” Sloane said. “Did he tell you if the prototype worked or anything?”