Meredith McCardle - The Eighth Guardian

And with that Bauer spins and marches out of the room. The rest of the men follow, save for Eta. So much for tea service. I bend my knees and pretend to fiddle with a stack of plates on the bottom shelf. Disappointment washes over me. I don’t know anything about the men who make up Eagle Industries. Nothing. I pray Yellow finds out more, because Paris just isn’t an option unless we steal some money, which is way too risky. Not to mention illegal.

I hear Eta’s footsteps at the door. She hesitates for a second, and I wonder if she’s looking at me. Hoping I’ll raise my head. I pick up the six plates on top of the pile and move them to the bottom, then I stand and brush a few crumbs off the top shelf into my hand. She’s still standing there. She has to be looking at me.

And so I turn, though I keep my head bowed. “Is there anything I can get for you, m—sir?”

My stomach lurches. I almost called her ma’am.

Eta looks at me, and I keep my eyes trained on the floor like a timid baby bunny. But I do glance toward the table. Bauer took those papers with him. Of course he did.

“No,” she finally says. She tips her hat at me. “Have a good day.”

I nod to her and turn back around. I don’t take a breath until the door has shut firmly behind her. I don’t bother clearing the table. Instead I wait. I want to give Eta enough time to get out of the building. I could follow her, but I don’t see the point. It’s not like she’s going to head back to Annum Hall while mumbling under her breath the names of all the people who make up Eagle Industries.

But then I hear voices. Two of them, both female, getting louder. I freeze.

“She threatened me, ma’am!” an hysterical voice wails. “I think she means to harm Mr. Bauer!”

Annie.

Bitch.

I whip out my watch, set it to Christmas Day 1963, and disappear. I land in the same empty meeting room, but it’s changed. A lot. Gone is the massive wooden conference table and velvet-backed armchairs. In their place are a shiny white table with metal legs and beige leather chairs. The wood floor has been covered with a pea-green carpet.

For a second I wonder whether Annie is still alive. Whether she still has my bracelet. Then I shake my head. Let it go. I have more important things to do.

There weren’t cameras outside, but I’m not going to gamble that there aren’t any in the hallway. I hurl a chair through the window, drop a twenty on the table to cover some of the damage, then think better of it and pocket the cash. I feel bad, but I don’t want to hitchhike back to Boston.

Yellow is already there, pacing back and forth in front of the reflecting pool. A few people amble around, but for the most part the plaza is empty. It’s Christmas morning, after all.

“It’s about time,” Yellow says. Her hair is stringy and greasy. There are big black bags hanging underneath her eyes. And she smells like a public bathroom. I raise an eyebrow at her.

“What?” she says. “It took me two days to get to DC and back. Have you ever tried sleeping on a bus?” She cracks her neck left and right. “But that’s not important. What did you find out?”

I sigh. “Not much. You first.”

“I didn’t do any better.” Yellow hesitates for a moment. “It was your dad,” she finally says, confirming what I already knew deep down. “He went to a secret congressional meeting about the Manhattan Project.”

“The development of the atomic bomb?”

“Yep. Early stages. Your dad said he was from some company and wanted to invest in the development.”

Every hair on my arm stands on end. “Eagle Industries,” I whisper.

Yellow opens her eyes wide.

“Same thing with my mission. It was Eta, like you thought, wanting Eagle Industries to invest in a power plant that eventually gets bought out by General Electric.”

“Did Eta say anything about who was behind Eagle Industries?”

“Nope.” I blow out my breath. “Did . . . my dad?”

She shakes her head. But then a thought hits me.

“CE,” I say. “What if the E stands for eagle ?”

A lightbulb goes off on Yellow’s face. “And the C stands for Cresty ,” she practically shouts. “Cresty Eagle! Do you think that’s someone’s name?”

“It’s a really awful thing for a parent to do to a child if it is a name,” I say. “Maybe it’s a kind of eagle?”

“Only one way to find out.” She trots away from the reflecting pool and looks over her shoulder. “Come on, the library is only a few blocks from here.”

“And it’s Christmas Day,” I say.

Yellow skids to a stop. “Crap. We have to project.”

I tense my shoulders, then release. Pain still lingers in all my joints and muscles. I would kill for a hot bath and two ibuprofens. But she’s right. We have to follow this lead, and there’s no following it here.

“Let’s go forward,” I tell her. “I’m done with 1963.”

We go forward two weeks, to January 8, 1964. It feels at least twenty degrees colder. A bitter wind whips off the bay and through the city, and my teeth chatter as we run down Huntington Avenue toward Copley Square. The streets are crowded this morning with men and women bundled in wool coats and scarves and hats, staring in disbelief at two teenage girls running down the street without any protection from the cold.

Yellow makes a left onto Dartmouth Street, and I follow. We race up the steps to the library, zipping past the statutes representing Art and Science, and run through the open metal gates. My shoulders are pressed up into my ears, but I release them as the heat of the building crawls under my skin and starts to warm me.

I look up, and time stands still. Apart from the woman next to me wearing a swing coat and cat’s-eye glasses, this building looks exactly as it did the last time I was here. It never ceases to take my breath away. Yellow and I are silent as we climb the great marble steps that lead to Bates Hall. Two massive marble lions leer at us on the landing, and Yellow and I exchange a glance.

And then we’re in Bates Hall. A barrel-vaulted ceiling runs the length of the room, which is at least two hundred feet long, and the ceiling itself has to be fifty feet high. Long tables with wooden spindled chairs fill the center of the room, and green banker’s lamps set on each of the tables wash the room in a rich, elegant glow.

Yellow is unfazed. She leaves me standing there, gaping at the ceiling, and walks up to a man sitting behind a desk. I watch out of the corner of my eye as he stands and leads her to a shelf. He points at it, then returns to his desk. I look over at her, and she jerks her head toward the shelf.

The man has led her to a section all about birds. She’s scanning the titles at the top, so I kneel on the marble floor and scan the titles at the bottom. My eyes stop on two red books on the second-lowest shelf.

I pull volume one of Eagles, Hawks and Falcons of the World off the shelf and hold it up. Yellow nods and sits in the end chair at the nearest table. I take the seat next to her and hold my breath. She really does smell of something rank. At least her arm wound appears to be healing all right.

The book has eagles in the front, and it’s alphabetical. I flip past a number of pictures and statistics on my way to the C s. Both Yellow and I draw in our breath on page thirty-seven. Because there’s an entry for the crested eagle.

My eyes fly to the picture, and my breath catches in my throat. The bird that stares back at me is small, and a mop of what looks like tangled curls sits atop its head. Like a hawk with a bad perm.

My mind flashes back to Testing Day. To graduation. To the pin that Headmaster Vaughn wore on his lapel. It’s the same bird.