The color drained from Keefe’s face. “Any idea what else they’re working on?”
“Nope. But I’m starting to wonder if it goes back to that first attack with the Everblaze. We never really looked into why they set all those fires in the human world, and I think we need to figure that out. Did anyone ever bring the fires up when you were living with the Neverseen?”
He shook his head. “Fintan was always going on about the wonder of fire and how things need to burn so that something stronger can rise from the ashes—blah, blah, blah. But it was just his usual tirade about how the Council never should’ve banned Pyrokinetics.”
“Well, I still think there had to be a bigger reason for the Everblaze,” she said quietly. “But even if I’m wrong, we know this is about more than two abducted humans.”
“That doesn’t mean we should ignore a solid plan to help them either.”
“But we don’t have a plan. Believe me, I’m trying to put one together. But there are so many things we need to consider—like Wylie’s mom. Fintan wouldn’t have abducted Wylie if there wasn’t something crucial he needed from him. So maybe if we figure that out, it’ll give us some leverage, or at least tell us what Fintan’s ‘vision’ is or . . . I don’t know. It made a lot more sense in my head yesterday.”
“Actually, that does make sense,” Keefe said. “But there’s only one person who can give us that information—and hey, it’s the one I’ve been saying we need to reach out to!”
“She’s not going to tell us for free. Same goes for any help finding Nightfall.”
“So let’s see what she demands.”
“Do you honestly think your mom is going to ask for something we can actually give?”
“I do. I think she’s that desperate—and if I’m wrong, all we wasted was a conversation. That’s why I got here early. I promised I wouldn’t do anything without you again, so . . .”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something small, green, and shiny.
“Is that a Prattles pin?” Sophie asked, squinting at the tiny metal animal.
“A gulon,” Keefe agreed with a wink.
“Okay, seriously, will you please tell me what happened during the Great Gulon Incident? I’m really getting sick of everyone avoiding the question.”
“It’s an awesome story. But now’s not a good time.” He pulled something else out of his pocket, and Sophie’s whole body turned cold.
“Please tell me that’s not . . .”
Keefe held it up over his head when she lunged to grab it. “It is. Dex gave it back to me a couple of weeks ago.”
“He shouldn’t have done that.”
“I agree,” Sandor said, stalking into the room. One of his large gray hands hovered menacingly near his sword as he held the other out to Keefe. “Give that to me, before you do something foolish.”
For one endless second, they stared each other down.
Then Keefe jabbed his finger with the sharp end of the gulon pin and dragged it through his skin, cutting a deep red gash.
“Sorry, Gigantor,” he said through gritted teeth as he scrambled to the other side of the room. “Foolish is my specialty.”
“Don’t!” Sophie shouted—but he’d already smeared his blood across the back of the silver screen.
“It’s going to be okay,” Keefe whispered as the small gadget flashed with a dull glow.
Sophie shook her head, her brain too clogged with words she wasn’t supposed to say to come up with a response. But she still heard Lady Gisela’s sharp, arrogant voice as it poured in through the still-blank Imparter.
“It’s about time.”
Twelve
GLAD YOU’RE BOTH here,” Lady Gisela said as Keefe tapped on the blank Imparter screen. “That makes everything so much easier.”
“You can see us?” Sophie asked, relieved her voice sounded strong and steady.
“Of course. Just like I can see your goblin looming behind you, looking ready to snatch the Imparter and crush it. I wouldn’t let him do that, by the way. Obviously you need my help, otherwise you never would’ve decided to trust me.”
“We don’t trust you,” Keefe said, his hands shaking so much, he barely kept his hold on the blood-coated gadget.
Sophie wondered if he was in pain, since his cut was still streaming red. But then she realized . . .
This was the first time he’d spoken to his mom since he found out she might be dead. And the last time he’d seen her, she’d tried to kill him—and his friends.
“Do you expect us to believe you don’t already know what’s going on?” Keefe snapped.
“I have my theories,” Lady Gisela told him. “But Fintan’s proving to be simultaneously predictable and foolhardy, thinking he can shred my plan and choose which pieces to follow—as if it wasn’t painstakingly constructed after years of unparalleled research, then fine-tuned until everything was perfected.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Sophie said, “your plan was the Lodestar Initiative?”
“That’s the name I eventually settled on, yes. And save your breath asking for specifics. Things may be salvageable yet, and neither of you are ready to accept that.”
“And we never will be,” Sophie told her. “Any plan that involves killing innocent people—”
“Who said anything about innocent?” Lady Gisela interrupted. “If you’re talking about what happened to those goblins in Lumenaria—and Councillor Terik’s leg, for that matter—I told you, that was Fintan’s ‘vision.’ As was his moronic plan with the ogres and the gnomish plague. I could never conceive anything so inelegant.”
“Then why did King Dimitar tell me at the Peace Summit that when Fintan first approached him about the plague, he called it the Lodestar Initiative?” Sophie asked.
“How would I know? Perhaps Fintan made his own amendment. If you don’t believe me, consider this: That was the same conversation where Fintan convinced Dimitar to lock me away in his reeking prison.”
Bile coated Sophie’s tongue.
As much as she despised Keefe’s mother, she’d never forget the memory she’d seen of Lady Gisela begging for her life as she was dragged toward the ogres’ legendary prison. Her skin had been covered in strangely curved wounds, most so deep they probably left scars.
Maybe that was why Lady Gisela wasn’t letting them see her.
“What about the abductions?” Keefe asked.
His mom sighed. “That whole ordeal was Brant’s uninspired solution—bring in the moonlark, search her memories to find out what the Black Swan were planning, then wipe her mind to neutralize her and see if we couldn’t reprogram her to work for us. I told him they would’ve been prepared for that scenario, but he lacked the patience to wait for a better alternative. And he was idiotic enough to kidnap an unnecessary child while he was at it.”
Keefe wrapped his free arm around Sophie, holding both of them steady. “Those aren’t the abductions I meant. And you know it.”
“Do I? Then you’ll need to be clearer. Unless . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and when she spoke again, the words shook with a barely bridled rage. “How many humans have they taken?”
“You don’t know?” Sophie wished she could stretch out her consciousness and dive into Lady Gisela’s mind—but without knowing where Keefe’s mom was, or being more familiar with the feel of her thoughts, she wouldn’t be able to make a strong enough connection.
When Lady Gisela stayed silent, Sophie decided she couldn’t treat her family like pawns in a game. “They took my human parents.”
Lady Gisela swore under her breath. “I suppose they do love to make things personal.”
“To keep me distracted, right?” Sophie asked.
“Sounds like the moonlark is finally learning to ask the right questions.”
“Does that mean I should also be asking if there was another reason behind the Everblaze attacks several months ago?” Sophie pressed.
She could hear the smile in
Lady Gisela’s voice when she said, “Definitely a question I was surprised no one asked before. Every action is . . . multifaceted.”
“And I’m assuming you’re not going to tell us what some of those other facets might be?” Sophie asked.
“For the fires? Is that really what you want my help with? And keep in mind, I’m only going to help you with one thing.”
The answer should’ve been yes. The fires could be more important than anything.
But even knowing that—even knowing the Neverseen were manipulating her into focusing on something personal—Sophie couldn’t make herself say the word.
“We need to get Foster’s family back,” Keefe said, making the choice for her. “Why would the Neverseen take them? Is there something important about them?”
“I’m sure that’s what they’d like to find out. Though for Brant, this is mostly about revenge. Your escape made him look bad, Sophie. And then you took great pleasure in spoiling some of his other plans—and you helped cost him his hand. He’s determined to make you pay.”
Sophie frowned at Keefe, wondering if he’d caught the same thing she did. “Don’t you mean ‘was’?”
“Was what?” his mother asked.
Sophie and Keefe shared another look.
“Didn’t you hear that Brant was killed in Lumenaria?” Keefe asked.
Silence followed.
If it weren’t for a few crackles of static, Sophie would’ve worried the connection had been severed.
“Was it an accident?” Lady Gisela whispered. “Or did they turn on him as well?”
“Neither,” Sophie told her. “He died when he attacked Councillor Oralie.”
Lady Gisela barked a laugh. “She took him out? Miss ringlets and rosy cheeks? I’m not sure I believe that.”
“She had help.” And no way was Sophie telling her about what happened to Mr. Forkle in the process.
“Well,” Lady Gisela said after another stretch of silence, “that’s certainly an interesting shift in the balance. Especially for Ruy.”
“Why?” Keefe asked.
“Didn’t you live with them?”
Keefe glanced at Sophie. “Ruy and Fintan did argue a lot.”
“I’m sure they do even more now that Fintan has his new advisor,” Lady Gisela added. “In fact, that explains this sudden acceleration.”
It took Sophie a second to put together who she must be referring to. “You’re talking about the prisoner they freed from the Lumenaria dungeon.”
The prisoner who’d been held there for thousands of years.
The prisoner who was so dangerous, the Council had erased any knowledge of them from their memories—as if that could somehow make the problem disappear.
“She’s quite the legend,” Lady Gisela said. “But that’s all I’m going to tell you, because she may yet be useful to me.”
Keefe huffed a disgusted laugh. “I love how you keep acting like you still have any power in this mess. The Neverseen cut you up, locked you in prison, and left you for dead.”
“If I’m so powerless, why are we having this conversation?”
Sophie hesitated before admitting, “Because they took my parents to Nightfall.”
“Of course they did. That’s what I designed it for.”
“So . . . my family is part of your plan?” Sophie whispered.
“None of this is going the way I wanted it to” was the only answer Lady Gisela gave—which wasn’t much of an answer at all.
But Keefe moved on to the more important question. “What is Nightfall? Some sort of prison?”
“It’s the future—though Fintan has never truly understood the concept. And I won’t ask how he got in, Keefe, since I’m sure I won’t like the answer.”
“You won’t,” Keefe agreed. “So why don’t you tell us how to get there, and we’ll clear them out for you?”
His mom sighed. “I expected you to be cleverer by now. Do you really need me to remind you that I already told you how to find it?”
“The starstone?” Sophie guessed.
In Keefe’s only memory of Nightfall, his mom had used a smooth, softly glowing stone to leap her and Keefe to the doorway. The rare jewel was set into one of her hairpins—the same pin she’d used to draw Keefe’s blood for the lock.
“Starstones always remember the last place they’ve been,” Lady Gisela confirmed. “I told you that would be important someday.”
“Funny, it’d be a lot easier to remember these things if you hadn’t wiped them out of my head!” Keefe snapped. “And hey, while you were at it, you could’ve told me where you hid the stupid pin!”
“I didn’t hide it. I lost it.”
Keefe snorted. “You expect me to believe you lost your only way to get to Nightfall?”
“Of course not. But it’s the only way you’ll be able to find your way there. And it just so happens to be in the one place I need you to pay a visit to for me anyway.”
“How convenient,” Sophie grumbled.
“Yes, I love when things come together so neatly. Especially when we’re pressed for time, so I won’t have to deal with any whining or arguing.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Keefe warned her.
“Really? Should I describe some of the tests Sophie’s parents are enduring while you snipe like a petulant child?”
“What kinds of tests?” Sophie asked, struggling to breathe.
“Hmm. Perhaps it’s better to let you imagine.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Keefe said. “I know this trick. She used it all the time on my dad—pretended there’d be some huge problem if he didn’t give her exactly what she wanted. And then, once she was satisfied, it would turn out to be a ‘misunderstanding.’ ”
“Are you willing to stake her family’s lives on that?” Lady Gisela asked.
Sophie wasn’t. “Where’s the starstone?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First you need to agree to deliver a message for me—one that must arrive pristine and unopened. I’ll know if you tamper with the seal, and you won’t like what happens.”
“And how am I supposed to get this mystery message?” Sophie asked.
“Leave that to me. If you agree, you’ll find it waiting for you tomorrow, and even your goblin will be scratching his head, wondering how it got there.”
The squeaky sound behind them was probably Sandor’s growl, but Lady Gisela seemed unimpressed.
“Do we have a deal?”
“Not without more information,” Sophie told her. “I’m not agreeing to deliver something that could be a kill order.”
“Trust me, Sophie, if I wanted someone dead, they’d be dead already.”
“Like Cyrah Endal?” Sophie countered.
“You brought Cyrah up the last time we talked too. What is your strange fixation with her?”
“Fintan’s fixated on her too. And I’m assuming you know why.”
“I do. But I’ve never agreed with it.”
“Then why did you kill her?” Sophie demanded.
“What makes you so certain I did?”
“Don’t!” Keefe interrupted before Sophie could answer. “She’s dodging the question, trying to get you to tell her everything we know.”
“Which means there is something to know,” Lady Gisela seemed to purr. “Fascinating. Fintan’s scrambling everything up even worse than I’d imagined. We can use that.”
“We’re not a ‘we,’ ” Sophie told her.
“Perhaps not yet. But we will be. Once you agree to deliver my message.”
“I told you, I’m not agreeing to that without knowing where I’m going and who I’m giving it to,” Sophie told her. “And how do I know you won’t betray us afterward and never tell us where to find the starstone?”
“Because the starstone is where you’ll be heading, and retrieving it will be entirely up to you. You and your friends are good at being creative. And the message is nothing to trouble yourself over. In fa
ct, depending on the result, you may even be thanking me.”
“You still haven’t told me where I’m going,” Sophie reminded her.
“And I won’t, until you agree. I’m also withholding one crucial piece of information you’ll need to get past Nightfall’s security until I know the message has been delivered. It’s your call. If you’d rather track down Nightfall on your own, be my guest. But I made sure it’s a place no one can find unless they already know where it is—and much as my son may think he can figure it out on his own, he doesn’t have enough information, even if he recovered every one of his erased memories.”
“How many missing memories are there?” Keefe asked.
“Telling you would be playing fair.”
Keefe gritted his teeth so hard, Sophie could hear them grinding against one another.
“This could be another one of her tricks,” Sophie reminded him. “To make you second-guess yourself.”
“I suppose that’s a valid point,” Lady Gisela said. “But you’ve recovered how many memories, Keefe? Two? Or was it three? Do you really think I would’ve made it that easy?”
Keefe rubbed his temples, and Sophie reached for his hand.
“It’s fine, Foster,” he told her. “I’m done obsessing about the past. All I care about is the future.”
“And that future is growing increasingly bleak, the longer you delay your answer. Tell you what—I’ll sweeten the deal. I’ll share everything I know about Cyrah Endal—but not until after you deliver my message. That’s my final offer. And it expires in thirty seconds, so think quickly—and keep in mind that if you come crawling back to me later, the price will increase significantly.”
Sophie tugged on her eyelashes and tried to rush through a mental list of pros and cons.
Even without knowing where the message was going, she was sure its contents wouldn’t be good. But would it be bad enough that it was worth ignoring this chance to help her family and learn about Wylie’s mom?
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