“Fuoco,” I said.
From the bottom of the cup, a red flame jetted up and stood in a spire. I watched it for several minutes, waiting for messages to begin spouting forth. I had only been present a handful of times when messages arrived through my own flame—pieces of parchment paper that would unfold as they descended, coming to a neat rest in the center of my desk as though someone had set them there.
But Chicory’s flame only hissed quietly.
What did that tell me? That Chicory had locked his own cup with an enchantment? Or that he wasn’t Lich? Given the insanity unfolding outside, I was leaning more and more toward the first.
But was I certain enough to return to the Refuge?
The answer was not yet. “Goddammit,” I hissed at myself.
I was considering my options when the front door opened.
My chest locked around my slamming heart, and I froze.
The door closed. A stuffy silence followed, as though the person were standing in the foyer, studying my pack.
Cutting the light, I whispered, “Spegnere.” But the flame from Chicory’s cup continued to burn. I tiptoed over to it, removed the cup from the table top, and placed it behind a stack of books on the floor. The corner of the room glowed as if from a night light, but the flame was no longer in plain view. As I was creeping into a position behind the door, sword sliding from staff, a floorboard creaked under my foot. I stiffened, swearing at myself.
“Hello?” someone called.
Footsteps began to click down the hallway.
“Everson? Is that you?”
It was Chicory.
19
“Everson?” Chicory called again. “Are you in here?”
My throat tightened and I swallowed with a dry click. I couldn’t have answered if I’d wanted to. His return on the fourth day meant he was Lich, didn’t it? Or was there some other explanation for his return? As his footsteps drew nearer, a corkscrew of dizziness hit me. I risked another few steps to make my way to the wall beside the door, out of sight.
“Oscurare,” I whispered, deepening the shadows in the room and drawing back my sword.
Chicory began muttering to himself in his curmudgeonly way. He sounded so familiar, so … harmless. Was it all a guise? His footsteps stopped in the doorway. I could see his hand pawing the wall before it found the light switch. When he stepped in, his mop of gray hair gave a little hop.
“Everson!” he exclaimed, his lips breaking into a smile. “Goodness, I feared I’d lost you!”
He stepped forward as though to clap my shoulder, but I showed him the ends of my sword and staff. “Stay right there,” I said, backing away, my voice low and husky. “Reach for your wand or utter the first foreign syllable, and I swear to God, I’ll end you.”
Chicory frowned sternly. “They got to you, didn’t they?”
“It doesn’t matter. I want to hear how you’re alive.”
“It does matter,” Chicory countered. “Don’t you remember what I told you before you left? How long did they hold you for?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Well, long enough to poison you thoroughly, I can see that much. Come, there’s no time to waste. This is going to take Elder-level magic, but I can at least contain the poison, keep it from consuming the rest of your mind.”
“How are you alive?” I repeated.
Ignoring my earlier warning, Chicory began bustling around the room plucking spell items from the mess. “I’ll tell you everything after we’ve begun,” he said. “No telling how much time you have left.”
I pressed the tip of the blade to his back. “No,” I said. “You’ll tell me now.”
The coldness in my voice seemed to get through. He stopped and let out a huff. “I never died, Everson.”
“Bullshit. I saw you get run through down there.”
“You saw a doppelganger get run through down there.”
“Doppelganger? You better start making sense.”
Chicory turned to face me. “When I received the message that you had destroyed the book, I tried to retrieve you, but the defensive magic around the realm was too strong. I then tried to go there myself, but the same magic repelled me. My only recourse was to send a doppelganger. A weaker version of myself that I managed to imbue with your father’s essence. It got in but was slain before my doppelganger was able to kill Marlow and pull you out. An unfortunate turn of events, certainly. But that’s what you saw. Not me.”
“What happened to the real you?” I challenged. “Tabitha said you never came back.”
“The death of one’s doppelganger is like suffering a mini-death oneself. I transported myself to a healing plane where I went into a coma to speed my recovery. I would have been recuperating for months, otherwise.”
Could the Front have known that?
“Then why didn’t the Order come for me?” I asked.
“The Order didn’t know you were there, and that’s … well, that’s my fault, Everson.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “In all the excitement, I neglected to tell them I was sending you in.”
I shook my head. “Nice try, but I sent them a message when I was in the Refuge.”
“I don’t doubt you did, Everson—or at least tried. The message never would have gotten past their defenses.”
I thought about Connell’s lack of concern upon seeing the cup I’d manifested.
“What about the messages I sent when I got back?” I pressed. I was about to mention the messages James had sent as well but felt a sudden protective instinct for him and held back.
“Still going up the chain of command, no doubt,” Chicory said. “Once we get you stabilized, I’ll use my direct line to the Elders to update them and arrange to have you cleaned. Listen to me, Everson.” Despite my aimed sword, he leaned nearer, eyes growing sterner. “Whatever they did to you down there, whatever they told you, it was with the aim of turning you against the Order. That’s what Whisperer magic does. It takes any doubts you may have and bends them so that their version of the truth seems the only one that can be believed.”
I wanted to trust him, but I steeled myself.
“If I destroyed Lich’s book,” I said, “then how come things are falling apart out there?”
“Falling apart?” He looked around in confusion. “I just came from the city. I got my coordinates mixed up when I returned from the healing plane and ended up on Roosevelt Island.” He chuckled at his own carelessness. “In any case, I didn’t notice anything amiss.”
“So the fires didn’t raise a red flag for you, or the riots, or the mass evacuation?”
“Everson,” he said, pulling one side of his jacket slowly open until I could see his wand in the inside pocket. “I’m going to draw my wand and use it to cast a spell to stop the spreading magic.”
“Try it, and I’ll run you through for real.”
“You’re not making any sense,” he insisted.
“Oh, so that’s it? I’m crazy? Is that the game?”
“Not crazy,” he said. “Under the influence of magic.”
I stared at him, trying to arrange my thoughts into something coherent, but they were slamming around like bumper cars. Everything Connell had told me about my mother, my grandfather … it had all fit. But if what Chicory was saying about Whisperer magic was true, of course it would all fit.
“Lazlo’s dead,” I said suddenly.
“What?” Chicory asked, looking genuinely surprised. “When did this happen?”
“Five years ago.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I went to Romania. I saw his body.”
“Went to Romania?” He looked at me askance.
“Here.” I moved my sword to my staff hand, pulled my flight itinerary from my pocket, and handed it to him. “See for yourself.”
I watched Chicory as he unfolded the piece of paper and moved his gaze down it. At last he nodded and handed it back. “I want you to take another look at this, Everson, and tell me exactly what you see.
”
“I already know what’s on here,” I said, snatching it back. “I’ve been carrying it for the last three—”
But when I looked down, it wasn’t the printed flight itinerary from the airport. It was my packing list from when I was about to leave my apartment for the safe house a few weeks earlier. I rechecked my pockets before looking at the packing list again. “What did you do to it?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” Chicory said quietly. “The protective energy around the house is charging up again. It must be clearing your mind.”
It was a trick. It had to be. I wasn’t crazy.
I dropped the list, pulled out my wallet, and tossed it to him. “Look inside and you’ll find boarding passes, train tickets. Check out the bills while you’re in there, too. Do you think I just walk around with Romanian currency?” My laugh verged on a mad giggle. I pressed a hand to my sweating upper lip as I watched him.
“The only thing resembling a boarding pass is this,” he said, holding up my New York City transit card. “And your currency is all in U.S. dollars.”
“My passport, then,” I said quickly. “It’s in my pack in the front room. It’ll be stamped.” I started to push past Chicory, then stopped cold. Tabitha had just walked into the room.
“I see we’re a happy household again,” she said dryly.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Why aren’t you at the apartment?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. We’ve been in this pit for almost a month. A month too long, if you ask me.” She parked inside the doorway and combed a licked paw over her right ear.
“I took you back to the apartment four days ago.”
She snorted. “Four days ago you were hardly in the land of the living.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” My temples were beginning to ache.
“Oh, come now, darling. Ever since you got back from that realm, you’ve been practically catatonic. I’ve been doing everything. Fixing our meals, feeding you.” She made a face. “Helping you to the bathroom.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Um, yes,” Tabitha said.
I opened my mouth, then hesitated. Another thought occurred to me. “Detective Vega and I have been in contact. She even gave me back my pager.” I pawed my front pockets, but the bulky device was nowhere to be felt. Impossible. It had been there not forty minutes earlier when she’d paged me. Had I left it in the cab?
“Everson,” Chicory said sharply.
“No,” I backed away from him. “I know what I experienced.”
“Think for a moment,” Chicory said. “Listen to me. This is exactly what Marlow wants—to bias you against us, to turn you against the Order, to harness your powers to his purposes. He had you down there for several days. He convinced you that what he’d told you could be verified up here, correct? He set you free for you to find out. But not before ensuring that the only journey you took would be in here.” He tapped his temple. “A mind he poisoned with Whisperer magic.”
“James,” I nearly shouted. “James Wesson!”
Chicory shook his head. “That means nothing to me.”
“He’s a—a wizard—a member of the Order. Here in New York City. You left his file out so I’d find him, but not before you told him to expect me so that he could stop me from…”
From what, exactly?
“From finding the truth?” Chicory asked, raising a bushy eyebrow. “And if this James failed, and you learned the truth despite his efforts to stop you, the more convincing those truths would appear to you, no?”
I stammered for a moment, then looked over at Tabitha. She looked back at me as though I was suffering a nervous breakdown and couldn’t decide whether that merited pity or scorn.
I sat down hard on the one chair in the room and dug a hand into my hair. Chicory was right. There were two versions of reality: the one before the Front had captured me, and the one after. I had been counting on my reason to determine which was the truth. Reason. The very thing Marlow would have corrupted.
I looked up at my mentor. “I need to talk to Detective Vega. If she says we never spoke, that will settle it. I’ll go along with whatever needs doing, and we’ll get back to the business of Marlow.” That decided, the exhaustion I’d been holding back broke through me, and I slumped in the chair.
Chicory nodded. “Very good, Everson. Stay here and rest, lie down if you need to.” He waved a hand toward the cluttered bed. “I’ll bring the phone up.”
When he left the room, Tabitha fell in behind him. My gaze moved from their departure to the flight itinerary—correction, packing list—I’d dropped on the floor. I thought back over my journey to Romania. The flights, the trains, the visit to Lazlo’s farm, my stay with Olga and her father, the bones she had read. It had all felt so damned real!
I lifted up my shirt to check the place on my stomach where the shadow creature had lashed me. Last night an ugly blue-green mark had run from my left ribcage down to my right hip, complete with bite marks. Right now there was nothing save pale skin, the faintest suggestion of abdominal muscles, and a mole I’d had since birth. Was Whisperer magic really that powerful?
Apparently so, I thought with a stab of disgrace.
I patted my pockets again. No pager. I looked through my wallet. Nothing to suggest I’d been in Romania. I stepped out into the hallway. Back in the kitchen, Chicory had stopped to heat up some goat’s milk for Tabitha. I went the other direction. My backpack wasn’t in the foyer where I was sure I’d dropped it. In the bedroom where I’d stayed, I found my clothes, books, and duffel bag, never packed. I could feel the hum of protective energy that encircled the house. Was it helping me to perceive clearly again?
Or is it poisoning your thoughts once more, the insidious voice whispered. But the voice no longer held the same power.
I looked down at the bed, where I could see an imprint of my body. I imagined myself lying there in a catatonic state for the past four days, Whisperer lies twisting through my mind like black tentacles.
I returned to Chicory’s room and walked along the lab table, absently touching the glass tubes and notebooks, telling myself there was no shame in succumbing to a magic that had nearly overwhelmed the Elders. Anyway, I had destroyed Lich’s book, not an Elder book. Meaning no Whisperer magic was flowing into the world. That was a huge relief right there. And as Marlow’s power dwindled, he and the Front would have nowhere to hide. The Elders would take care of them.
With that knowledge, I no longer cared to see the face behind the gold mask. Marlow was corrupt and evil, a vessel for the Whisperer. He wasn’t my father. He was nothing to—
At the end of the table, I had arrived at the pile of newspaper clippings and begun poking through them: the article on the robe of John the Baptist as well as those concerning exhibits of other magic-sounding artifacts. But near the bottom of the pile, at a depth I hadn’t ventured to the last time, I arrived at a glossy program for an opera. The program showed a black-robed figure standing center stage.
He was wearing a gold mask.
Heart thudding, I pulled the program all the way out.
The gold mask with its frowning mouth was identical to the one I’d seen on Marlow. I read the caption below:
RADICAL! VIOLENT!
In this reimagining of Verdi’s Macbeth, we go not to Scotland, but ancient Greece, where an ambitious young magician murders the King of Athens and embarks on a bloody rule.
My eyes skipped to the bottom:
Praise for The Death Mage, recent Opera Award nominee and…
“Here we are,” Chicory said.
I jumped and shoved the program back into the stack. My mentor had returned with the phone, but he wasn’t looking at me. In search of a jack, he was kicking through the clutter along the baseboards. I glanced back at the articles. In his carelessness, Chicory had neglected to conceal the most damning clue: his model for what would become my boogeyman.
There was no De
ath Mage. Chicory had invented him.
I turned from the table and eyed the chair where my cane was leaning. As Chicory continued to root around, I crept toward it.
“Could’ve sworn there was a place to plug in,” he muttered.
I reached the chair and slowly grasped the cane’s handle. But when I tried to unsheathe the sword that had slain Lich’s form once before—the doppelganger story was BS too, I now decided—it wouldn’t come free. I rearranged my slick grip and tried again. Normally, it was an unconscious act, a smooth release, but now the wood around the blade seemed to clench.
As though magic were holding it closed.
“Ah, there it is,” Chicory said, stooping down to snap the plastic head into the jack. He turned, a pair of fingers hooked under the phone’s switch hook, and was in the act of extending the handset when he stopped and pulled it back. “Why, Everson, you’re as pale as a ghost. Something the matter?”
“No,” I replied, thinking about what James had said about bluffs and double bluffs. I watched Chicory for a tell. A subtle force wriggled through my mind, and Chicory glanced past me to his lab table.
And there it is, I thought numbly.
“Damned Whisperer magic,” he said, setting the phone on the chair and bustling past me. “What’s it making you see now?” He arrived at the stack of articles and began searching through them.
The odds had finally shifted decisively, away from Marlow as the culprit and toward Lich. If the magic around the house was clearing my mind, I shouldn’t have been able to see the program. Not in a way that implicated Chicory and not in that much detail.
Praise for The Death Mage…
There was no time for second-guessing. I would only talk myself back into a fifty-fifty stalemate—or Chicory would do it for me.
I rushed forward.
The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 90