The Book of Lies

by Melissa McShane

  “Ms. Davies,” someone said, his voice almost familiar. I dragged myself awake and blinked at him. Malcolm—no, Ewan Campbell, crouching next to me. He had a huge bruise covering one eye and most of his cheek, and his dark hair had something nasty in it. “Ms. Davies, are you all right?”

  “I’m not injured, if that’s what you mean.” I stretched and sat upright. “Where’s Kevin?”

  “I don’t know who that is. You haven’t been drained at all?”

  “They tried, a couple of times, but I don’t think it was serious.”

  “We’ll have a bone magus look at you, just in case. I’m glad you’re well.”

  I wanted to ask about Malcolm, but thought that might give me away. Instead, I said, “Is everyone all right?”

  “Everyone’s accounted for.” Ewan looked grim. “Twenty-five custodians were killed, as well as Parvesh Chhitri. And Iakkhos Kalivas is still very ill from his heart attack.”

  I closed my eyes again. “I can’t believe it. So many…” My eyes flew open. “What about the cops?”

  “What about them?”

  “I know they were outside with you all. Why isn’t this place crawling with them?”

  “It is, but our paper magi pulled together one of the most incredible illusions I’ve ever seen. They made it look like this room is empty, left a few familiars lying around as ‘dogs’ to support the notion that a pack of rabid animals got inside and attacked people. The steel magi left a few familiars free for the police to kill and analyze—that illusion alone was worth all the others. We’ve had to allow a couple of our dead to be taken to the morgue, but for the most part our magi kept this from turning into a total disaster. I’m issuing commendations for a lot of people today. Not that I expect it will matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll be handing in my resignation in the morning. I consider myself personally responsible.”

  “It’s hardly your fault if the Board sent you away!”

  “I shouldn’t have bowed to their wishes. I knew my duty and I abandoned it.”

  “I’m sure Malcolm won’t think so.”

  “Begging your pardon, Ms. Davies, but I know my brother better than you do. He’d hold himself to the same standard.”

  I had to admit he was probably right. “How much good are you going to do the Long War if you just quit, like a…a quitter?”

  “I’m not quitting. I’m resigning. There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t see it. Look, maybe you made a mistake. You’re not the first. But if there’s any blame to go around here, shouldn’t it lie with the magi who didn’t remember to change the…the frequency of the wards, or whatever you call it? I mean, I don’t want to go pointing fingers, but if they’d done their job right the first time, we all would have been safe.” I didn’t want to bring up Rasmussen’s name, but at this point, surrounded by injured custodians with the bodies of twenty-five more of them lying throughout the hotel, his refusal to destroy the familiars looked pretty stupid.

  “I don’t believe in putting off responsibility on someone else,” Ewan said.

  “If you’re quitting because you think you’re a liability, I won’t argue with that. But if you’re quitting out of guilt or something, I can’t respect that. Your duty is to fight the Long War, Ewan Campbell, and sidelining yourself isn’t going to help anyone.”

  Ewan gave me a sidelong smile and stood. “You’re tenacious, I’ll give you that. Thank you, Ms. Davies.”

  “Call me Helena.”

  “All right…Helena. I’ll consider what you’ve said.” He nodded and walked away, leaving me feeling achy and sad. He looked so much like Malcolm it made me long to see the real thing walk through the door, even if he couldn’t hold me or kiss me in public.

  I looked around the room for Kevin. There was Claude, on his feet and looking like he’d never been drained. Nimisha, sitting by herself and looking so lost my heart went out to her. No Kevin. I wondered where he’d gone. Surely no one had just let him walk away? They had to have the hotel staff somewhere, feeding them a story that would justify whatever they might have heard or seen. I hoped I wasn’t going to be in trouble for telling him some of the truth.

  I stood, wobbling on still shaky legs, then slowly crossed the room toward Nimisha. She looked up as I approached, but said nothing. “You’re not hurt?” I said. She shook her head. “I’m sorry about Parvesh. I can’t imagine how you must feel right now.”

  She smiled. “Parvesh and I did not get along,” she said. “We were assigned this together as a sort of…penance, possibly? So I mourn him as a human being and a colleague, but not as a friend.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I guess…I feel that way about the ones who died. I don’t know many of the custodians personally.”

  “It is a blow for the Long War, to be forced to replace so many custodians at once. And Iakkhos may not survive to return to the Labyrinth. This has been a terrible night.”

  “I don’t know what time it is, but it feels like it’s gone on forever.”

  Nimisha nodded. “I am simply waiting for the hunters to verify that the hotel is clear of invaders, and then I intend to return to my room to sleep.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.” I sat on the floor next to her chair and folded my arms around my knees, rested my chin on my arms. The shaking was diminishing, though I still ached from all the running and fighting, and my arms felt like overcooked macaroni. I watched the door, watched the people running in and out of it, and wished Malcolm would come. After everything I’d been through, I wanted to know he was still alive.

  My eyelids sagged again, and I turned my head to pillow my cheek on my arms. I wanted to sleep now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to my suite, with the dead familiar leaking its blue blood onto the carpet. My head jerked, and I realized I’d fallen asleep, after all. Nimisha was gone, Malcolm still wasn’t there, and I decided I was just going to sleep on the floor. I curled up in a tight little ball and was asleep in seconds.

  Someone was shaking me, whispering my name. It was Derrick, Malcolm’s teammate and an excellent bone magus. “Wake up,” he repeated, and I blinked and sat up. My face felt scratchy from where it had been pressed against the carpet, and my mouth was fuzzy and dry.

  “It’s over,” Derrick said. “We’ve cleared out the hotel and the wards have been restored. And properly set. The police are finishing their investigation. Are you all right? No injuries?”

  “Just sore from swinging a skillet.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I was bitten twice, but not for very long.”

  “Show me.”

  I rolled up my pant leg to show the pinkish crooked line where the familiar had caught me in the stairwell, then displayed my arm where the other one’s cilia had brushed me. Derrick ran his hand over both sites. “You’re fine,” he said. “They must not have latched on long enough to drain you.”

  “Where’s the rest of the team?”

  “Mopping up. Campbell sent me to make sure you were all right.” Derrick cleared his throat. “I thought you should know…we’re all aware of why he’s so concerned about you. In case you felt that’s a secret you needed to keep.”

  Unexpected relief washed over me. “He told you.”

  “Teams that keep secrets from each other don’t last long.” Derrick shook his head. “I think you’re both crazy for risking yourselves, but I can hardly argue with true love.”

  “Thanks. For everything.”

  “I’m supposed to escort you to your suite, just in case. We heard you were quite the fighter down in the basement. You sure you don’t want to become a magus?” Derrick teased.

  I shuddered. “I’m never going to complain about mail-in auguries again. I’m not cut out to be on the front lines.”

  “It’s nice to know you can defend yourself, though, isn’t it?”

  “With a skillet. Not the most romantic weapon.”

  Derrick
made me wait outside the suite while he checked it for familiars. Whatever had been in my bathroom was long gone. He put the ventilation grate back into place and used a towel to scoop up the body of the familiar I’d killed, which had mostly disintegrated. “Leave the mess,” he said when I picked up another towel to mop up the blue ichor. “Most of it will sublimate into the atmosphere by morning. Their bodies don’t last well once they’re dead. Makes it easier to fight them, if we don’t have to worry about disposal.”

  I made a face, but put the towel away. Derrick checked my bedroom and the other bathroom, said, “You’re clear. Try to get some sleep,” and left.

  I showered, put on my pajamas, and got into bed, but my earlier sleepiness was gone. I had too much to think about. Twenty-five custodians to replace—why had Ragsdale behaved so oddly on the phone?—what had happened to Kevin?—would Malcolm come to me tonight? Rasmussen couldn’t justify keeping the familiars anymore, not after this fiasco. I had no idea how it would affect the rest of the conference. How could anyone think about things like Abernathy’s moving to London when so many people were dead?

  I found the remote and turned the television on. I needed something to distract me. What I needed was my DVD collection, home to all my old favorites, but what I had was another infomercial, this one for some kind of robe you wore backwards so it was more like a blanket with sleeves. It looked comfortable and unattractive at the same time. I turned down the volume and made up my own story to go with it, something about space blanket monsters wrapping people in their folds and sucking their magic out. I might have been projecting my fears on the dumb blanket robe.

  I woke from a sleep I didn’t remember entering to the sound of the outer door opening. My heart pounding, I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the bedroom door. Just as I put my hand on the lever, it depressed, and the door swung toward me. Malcolm stood there, looking as filthy and haggard as he had the previous night. I gasped, then flung myself at him, crying his name.

  He held me tightly, stroking my hair, and I buried my face in his shoulder and breathed in the woody smell that was his alone. “When I got your message that the Grandison was under attack, I was utterly terrified,” Malcolm murmured into my hair. “But when we arrived to find the wards impenetrable, I thought I might go mad. Knowing you were here, undefended…let me hold you, please, while I convince myself that you are safe.”

  “I never want to do that again. I would rather you rescue me. Does that make me weak?”

  “Since I know you will fight to defend yourself if anything like this happens again, no. I swear to come to your rescue as often as you need it.”

  I sighed and leaned into him. “I’d like to promise I won’t need it, but doesn’t it seem like trouble follows me?”

  “It does, a little. I’m sure it’s our imagination.”

  I raised my head so I could look at him. “Can you stay? I’m too tired for anything but cuddling.”

  “I can stay a few hours, and cuddling sounds appealing.” He released me only to take hold of my hand and draw me towards the bed. “Lie down, and I’ll join you in a moment.”

  I crawled back into bed and watched him shed his fatigues and boots. “I’m starting to change my mind about the cuddling,” I said, admiring the way his T-shirt fit tightly across his chest.

  He smiled. “Tinsley said you fought like a demon, and that means you need rest, much as I would prefer other activities.” He lay down next to me and took me in his arms. “Sleep, and we’ll see what the morning brings.”

  I was asleep almost before he finished speaking.

  15

  When I woke, feeling tired and sore, Malcolm was gone. I stifled feelings of self-pity and shuffled to the sitting room, where I turned on the coffeemaker. A faint blue stain on the carpet was all that was left of the familiar’s blood. I knelt next to it and reached out to touch it, but changed my mind when I caught the faintest whiff of paint thinner. That was never going to be a pleasant smell for me in the future. Good thing they hadn’t smelled like something nice, like flowers or peanut butter.

  I poured myself a cup of delicious coffee and retreated to the bed to drink it. The bittersweet aroma overrode the stink of the familiar, but that wouldn’t last long. The bedside clock told me it was 9:42. I’d really slept in. I leaned back and breathed in the coffee smell again. I ought to get dressed and find out what was going on. Surely they couldn’t expect the hotel staff to soldier on like nothing had happened?

  I dressed in comfortable clothes, jeans and a full-sleeved tan blouse with gold embroidery around the neck, and went to Claude’s suite. He didn’t answer. I thought about knocking on Laverne Stirlaugson’s door, but decided that was more than I could handle before breakfast. Maybe there was food still in the restaurant.

  The mezzanine didn’t look nearly so torn up as it had the night before. The doors to all the conference rooms were wide open, and people moved around, setting up chairs or wheeling carts full of expensive plastic water bottles. I descended the stairs to the lobby, which bore no signs of a criminal investigation other than a Christmas tree that had been knocked over, its ornaments scattered. The police had completed their work and left while I slept through it.

  The restaurant was half-full of diners, all custodians, eating in ominous silence. The waffle lady wasn’t there, and I had to content myself with a poppy seed muffin, a bowl of grapes, and a glass of orange juice. I found a table to myself, not difficult given the emptiness of the place, and wished more than ever that I had my phone. Being stuck in information limbo was driving me crazy.

  “Good to see you’re alive,” Diane said, sliding into a seat opposite me. “That was some night, huh?”

  “You make it sound like a party!”

  “Hardly that. But you have to admit it brought us closer together, and I believe in looking for the best in the worst situations.”

  I wiped crumbs from my mouth. “What happens next?”

  “Programming as scheduled. The police have been and gone, and the Board doesn’t want this incident, as Stirlaugson is calling it, to interfere with its plans. We’ll have a brief memorial service tonight before dinner.”

  “That seems sort of cold.”

  “Stirlaugson is pissed about the whole thing. I hear she handed Ewan Campbell his head on a platter, even though she’s the one who sent him away. God forbid she take responsibility for any of this fiasco.” Diane took a long drink from her coffee cup. “They’ve all isolated themselves anyway, the Board, I mean. I tried to talk to Chukwu earlier and he didn’t have time for me. I think they’re reaming out the magi who failed to adjust the wards.”

  “So now they care.” I hadn’t realized I felt so bitter about the Board’s abandonment of us the night before. “That’s nice to hear.”

  “They couldn’t have come all the way down from the top floor without someone dying. It’s not their fault they were trapped up there.”

  “I guess.” It didn’t make me happy. “What about things they still haven’t decided? I don’t want to make this all about me, but I need to know if I still have to defend Abernathy’s against Rebecca Greenough.”

  “Everything’s still as planned, though the schedule’s shot to hell. They’ll send a flunky to fetch you when it’s time for you to make your statement.”

  “So basically I have to spend the day waiting on their pleasure.”

  “Basically, yeah. Sorry.” She drained her coffee cup. “At least you have something productive to do. I’m going to wander the halls and reassure people, which is going to depress me after about an hour, but has to be done. Everyone’s lost a friend.”

  “I wish I could help. I feel so at a loss—I was only beginning to know these people, and I never know what to say to someone who’s grieving.”

  “Just be honest. Offer to listen. You might want to talk to Carlos. Elisabeta didn’t make it.”

  A chill touched my heart. “I didn’t know that. Where is he?”

  “Their room. Go o
n, go.”

  I crossed the lobby to the elevators and pushed the button for the sixth floor. The man and woman at the reception desk looked at me with a total lack of interest. They seemed way too calm to have been here last night. It was reassuring to know there were people whose lives hadn’t been touched by the attacks.

  The sixth floor corridors were as empty as mine always were. I came to a halt in front of Carlos’s door and knocked quietly, feeling obscurely that I shouldn’t disturb anyone. After a short pause, the door opened, and I found myself facing a stranger. “Yes?”

  “I wanted to see Carlos, if he’s here.” That sounded utterly stupid.

  The stranger stepped back and gave me room to enter. He said something in liquid Spanish of which my mind caught nothing. Carlos said something in return, then added, “Come in, Helena.”

  The room contained two queen beds, with Carlos sitting on the edge of one. Elisabeta lay in the bed, looking so shrunken I might have mistaken her for a large doll if dolls were wrinkled and faded. “Carlos,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “She was in no pain, at the end,” Carlos said. He took my hand and squeezed it. “She spoke to her husband, Andrei, and made her goodbyes.”

  “But…people recover from having their magic drained all the time. Why not her?”

  “It’s what happens when your magic can’t restore itself,” the stranger said. “It latches on to other vital parts of your body and tries to make them do the job of the magic.”

  I remembered what Lucas had said about Harry’s magic not restoring and tears fell. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just not fair!”

  “Fair is not a thing that happens in the Long War,” Carlos said, but his jaw was clenched, and tears glimmered on his cheeks. I knelt beside the bed and leaned my face against the side of the mattress. At that moment I could have cheerfully killed William Rasmussen and every familiar there was left in the city, free or harnessed. Her poor husband, waking to such awful news. And her node would need a new custodian. No wonder the Board was in seclusion. They couldn’t afford to leave any Neutrality untended.