“Don’t you start,” I said tiredly, and pushed him out before locking my door.
Despite my attempts to ignore Francis, I felt like a wrung-out washcloth. I sank heavily onto my bed and set my alarm for one a.m. It wouldn’t be safe to go out before then, and maybe I could catch some sleep.
I could not catch some sleep. It was a relief when my alarm finally went off. Relying on a penlight, I got up and changed into sturdy, dark clothes. I put my hiking boots and thick socks by my door, but stayed barefoot for the moment to minimize the chances of Francis catching me.
Francis is no stranger to insomnia. He honestly suffers from it but is too pigheaded to book an appointment with a sleep doctor. Half the time, if I get up in the night for a glass of water, there he is: sitting at the dining table, eating junk food, and staring miserably into midair.
Tonight, however, the apartment was dark and sleepy. Moonlight pooled through balcony doors. The faint foody smell reminded me that I never had eaten that fish sandwich.
My stomach twisted at the thought. I could eat something now—
But that would only be putting it off, wouldn’t it?
I listened at Francis’s door, then eased it open and peered inside. Francis lay on his stomach, hugging his pillow, face turned my way. No glimmer emerged from his eyes, and his back rose and fell regularly with sleep and oinking snores.
I dropped my jaw to breathe silently and deeply through my mouth as I pulled his door shut.
He’d left his phone by his bedside table, close enough that he could grab it with one arm without shifting. I noted its exact position, unplugged it, and took it around the foot of the bed. Shielding the light with body and footboard, I scrolled through his contacts and wrote down the number I wanted. Then back it went, precisely as before.
That was the part it’d be easy to talk my way out of, if Francis awoke. Considerably trickier would be explaining why I was opening his safe.
It was a big safe and had probably been ridiculously expensive, but Francis believes in being safety conscious about his manliness complex. Or maybe it wasn’t a complex, the way that he drove a giant red truck, had a collection of guns, and worked on construction sites; in Batata, that sort of thing is the norm, and women do it as much as men. Maybe it had nothing to do with him being a hair under five-foot-five.
I got the combination wrong the first time, and had to try a second. It’s not like I got an opportunity to use it much, for all that Francis insisted Luc and I memorize it.
The safe clicked open, and I plucked out his smallest revolver: a .357 Magnum with a walnut grip and a 5.5" barrel. Petite enough to fit my hands, but with a long enough barrel not to kick like crazy. I’d shot it before, although not in a couple of years.
A box of ammo and a holster completed the picture, and then I pressed the safe shut, twirled the lock, and padded out. Francis’s lids didn’t so much as flutter when I passed him and slipped out his door.
“What are you doing?” Luc asked.
I gasped and whirled. He hadn’t turned on the light for the short trek between his room and his bathroom, but the nightlight gave him an excellent view of my armful. His eyes yo-yoed between my arms and my face and widened. “Mercedes,” he said, “what—”
“Quiet!” I whispered. “Don’t wake him. In my room.”
Eyes round as a dead man’s coins, Luc followed me. I switched on the light, and let him watch as I threaded the bulging holster onto a thick leather belt and pulled on my hiking socks and boots. I was positively ostentatious about it, to keep him occupied while I thought up a really, really good lie that’d hold up no matter what he learned.
That’s one of the problems with working for the Carinan Security Service: lying becomes so automatic that you forget that, sometimes, it’s better to tell the truth.
Could I tell him? He wasn’t the one who might’ve made a deal with Deals & Bargains; he couldn’t warn her. And if I did tell him—if I took him with me—then I wouldn’t be alone.
“Should I interpret your hesitation as a sign you’re going to lie to me?” Luc asked. No warmth tinged his voice; it was too busy being ironic. He folded his arms and leaned against my door, and it struck me how much he must trust me, to see me outfitting myself like this and not try to stop me.
Luc and I have always been more similar to each other than to anyone else in the family. If there was anyone who might understand, it was Luc.
I wanted him to understand, wanted it desperately.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” I lied; “I just wasn’t sure how to tell you. I’m going to see Theodora.”
“With that.”
The tricky part was, Luc doesn’t like weapons. It’s like he doesn’t believe in them. In video games, sure—you won’t find anyone more knowledgeable about weaponry modern and archaic. In real life, he’d been forced to go hunting with Francis and our father back in Batata, but I don’t think he’d ever shot anything. Luc was what I only pretended to be: someone who pored over violence in theory and then went damp and weak at the sight of actual blood.
But.
But he wasn’t a fool, Luc. If I could make him understand—if I could prove—
“This? Self-defense,” I assured him. “Look, Luc, I wasn’t kidding when I said she was dangerous. I’m going to go have a chat with her, but I’m not going to go unprotected.”
Luc threw up his hands. “What’s wrong with your pepper spray? Or meeting her in a public place in broad daylight? Or, I don’t know, crazy idea—contacting the reeves?”
“I can’t go to law enforcement until I have proof,” I said primly. “Such as a recorded admission of guilt. Don’t give me that look, Luc. If you’d seen what I’d seen, you’d be the first one insisting I go armed.”
Hah. More lies. He’d be the first one insisting I hide under my bed until the bogeyman passed by.
Luc scrubbed the heel of his hand over his forehead, lids squeezed shut. “Mercedes, you need to let this go. You don’t honestly believe what you’re saying about her. I know you. You’d go to the reeves if she were really dangerous, not head out to meet her in the middle of the night. Face it. You don’t like her because your boss—”
“This has nothing to do with my boss,” I said coldly. And that was true. He had made a mistake, and Theodora had used that against him, but that was over—and I have never known him to make the same mistake twice. He was safe, and I have never been motivated by revenge. The past was in the past; it was what Theodora was doing in the present and might do in the future that concerned me.
Not that Francis could ever understand that, but Luc—“You say you know me,” I said, “but you clearly don’t know when I’m telling the truth. You clearly don’t trust me enough to believe me about Theodora.”
“Because that’s not how the world works,” Luc burst out. “Mercedes, I met Theodora. You can’t tell me a woman like that is a magical bargaining psychopath!”
“Why not?”
He threw up his hands. “Because she’s nice! Because she eats hamburgers and wears cute dresses and flirts with Francis! Because things like that don’t happen in real life!”
I rubbed my thumb over the thin cardboard of the ammo box. I could almost smell the gunpowder. I thought of the things I’d bought before coming home, of fluorescent-lit stores and bored clerks and twisted streets and foolish brothers. “Tell you what,” I said, as if the idea were only just occurring to me. “Why don’t you come with me? You hide and listen while I talk to her. She’ll speak freely in front of me, and we’ll see which one of us is right.”
“And if I’m right,” said Luc, “you’ll admit it. You’ll stop harassing her, apologize to Francis, and drop your grudge forever.”
“Gladly,” I said, since it didn’t matter what I promised. “You’ll come?”
“I guess I have to,” he sighed.
Chapter 10:
Assault
We took Francis’s truck. Neither Luc nor I owned a car, it was too far
to bike, and I wasn’t about to borrow my boss’s car. Not because it was too recognizable or because I didn’t have permission to use it outside of work or because it might implicate my boss, although those things were true. But their truth paled in comparison to the sheer stupidity of starting your criminal activities by retrieving a car from a manned parking garage where you were well known and sure to be recorded by security cameras.
Seriously. Don’t do that nonsense.
“I wasn’t suggesting we take your boss’s car,” said Luc, to whom I hadn’t explained my logic. “I only meant that Francis might wake up, notice his truck was gone, and wonder where it went.”
Yes, well. Every plan has flaws.
I drove us north through Silvertip and kept going when the city ended. Luc made noises about this, but I reminded him that Theodora would only speak freely if she met me privately.
“Privacy is good,” he said. “Finding a creepy shack in the middle of nowhere is overkill. I think it’s going to rain.”
“Not according to the weather report—or not until tomorrow morning.”
“It is tomorrow morning. Technically.”
I didn’t reply. I was half regretting inviting Luc along. The night felt unreal—abandoned by human life, soft and unfathomable, thick with cool air. This far from my boss’s routine, the streets stayed sensibly straight and right angled. I turned from the main road to a smaller one that paralleled the Gyllan River. I’d already turned off the GPS—had only used it to get as far as the edge of town. I hadn’t wanted even that much of a record; but then, I hadn’t had much choice.
The Gyllan is powerful, swift, and deep. It flows north through the whole of Silvertip Prefecture until it meets the Bay of Uror, which joins the Atlantic Ocean. Late though it was in the year, the river foamed like a rabid dog. Every year, the Post features articles about strong young man (it was young men) who’d decided to show off their swimming skills by diving into the engorged river. The bodies hadn’t been found, and the reeves interviewed stated that they probably never would be. People should learn from this and be responsible about the dangers of turgid water, use their common sense in potentially dangerous situations, always wear life jackets, et cetera, et cetera, don’t be an idiot.
This was as far as I had planned my route. I hadn’t chosen the exact location ahead of time, because I hadn’t had to; there are literally dozens of scenic pullouts in this area, all of them deeply overgrown, invisible from the road, and forgotten by everyone but the occasional lost tourist. I picked a particularly sketchy one, and veered onto the winding turnoff. We bumped over potholes, seasick headlights bouncing between dense foliage and heavily mossed trees.
“You arranged to meet her here?” Luc asked as we got out, looking around in amazement at the flora and out across the Gyllan. He inhaled the fresh damp aromas of leaf and twig and rubbed his neck. Silvertip is far lusher than Edenfield; instead of widely spaced beeches, we have dense forest. “How’s she going to find the right turnoff?”
I shrugged. “Magic.”
“I’m serious, Mercedes. Did you have exact coordinates, or something? Give her the precise mileage? No way this place shows up on a map. I don’t want to be hanging around all night, while she’s one turnoff over.”
“Then consider this another test,” I said shortly.
The moon had swelled nearly full and, this far from the source of light pollution, the stars poked out their heads. It wasn’t bright by day standards, but there was plenty of light to walk by. Our way was made easier because some gallant group had crafted rocky stairs down to the water, and they were mostly intact. My sturdy hiking boots had no trouble finding traction.
I left Luc halfway down the cliff, right before the tree line gave way to orange-gray rocks. The air tasted of mud and wet vegetation. Moss crept down from above, and the tiny corpses of river-dwelling creatures gritted the dry rocks and slicked the wet ones. A moist breeze ruffled my hair and infiltrated my coat.
I positioned myself a couple of yards downstream of the stairs, feet planted hip-width apart, shoulders rolled back. The .357 Magnum weighed heavily on my belt. I felt around the light-headedness in my mind and banished it, banished anything that might interfere.
There was no benefit in putting it off. I pulled out the disposable phone I’d purchased earlier and dialed the number I’d found in Francis’s contacts.
Theodora picked up on the first ring. “Mercedes.”
“Would you like to make a deal?” I asked.
“Would you?”
Her voice hadn’t come from the phone: it had rung bell-like through the night air, and I followed it up and over.
She stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at me, framed against the night sky, luminous in the moonlight. Once she was sure she had my attention, she began to gracefully descend. Her hands were empty, and she was dressed in a simple white robe with ragged sleeves and hem. Soft boots shod her feet, and a wreath of white flowers crowned her long loose curls. Between her pale skin and that getup, she looked like a human-sized version of a children’s-book fairy—which I took to be a joke at my expense.
I noted this clinically, distantly, and it didn’t bother me.
She took her sweet time coming down. Business as usual; summons in the middle of the night nothing special. Never did she look away from me, left or right, and I kept my eyes on her. She could not have seen Luc.
“I’ve been waiting for your call,” she said when she stood on the narrow bank with me. She wasn’t gloating, just stating a fact. “If privacy was what you wanted, you could have asked.”
“Special accommodation is a commodity.”
“Not,” she said, “always. I owned a many-roomed auction house for a reason.”
“But not now.”
“I have other places.”
That was ominous, but it only reinforced how dangerous she was, how desperately she needed to be stopped. How impossible it would be to stop her by mundane means.
I thought this, filed it, and moved on. “I called you here to make a deal,” I said.
“I know. To save your brother.”
“No—to save you.”
She frowned at me, pulling her head back to get a better view. I wasn’t following her script.
“I know the concept is alien to you,” I said, “but not everyone is evil. I understand what you are. I understand that you may not have full control over your influence. I do not understand why you are working with the trappings of your personification instead of against them, but I can help you. I can free you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That is certainly a unique analysis of the situation. You must have been talking with Jon; the term ‘personification’ is pretentious enough for him. What is it he calls himself? Cipher? I suppose he has invented a name for me as well.”
I filed this too, and didn’t let it distract me. I ground on: “Here’s the deal: you agree never to use your personification, to never make another deal with anyone. You forgive all debts and release everyone who owes you. You put aside the mantle of Deals & Bargains for the rest of your life and dedicate yourself to making amends for the evil you have wrought. You perform this in the spirit of my words without trying to trick me or otherwise exploit loopholes.”
She laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“You arrived here by the power of your personification,” I went on, “which means that this deal will prevent you from easily getting home. Therefore, for my side of the deal, I will escort you home.”
I didn’t expect her to accept; I expected her to laugh again. Maybe Theodora would have laughed, but my phrasing had brought out Deals & Bargains—her eyes silver and bright as distant stars, her voice smooth and cool, her expression immovable as a glacier. She said: “Your deal does not fall within bargainable parameters,” and Theodora added, “as you must have known it wouldn’t. Don’t waste my time, Mercedes, and don’t try to trick me. We both know you’re here to save Francis, and that the only thing yo
u think I’ll accept in exchange is you.”
I had wondered about that.
“Or perhaps I’m mistaken and you have another trade in mind. Do you want me to take Lucas instead of Francisco? Would you sacrifice one brother for another? Would you sacrifice Jon? Whom do you love best in this world?”
Healthy individuals don’t quantify love and human worth that way, I thought but did not say. We were bargaining, and I didn’t know what would count as part of that.
Theodora raised an eyebrow at my silence. Deals & Bargains said: “Offer me a deal.”
“I have.”
“That deal was not within bargainable parameters. Offer me a different deal.”
I restrained my twitching fingers. Soon, but not yet. Not yet. One more chance. “Tell me what deal will prevent you from continuing as Deals & Bargains,” I said. “Tell me what deal will stop you from causing the sort of damage to people that I witnessed in the auction house. Tell me what deal will effectively neuter you. Tell me what deal will save all those who are enthralled to you.”
Theodora tilted her head at me. “No deal that would so restrain my power is within bargainable parameters,” she said. “Or . . . no remaining deal. But if you are clever and persuasive, you might save your brother. Offer me a deal.”
There. I’d made her say it. I’d suspected it, but there had been a chance—no. I clawed my thoughts back into place. One more. Once more. “It seems to me,” I said, “that when you know someone is evil, the last thing you should do is give them what they want. No matter how bad the thing is that they threaten you with, it isn’t as bad as what they’re after.”
Her eyes flicked sarcastically at me. “I didn’t make your brother ask me out, if that’s what you’re getting at. I was looking through the phone book for a construction company to rebuild my auction house, and I recognized the name. He was one of several I interviewed. It’s not my fault he falls at the feet of any woman with a pretty face.”
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