A beat passed. Not a friendly one, either.
“You planned this,” Lindo accused him, grimly satisfied. “I was right about you: you weren’t on the level. You were the one who changed the conference location. You’ve been manipulating the situation from the start.”
“There were two possibilities,” Sr. Nordfeld said, “of what would happen when you went through with the ritual I designed to be used at this time and this place: either you would summon Mercy or you would summon one of her colleagues. In the first instance, I could be guaranteed safety by my previous arrangement with her; in the latter, she would provide insurance against my harm.”
Avior laughed. “You make me want to use you as a test more, not less! These children against a demonologist and a demon? I like that. I like that very much indeed. Children—”
“Before you strike,” Sr. Nordfeld interrupted, “it would behoove you to listen. Mercy?”
I curled my fingers and hooked them before my naval, stood ramrod straight, emptied my face of human expression, and recited, in my best Avior accent, “‘I, Lucio Winter, Prefect Avior, for the benefit of my prefecture and my nation, declare King Emil incompetent and hereby bind myself to my fellow prefects in seeking his death—and to, with them, executing him at this conference by any means necessary.’ I have the other confessions as well.” I looked to Prefect Lindo. “Your knights didn’t knock out the internet soon enough. I recorded the confessions live online, with a twenty-four-hour delay lock. If I don’t renew the lock before the end of those twenty-four hours, the recording will be made public in two dozen different forums and social media sites, and emailed to media outlets around the country—as well as to my various contacts within the palace.”
I stopped there, to allow each prefect to express his outrage and horror by whatever ways best suited his disposition. I bore the abuse with admirable grace and a small, polite smile.
In the end, they didn’t do anything worse than yell at me. I hadn’t actually betrayed them—yet—and I swore to them that I wouldn’t, as long as Sr. Nordfeld and I remained alive, unharmed, and free.
Only Avior and Fjordland didn’t join in the abuse. Fjordland looked mildly offended by it, and Avior was just plain fascinated. “You’re a demon too?” he breathed. “You mimic humanity so well! How long have you been pretending? What’s it like?”
“I knew it all along,” Silvertip proclaimed. “You were too compelling, too convincing. No wonder you could manipulate the darkness of my bedroom that way. No wonder you could seal my wife’s lips. Of course you were a demon!”
“But what of your background?” Avior asked me. “It’s flawless! Family, schooling, job history—everything in place, everything ordinary!”
“Of course,” said Sr. Nordfeld. “She could hardly work for the government—or be useful to me—if her cover were anything but perfect.”
“And then there’s your brother—the one who’s here!” Avior smacked his lips. “Is he—”
I gave him my hardest, blankest look. “Off limits.”
“But why? Because you love him? Can demons love?”
Lindo was listening in on this one, and I picked my words with care. I said: “Your assumption is based on a faulty premise.”
“That he’s really your brother?”
“That I have any reason or desire to explain myself to you.”
That took him aback for a moment, but he rallied. “In that case,” he said, “I will provide you with motivation.” He stood and crossed to the door. The prefects quieted, more interested in watching him than in insulting me. Want and Ignorance stayed where they were, but their heads turned to follow the movement, and Want never blinked away from his back as he talked briefly and quietly to the knight outside the door, or as he returned to his chair.
A minute later, the door opened again, and Francis was pushed in: sleepless, disheveled, and foaming mad.
“Francis!” I exclaimed, stepping forward and holding out my hands automatically. “Francis, how—”
I never saw his fist coming. I was abruptly flat on my back, struggling to breathe, knowing I’d lost time but not how much. I tried to say his name again, but nothing came out. I was vaguely conscious of knights dragging him back before he could hit me again, and then Sr. Nordfeld was helping me to my feet and stabilizing me upright.
“You bitch!” Francis screamed at me, struggling against the knights. “You fucking bitch! You killed her! You dragged her to the river and murdered her!”
“He’s crazy,” Fjordland quavered. “Insane! Why is an insane person in here?”
I touched my temple and shook my head slightly, trying to get a hold of myself. I nearly fell as Francis lunged at me again. I had cringed away from him, which I’d never done before. But then, I’ve never been afraid of Francis in a temper before. I’ve always known he would never actually hurt me. Not like he meant it.
Not like this.
Spittle flew from his panting jaws, and his eyes peeled back. “I saw you!” he screamed at me. “I saw you! I saw you shoot her and mutilate her and throw her into the river! I saw her cut off her head with my knife!” he yelled wildly at the prefects. “It wasn’t enough to let her die with dignity—she had to cut her into pieces! Oh Theodora, Theodora!”
I could feel the laser of Sr. Nordfeld’s attention cutting into my cheek, the volcanic heat burning my skin, the mountain’s weight on my heart. I tried to keep my face expressionless as I looked at the prefects, but their eyes bore judgment as they saw my guilt. “‘Theodora,’” I told them, in what was meant to be a level tone, “is the name by which he knows the demon you summoned. I told you she had her claws into him, and now you see it for yourselves. She can make him believe anything she wants.” I extended my palms. “I tried to prevent this.”
It sounded convincing. It was true, which helped. But Sr. Nordfeld knew what Theodora really was, and he had drawn back from me. He understood, and I could not take that understanding from him.
“You liar!” Francis spat. “You’re always lying. And I believed you! I trusted you! I came here to help you! I opened my heart to you and you betrayed me and murdered her!”
“Hardly,” I drawled. “We saw your ex-girlfriend alive, healthy, and psychopathic not twenty minutes ago. You must have seen her alive too, for her to spin you this fantasy.”
“I saw her spirit, you honey-tongued viper! Her ghost!”
I didn’t take his insult as willingness to flyte. That would have indicated forgiveness. And that he didn’t mean every word he said.
“Perhaps I can explain,” Sr. Nordfeld said. The others must have thought him unperturbed despite the violence. Poker face, cipher face.
Fury.
If I threw myself at his feet and begged him to forgive me, to not think badly of me . . . if I explained . . .
But this wasn’t the time for tears. Long past. Ages too late.
That, too, was a sacrifice I had been willing to make in order to rid the world of the proprietress’s evil.
Except that I had failed.
“Theodora Banks,” Sr. Nordfeld said. “Demon, fairy, proprietress, Deals & Bargains, the red-haired woman with silver eyes. She has many names but only one function: to make and fulfill bargains. What many people do not know—one of the things I hinted that you did not know, Prefect Avior, that could hurt you—is that unfulfilled bargains create a form of ownership. If you owe her, she, in a manner of speaking, owns you.”
I blinked and tried to focus on him rather than on the frantically struggling Francis. This logic sounded familiar. Was Sr. Nordfeld getting it from me?
“Although I have never personally witnessed this,” he went on, “it stands to reason that in times of crisis, she would use this ownership to, if you will, pass on her death. When she is killed, someone in her debt dies in her place. She herself can die only when everyone who owes her has either paid off his debt or died.
“Technically speaking, therefore,” he informed Francis, exc
ept that he was really informing me, “if Mercedes did indeed decapitate, shoot, and drown Theodora, she was not killing her—she was killing the poor fools who had unfulfilled bargains with her. My guess is that if the prefects did not summon their demon when they did, Theodora would have eventually run out of replacements and herself died. But she was summoned, and so she did not die.”
Ages too late.
“You’re her boss,” Francis realized bitterly. “Jon. Mercedes said you were terribly clever. I didn’t recognize you from her description. Probably because she didn’t mention you were old and fat.”
“That is the problem with assumptions,” Sr. Nordfeld said equitably, not rising to Francis’s gross exaggeration. “They lead you astray.”
Francis snarled at him, fists clenching but making no attempt to lunge. “Smug, self-satisfied, bureaucratic lump,” he said. “I can’t imagine what my sister sees in you.”
“No,” Sr. Nordfeld agreed, “I suppose you cannot. But I am not bothered by the opinions of a man who takes the word of a beautiful and beguiling stranger over that of his intelligent and perceptive sister.”
“You don’t know anything about it!”
“And yet I know more than you, because I have been in Theodora’s auction house, and I have seen the evils she kept there.”
“She didn’t keep anything there! That building had no basement! I saw for myself. I drove there and looked at the ruin and walked over it and examined the foundation. The auction house did not and could never have had a basement!”
“A woman who can be shot, decapitated, and drowned without dying,” said Sr. Nordfeld, “can surely hide evidence of a basement from a man who sees nothing, hears nothing, and understands nothing.”
“Oh, I get it,” Francis sneered. “You like murder. You like the fact that my sister goes around shooting innocent women. What a wonderful assistant she must be, if she’s willing to do that for you. Well, she’s willing to do everything else for you, so why not? You sicken me.”
“You were already sick,” said Sr. Nordfeld, “with a greater sickness than you know. But I can help you, if will you allow me.”
Francis spat on his shoes.
“Enough of this,” Avior said, shaking off the ennui of fascination. “Knights, take Mr. Cartier away and lock him up. We can deal with him later; in the meantime, we have more important business.”
“Don’t let him hurt himself,” I begged the knights, as they pulled my brother away. “And if a red-haired woman comes by, don’t let her in. Don’t speak to her—and whatever you do, don’t make any deals with her.”
Chapter 32:
Baiting
The last thing I expected, after so much drama, was to go right back to ordinary conference business, but that was exactly what happened. Sr. Nordfeld was given freedom to roam the manor but not to leave, and I suggested that he take the children’s room, since Francis clearly wouldn’t be using it.
“Gina Gulbransen can help you with anything you need,” I told him, “including fresh sheets. You’ll find her in the kitchen, unless Prefect Lindo’s knights are interfering there too.”
“Thank you,” Sr. Nordfeld said. He’d brought up his shields more solidly than ever, and nothing beyond somber professionalism made it into his voice. “I will.”
Once he was gone, we sat back down and went on discussing fishing rights and lumber sales, nice as you like, nothing changed except for the presence of the two wretched figures lurking behind Avior and the way Avior’s nearest neighbors edged away from him—and the way mine edged away from me. We spoke formally, as necessary, with no personal remarks or jokes or confidences. The other prefects called me Edenfield. They had reverted utterly to the mundane—or to whatever shreds of duty they felt toward the conference and their country. Maybe it made them feel better, to pretend.
I saw Sr. Nordfeld again over dinner. He had cleaned up in the intervening time, and although he wore the same charcoal-gray suit and tie, they had been freshly washed and pressed into crispness. He once more looked exactly as I had always known him; and although I strained to see the signs of his incarceration in his face and movements, he had hidden them too well.
By accident or design, Sr. Nordfeld ended up at the opposite end of the dinner table from me, sandwiched between Avior and Tey. From what I caught of their conversation, the prefects were pressing Sr. Nordfeld on information regarding demons—their abilities, classifications, vulnerabilities, and habits. Since Sr. Nordfeld genuinely had become an expert on demonology in order to effect his meeting with Avior, I had no doubt of his ability to answer anything put his way. In any case, he never looked to me for help.
I caught myself watching him and turned my attention back to Prefect Lindo before she noticed it had strayed. She’d grabbed me as we’d exited the conference room and hadn’t let go of me since.
“You said you admired me, but I’m the one who admires you,” she was telling me at the moment, intense over asparagus. “The way you take charge. When my sister . . . I suppose you know about that.”
“I’ve heard stories,” I admitted. “Rumors, really. I don’t know if they’re true.”
“They’re close enough.” Lindo squeezed her eyes shut, fingers strangling her fork. She’d thoroughly mangled the greenery on her plate by this point, and had taken one or two fierce bites, but that was it. I placed my hand on her arm and murmured consoling nothings while she concentrated on breathing. “It’s my fault,” she whispered, voice breaking over the words like water over rock. “I should have stopped her. I should have stopped him.”
Which him? I wondered. The king or the lover?
“I should have taken matters into my own hands, like you did with your brother. I should have taken him out of the equation, made sure he couldn’t interfere—couldn’t hurt her.
“But that’s just me being foolish again, isn’t it? I should know by now that nothing ever goes right for me. That’s my life: as soon as something good comes along, someone is determined to ruin it. The universe hates me, Mercedes.”
“It doesn’t hate you,” I told her. “Look at how much you’ve accomplished.”
Lindo blew air out of her nose. “I shouldn’t have expected you to believe me. No one ever does. Why should they? I’m not like you. I’m not a powerful personality. No one ever listens to me.”
“I’m listening,” I pointed out. “I believe you are worth hearing.”
I kept listening, too. All through dinner. To her constant moaning. I was terribly sympathetic, which I accomplished by dint of banishing from my mind the constant reminders of how she’d imprisoned Sr. Nordfeld, invaded my prefecture, and plotted to assassinate my king. In fact, I concentrated on her so thoroughly that I was almost surprised by Sr. Nordfeld as he brushed past me on his way out—as well as by the micro memory card he pressed into my hand and the packet of used needles he slipped into my pocket.
The sun was setting when I arrived back in my room, which was exactly right. I wasn’t going to wait until the middle of the night to sneak out—not this time. Any knights worth their salt would be more likely to expect someone to sneak out in the full dark of 2 a.m. than the gray uncertainty of 8 p.m.
Not that it was 8 p.m. quite yet; but then, I wasn’t going out quite yet. I turned out my bedroom lights, let my eyes adjust to the darkness, and tweaked my curtain aside.
I would’ve had a better view from the children’s room, situated at the building’s northeast corner, but what I saw of the patrol patterns from here was depressing enough.
Lindo certainly hadn’t stinted at bringing knights and assigning patrols. From my east-facing window, I could see three stationary knights planted along the side of the manor and in the trees beyond the lawn. Then there were regular patrols of pairs of knights. Based on what I’d seen earlier today, I’d say Lindo had brought close to a hundred knights all told, at least half of whom were on duty at any particular time.
I made a face and let the curtain fall back into pl
ace. No chance of driving away; they’d catch me for sure. I’d have to walk to Gjerde to find a vehicle or—on the off chance they weren’t watching the station—the train. Maybe further, if Lindo had posted knights around town. It was so quiet there, any disruption would draw them to me in an instant.
The problem was, Edenfield was so sparsely populated that I wasn’t sure I could make it to the next town—or into an area where my mobile phone would work—before it was too late. So I might have to improvise.
I changed into a forest-green turtleneck sweater and chocolate-brown skirt, transferred everything I really needed to take with me to the bed—IDs, credit cards, cash, phone, pepper spray, and lip balm—and then went to visit the bathroom.
How does a head knight sneak into his prefect’s locked bedroom in the middle of the night? Through a secret passage, of course. It’d have to be on the south wall, against the hill, easily accessible, and preferably out of view of the door. That meant the bathroom. And oh my, wasn’t that an unusually wide full-length mirror. What a stroke of originality!
Statistically, “password” is the most common password in the world, followed by “123456” and variations thereof. “Dragon” is the seventh most popular password. You’d be amazed at the number of supposedly intelligent spies who use “trustno1” as their cipher keys no matter how we try to train them.
People will be people, I guess. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when I ran my fingers around the mirror rim and found a latch that swung the mirror inward.
Beyond the mirror door lay a space of about the same dimensions as the bathroom, paneled on three sides with local beech wood and piled high with emergency supplies. On a small round table, where you couldn’t miss it no matter how you hurried past, waited a prepacked backpack.
I wasn’t in that much of a rush. I took the backpack into my bedroom and sorted through the supplies, then repacked it with what I wanted. In addition to the items from my purse, this meant space blanket, whistle, multi-tool pocketknife, flares, first-aid kit, energy bars, water bottles, more cash, compass, and flashlight.
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