Consort of Light

by Eva Chase

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rose

  Walking into the Assembly’s holding building wasn’t any more fun than it had been on my previous trip. I rubbed my arms as I stared down the dull gray hall, the faint chemical smell in the air trickling into my lungs. The afternoon had turned overcast, heavy clouds congealing in the sky, but the air conditioning in here was still at full blast.

  I pushed myself onward. Coming here had been my idea, but I didn’t want to spend any more time in this place than I had to. Investigator Ruiz, my sole companion this time, kept pace with me, our shoes tapping against the tiled floor.

  “I have approval to use further truth compulsion, if you think it’s necessary,” she said. “You’re not to cast that sort of magic yourself.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t think it’ll really help us with the sort of information I’m hoping to get today. But if I think one of them is hiding something we can only get that way, I’ll let you know.”

  Starting things off with a truth spell made the conversation automatically twice as antagonistic. Not that I was feeling especially friendly toward the two men I might speak to today, but we’d already gotten the straight-forward facts from them. I wanted impressions, insights, the sorts of things it was easy to weasel around saying under compulsion, if they decided to. By going in with good faith, maybe I’d earn a little in return.

  Or maybe they could just give enough of a damn about the rest of us to want to make sure the demon didn’t raze this city to the ground.

  Ruiz motioned to indicate which door led to Charles Frankford’s holding cell. He and his wife, Helen, had led their faction together for decades, but I had the feeling he was the one more invested. He’d been the one gaining a sort of magic from it. He’d been the one who’d gone to the greatest lengths to stop me from uncovering their conspiracy.

  I doubted there was anyone in the world who had greater experience with demonkind than he did.

  Ruiz unlocked the door. The air in the room inside was a little warmer, but I had to suppress a shiver anyway, stepping inside to face the man who’d orchestrated so many horrors.

  Frankford leaned back against the wall at the sight of me, his expression tensing in defiance even though he was looking a little haggard. The Justice division didn’t believe in torture, but I remembered what it had been like trapped in one of these little rooms for just half a day. The boredom would be eating at him, along with the restriction of movement. He was probably stewing over the possible sanctions he’d face when the current emergency was over and he could be brought to proper trial.

  I wasn’t sure I could hope any guilt had come into that mix, as much as it would have been deserved.

  “Lady Hallowell,” he said, his voice crisp if a little hoarse.

  “Mr. Frankford. I thought we should talk a little more.”

  “About what? I’ve talked to plenty of people since I’ve been brought in here. I’m not sure there’s any thought in my head that hasn’t been overturned and examined.”

  He sounded almost sulky about it. I caught myself on the verge of gritting my teeth. As if it wasn’t justice for him to be here after everything he’d done. But I couldn’t let my temper get the better of me.

  “You know the demon is making its way toward the city,” I said. “It looks as though it’ll reach the outskirts overnight.”

  “Not my doing,” he replied flatly. “I was perfectly content to have them stay on the other side of that portal.”

  “It’s your family who opened that portal in the first place,” I couldn’t help retorting. “You maintained it all this time. The fiends wouldn’t have had the chance if it wasn’t for you.”

  He shrugged. “Did you come to tell me things I already know, girl?”

  The dismissive label annoyed me almost as much as his careless attitude did. I dragged in a breath. “I’m here because you have been involved for so long. You’ve seen more of the demons than anyone else. I’m sure you’ve been forced to share every fact about them you’ve discovered. But there’s got to be more than that—things you couldn’t prove, ideas, suspicions. Anything your instincts told you that you never completely confirmed. We need everything we can get, even if it’s a longshot. Would you please help us stop it before it shatters this city and possibly all of us in it?”

  Any emotion that had been in his eyes before had drained away. “My life is already over. Because of you. I’ve told the Assembly everything I know that could help. I’m not going to speculate wildly so that I can be blamed for further catastrophes.”

  “That’s not—”

  He turned his face away, his body rigid, and I knew I wasn’t getting anything else from him. Maybe there really wasn’t anything else. Ideas so shaky they led us in the wrong direction weren’t going to fix this mess.

  “Mr. Frankford,” Ruiz said. “I’ll just remind you that Lady Hallowell is here by the authority of the Northcotts, and a rejection of her request is a rejection of them.”

  “I’m not rejecting,” he said, sounding only tired now. “I have nothing to offer.”

  The enforcer glanced at me. I shook my head, my mouth tight. We couldn’t have dragged vague suppositions out of him with any magic, even if I’d been sure he had something more than might be useful.

  My legs balked for a second when Ruiz had shut the door behind us. My gaze found the other room on my agenda without any guidance.

  If Frankford had given us something useful, I could have skipped the second visit. But he hadn’t. I didn’t know whether my chances were better with my second option or worse. Maybe a little of both in different ways.

  “Ready?” Ruiz asked, a hint of sympathy in her tone.

  “As much as I’m going to be.”

  She opened the door to my father’s room. He sat up at the swing of its opening, his expression almost hopeful until he caught sight of me. His face—his whole body, really—went still.

  We didn’t have to exchange a single word for me to be able to tell that he knew I was now aware of the full extent of his crimes against me. He had to have realized I’d find out after the interrogators had forced the information out of him.

  For almost twenty-five years of my life, I’d known that face better than any other. Now I could hardly stand to look at it. The idea of calling him “Dad” out loud, as if nothing had changed, made my throat constrict.

  “Mr. Hallowell, Lady Hallowell has requested an interview with you,” Ruiz said, breaking the silence. “She comes with full authority from the Assembly.”

  Dad eyed me warily. “What do you want to ask me about now?” he said, his voice almost creaky. There was a hesitation in it, as if he wasn’t totally sure he wanted me to answer.

  Did he think I’d come in here to hash out my personal complaints? Every time I spoke with him, I was reminded more and more of how little he must really have thought of me.

  “The demon has almost reached the city,” I said. “We need to understand everything about it that we can. You’ve been involved with this faction… for a long time.” At least the entirety of my life, and presumably a fair number of years before. “You’ve had their power in you. You’ve been there for the rituals to use and bind them. If there are any impressions, even vague ones, that you didn’t share with the previous interrogators because you weren’t sure they were important, I want to hear them now.”

  “Impressions,” he repeated dully.

  “About the demons. How they behave. What affects them. What they’re drawn to or repelled by. Even if it was nothing but a hint and you’re only speculating.” I paused and forced out the last word. “Please.”

  His gaze had dropped as I’d spoken, but it jerked back to my face at the plea. For a few seconds I thought he was going to refuse like Frankford had. Then he let out a ragged breath, his eyes going distant.

  “I’m not sure there’s anything I haven’t already talked about,” he said. “I never delved too deeply into the logistics—I never wanted
to. And we couldn’t see much of their behavior through the portal. We only knew as much as we did by how they responded to what we offered them. And we never offered more than the usual, while I was there.”

  “The usual,” I prompted, even though I knew what he meant. The more he talked, the more likely something useful would come out.

  He grimaced. “The creatures seemed to crave something about our essence. We’ve been over that. Taking magic from a witch appeared to sate them for a while, enough that Frankford could control them somewhat…” His forehead furrowed. “I remember thinking it was almost as if they got drunk on it, unable to reason clearly, and that was why he could manipulate them then.”

  Huh. I hadn’t heard any of the faction members describe it like that before, but I couldn’t say the insight helped any. A drunken demon lumbering around the city sounded even worse than a sober one.

  “Drunk could also mean more erratic and harder to control,” I pointed out.

  “Well, maybe. I don’t know what they acted like when they moved away from the portal to do whatever they do in that aberrant realm. Occasionally they drifted into what looked like a bit of a stupor, but that wasn’t consistent enough that I’d stake anything on it.”

  A stupor. The word sent me back a few hours to my hurried ministrations with the recovering witches as they’d panicked—sending a cloud of calm down over them. An idea prickled up from the back of my mind. We’d tried shoving the demon back, and we’d tried subtly maneuvering it into a trap, but we hadn’t attempted to lull it. There wouldn’t have been much point in simply slowing it down temporarily as an effect by itself, but maybe in combination with the other strategies we’d been developing…

  “Does that get you anywhere?” Dad asked with apparent curiosity.

  I wrenched my thoughts back to the present. I had no interest in discussing my uncertain ideas with him.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see. Anything else about them, or their power?”

  His mouth tightened. “I don’t like to think about how it felt, having that energy in me. Like this constant tremor of wrongness I could never completely ignore. But you must know about that at least as well as I ever did.”

  His tone was prodding. My back stiffened. “I don’t think you want to go there with me,” I said.

  He kept looking at me intently. “It can’t have been that bad. You didn’t have any idea until I told them. Enough to light up your spark that much more, but not enough to poison it.”

  “You had no right,” I said. “To do that to me—to do that to my mother… You couldn’t have known what it would do. You brought a monster’s essence to me, let it touch me, before I was even born.”

  My voice was shaking by the last word. I clamped my mouth shut.

  “I did know,” Dad started to say. “I told them—I wanted to stop him, to stop the whole—”

  “Shut. Up,” I bit out. “I don’t want to hear about it. Your explanations have changed so many times, I can’t possibly believe any claim you make. So stop trying to explain. It’s never going to be forgivable, no matter what you say.”

  His expression wavered. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” he said quietly. “I’ve seen it in you already—how important your magic is to you. How much it means to you to wield that power. You’re the witch you are because of what I gave you, Rose. Everything you’re capable of is thanks to that.”

  “I am never going to thank you,” I snapped before he could go on. “Don’t you dare try to tell me who I am.” A quiver ran through my body. I didn’t think we were getting any further here—and I wasn’t sure I trusted my reactions enough to try. “That’s enough.”

  I spun on my heel and stalked out. Ruiz followed, shutting the door. I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to risk seeing that she agreed with him, even a little.

  Even I wasn’t totally sure he was wrong. The power I had, the exhilaration of that magic, the awe I’d been able to inspire in others… I couldn’t say that hadn’t meant anything to me at all.

  “What now?” Ruiz asked.

  “I think the first part of that conversation might have sparked a little inspiration,” I said. “I should talk to the Northcotts and their advisors—and my consorts.” Ky would want to be able to share his perspective based on his research, certainly. I headed toward the main doors. “We’ll need to confirm the status of the cage reconstruction, and—”

  A figure in enforcer clothes burst into the hall, her gaze wild as it search the hall and snagged on us. “Lady Hallowell,” she said. “Investigator Ruiz. Your presence is requested right away. The demon has sped up its approach. At its current pace—it could be at the edge of the city within the hour.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rose

  When we made it to the main Assembly building, it looked as if the entire staff was flooding out under the thickly clouded sky. Enforcers were scrambling into the cars parked along the road, and more vehicles were pouring from the underground parking garage. Ruiz’s hand clamped around my arm as a humid wind whipped through our hair.

  “Come on,” she said. “There’s no time for meetings now. Whatever ideas you have, you’ll have to share them over the phone while we head out to intercept it.”

  A breathless minute later, I found myself crammed in the back seat of a small sedan with two enforcers, another at the wheel and Ruiz beside him. The car’s wheels squealed against the pavement as we swayed around the bend. The growl of the engine sounded nearly as anxious as my thudding heart.

  “Do you know anything else about what’s going on?” I asked the other enforcers. “What’s the demon doing? Has it hurt anyone else?”

  “We just got the report to move out,” the woman next to me said. “From what I heard, it’s been picking up speed for the last several minutes without any signs of slowing down. I didn’t hear any new casualties reported, but if it reaches the fringes…”

  She didn’t need to finish that sentence. My fingers curled around the door handle as if it could provide some comfort. “No one has any idea what changed—why it’s in a hurry now?”

  The enforcer shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard about.”

  “I’ve got Lady Northcott on the line,” Ruiz said. She swiveled in her seat to hold out her phone to me. “Fill her in on whatever your thinking, and if she agrees she can get started on coordinating.”

  “Thanks.” My lungs were tight as I accepted the phone. “Lady Northcott—hello.”

  The head of the Assembly’s measured voice filtered through the speaker. “Lady Hallowell. Please tell me this idea of yours is something we can implement immediately.”

  I choked on a desperate laugh. “Maybe. Let’s see what you think of the plan first.”

  We didn’t witness any sign of panic until we reached the suburbs. A minivan came racing past us on the opposite side of the freeway, the driver weaving erratically from lane to lane to gain every bit of distance she could. One glimpse of her pale face made my stomach sink.

  She’d seen the demon. I had no doubt about that. And recently enough that she was still in flight mode.

  The closer we got to the edge of the city, the more speeding vehicles zoomed past in the opposite direction. Where the streets on either side of the freeway started to give way to wilder land, a blockade had been set up on our side. The hum of magic in the air told me those police officers were only enforcers in costume. They were keeping as many people as possible away from the site of the demon’s impending arrival.

  The officers waved our vehicles through while turning back everyone else. The driver put his foot down on the gas pedal as soon as we were passed in on the less crowded stretch beyond. We flew across the asphalt and skidded around the exit ramp to reach the smaller road where we were going to make our stand.

  If the demon didn’t change directions as well as pace in the next several minutes, that was.

  The terrain looked like as good a spot as any for an ambush on this shor
t notice. We parked at an overgrown field, a sign at the edge announcing that it would be built up into a little townhouse development sometime next year. A familiar truck was already stationed partway into the long grass, where workers were moving around the sprawled bars of the refurbished cage. I spotted Seth’s brawny form and Jin’s leaner one next to him, and my pulse hitched.

  “Fan out!” the sergeant was shouting near the car she’d arrived in. The enforcers were streaming around her to encircle the field. Our supplies hadn’t arrived yet, from the looks of things, but how could I have expected them to? It’d taken a few minutes to walk Lady Northcott through my plan and several more before we’d hashed it out to the point that she’d felt we had something solid—or at least more solid than anything they’d already come up with. The delivery she’d sent would take time to catch up.

  “I’m waiting for the magicking materials,” I told Ruiz. “I’ve got to talk to my consorts first.”

  She gave me an unreadable look and a brisk nod. I realized she’d never really indicated what she thought of my unusual choice of consorts. I supposed she couldn’t be too bothered by it, anyway, or some derision would have slipped into her attitude toward me by now. Not everyone was totally caught up in their prejudices.

  A distant rumbling crept through the clouds overhead. Another gust of wind tossed my hair as I jogged across the field to where Seth was stalking along the perimeter of the trap. Its base was still set on the truck’s flatbed, the flaps dangling around that square.

  Seth raised his head at the sound of my footsteps. His eyes brightened, but the smile his mouth formed was grim.

  “How close is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. The sergeant must have had an idea—she’d be getting reports from the enforcers tracking the thing. From the increasing urgency in her shouts, it clearly wasn’t that far off. “Close, I think.”