The Book of Betrayal

by Melissa McShane

  Malcolm’s arm tightened on me. “I’m grateful to be alive. I should be dead. Those surgeons worked a miracle.”

  “I wish I could thank them.”

  “I know.”

  He fell silent for a moment. I lay still, breathing him in as I’d done so many nights before. “How many died?” he finally said. “Tinsley wouldn’t say.”

  “Seventy-six. Over a hundred more had attacks, but mild ones.”

  “So strange. All those aegises failing all at once. I’ve never known an electromagical pulse to have that kind of effect. It’s frightening, to think it might happen again without warning.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was struggling with myself. I’d thought about this all the way to the hospital, what I was going to say, and I still hadn’t come to a decision. Lucia hadn’t said I could tell Malcolm the truth, but she’d acknowledged he wasn’t a traitor and she hadn’t said I couldn’t tell him. I just wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to give him something else to fret about while he was trapped here. And maybe telling him was just selfishness on my part, wanting someone I could share the burden with.

  On the other hand…Malcolm was smart, and ruthless, and if anyone was equipped to fight an enemy within the Wardens, he was. “It wasn’t an electromagical pulse,” I said. “Or, maybe it was, but it didn’t occur naturally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a deep breath. “Remember Christmas? The Conference of Neutralities?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, Christmas Eve day, I had a visitor…”

  I told him everything. About how an intelligent invader had entered the store in human guise, wanting me to work for him. About the secret group within the Wardens that was allied with the invaders. The marker that distinguished the enemy—sort of. Lucia’s work to ferret out friend from foe. “She’s convinced the event that struck down the steel magi was an attack by the shadow cabal—that’s what Ms. Stirlaugson calls them. Whatever it was, it was the most complex magic anyone’s ever worked. I’m sure Lucia is trying to find a way to defend against it, if they try again.”

  Malcolm was silent, his fingers stroking my arm idly. “Ewan wasn’t affected,” he said.

  “No. Neither was Ryan Parish.”

  “There’ll be hell to pay if either of them is a traitor. And I’m stuck to this damned bed, unable to do anything about it.”

  “Malcolm, please don’t get worked up over this. I don’t want to regret telling you.”

  “You did the right thing. This is something I need to know.”

  “Yes, but you’re going to be in the hospital for at least another week, and I don’t want you chafing at your limitations. Isn’t there some more…intellectual way you can fight this battle?”

  He laughed quietly. “Tinsley’s been telling tales.”

  “He says you’re a crappy patient. They sent me in here to calm you down. Possibly as a sacrificial lamb.”

  He laughed a little more loudly, then coughed, grimacing with pain. “Don’t worry,” he said, when I moved away from him in alarm, and tightened his grip around me. “My sternum is broken, and Tinsley can’t heal it without causing notice. It hurts like hell when I cough, but otherwise it’s just a constant sharp ache.”

  “I can’t wait for you to be out of here so you can be restored to normal.”

  “Neither can I.” He sighed, his warm breath brushing my forehead. “All right. I can be patient. But I need Lucia to clear the rest of my team. This marker, it only shows up in magi?”

  “No, in everyone. Lucia says I have it, but I’ve already proved where my loyalties lie.”

  “Get her to clear the others. Then I can start cleaning house at Campbell Security. And if she can prove Ewan isn’t a traitor…let’s hope she can. If he is, tell her I’ll deal with him myself.”

  He sounded grim, his voice flat and expressionless, and I shivered. “Cold?” Malcolm said.

  “No. I love being next to you. I love you.”

  Malcolm kissed my forehead. “I love you. I wish I could declare my love openly. Though it would open you up to some unpleasant influences, namely, my mother.”

  “She can’t be that bad.”

  “She’s passive-aggressive and wants to run my life. Also, she thinks Andria would be the perfect daughter-in-law. You, a nobody from nowhere as far as Warden aristocracy goes—”

  “There’s an aristocracy? Malcolm, are you a prince? Tell me you’re a prince. Though I’m not sure what that would make me. Cinderella, maybe. I’ve never liked that story.”

  Malcolm chuckled. “It’s not that kind of aristocracy. It would be more accurate to say that certain families have lineages that reach all the way back to the founding days of magery. The Campbells have been steel magi for generations, and my mother is excessively proud of that fact, despite not being a Campbell by birth. Andria’s family—Andria isn’t a magus, mind—have been wood and bone magi nearly as long as the Campbells. That makes her a suitable match for a Campbell, i.e., me.”

  That irritated me, the idea that anyone might consider Malcolm a pawn in some genetic breeding game. “Why doesn’t your mother marry her off to Ewan, if she’s so hot on the idea?”

  “She has someone else picked out for Ewan. He’s dutifully courting the woman. I have no idea how he really feels about her, though he might actually be in love. But Mother likes her, so Ewan tells himself he likes her too. She—Mother—has been behaving as if they’re already married. Poor Cathy is so awestruck she lets Mother boss her around even though you’d think, owning her own business, she’d be immune to that kind of behavior.”

  “I take it back. She sounds every bit as bad as you implied. How did you turn out so well?”

  “My father.”

  His voice was even quieter than it had been, and I felt uncomfortable. “I know you don’t like to talk about him—”

  He shook his head. “Some of my memories are painful. Mostly I just miss him, as much today as I did the day he died. It was a horrible debacle—he was hunting an invader, and his team ran into a Nicollien team on the same trail. The Nicolliens had two familiars and gave them conflicting instructions that put one of my father’s teammates directly in the path of the invader. My father stepped up to intervene, and the thing got in a lucky blow to his throat. It killed him almost instantly. The Nicolliens never admitted to any culpability in that disaster. I hated them for so long, them and their familiars.”

  “You seem mostly even-handed in your treatment of them now.”

  “I realized I shouldn’t hold the entire faction to blame for the actions of a few people. But Brittany Spinelli—” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We dueled, unsatisfactorily, and even now if I came upon her wounded unto death, I’m not sure I’d reach out a hand to save her.”

  “I understand that.”

  He shot me a keen-eyed glance. “Do you? I would think you’d disapprove.”

  I took a moment to think before responding. “I believe hatred hurts you even if the other person deserves it. But I’m not going to tell you how you should feel. I only want you to find peace, however you do it.”

  “You are remarkably wise. I love you, Helena. You see to the heart of things so clearly.”

  “Only for other people. In my own life, I sort of muddle along.”

  We lay together in silence for a while longer, until the locket lying next to my heart turned chilly. I kissed Malcolm, which was a mistake because one kiss turned into a dozen warm, passionate kisses, and every kiss felt like saying goodbye. Finally, I extricated myself from his embrace. “I’ll try to come again,” I said, unable to look away from his dark eyes.

  “I hope you can,” he said. “But I would rather you stayed free from detection. I’ll be well soon enough, and then….”

  I touched his cheek. “Good night. I love you.”

  “I love you, Helena. Be safe.”

  There were more nurses in the hall, and it took time to find a break in the
ir pattern I could slip through. The locket was burning cold by the time I left the stairwell to hurry down the hall to the front lobby. This time, someone sat at the reception desk, though I couldn’t imagine why anyone would need to at nearly midnight. Whoever it was had their head down over a tablet, but I was sure if I became visible, they’d notice.

  I headed for the sliding doors and came up short when they wouldn’t open. I couldn’t see the sensor that would register my presence, so I ran back and forth in front of the door, hopping and waving like a lunatic. Still nothing. I tried pressing my hand flat against the glass, tried backing up and walking at the door slowly. No response. The locket was painfully cold against my skin. I rubbed it and felt a jolt run through me. My time was almost up.

  I leaned with my head pressed against the glass. I was mostly out of sight of the reception desk; maybe I could run through when I became visible. Besides, what was the harm, really, if I were seen? My eyes focused on a bar that ran the length of the door at about waist height. FOR EMERGENCY USE, it read in black letters against a yellow background. Well, if this wasn’t an emergency, I wasn’t sure what one was. I put my hands against the bar and pushed.

  Groaning, the door inched open, and I squeezed through the crack. I didn’t stop to look behind me to see if the person noticed—I took a few quick steps and pushed on the second door, which eased open even more slowly. Free of the door, I ran for my car. Behind me, I heard the door shut, but no cries of alarm or warning. The cold feeling vanished just as I had my hand on my car door handle. I breathed out relief and threw myself into the Civic’s front seat. Nobody had followed me.

  My heart beating rapidly, I started the car and headed for home. I felt better than I had all week. I hated having to leave Malcolm, but things were what they were, and there was no sense pining over what I couldn’t have. And maybe my visit had done him some good. If he could put his mind to solving the problem of identifying our traitor Wardens, it might keep him from fretting at his physical limitations. I hope Lucia doesn’t kill me for telling him. But I had a feeling she’d be happy to have one more ally, particularly this one.

  7

  Rain fell steadily the next two days, a dull, chilly rain that seeped into everything I owned. The store stayed dry and warm thanks to its semi-magical climate control system, but that system didn’t extend to the second floor. Saturday morning I stood at my upstairs window and watched the cars creep past and shivered. It was one of those days where it was hard to imagine ever being warm again.

  A flicker of light across the street caught my eye, but when I looked for it, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There were a couple of stores opposite me, two of them, like Abernathy’s, with second stories used for storage or extra floor space. I didn’t think anyone else in our neighborhood lived above their store.

  There it was again—a gray flicker, like a piece of glass catching what little sunlight there was. It had come from a second story window two stores down from mine, a cute little consignment store owned by a couple of women I knew by sight but not name. I leaned on my windowsill, thought better of it when my arms came away damp, and pressed my face to the glass. The window in question was dark, and I couldn’t see anyone there, but—there it was again. A lens, like a telescope or a camera, changing its angle and flashing light back into the street. Someone was taking pictures of my street.

  I wasn’t sure why that made me uneasy. There were lots of reasons someone might want pictures of the stores along this street. They were picturesque, for one, and then there were the people, who tended to be trendy and interesting-looking. But how good a picture could you get from behind window glass? It was odd, and I didn’t like odd things. They rarely led to anything good.

  I busied myself with cleaning until the store opened. Judy had arrived at 9:25 and grabbed the deposit bag for a quick run to the bank, with its shorter Saturday hours, and I swept the floor and dusted the cash register, my mind on Malcolm. When could I see him again? I didn’t want to wait until he was out of the hospital; that could take up to another week, and then there was however long it would take Derrick to heal him fully. Maybe I could buy another of those butterfly illusions at the Beaverton market, where magi sold and traded their wares—sometimes even illegally, though Lucia’s enforcers cracked down on that when they found out about it.

  The door slammed open, startling me. “I’ll be in the office,” Judy snarled. “I have to make a call.” She stomped away, furiously unbuttoning her coat and snatching off her tam, disordering her short black hair.

  “What’s wrong?” I ran after her.

  “Those detectives are what’s wrong. Father?” She threw herself into the office chair, her phone held to her ear. “I need you to do something about Acosta and Green. No, the detectives. They had the nerve to accost me on the street and—no, it’s not like that, I’m not hurt, I’m just furious.”

  “Judy!”

  She held up a hand for my silence. “They think you’re some kind of Mob boss and I’m a courier, taking the store’s profits to the bank for money laundering. They offered me a deal—well, it’s not like there’s anything to tell them. I just want them off my back. I know they’ve harassed Helena as well. And I’m tired of waiting for the Board to handle it.”

  I sat on the edge of the desk and crossed my arms over my chest. I felt as angry as Judy clearly was. Harassment was exactly what it was. Acosta, not able to prove his case any other way, was going after Judy and me. What would he do next—follow our customers, try to get them to confess to nonexistent crimes?

  Judy sat silently listening to Rasmussen, whose voice I could hear as an indistinct murmur. Finally, she said, “We’ll do that. Thank you,” and hung up. She leaned back in the chair, which tilted alarmingly. “There. Let’s see what happens when Father gets through with them.”

  “What will he do?”

  “I don’t know, but he has influence everywhere. I hope he gets them pulled off the case, or disbarred—no, that’s lawyers. Anyway, he can cause serious trouble for them.”

  “Did Acosta and Green really stop you on the street?”

  “Green did. At the corner where I was coming around from the parking lot. I’m sure his partner was lurking somewhere nearby. He knew I’d been to the bank and had all sorts of questions about our business—why we went to the bank so often, how did a bookstore do so much business in cash, that sort of thing. It would have been frightening if I hadn’t been so angry, because he knew a lot about our revenue stream and far too much about me. I told him to get out of my face and came straight here.”

  I thought of the lens flash, and anger swelled inside me. I ran back to the front of the store and opened the front door, looking down the street at the consignment store. It wasn’t open yet, and I didn’t see anything incriminating, like Acosta or Green going through its door. The window where I’d seen the flash of light was dark. Even so, I felt certain we were being watched.

  I shut the door, but left it unlocked, and turned the sign to OPEN. “I hope Mr. Rasmussen punches them in their smug faces,” I said. “Metaphorically.”

  “He’s got men and women who’d do it literally if necessary,” Judy said. “But it’s almost more satisfying to picture them called up in front of their captain and yelled at for persecuting innocent young women.”

  “That’s an image that will keep me warm tonight. I almost want to tell Acosta the truth just to see his eyes bug out of his head.”

  Judy laughed. “Lucia would kill us both. It might be worth it.”

  The rain finally stopped around two, just when the Ambrosites were lining up outside, and watery sunlight filtered through the remaining clouds. I kept an eye on that upper window, and occasionally saw a flash of light, but neither Acosta nor Green appeared. I wondered what they’d told the women who owned the shop—that they were staking out a Mob front, probably. I thought about going over there just to yank Acosta’s chain, but I wasn’t sure if that constituted interfering in an ong
oing police investigation, and I didn’t want to give the detectives actual cause to arrest me. So I watched, and fumed.

  Derrick called just after closing. “I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said. “Whatever you did, it worked. He hasn’t bitched nearly so much about being trapped as he did earlier this week. Thanks.”

  “Can I see him again? Or is that too dangerous?”

  “It’s not really dangerous if you go after hours, except for the issue of getting past the doors. Just expensive. The illusion costs about a thousand dollars.”

  I gasped. “Derrick, how could you let me use your money like that!”

  “It was Campbell’s money, and I’m fairly certain he’d have spent ten times that without complaint. I was also thinking of the time cost. By the time Quincy gets another one ready, he might be out of the hospital.”

  “What about if I went to Beaverton?”

  “You could do that, sure. Probably won’t find one that lasts as long as Quincy’s, but you could get an hour’s worth of invisibility. And tomorrow’s not a bad day to go. His family doesn’t spend as much time at the hospital on Sundays. Madeleine’s a churchgoer.”

  “How late is the market open?”

  “Until ten. Look, just be careful, all right? Take Judy with you or something.”

  Wary, I said, “I didn’t think the market was dangerous.”

  “The market isn’t, but some of the sellers are shady, and they get nervous if they think someone’s poking around in their business. Weird, since people have to poke around for them to sell their stuff, but there it is. Anyway, just don’t go alone. Judy will know what parts to stay away from.”

  “Thanks, Derrick.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m acting from purely selfish motives.”

  I put my phone away. “Judy!”

  “I’m right here,” Judy said, emerging from the break room. “What?”

  “Want to go to Beaverton with me?”

  “To the market? Why?” Her eyebrows went up.