Heritage (The Slendervale Series Book 2)

by Sean Mannette

  Adam nodded, taking the whole of the story in. It was definitely more significant a tale than any he had heard surrounding a painting. Still, there was a splinter in his mind, something that was pulling at his attention.

  “Mr. De La Poer?” Adam asked tentatively. Francis’ gaze swiveled back to Adam, almost as though he was surprised to see him. “Albert Gillman said that the dagger was a part of his history, and Slendervale’s. If the Church had it all this time, how is that true?” Francis nodded, suddenly in the present.

  “Do you know how Slendervale came to be founded?” Adam shook his head. “It’s a long story, and one I certainly cannot do justice this morning. But, while the events in Salem, Massachusetts were coming to a boil, there were some who saw the warning signs. For many it was all that could have saved them. They moved south, taking what goods they could with them, and settled here. For over two centuries, Slendervale was populated almost exclusively by those same families who had fled. War, that’s what moves people. The wars that ensued brought outsiders in, and built the city you see today.

  “It’s all modern now. Phone lines, steel, glass. But it used to be a small, superstitious community. The people who came elected the first town council of Slendervale. Those men and women were, reputedly, of the kind that would have been burned in Salem.” Adam cocked his head, confused. “Witches. It was a witches’ coven which first founded and ruled Slendervale. They had, at some point in the ensuing centuries, endeavored to steal back the dagger. They succeeded, obviously, but never used it.

  “It was present at the first sessions at City Hall, a reminder of what we had built. Still, it wasn’t long before fear set in, and it was eventually removed from the public eye. It has resurfaced every few years, but frequently separates from its owner tragically. That, combined with its checkered history, has led people to say it is cursed.” Francis nodded sagely.

  Adam was motionless for several moments, trying to digest all he had heard. It certainly fit with Alisha’s allegation that the bank had seized it with all of Albert Gillman’s family assets when his father went bankrupt. But the whole thing smacked of the kind of urban legends tour guides might tell to raise ticket sales.

  “Francis, you don’t really believe all that, do you?” Adam questioned, his voice slightly trembling. Francis' eyes met Adam’s with feverish intensity.

  “I think there’s more to every story. The last witch-burning in this country was in 1928, Adam. Barely 63 years ago. I think that the Church was afraid of something. I think the Red Dragon is a powerful symbol of those who were, unknowingly, martyrs for this cause. Men and women who fought the Church’s claim over their minds, souls, and lives.” Francis’ voice grew deep as he challenged Adam.

  “I think you have felt the sting of that lash, Adam. You know the kind of tyranny that exists in the halls of that Church.” He practically spat the final word. “I think you, of all people, might understand why it is that I wish to give the Red Dragon a place of honor.”

  Adam nodded, draining his drink as he got up to leave. Francis rose with him, returning to the large window with his customary grace. Adam was feeling exhausted after their conversation, lightheaded even. He had all but resolved to put it behind him when he felt the itch again; the splinter in his mind. He tried to ignore it as he opened to the door of Francis' office, but he couldn’t.

  “Francis?” Adam had no idea how to blunt the question, and his mind was too exhausted to try. He decided to simply ask. “Are you going to try to use it? The Red Dragon?”

  Francis turned to him, silhouetted against skyscrapers and the cloudless afternoon sky. The royal blue color of the sky this high up matched his suit almost perfectly. He held his head aloft with the same kind of casual grace Adam had come to associate only with him.

  “If there is a man out there who is capable of destroying an organization that has existed for nearly two millennia with a dagger, no matter how magical it supposedly is, I haven’t met him.” Francis spoke with a tone of complete authority and certainty.

  Adam, thinking that it couldn’t be anything other than a joke, gave a ghost of a chuckle before shutting the door behind him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Adam’s room looked the same as it had when he had left that morning. The sheets were in disarray from his panicked exit, but the rest of his belongings were neatly stacked in the corners of the room, as were his wife’s. Detective Caputo hadn’t left any messages, much to Adam’s chagrin. He had hoped, however irrationally, that spending the day working for Francis would somehow yield more information about his wife.

  There had still been no word from her potential kidnappers. If it had been possible for Adam to be more worried, he would have been. Idly, and almost without any conscious thought, he fixed himself a drink from the minibar while he pondered everything that was happening with his wife.

  Caputo was useless in Adam’s mind. He had done nothing to move things forward beyond clearing Adam himself as a suspect, and his current fixation with Francis De La Poer was hopelessly inane. Adam considered all he had learned, both of the Tower and of the residents therein. Varro was not to his liking, that much was certain. But although many of the denizens of the Tower were strange—Bartholomew was downright creepy—none of them had gotten Adam any closer to finding out what had happened.

  Francis had certainly been as helpful as he could, without having more to go on. Adam was at a loss. If there weren’t any leads for him at the Tower, he wasn’t sure there were any to be had at all. There was no one Adam knew of in Susan’s life who had the capacity for bringing such a degree of harm to her.

  Was it possible that Caputo had been right about Francis?

  Was he not to be trusted?

  As Adam pondered, he thought back to the way that he had compared Francis to Gillman. How he had thought that Francis was more composed, more trustworthy, and generally superior. Something else began to simmer at the forefront of Adam’s mind. Gillman had disgusted him, repulsed him, by the sheer fact that a man like that could have dared become the enemy of a man like Francis. The idea was repellent, nauseating.

  But the idea that someone as repellent as Gillman was behind his wife’s disappearance wouldn’t have shocked him. If Susan had made any enemies while she was writing, he might have been among them at some point or other. She had gone after difficult targets before, usually due to local gossip with real fact behind it.

  Allegations of the corruption of city officials, the Heritage Group, and other powerful adversaries would have drawn attention to her. Any one of them could have taken offense, and revenge. He already had Gillman to take a closer look at; the man was immediately suspicious in Adam’s eyes. He was an enemy of Francis’, a possible enemy of Susan, and the only person Adam didn’t currently favor. The latter notion was surprising in his mind, but he worked quickly to oppress it.

  Adam nodded to himself, alone and pacing at the foot of his bed. The sound of his heels brushing against the short hotel room carpet was completely muffled by the raging torrent of thoughts and justifications in his mind. The more he paced, bewitched, the more time passed. As the hours ticked by unheeded, the shadows in his room grew longer and the sun sank low in the heavens. Soon darkness devoured the room and Adam stopped his relentless march.

  Gillman had taken his wife. Adam’s twisted mind was now thoroughly convinced. But there was no way for anything significant to happen until Adam was able to collect the evidence. All he had to do was find it, take Gillman down, receive accolades from Francis, and get his wife back. At this point it seemed the perfect scenario, formerly only a distant dream that Adam had concocted in his head. Now, the business of the mind complete, Adam was suddenly very aware of the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day. He approached the door in the dim natural light that was making its way through his still-open curtains.

  Adam never flicked the light on, never looked behind him. He never saw what secrets lay writhing in venomous ichor behind him. The shadows stayed dark,
silent, and waiting as he closed the door on the darkness behind him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The warm atmosphere of the Tower bar was welcoming. A few patrons, celebrating coworkers from what it looked like, were left over of the business crowd. From their jovial exclamations and considering the relatively early hour, Adam guessed that they had been celebrating since lunch. There were also a fair number of Tower renters in appearance, given that early evening was considered a relatively safe time to emerge. They were the desperate, the lonely, the sorrowful, and the carnivorous who still had enough pride to hide during the day, but appeared as soon as night fell to drown their sorrows or feed their dark cravings.

  It thus proved no surprise to Adam when a familiar figure slid onto the stool next to him at the bar, one of her favorite haunts. Adam was trying to catch the attention of Bartholomew, currently serving his position as creepy bartender rather than creepy doorman. Unfortunately, he was currently engaged in conversation with another patron further down the bar. Adam couldn’t tell if it was a voluntary conversation he was caught up in, and to be offended, or if it was an involuntary one he was struggling to escape. Because of Bartholomew's persistent evasion, he found himself caught in his own involuntary conversation.

  The flick of a lighter sounded from the woman who sat beside him, and the warm and relaxing smell of cigarette smoke soon reached Adam’s nostrils. He allowed himself to savor the smell, even if only for a moment, and suddenly felt something light and crisp placed between his fingers.

  Adam gazed down at the object that had been left in his hand. It was a cylinder of unblemished white that ended a bit of brown paper making a poor attempt at looking like a cork. Lily’s hair twisted into his view. She was craning her neck down toward the bar to catch his eye. There was an identical cigarette between her lips, and Adam paused for a short moment before allowing her to light his. He nodded his gratitude to her while he inhaled the first hit of smoke.

  Immediately a small tingle spread through his body as his mind connected with the smoke. He rotated his body a bit more to his right when he heard the sound of Lily sliding an ashtray down the bar and in between them.

  Adam found himself gazing into her eyes a bit too long, and discomfort stole over him. Hurriedly, he glanced down at the solid, reassuring oak of the bar.

  “Thanks for the cigarette.” He said awkwardly to the bar under him.

  “Looked like you needed one.” Lily muttered fairly audibly around her own cigarette. Adam could feel her presence getting closer. He glanced back toward his left, once again trying to signal Bartholomew to come take his order, or at least stop the conversation there.

  Lily had been his solace the day before, when he had been afraid to ride the elevator alone, but Adam was still put off by her. She reminded him of the sleazy characters from those awful anti-drug ads. There was something else about her, too: she relished it. It was as if her own life was a Greek tragedy unwinding out before her, but she was swept up in the romance of it.

  Adam could sympathize. He suspected this coping mechanism helped numb her far better than the booze and whatever else she used to find solace in her pain.

  “Long day?” She inquired, her tone revealing nothing of her intentions. Adam took a drag as an excuse not to talk while he pondered his answer.

  “Something like that.” He said, with a brief glance in her direction before averting his eyes back to Bartholomew. He could feel her interrogative stare, boring its questions into the back of his skull as if it could somehow divine the answer. He cracked under its pressure. “Long day at work.” Every word felt like it was dragged from his lips almost involuntarily.

  She made a soft hum through her lips, silently urging Adam to continue. When he didn’t, she took the initiative again.

  “Is the air thinner up there, like they all say? Harder to breathe?” Her words held the hint of a laugh, and she punctuated her questions with a drag from her cigarette.

  “What?” Adam asked, now wondering what could possibly be keeping Bartholomew from venturing down to his side of the bar.

  “At the top. Is it so much more,” Lily searched for the word expressly, glancing around like a pantomime. “Responsibility?” She hissed the word. Adam could feel the bite of her sarcasm, now sharp enough to cut through his distracted senses.

  “Nope,” he resolved to challenge her, maybe knock her down a peg or two. “It’s all a shell game of figuring out what you’re supposed to be hiding and what you’re supposed to be revealing.”

  She was taken aback by the comment and had clearly not anticipated anything bordering on controversial. She smiled at him around her cigarette, the smoke twisting around her face merging into her frizzy red hair. She stretched languidly at the bar while pondering her next move.

  “Some people out there come back from long days with scars.” Her eyes flashed darkly.

  Adam could feel something writhing inside him as she provoked him. Innocent enough banter for someone who didn’t know about his personal life. Adam assumed she wasn’t one of those someones.

  “I am still searching for my wife.” Adam reminded Lily with what he had hoped would be a smile, but was likely a grimace. Nonetheless, he succeeded in keeping that ugliness contained within him, at least for the moment.

  Lily was regarding Adam with what he might have considered to be respect. Her head was held backward away from her body as she paused to regard him from afar. The smoke from her cigarette drifted with her motion.

  “Of course. How rude of me to forget. I know you’ll forgive me.” Her words rang with a false air of formality, though her tone brooked no argument that she hoped to continue their game. She tilted her head in acknowledgement, conceding victory to Adam.

  As if it was his prize for winning, Bartholomew finally deigned to make an appearance and took Adam’s order impatiently. Adam was able to distract himself from Lily the entire time, watching the bellhop fix his drink in front of him. A few seconds after placing the drink in front of Adam, he vanished further down the left of the bar.

  Adam took the first sip of his drink, permitting himself a little sigh of relief. It was only after Bartholomew had turned completely away from him that Adam realized he had forgotten to order anything to eat. He raised two fingers slightly aloft with a self-conscious sigh.

  ♖♖♖

  Madam Ubasa hummed lightly to herself as she shifted a column of cards in her solitaire game. The playing cards moved haltingly when she dragged them over the table top. The glossy finish to them had worn away with age, leaving them little more than colored bits of stiff paper. They were obviously old, but like most things in the apartment, the cards were neat and well cared for. Not a single coffee stain marked their sides, nor did any fold or crease reveal their identities. Ubasa caressed the deck lovingly as she turned over the top card, all other eligible moves having been executed.

  A knock sounded at the door. Madam Ubasa placed the deck face-down on the table and got out of her chair. The knock sounded again, impatient this time. Ubasa had barely picked up the pace when the knock started to repeat itself.

  “Hold on! I’m coming.” Her hand, almost as well-worn as the cards, cracked the door steadily. She peered around the hall with squinted eyes. When the hall yielded nothing after the space of a few heartbeats, she went so far to open the door just a little wider, shifting her gaze to the left and right. Just when she was about to turn back into her apartment, a small, polite cough broke the silence below her.

  Madam Ubasa looked down, astonished to see the front desk clerk at her feet. In all her years at the Tower, she could not recall even once having seen the dwarf leave his post. Though he was not the only clerk, she was certain he spent far more time there than should be legal.

  “Misses Ubasa?” The dwarf asked in a bored tone. “May I come in?” He asked, when she didn’t respond.

  “What’s this about?” Ubasa asked, suspicion coloring her voice. She was not accustomed to receiving visitors unan
nounced, and certainly not outside of daylight hours. The dwarf sighed, his eyes drawn down toward his feet.

  “I am here to remind you of your bill.”

  Madam Ubasa started visibly. Had Francis not sent Bartholomew to remind her? Did he think that this would somehow catch her off guard? She started to close the door.

  “Renfield, I have an arrangement as a former CEO of Three Roads. We have a deal, I don’t pay rent.”

  The front desk clerk smiled slightly, his eyes revealing a touch of sadism normally reserved for his coworkers. He withdrew several sheets of folded paper and a pair of eyeglasses. He placed these eyeglasses on his nose, and began unfolding the sheets of paper.

  Ubasa winced. She could have sworn she saw something move in the shadows behind him, but it passed as quickly as it had come. The only sounds that pierced the silence were the rustling of papers and the sound of concentrated breathing.

  “Annualized rent with small, regularly-scheduled increases over the last 32 years totals at,” he paused, whether to read the number, or just for dramatic effect, “$714,674.” The dwarf was silent for a moment. He let the number lie heavy in the air. Ubasa shook her head, neck stiff with outrage.

  “That’s not going to happen. Francis and I have a deal. It’s a contract and it is legally enforceable.”