by Terah Edun
He gave her a sad look. He knew exactly what she meant without her having to elaborate on it. Once they healed her siblings that was only the start of their work. They still had to track down the source of the darkness spiraling around her family and they both knew it.
Trying not to let the ideas for the future depress her, Mae asked “Can we at least get something done? I need Donna Marie to get her butt back in here and uphold her part of the bargain. I’m certainly ready to uphold mine.”
“Good,” Rivan said while flashing his teeth in something that resembled but wasn’t quite a smile. “Because she wouldn’t let you back out now even if you wanted to.”
Mae groaned. “Just go get her, will you?”
He raised a sardonic eyebrow, “Are you asking me to leave?”
“No, no,” she hastily said. “Well, yes. But for a purpose. Let’s get this done okay. We need Donna Marie and preferably away from her new best friend, my stepmother, and we need the incantation which I will get.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Fine,” Rivan said. “It’s a favor. But you owe me.”
She put her hands on her hips in mild affront and replied, “It’s a walk outside. You can’t do that for free?”
“That’s something you’ll need to learn about all foreigners,” he said with a chuckle. “There’s no such thing as free.”
20
After Rivan left Mae took a deep breath.
She knew what she had to do. Retrieve the incantation.
It had been ripped out of the grimoire when Richard was captured. He no longer had it and she didn’t blame him for that, she was just glad he’d survived. Mae was just hoping he had seen where her great-aunt had put it when she’d stolen it before they’d burned the grimoire.
Mae knew her stepmother had said Richard was on his way but she already waited far too long. He was proving nowhere to be found. Electing to put herself to the task and get something done she headed out in the hallway on a mission.
Filled with a sense of purpose Mae rapidly trotted to her destination. She wanted to get to the office of the Council of Elders before it got too late and the halls filled with her relatives. Even so she still had to duck around corners and outright ignore some people calling her name as if she didn’t hear them.
She knew if she stopped, she would get tangled up in everyday concerns and problems that didn’t matter. There was also the small problem of her appearance that would attract far too much undue attention when viewed closed up.
One call did stop her though.
As she was heading up the side staircase to the correct wing which held the household and staffing offices, most of which were unused since it had been a long time since they were a true great house, she heard her name.
Her heart stopped as she couldn’t believe it.
Her stepmother had said he was well and coming, but to hear her name stretched between his lips brought those tense moments when she’d watched him held down between dark masked figures all the more real.
Mae turned mid-step up the side staircase and looked down to see the person she’d been hoping and praying was alright staring back up at her with an equally relieved smile on his face.
She gave a happy gasp of relief and rushed down the staircase, using the height of the last three steps to take a flying leap into Richard’s arms.
He obviously wasn’t expecting her movement because he took a few steps back to regain his balance even as he was at least a foot taller than her and outweighed her by several pounds.
Mae didn’t care though.
Folded in his arms for a brief moment, Mae was reminded that as bad as her family had become, they hadn’t stooped down to outright murder just yet. And that was a relief. If she had been told a year ago that she would just be happy that her family weren’t killers, well she would have been aghast. Of course there was still the matter of the life forces being stolen from her younger siblings who were still very much alive but for now she would take her victories where she could find them.
As he set her down with a grunt Richard wrinkled his nose, “You’re a sight for sore eyes, but why do you stink?”
Laughing out in joy as she ignored his insult Mae said, “You’re one to talk! How did you get away?”
“Me,” he said in mock surprise. “I heard you were forced out with someone else…”
“Wait, wait!” Mae cried out while leaning away from him. “Who told you that?”
She and Ember hadn’t told anyone they were witnesses to the secret meeting.
“This morning when you came in with the outsiders,” he replied with a brow wrinkled in confusion. “It was all over the breakfast table talks that you got roped into leading them on a tour.”
“Oh right,” Mae said as she waved a hand in dismissal.
Just before she was going to change the subject, she noticed they were starting to attract attention standing at the base of the stairs hugging like they’d been separated for years instead of a day at most.
“Why don’t we go somewhere and talk?” Richard said in a lower guarded tone.
Mae nodded and put a finger to her lips.
“Outside?” she asked.
He agreed and they took the side door to the small outdoor paths that served as a walking garden for the Council members although it was open for the whole family to use. It was a simple bare affair with pruned rose bushes along the sides when in season and nothing else when not. At the moment they had it to themselves as they walked the path surrounding the outer curve of the tower.
“So?” Mae looked over with Richard with a raised eyebrow. “You first. How’d you get out of that crazy situation?”
“Well, they had me,” Richard admitted with a stony look in his expression that she didn’t recognize on his usually sweet-natured face. “I don’t remember much after someone knocked me out but I do remember seeing people who should never be in the same room together. And the room felt…wrong.”
Mae felt a tiny bit disappointed that he couldn’t recall everything but she had to still be thankful to the gods that he was alright.
“They probably had one of the mages wipe your memory,” Mae pointed out trying to make him feel better.
“One of them,” he agreed with an unhappy grunt.
“Can you believe they had males with tattoos of the family on their skin?” Mae demanded.
“Don’t remind me,” he murmured with a horrified grimace.
“I wonder what they plan to use them for?” Mae asked as if they were discussing a regular occurrence. It was either be calm about it or fly into a panic. The latter wouldn’t help anyone.
“I don’t know,” he said grimly. “What I’m even more concerned about…I’m sorry Mae but they took the grimoire from me.”
“I heard,” Mae said. “Unfortunately they destroyed it.”
“Oh no!” Richard said with what sounded like sincere regret.
“But they took out a page,” Mae eagerly said. “The one we were working on. I don’t know how they knew, maybe some residual magical use that directed them to it, but they saved it.”
Ever one to get straight to the point, Richard asked, “So where is it?”
Mae thinned her lips into a displeased frown, “Great-Aunt took it. That’s why I’m here.”
Richard raised a brow in question as he looked down at her.
She smiled and pointed a finger over in the corner.
He turned and a side courtyard was revealed. It was small and circular with gray stone layered in pleasing unity across the ground to make a gravel base. A few small statues of formerly prominent family members atop stone bases and a bench for lazy individuals completed the look.
It was the private garden for the members of the Council of Elders.
“Oh,” Richard said in a tone that sounded both wary and displeased. “I don’t know about this Mae.”
As usual he could see where she was going and anticipate her thought processes sometimes even be
fore she could. That was the problem with living day-in and out with the same people. But also the benefits of growing up with family.
“We have to get that page back!” Mae argued. “It’s the key to everything.”
“We,” he squeaked weakly for such a big and tall person.
“We,” Mae said with an eager grin as she slapped him on the back. “Welcome to the team.”
Richard rolled his shoulders in disagreement but to her surprise he didn’t argue with her. He just gestured her forward, letting her take the way.
Probably because he knows I’m going to do it whether he helps or not, she thought in private amusement.
It was a short walk into the Council’s private courtyard and then all they had to do was sneak up the back staircase to their private second-floor balcony. Like furtive thieves Richard and Mae accomplished this by lurking away from the windows and staying near the edge of the balcony until they got to the furthest edge. On her way over Mae had taken a peek in through the wavy glass panes of the exterior doorway.
What she had seen had made her stomach drop.
The first floor was filled with people walking about.
Turning to look over her shoulder to confer with Richard she saw that he was hunched over in a crouch like she was.
“There’s too many people,” Mae hissed him.
“Maybe we should come back?” Richard asked dispassionately.
“No, it has to be now,” Mae said. “They can’t wait anymore.”
There was no need to expand on she meant, her siblings were always first in her mind.
Richard bit his lip as he thought about it and Mae glanced up into the sky on a lark as she hoped it wouldn’t rain.
It was then that her eyes alit on the perfect solution which was highly ironic because after all that effort she was back to her original plan. Granted that had worked but there was a big difference between sneaking into her grandmother’s private sanctum when no one was there and trying to break in through the ledge of the Council’s office in broad daylight.
“Mae, we need to move sometime today,” Richard whispered urgently.
“No we don’t,” she quickly said. “The window’s open and I don’t see anyone near it!”
“You don’t know the room is empty though,” Richard worried.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Mae agreed.
“That isn’t what I meant,” Richard hissed with alarm.
Mae shrugged. “I’m going.”
“I hate to rain on your parade but we can’t make it up there.”
“You can’t,” she said smugly. “Give me a boost.”
She quickly moved out of his way and motioned for him to move forward urgently. Reluctantly Richard did as she asked and positioned himself facing the wall. His head was just close enough to the second-story window that she could reach it with a hop.
After climbing him like a tree, Mae put her feet on his shoulders and jumped.
There was the sound of a light curse and she miscalculated her reach and nearly fell.
Landing back on his shoulder after grasping onto his head was not how Mae imagined this going but it saved her from falling against the hard balcony and breaking her back.
“Mae,” warned Richard who was undoubtably uncomfortable. One of her hands had yanked his head back by the hair so hard that he had jerked back and the other hand had lodged briefly in his eye in her scramble. At least Mae thought it was his eye. It had been high enough and squished enough.
“One more try,” she pleaded.
“One more,” he agreed warily.
This time she made it.
Or rather she managed to grip the window with both hands firmly enough that she scaled the outside of the wall with some undignified kicking. It was a good thing that the room she was breaking into was empty when she landed inside because it was quite the undignified scramble and she landed face first on a couch.
Quickly standing up and sorting her limbs to rights she realized she was in the head counsellor’s office. That was just what she needed. Mae knew her great-aunt and grandmother shared quarters and offices, so if her great-aunt had hidden anything it would be right here.
Swallowing heavily she began her search.
After that is, she poked her head back out the window and waved to Richard to signal she was okay.
“Ten minutes!” she whispered down at him urgently.
“Five,” he snapped back as he looked around nervously.
“Seven,” she bargained as she took a look back at the interior room and saw so many stacked shelves of tomes that she knew could be where a single sheet of paper was hidden. This wasn’t even her grandmother’s main collection. That was reserved for her private sanctum. This just served for her daily needs for texts and reference tomes.
“Just find it!” Richard hissed back up at her as he backed off and climbed over the edge of the balcony to hide in the garden below.
Mae grimaced and turned back. She had quite a task on hand and she didn’t even know how she was going to keep track of time in this mess!
Determined to make it work, she got to work.
21
Mae didn’t waste any time. She immediately started with the stack of tomes closest to the desk and then proceeded around the room as quickly as she could. She focused on picking up the tomes that were loosely stacked or looked like they had been recently disturbed. She was searching for a single page that would fall out of the front or was used as a bookmark of sorts.
When none of those proved accurate guesses she looked up and tried to eye where to go next. Mae knew that the shelving spaces on the walls was reserved for the most expensive tomes so she figured her great-aunt wouldn’t bother them. They were too fragile to be moved, let alone have things stored in them on a lark.
Her great-aunt was on the dark side now but she wasn’t crazy.
She would recognize the worth of something like that and leave it alone. Or at least Mae would anyway.
So it took her maybe three minutes to look through the likely candidates of tomes and graduate to the desk in the corner of the room. A nice stream of sunlight lit its dark wood surface giving her the perfect lighting to search by.
Mae made quick work of the surface of the desk, even looking under the paper weights and in the daily messages to see if the incantation page had been hidden in plain sight but no luck.
Going behind the desk she saw four drawers, all of which she searched thoroughly.
Disappointed and ready to give up just as she got up from the desk, she felt a knot under the top of the desk. Feeling it with her fingers she thought it was weird that a woodcarver hadn’t stripped this bit of incongruity away as the rest of the underside wood was smooth.
With a bit of hope in her heart, Mae pressed up on the knot until it pushed inward into a depression. The next moment a pop sounded and what Mae had thought was the underside of the desk dropped down to reveal a hidden compartment perfect for letters.
At the very top was the page she was looking for.
With a smile Mae grabbed, it folded into a secure square and then she put the paper close to her heart underneath her breast band.
Darting to the window, she whistled high out for Richard, and without waiting scrambled over the window ledge. She had planned to lean out and look for him but just as she started to do that the sound of the heavy wooden door on the opposite side of the office began to make creaking sounds.
It’s opening! Mae thought frantically.
She didn’t bother looking behind her, she just hoped the drop wasn’t as high as she remembered, let go, and fell.
Luckily for Mae something soft broke her fall.
“You couldn’t wait until I got into position?” Richard wheezed out from under her.
“Someone was coming,” Mae pointed out stressed. “Hurry, let’s go before they decide to enjoy the breeze from that open window.”
She got up and scrambled away, leaving Richard to follo
w her or be left behind.
“You didn’t disturb anything did you?” he asked as they hightailed it back through the gardens and into the house.
“They’ll never know I was there,” Mae promised while privately hoping that was true.
Someone would know a piece of paper was taken but just like the day her great-aunt had unwanted guests in her séance she couldn’t put out a hue and cry to look for the perpetrators without pointing the finger at her group first.
So Mae was safe…for now.
Taking a deep breath as they made their way back into the main house, she heard Richard hiss out from behind her. She wondered for a moment why he didn’t speak in a normal voice before she saw the gaggle of girls coming her way. With a grimace she ducked into a somewhat dark alcove with her cousin and waited for these other family members to pass them by.
“After all that I hope you got the page,” Richard whispered in the shadows.
“I got it,” Mae assured him. “Now we just need to get back to the sickroom and we can begin.”
He didn’t say anything after that but he did follow her out of the shadows and through the main hallways without protest which was the best level of support she could ask for at the moment.
They were three doors down from the sickroom when Richard stopped her and pulled her back again.
What now, another group of gossipers? Mae griped as she ducked into an empty storage room at his bequest, trusting without verifying first.
As they hid in the complete darkness, Richard stood by the door and peeked out to ensure they were in the clear.
“Did you see someone bad?” Mae wondered from behind him.
Richard grunted. “I thought I saw some guards looking around for someone, could have been us, could have been a normal report to a superior.”
Unease settled in Mae. The former didn’t sound appealing at all.
The guards were family, practically everyone who worked a role in the Darnes greater holding was after all, but that just meant she’d recognize the face when they arrested her. Family meant business not that they’d pass her by with a warning because they shared a bloodline.