Web of Lies (The Hundred Halls Book 2)

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  He watched her stumble to the crater and check Pythia's pulse. The soft shake of her head told him what he needed to know. She was dead. Zayn tried not to let that bother him. He was supposed to be detached from his feelings. Five years in the hall should have erased that from him, but the tugging went deep.

  Zayn was only partially surprised by the sadness displayed in Priyanka's hunched shoulders. His patron had shown him kindness when no one else had. It was just a shame she'd chosen to side with the Cabal.

  When Priyanka looked in his direction, he barely got himself hidden again. He didn't think she'd seen him, but it was close. Even after nearly getting blown up, Priyanka had the senses of a demon cat. It didn't help that he was linked to her. Only his other link confused things and allowed him to oppose her without her knowledge.

  Inside the house, a battle of elements raged. Aurie was battling Frank Orpheum. Zayn wasn't surprised that she was holding her own against him. The dramatics patron wasn't used to head-to-head battles, preferring subterfuge as his main weapon, which was why he'd teamed up with Priyanka to find the wish spell. But Aurie was the strongest mage he'd ever met.

  Around the time his patron went to the back door, the battle ended, and a minute later, the big blond girl on rollerblades went through the third-floor window.

  Zayn moved through the houses, which wasn't hard since the wakers had flooded into the street. Orpheum had kept the whole population of the district subdued with his hypnotism trick. Zayn climbed onto the second-story roof, making it up the vertical incline as easily as walking across a room. Hannah was alive, but unconscious. He lifted her and carried her into a nearby building, hiding her in an abandoned house.

  If he could get inside, maybe he could get Aurie out too. He shouldn't be so stupid as to risk it, but he'd been the one to get them into this mess.

  Through the downstairs window, Zayn spied Priyanka and Orpheum talking. They had the kid Echo. It was strange to think that Invictus had put the wish spell inside that kid. Messed him up pretty good to have that much magic swirling around inside of him. Zayn didn't have the starry-eyed ideals about Invictus that other people did. The head patron had done some pretty shady stuff, and dooming this poor soul into carrying his pet spell was as shitty as it got. Almost like making him a slave to the magic.

  He wasn't sure how they were going to get the spell out of poor Echo, but that wasn't Zayn's concern at this point. Aurie was still inside the house. If he could get her out, then maybe he could salvage something.

  Climbing the wall was trivial after a bit of shape shifting. Not even Priyanka could detect him if he focused.

  Back in his human form, Zayn nearly broke when he found her.

  Slumped against a wall, Aurelia Silverthorne stared into vacant space, the awful lines of betrayal on her face. He knew it as soon as he saw that open-mouthed gape.

  Blood had pooled around her. Zayn almost couldn't believe it. He'd seen death before. Known it from his very hand. But this was someone he'd cared about, maybe even loved.

  It'd never been his intention to fall for her. He'd only gotten them involved to spite Priyanka. He'd hoped they would figure out what the Cabal was after and inform the Arcanium patron, not get involved themselves. But he hadn't counted on her ambitions.

  The night on the Spire came back to him. Lying with her as the storm tickled their skin with electricity, moving together, cries of passion on their lips. Now, dead. What have I done? That moment had been the happiest he'd ever been in his short life.

  He wanted to march downstairs and confront her. Do you know who you murdered? he'd say. Aurie was kind, curious, brilliant. She was fierce, protective of her friends, understanding of her enemies. She was the best of us. And you killed her.

  But he knew he wouldn't because in a way, he'd killed her too.

  Zayn wiped the tears from his face, stared at them like traitors. He hadn't cried for real in years. Is this what I've become? I'm no better than Priyanka with all her deceptions. If I hadn't mentioned the book, or fixed the sorting contest to get both Aurie and Pi into the group, then this would have never happened.

  He closed her eyes with his fingertips, lifted her mouth shut. She was so soft. As beautiful as a sleeping angel. He crept back to the window. They were all dead, or would soon be. Even Hannah wouldn't escape once they'd pried the wish out of Echo. Because once they had, he knew Priyanka's intention. She would use it to take control of the Hundred Halls, place herself as the head patron. Nothing would escape her notice after that. Zayn fled.

  Chapter Thirty

  The world was one big throbbing nerve end lost on a stormy sea. Pi groaned inside the crater. Any attempt to open her eyes was met with soul-crushing vertigo. The verumancy spells she'd cast before the assault on the house had protected her from the worst of the blast, but it hadn't been able to shield her brain from the concussive blow.

  She wondered if this was what running backs felt like when they got hit by a linebacker. If it was anything close, she thought they were stupid for continuing to do it. She felt like a child, and each movement reinforced her weakness.

  The ringing in her ears made the world seem distant. She climbed to the edge of the hole, fingers digging into the packed earth. The smell of gunpowder was strong.

  She held on as the buildings seesawed, closing her eyes when the vertigo got too bad.

  "You almost got me with that," said a voice from near the house.

  It was Priyanka Sai.

  "Pretty ballsy to blow yourself up to get me. I shouldn't be surprised after seeing you in action in the contest. You're brilliant and unpredictable. I wish I had you in my hall," she said.

  Spent faez made Pi's skin tingle. The worst of the vertigo disappeared, but Pi thought if she tried to move quickly or cast a spell, she'd end up vomiting.

  Priyanka helped her out of the crater and pushed her into the house. Echo was sobbing on a chair, while Frank Orpheum stood over him.

  "Messy, but it's done," said Priyanka. "Now for the important part."

  To Pi's surprise, Priyanka approached Echo. His hands were jammed between his quivering knees. She placed a long fingernail under his chin, made him lift his head.

  "You know who I am, right?" she asked.

  He didn't want to answer at first but she dug her fingernail into his neck.

  "Yes," he said weakly.

  "You know what I do?"

  He closed his eyes and nodded. A tear formed at the corner of his eye.

  "It's okay, Echo. I'm not going to do that to you. You know, I remember you when you were a boy living in Invictus' apartments. You loved to tend his flowers, get your hands dirty in the soil. When I would visit, you would tell me about the flowers and their scientific names. Even as a seven-year-old boy you could wax on about the tagetes erecta or canna generalis. You were as sweet as you were intelligent. It's awful what he did to you."

  The revelation that Echo had been Invictus' assistant was not as surprising as it should have been. It explained why he was on the school rolls without ever revealing his house. But Pi didn't understand the direction of the conversation.

  "This isn't the way I imagined this would happen," said Priyanka. "The plan had been to befriend you, make you understand that I cared. But you knew who I was the whole time, didn't you?"

  Echo nodded slowly.

  Priyanka cocked a grin, glanced at Pi. "He's smarter than you think. Saw through my deception."

  "What do you want?" asked Pi.

  Priyanka chuckled, shared a smile with Orpheum. "That's right. You don't know."

  "I know about the wish spell," said Pi. "But I don't how Echo fits into it."

  "You're looking at the wish spell," said Orpheum.

  "Echo?" asked Pi, receiving a nod.

  "A spell is an algorithm to solve a magical problem with faez as the supplied energy. A wish spell is the ultimate conundrum and no spell could plan for every contingency. Invictus solved that issue by placing the spell inside of a human ch
ild so the mind and the spell could work as one," said Priyanka.

  "Oh dear god," said Pi.

  Echo's inability to interact or focus, his near helplessness. It wasn't because he was weak, it was because he was too powerful.

  "You see it now," said Priyanka.

  "What will you do with it?" asked Pi.

  "The only thing that matters," she replied. "Head patron."

  "You bitch," said Pi.

  Priyanka smirked. "Better me than one of the others. That's why Frank and I conspired. Do you really want Bannon Creed to have that position? Or Celesse or that jackass at Coterie? The role of head patron might as well be emperor of Earth for all the power that it enjoys. Every patron is beholden to you."

  "But you're one of the Cabal."

  "Cabal," she spat. "It's a word. A name to frighten people, because fear is useful. Not enjoyable, but useful."

  Pi stole a glance at the outside. Where was her sister? Where was Hannah? She hoped they'd gone for help once they realized what they were up against.

  Priyanka stared at her with real empathy. "I see that look in your eye. You're wondering where Aurie or the others are at. They're not coming. They're all dead."

  Pi went numb. She was already recovering from the concussion, but hearing that her sister was dead only pushed her back down a deep hole. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Aurie was the only family she had left.

  "Once I found you had a pulse, I knew what had to be done. Echo likes you more since you were the one to save him from those gang members. Though it was supposed to be Aurie, but I wasn't willing to throw away a lot of preparation just because the wrong sister was available," said Priyanka, advancing on her. "It was never supposed to be this way. Our plan was to befriend him and put him in a situation that using the wish was the only thing that would save the city. A useful thing having the master of illusions on your side. Now we'll have to do it the hard way. I'm very sorry, Pi. Until Echo agrees to work with us, you're going to be in a considerable amount of pain."

  Pi was expecting the blade, but Priyanka put a spell on her. At first, her skin grew warm, then it got hotter, until her body felt like it'd been dipped in lava. She resisted screaming at first, because she knew that once she did, it would never stop. Pi expected the skin on her hands to peel off from the fire. There was nothing but pain. Nothing but pain. Pain.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  There were forty-seven different shades of blue in the ipomoea purpurea growing in the planter's box outside the house. Echo traced the boundaries between the shades with his eyes. They formed spirals like a galaxy.

  That was the way the world worked. The patterns repeated themselves. Galaxies and flowers. Leaves and rivers. Even people.

  Echo watched Aurie run into the house after Hannah. There would be a battle. He could see it in the patterns. It always ended this way.

  People were like volcanoes. They pushed together, building pressure, fighting to be on top. The eruption was inevitable. Sometimes it was clean and orderly, a lava ejection straight out the top, fired like a gun, leaving the mountainside intact. Other times, the explosion ripped the hillside away, turning everything into ash and fire.

  Was this the big explosion? A super-eruption? The one that would change the world? Would the ash cloud blot out the sun for a few months and change the weather patterns? Or would there be an explosion but the pressure would remain?

  People spilled from the houses. Aurie had called them wakers. But that wasn't right. They were asleep, tricked into living their lives in opposition to the sun. Like the negative in the photo.

  Blue. Slate. Sky. Navy. Teal. Cobalt.

  The color was soothing. He could bed down in the color blue. It reminded Echo of the days when his Opa was still alive. They'd seen him as a towering figure, a man to be feared and for some, worshiped. To Echo, he was the color of the sky on a sunny day when big, puffy clouds reigned.

  Peacock. Teal. Aegean. Berry. Sapphire. Arctic.

  The wakers grabbed his arms, his legs. Lifted him up, but he wasn't done with the colors yet. He repeated them quickly, before he forgot. He always forgot what he was doing.

  Denim. Admiral. Stone. Spruce. Azure. Indigo. Lapis. Cerulean. Ocean.

  The wakers carried Echo into the house like a tide washing to shore.

  He felt the patterns tug and pull around him. A thread snapped—Rigel, no!—and others thinned.

  Sometimes Echo could find himself in the patterns. Those were the good days, when he could remember when people were talking to him, use his words like he should, like Opa asked him to. Today wasn't a good day. Today the patterns crashed around him, seized his thoughts in their tortured webs.

  He felt the gift inside him, moving like a pupa inside a cocoon. That's what Opa had called it, a gift. It'd never felt like a gift to Echo. Before the gift, he'd been able to think, to remember, to keep the patterns at bay.

  But Opa had been scared. Echo didn't know that Opa could get scared, but he was. His skin was cracked and broken, eyes bloodshot—oh to see that pattern in those eyes—Echo had felt his need as if it were his own.

  Echo had agreed to take the gift, though even he knew he was too young to understand. How does one understand the pattern without truly understanding it? That was the paradox. It was the need that Echo had understood, nothing else. If Opa asked, the man who had saved him, taught him, fed him on a sky full of blue, then he would say yes, he could take the gift, even if the gift would be the end of him.

  What would it be? What would it become? The gift wriggled and wiggled inside him. The patterns swayed and sang. He knew the gift wasn't for him. It couldn't be. Using the gift in that way was like dividing by zero. He would have to use it on someone else.

  The Woman Who Was Everyone. The R in Harpers. She wanted something. She wanted to control the pattern. To be the pattern. The liar wanted it too, but he knew he would never survive against the others and clung to her.

  She'd been kind to him. Back before the gift. Opa had liked her. They liked each other. She had hard eyes, but kind. Like a surgeon with a scalpel. When the cancer was inside of you, it had to be cut out.

  But The Woman Who Was Everyone was wrong. The gift didn't give control of the pattern. That was somewhere else, something else. Opa knew the patterns better than Echo, had seen in them in his spells, his divinations. Knew what was coming and had been afraid. Many possibilities, many deaths.

  When Aurie's thread was cut, Echo knew it was wrong. She was integral to the pattern. There was going to be a volcanic eruption, but if she wasn't a part of it, then the pressure would build until the whole mountain exploded, knocking down everything from one end of the world to the other.

  Pi was screaming.

  The Woman Who Was Everyone wanted the gift. Echo would give the gift. It was the only way to save the pattern. She would be disappointed, angry, but eventually she would have to choose.

  The magic spilled out of him in a torrent. There weren't forty-seven shades of blue in the flower, but a hundred million, and every one of them spelled out the name Aurelia Silverthorne.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The world was one blinding color of blue.

  Aurie shuddered awake—no, not awake, that was something else—this was different. It felt like someone had flicked a switch, turning her on. There was no groggy climb out of the depths of sleep, only an existence that started with that singular moment.

  Aurie was aware that she had died twelve minutes ago. It was a fact of her existence. She remembered the cold metal entering her heart, the horrifying slide into oblivion.

  People were talking downstairs. Without considering the consequences, Aurie went to investigate.

  Pi was slouched against the wall, head between her legs. Sweat dripped from her arms, her hair glistened.

  Echo lay on his side. Aurie didn't know if he was alive or not. Priyanka didn't seem to know either as she'd knelt by his side and was shaking him lightly while Frank Orpheum looked on.
/>   They didn't know what Echo had done. Aurie knew it, now that she'd seen him.

  "It's over," said Aurie, startling the three of them.

  Pi burst into tears the moment she looked up—happy, delirious, exhausted, what-the-fuck tears.

  "He used the wish to bring me back, whatever that means," she said, the second part to herself. What was I? Dead? In limbo? These were thoughts she wanted to contemplate, but the needs of the immediate brought her back. She was, as she recalled, speaking to two patrons, one of whom had killed her only a short while ago. This seemed like something she didn't want to happen again.

  But first things first. Aurie moved past them both, knelt beside Echo, and checked for a pulse. It was there faintly. Aurie didn't know if he would survive the unraveling of the spell. He'd carried it within him for so long that it'd grown roots into the essence of his being.

  "I killed you," said Priyanka Sai, unbelieving, then looking to the theater patron. "I killed her."

  "You clearly didn't do a good enough job," said Aurie.

  "What's going to keep me from finishing it? The three of you are no use to us now," said Priyanka.

  Aurie had no doubt that the patron of assassins meant it, yet she wasn't afraid. Why was that? The answer bubbled up from her thoughts. Oh, yes.

  "Because I know you don't mean it," said Aurie. "You could kill me when it was a means to an end. I was a sacrifice on the altar of your ambition, but to kill for no reason, that's not your way. You're not an indiscriminate killer. Not a sociopath."

  Blades appeared in Priyanka's fists. She twirled them expertly. "You don't know me well enough."

  "Actually, I do, Raz," said Aurie. "And not just because of the Harpers. Invictus put a little of himself in that spell, so I know what he thought of you. He didn't think of you as a killer. You have that ability, but it's not who you are."