Chapter 23 Grim
A peal of laughter cleaved through the quiet as I stalked down the hall leading to the Basins, the high and light sound setting me on alert.
I unfurled, then re-formed in a swirl of black fog in the Basins chamber, my gaze at once finding the owner of that laugh—who was exactly the woman I suspected.
Helena.
Startled by my arrival, Pluto cawed and lifted off from his perch in a panicked flutter. He flew past Helena, who stood bold as daylight in the center of the room with Flora and Johann—the only one among the three who didn’t lose his smile at my sudden appearance.
“Ah, Grim,” said Johann, “we’ve been waiting on you.”
Waiting… on me?
After circling the room once, Pluto rounded his way back to Johann before landing on his shoulder. “Grim’s home. This time he’s alone.”
My gaze bounced between them while I tried to cobble together an answer for this assembly.
How had Helena gotten out of my apartment?
What were they all talking about together like this, as if they were having a fucking faculty meeting?
And why was she just standing out here in the open? What if Cedric came back?
And Johann…
“Where did you get that hat?” I growled, pointing with a skeletal finger.
The visor he wore—I’d seen it yesterday. On Bryce’s head.
“Flora brought it to me from Mickey D’s,” said Johann. He pointed to the hat’s emblem. “One would think the yellow M would give it away. She also brought me a McFlurry.”
“Had to make it meself,” said Flora, “since there wasn’t any staff about. You and Cedric did a right good job of clearing out the place.”
Again, my gaze ricocheted between them, going from Johann, to Flora, to Helena, and then down to Flora’s lantern, which flared bright green.
It shuddered and shook, creating a racket against the marble floor, a clangor that echoed up through the dome and down again—until Flora gave the lantern a kick.
“Pipe down, you slippery radge,” grumbled the fairy—an unusual response to her normally tender tenants. Whose soul did she hold in that lantern now? It wasn’t a child’s. Their souls were smaller, like lightning bugs.
“What is this?” I demanded, even though I already had an inkling. “What is going on?”
“Helena’s come up with a plan,” said Flora, hands going to her hips Peter Pan–style.
A plan? What kind of plan? For what?
“I think… it’s a good plan,” said Helena, her words shocking me. “If… I’m allowed to say so.”
She wasn’t angry. A moment ago, she’d even laughed.
That made no sense. She made no sense.
“How did you get out?” I asked her, glancing back toward the open passageway to my domain, my words coming out gruffer than I’d intended.
“I… figured out the lock,” she said.
The lock? She must mean she’d moved one of my scythes, an action that had apparently triggered the door. I hadn’t factored for that possibility. How could I have when, until now, I’d always been the only one capable of entering my quarters in the first place? Or handling my scythes.
Apparently, while others could not enter, they could exit.
Or was it possible that Helena was somehow… unique?
“Cedric is hunting her.” I blurted this out to Johann. Perhaps I was appealing to him to help me—to help Helena.
Before, I’d been so sure I’d stoked his anger by acting on my impulses—and telling him off. Maybe he wasn’t angry anymore. Maybe he’d never been. Sometimes, he was harder to read even than me. Whatever the case, I needed him to hear me on this. Flora, too.
Helena couldn’t be anywhere near Cedric, who was bound to return at any moment.
Unless…
“Relax,” Flora said before Johann could reply. “Pluto and I took a field trip to your McD’s and picked up the meddling tyrant.”
“We put the fries in the bag,” said the bird.
Flora raised the lantern, which swung on its hinge, the green light within crackling as though with displeasure and, likely, rage, confirming my suspicions about the lantern’s lone occupant. “Picked up a new chapeau for Johann while I was at it.”
“So oft is he perfectly coiffed,” added Pluto.
“The lady.” Johann paused to gesture to Helena. “She emerged from your chambers less than an hour ago. But that was enough time for her to explain what I already suspected. That Cedric’s behavior has become… ungentlemanly.”
“Putting it mildly,” said Helena through a snort, which she stifled the moment she regained my attention.
“It was Johann’s idea to park him for a spell,” said Flora as she plopped the lantern back down again—roughly.
“When you said you killed Cedric and left him, Johann sent us to catch his soul before it could return to his body. Had to chase him around a bit, and he put up a fight for sure, but Pluto helped me get him wrangled. Managed the task just as they were zipping the body bag.”
Flora had secured Cedric’s soul? The fight at the restaurant must have weakened the wizard somehow. Or else Johann’s bird was stronger than he seemed. Sometimes that bird made me wonder…
Whatever the case, I was glad her pursuit had kept Cedric too busy to rejoin his earthly form.
Which meant, at that moment, Cedric’s corpse was probably right back in a morgue drawer.
Possibly even the same morgue or even the same drawer.
The authorities would want to assume their John Doe had an identical twin, but that would be hard to conclude with the original body now missing.
From what I understood, Cedric also had a fair number of identifying scars, including that brutal one on his neck.
How many fires could I set and leave roaring until another of The Few showed up to take names and crack skulls? My skull.
“You’ll be glad to know Lady Helena understands the finer details of her situation now,” said Johann. “Flora and I took the liberty of elaborating on what a Fated Soul is. She mentioned how your conversation on the topic was… interrupted by our resident wizard.”
“Resident bampot more like,” added Flora under her breath.
Helena offered me a weak smile, but this did nothing to alleviate my growing confusion. Or anxiety.
“Johann and I guessed at what you must’ve been thinking when you brought the lass here,” said Flora, her own expression sobering.
“That you assumed you’d both fare best if you contacted Sir White directly now and owned up to this guddle before it got worse.
But Helena thought it might be better to let the situation…
play out. Without, of course, Cedric’s meddling. ”
Flora gave the lantern another nudge with her toe, inciting the green orb within to once again flare and flash in agitation.
“In the meantime,” said Johann, “Cedric can enjoy a much-needed… er… time-out here in the Hallows.”
“You’re going to keep him captive?” I asked.
“I think we’d better,” said Johann. “You said yourself you didn’t think it was a bad idea. Actually, to quote you directly, you said you didn’t think it was a ‘bad fucking idea,’ and after learning more about the situation, I must say I’ve come to agree.”
Flora’s mouth dropped into an O, her eyes rounding as they flashed my way, her expression half scandalized, half delighted since Johann rarely cursed.
“So long as he has designs on hurting this charming young lady,” said Johann, “what other choice has Cedric left us?”
Helena smiled at Johann, though her expression faltered when she again glanced to me, almost as if she assumed I had to be scowling within my hood, and that I was aiming my disapproval at her.
She must think I was agitated by this turn of events, and my friends’ intervention. By her, too. Maybe I hadn’t exactly given her a different impression.
“If White finds out,” I argued, “if any of The Few find out—”
“No one’s going to find out,” said Johann. “And I’ll tell you why.”
I shook my head, because I didn’t like where this was going. I was the one who’d broken the rules. In fact, I wasn’t sure at this stage if there were many that I’d left unbroken. Johann and Flora had to understand I wasn’t about to let them go down with me.
“This isn’t—”
“Shut up, Grim,” said Johann. And because it was Johann, and only because it was Johann… I did. It was Flora, though, who picked up on providing the explanation for the bizarre scenario I’d walked in on.
“We explained to your lass what you were trying to tell her—how she’s fated to move on and go into the White Basin. She told us how you saved her on that balcony, something that put a wrench in our works here.”
“Putting it mildly,” mumbled Johann with a short and wry huff of a laugh, his words earning him a slight smile from Helena, who in my absence had apparently—though unsurprisingly—endeared herself to both my cohorts.
How could she still smile while we were all casually discussing her impending departure from this life?
“After finding out about Cedric’s… incapacitation,” Flora continued, “Helena thought it might be a good idea for her to return home and, well, let fate do its job.”
“Not exactly a delicate way of putting things,” I snapped at Flora, who blinked at me, taken aback. Then she scowled, her cheeks flushing red—never a good sign.
“Well, I’m not the coldhearted numpty who told her the only reason I was saving her was to keep my bony ass from getting sacked!”
“That was the only reason I was saving her!” I roared.
Like yelling it would make it true.
“You’re a right fibber and a big ugly mood killer,” she said, crossing her arms as she glared up at me. “And you’ve got zero game, Grim.”
Helena giggled and my head snapped her way. Again, she stifled her mirth, mistaking my sudden attention—my utter shock at her reaction—for reproach. Was that because she still thought of me as mean?
I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t like I had a face she could read.
Or maybe I was mean.
I hadn’t meant to be. Not to her.
Taking a step toward me, Helena spoke up at last. “It’s okay, Grim. What Flora, Johann, and I came up with was this. Basically, I go back home, return to life, and… well… wait for you.”
My soul contracted, clenching into a tight iron ball of pain.
Wait for her death to occur was what she meant.