11. GUEST OF HONOR
I spent the rest of the day with Briggs’s odd speech and the missing guestbook pages competing for the top spot in my brain. After revisiting the interrogation room and scouring the Investigative Department as inconspicuously as possible, I’d exhausted all I could do at the Capitol. So, I shifted my focus to Briggs and his claims about Maximus working with criminals before I came along. Did he mean the Bloody Hex? Or some other notorious felons I couldn’t call to mind?
When Nash picked me up, I declined his offer to return me to the houseboat. We’d heard nothing from Donovan, and I interpreted no news as good news. He took me to Bitters instead, where I hoped to find the answers to a growing list of questions.
Upon arriving, Nash and I parted ways. He had to help Pippa get the bar up and running for the night, and I had my own business to attend to.
I walked the perimeter of the old house, dragging my fingers along the whitewashed siding as I rounded the back corner. Against the foundation, a pair of double doors were set in a cement frame in the ground. The chain looped through the handles was secured with a padlock. I didn’t have the key, but recent practice with handcuff locks made this one a cinch.
Crouching, I wove a thought through the mechanism and popped it open. I grabbed the padlock and pulled it free, then pocketed it. The chain fell loose, and I pulled one door open, like a mouth yawning into the dark, dank underground.
The sun beamed from behind me, forcing me to squint into the shadows ahead. Sucking a final breath of fresh air, I descended into the depths.
The Bitters’ End cellar was the kind of place I would have been afraid to go as a kid. Raw wood steps led down to a low-ceilinged space cluttered with pipes and support beams. It smelled like rust and mildew and, as soon as I set foot on the packed dirt floor, I wanted nothing more than to go back outside.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, identifying metal shelves cluttered with dusty, glass bottles, wooden crates stacked floor to ceiling and, in the corner, a man sitting on the edge of an iron-framed bed.
He rose to my approach, rattling the chain attached to his ankle. His gray hair was flat and caked with the same grit that lined the wrinkles on his face, but he remained unmistakable.
Maximus Lyle stood before me, alive and well enough, all things considered .
Three weeks earlier…
“I came to kill you.”
The older man was really flexing when he stared straight into my eyes, blinked once, then asked, “Why?”
Because Grimm told me to, I thought and immediately realized how pathetic that sounded.
I had the leader of the Bloody Hex dead to rights. Gripped in my mental fist and dangling like a ragdoll. How many times over the past twelve years had I dreamed about killing him? I’d never come so close. And then Donovan ruined it with some therapy-worthy daddy issues that unfortunately resonated with me.
That, coupled with a murder warrant signed by Maximus Lyle’s own hand, sent me speeding across town to save my own life. And follow orders. Like always.
Standing on Maximus’s front porch, I had no good answer for his question, so he filled the silence for me.
“Do you wonder what it feels like for the people you kill?” he asked. “Not death. Death is serene. A welcome release. A reward.”
He chose an interesting time to wax poetic. Maximus knew fully well what I could do. I could end his life with a targeted thought or flick of my wrist, yet no fear broke his mask of apathy.
“Have you ever considered the moments before death?” he continued. “The shock and terror, thinking of everyone and thing soon to be left behind?”
Shock and terror had transformed me from the willful teenager Maximus once knew into the practiced assassin facing him now. I would have reminded him of that fact if I hadn’t been abruptly gripped by the cold hand of fear.
It sent shivers through me, prompting a sharp suck of breath and stirring my heart to a rapid rhythm. What little mental control I had went straight to Maximus’s feet and fixed him in place. I held him with a shred of thought, squeezing my hand into a fist as creeping dread slowly overtook me. Cold and sweating, I glanced all around from the cover of the shady porch.
“Cut it out.” I aimed a venomous glare at Maximus. He was to blame for the emotional assault. Teaching a lesson he thought I should learn. Too little, too late.
The internal storm continued to brew, rising into my throat and choking me. I shook, and my muscles quivered like plucked bow strings.
My lungs felt compressed, wrenching out gasps that left me swaying. I stumbled forward and caught myself against the doorframe while Maximus remained mired in place.
My fingers scrabbled at the white-painted wood, seeking something real to dispel the imaginary terror. If Maximus wanted to save himself, scaring me straight was not the best tactic.
When I told him as much, grunting through gritted teeth, he nodded.
“If I die, you will still be in the company of my daughter,” he said. “Giving you perspective is the surest way to save her from a gruesome fate.”
I shook myself. Pitting logic against emotion was a fight I always seemed to lose. For someone who drew so much power from his brain, my heart ruled me more often than not.
“Why would I hurt Holland?” I asked.
“You’re hurting her now,” Maximus replied. “Leaving her orphaned and alone in the world. I needn’t ask if you know that feeling.”
The sense of panic eased, and in its stead came a seeping sort of misery. It was the same vacancy I’d felt in Thorngate’s isolation cell. A shade darker than the loneliness I experienced most nights staring up at the ceiling while Donovan dozed in the bed across from me.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I insisted. “She’s my…”
What was Holland to me? An old friend? My first love? One of the few people who remembered who I had been before Grimm molded me into his murder puppet? Or maybe she was a coworker. My boss. I’d been trained to fall in line behind those who could be considered my superiors.
I didn’t finish the statement, doubting my relationship with the legalistic investigator as much as I suddenly doubted everything.
Maximus’s level tone cut through the tension. “Something the matter, Mister Farrow?”
I didn’t have to do this; I had options. Shitty, half-conceived plans that I couldn’t carry out on my own, but they would buy me time to think. To work up my nerve. To decide once and for all which master I was going to serve .
Turning, I pointed toward the Bronco parked a few dozen feet away. “Get in the car,” I commanded.
Maximus flushed with concern that momentarily bled onto me.
“You can move your ass, or I’ll do it for you,” I told him.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
Not a shitty storage unit. I could do better than that. Also, not anywhere Grimm would find out. Donovan, either. My brother had shown his true colors, and I couldn’t trust him with this. Then who?
At length, I replied in a low voice. “It’s a surprise.”
It would be a surprise, all right. To both of us.
I felt guilty burdening Nash with the care of my long-term captive. Guiltier still for realizing he only had time to do so since his business had tanked, also due to me.
I should have felt guilty about the state in which I found Maximus now after I’d failed to check in since dropping him off here almost a month ago. But I had a hard time drumming up sympathy for someone who ordered my death.
“Mister Farrow.” Maximus greeted me with a weary smile. “I was beginning to think I’d seen the last of you. Your friend is a decent fellow, though. Is he a criminal, as well?”
Does he talk to you about me, too?
That thought was squashed as soon as it occurred.
“Who knows?” I shrugged. “He’s just some guy I paid to look after you. Seems like he’s doing an okay job.”
The absence of pizza boxes or even a whiff of a shit bucket were proof of that. If Maximus was getting Nash’s cooking while I subsisted on potato chips and cereal, I might have envied him a bit.
Pulling the cigarettes out of my pocket, I put one between my lips, then tipped the pack toward Maximus in a wordless offer.
He shook his head. “Those things will kill you.”
I produced my lighter next, holding it to the end of the cig and setting it ablaze. The breath I sucked through it caused the ash end to flare. “Guess I’ll die, then.”
Broaching the topic of death must have worried the old man because he asked, “How is Holland?”
It felt malicious to tell him she hadn’t noticed him missing or mentioned him acting strangely since being replaced by Grimm, so I kept my answer succinct. “I told you I wouldn’t hurt her.”
Maximus’s shackles clattered as he shifted. “Do you fault me for doubting?” he asked.
I looked away, spotting a spare barstool in the corner. I stretched my hand toward it and called it to skitter across the packed earth to me. Climbing onto it, I sat with my elbows on my knees and the cigarette burning down between my fingers.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Max,” I said. “And I think you’re smart enough—and aware enough of your current situation—not to lie to me, either.”
I took another slow drag then blew it out, clouding the musty air.
Maximus’s lip curled with disdain. “Is there a question behind all this pretense and posturing?”
Briggs’s comments added fuel to a fire of inquiries I’d had for over a decade. Now that the opportunity was before me, I was afraid I wouldn’t like the answers.
“You seemed pretty casual asking me to kill for you,” I began. “Not your first time hiring a hitman, I’m guessing?”
Stepping back, Maximus returned to his seat on the ratty mattress. He clasped his hands in his lap. “Over the past hundred years, I have done anything and everything necessary to ensure the wellbeing of our society—”
My whistle stopped him mid-sentence. “So, it’s a hell of a body count, then.” I leaned forward, enticed by the idea. “Don’t be shy. How many are we talking? Two? Three hundred people?”
Maximus’s scornful expression persisted. “I won’t be answering that.”
“ More ?” I rocked the stool back onto two legs, then forward again, hitting the packed dirt with a thud. “Shit, Max. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as genocide.”
Thinning an already endangered population seemed the furthest thing from the Capitol’s agenda. They spread a message of protection, provision, and the eventual reintegration of our species into the modern world. The city had been built as a safe haven, a preserve where witches could not be hunted to extinction. It was hard to imagine the leader of our government greasing the wheels of progress with the blood of his own people. Hard, but not impossible .
“Who came before me?” I asked Maximus. “What kind of sinister shoes was I supposed to fill?”
“Why are you asking about this?” the older man asked. “What sparked your sudden interest in the distant past?”
I stood and walked forward, closing the gap to where Maximus remained seated. Looming over him, I flicked ash into his lap. “Because my parents were some of those hundreds of people, and I wanna know why.”
“The Bloody Hex killed your parents, Fitch.” He spoke through a sigh. “It was a great tragedy, but nothing I ordered or wished for. In fact, that loss made things immeasurably worse for our society because of its profound effect on you.”
The accusation got my hackles up. I pinned the cigarette between my lips and spoke around it. “Giving me an awful lot of credit, don’t you think? I’m a bad guy but not like… villain of the year.”
Smoke filtered into the space between us.
“Those in the Investigative Department may feel differently,” Maximus mused. “Innocent men and women taken out in the line of duty for the sake of your hurt feelings.”
My rage redoubled, flooding me with prickly heat. I plucked the cigarette from my mouth and flung it down.
“Hurt feelings? Fuck you.” I stabbed my finger into his chest, but he didn’t sway back. Didn’t budge. “You abandoned me,” I said, seething. “You all did. Any shit I’ve done can be laid right at your door.”
Maximus’s eyes were weary. He looked haggard and pale after weeks trapped underground. “You killed the people who tried to save you, Fitch,” he replied. “I couldn’t keep sending investigators to their deaths. Your life was worth no more than theirs.”
His words stole the breath from me, and I gasped to shout back at him.
“I was a kid! The gang manipulated me! Tormented me! For years!” Anger took a detour into bitter humor, and my ensuing laugh sounded deranged. “Do you realize how fucking broken I am?”
I wished for a moment I had his power so I could make him feel this. Know what it was like to be gutted by emotional wounds that never fully healed. Instead, they seeped with poison that ruined everything I touched.
“I could’ve been happy.” My voice cracked along with my resolve. “Even without my parents. I just needed someone, anyone, to help.”
I stepped back and scrubbed my fingers down the shaved sides of my head. For twelve years I’d stewed, and wondered, and waited for the chance to demand an explanation or an apology. But it was clear now that neither of those things would change the past, and I would feel no better having them.
“This was a waste of time,” I said.
When I met Maximus’s gaze, his eyes glimmered with fear. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.
I sniffed. “Not today. And I’m booked solid tomorrow, so… get comfortable. I’ll be in touch.” Turning, I gave a trite wave and started toward the steps.
“You can’t leave me here forever!” Maximus called out. The ankle chain clinked as he leaped to his feet. “ You aren’t that cruel.”
My nostrils flared through a sharp inhale. This imprisonment was more palatable than storing the political nobodies at Lock n’ Roll. Why? A dank cellar was no homier than a cramped storage unit. What changed?
The captive, of course.
Maximus Lyle left me to suffer at the hands of the Bloody Hex for almost half my life. He abandoned me and, in doing so, damned me to a far darker place than this hole in the ground. He deserved this fate, at least for a while. But, like the apology I would never get, I knew already that punishing him wouldn’t change the past, and I would feel no better for doing it. In fact, I felt worse before I even made it to the top of the cellar stairs.