20. BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE
Reentering the house was an entirely new experience. The lights had gone out, bathing the whole place in black. Furniture was upset, and chandeliers lay in shards on the floor. Drywall dust thickened the air and made me cough as I chased Vesper’s form—swathed in a predictably red dress—toward the back corner of the home.
“What’s going on?” I managed to ask as we skidded to a stop outside the formal dining room. Holland lingered in the doorway, wearing my suit coat with her arms wrapped around her middle and her posture hunched.
Inside, Tobin stood next to the twelve-person table. His face was strained with concentration.
“Don’t come in here!” he shouted at my approach. “You’ll get caught in it, too.”
Ten people stood around the room, staring at the massive light fixture. The ceiling buckled down, spreading with cracks in a dozen directions. But there was no sound and no movement from the party guests or the rapidly collapsing roof. Everything appeared frozen, including the expressions of horror from everyone in the room.
Among the bystanders, I identified Willem and Nancy Briggs, side by side and stuck in the bubble of time the investigator had stopped.
Tobin alone seemed free to move as he turned toward me. “I need you to hold this while we get these people out,” he grunted through gritted teeth. “Can you do that?”
My eyes stretched wide as I glanced upward again. “Hold what? The damn building?”
“The roof,” he growled, clearly straining with the effort of his spell.
“And the whole second floor!” I sputtered in response. “How much weight is that?”
“A lot.” Tobin glared at me. Sweat glistened on his brow. “Can you do it?”
If the ceiling came down, who knew what would come with it? Sofas? Beds? Bathtubs? Potentially thousands of pounds of crushing power.
It was more than I’d ever tried to move, hold, or support. And it didn’t help that the weight was spread along the length of a room, over the heads of almost a dozen people.
I couldn’t keep my gaze from returning to Briggs and his wife, trapped in the path of destruction. My heart fluttered with fear. “Just let me pull them out.” If only those two people survived this, I would consider it a success. I tested the air with telekinetic force, ready to grab onto the Briggs’ the moment I got the OK.
Tobin shook his head. “No time. I’m turning it off in three, two…”
Breath hung in my chest. I had three seconds to sink my anchors into the ceiling, choosing spots above the heads of the frozen party guests and hoping for the best.
The moment Tobin released his hold on the room, pressure fell like an anvil dropping on my head. Pain shot through my skull and into my clenched jaw. A cry wrenched out of me, and my eyes squeezed shut. I sunk to my knees.
Voices clamored and bodies rushed by. I pressed my palms against the rippled wood floor, my bitten-down nails scrabbling for purchase.
Searing pain like a branding iron driving into my gray matter drove stuttered breaths from me. With every second, the heaviness became less bearable.
I couldn’t see who, if anyone, made it out. Couldn’t feel anything but screaming agony until Holland’s voice drifted to my ears.
“Almost there,” she said. “I’ll tell you when.”
I whimpered as I was driven lower to the floor. Without anything physically touching me, I was being slowly, excruciatingly crushed.
Something warm and wet dampened my upper lip. I didn’t need to taste it to know it was blood.
“Now! Now!” Holland shouted and shook me.
Releasing my mental hold came with another sharp cry. Everything gave way.
I heard the thundering crash only a few feet from me. Hands looped under my arms, dragging me away from the cave-in.
Blood continued to leak from my nose, bubbling over my lips and off my chin. I mopped it with the sleeve of my shirt.
“You did great.” Holland’s voice came from close beside me. “Everybody’s out.”
But we weren’t. Not yet, and the collapse was only beginning.
I pried my eyes open, struggling to focus through the dark, dusty air. My brain felt like it was in a vise, beset with less pressure than when I’d been holding up the house, but only just.
I sniffed my blood-clogged nose and tried to sit up, but a headrush drove me back down.
“Come on.” Holland tugged on me. “We need to move.”
Hearing the sorrow in her voice brought me to a belated realization. This was her childhood home, falling into ruin. It must have been hard to watch.
“Fitch, get up,” she urged as my eyelids drooped again.
When I didn’t respond quickly enough, she threw my arm across her shoulders and dragged me to standing.
Dizziness overwhelmed me and I leaned heavily against her, fighting to keep my eyes open and my feet under me as we staggered out of the house .
“Do you need a ride home, Mister Farrow?” The woman healer beamed a tiny flashlight across my eyes.
I flinched away while daubing a wad of paper towels to my nose. “I’m good,” I muttered, the same assurance I’d given five times already.
It was after midnight by the time emergency crews arrived with blaring sirens and medics to tend to the dozen or so people with minor cuts and scrapes. Most everyone had already left, having fled in the middle of the mayhem, or were loading into their cars now. I watched them pull away from the sunken, lopsided mess that had once been the Lyle estate.
Holland had already been by to debrief me. Everyone made it out alive and accounted for. Ezrah Everett was taken into custody. His twin brother, Ethan, came and went unfound. It had been a hell of a party.
Holland had also sicced the healer on me. She was either bothered by the blood steadily dripping from my nostrils or more aware than I wanted her to be that I hadn’t budged from this soft patch of grass in almost an hour.
Satisfied with her work, the healer stepped out of my line of sight. Hanging a few feet back, Tobin stood, ready to take her place. Everything from his slick black hair to his tuxedo was covered in dust. He regarded me with his usual disdain.
“Vesper said you were made of stout stuff.”
I didn’t look very stout right now, sitting slouched in the dew-damp grass with my nose leaking. Despite the sorry sight, Tobin nodded. “Guess she was right. I owe you one. ”
“Two,” I muttered.
His dark eyes narrowed. “Jackass.”
“Dick bag,” I retorted.
We glared at each other for a moment before both of us broke into weary smiles.
“Nice work, Farrow,” Tobin said. “That was some heroic shit.”
And I would be paying for it with the migraine from hell for the next twenty-four hours. I was lucky I hadn’t given myself an aneurysm. That was what the healer said. Pushing the magical boundaries of a mostly human body. Now I was resigned to sitting and telling anyone who asked that I’d never been better because I was ready to get out of here.
I watched Tobin join the crowd making their way out of this place. Cars reversed then pulled into a line headed down the private drive. So much more orderly than the same people had been while in the confines of the shaking home. With the crisis behind us, social etiquette was restored.
I was still staring and dealing with the headache that had burrowed deep in my gray matter when someone else sauntered up.
“Heroic.” Grimm—wearing his Maximus disguise—stopped across from me. “Not a word I ever thought I’d hear used to describe you.”
Unlike Tobin, Grimm appeared immaculate. Nothing was askew, and not a hair was out of place. Such precision could have been explained by the illusion spell, but I had a feeling there was more to it than that.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked him .
He smiled, sedate. “Around,” he said, then added, “Close by.” Slipping his hands into his pockets, he moved nearer. “Tell me, do you think I should be impressed enough by these antics to make you a proper investigator? Or should the hiring process be more rigorous?”
We were back on this again? And why did he want it? He’d gotten caught up in the notion while I was in prison after Holland let slip that an investigator position might be in my very distant future. But she would balk at hiring me only weeks after a rigged trial with no training and no relevant experience.
“You can’t just hand me a badge.” I shook my aching head. “I’m not qualified. I didn’t even go to the academy.”
“Ah, but you have a legacy to fulfill,” Grimm replied. “It’s the kind of story people get behind. From what I’ve heard, they’re hungry for it. Former criminal changes his ways.” He waved his hand through the air as though pantomiming an invisible headline. “Uses his once-tainted powers for good.”
A sour taste filled my mouth. “None of what I’m doing here is ‘for good.’ We both know that.”
I was no more a hero or an investigator than Grimm was Maximus Lyle. We were playing a deception game, worming deeper into the company and confidence of the Capitol’s elite. Even Tobin was starting to warm up to me. But, instead of feeling relief about winning over the stubborn investigator, guilt piled up.
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it,” Grimm replied. “You could have told them you weren’t able to save those people. By the looks of you, that may not have been far from the truth.” His gesture to my reposed form—draped in the dark red suit coat Holland had returned—indicated he was aware of the toll the exertion had taken on me.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Of course, you are.” His smile turned prideful. “Always fine. I taught you that, didn’t I?”
My father may have introduced me to magic, but Grimm showed me my limits. Rather, he shoved me into them with all the finesse and care of repeatedly driving a car into a wall. He’d seen crippling migraines, blackouts, and nosebleeds worse than this. Valuable information, he claimed, as knowledge was intricately connected to power. My pursuit of that knowledge had been both memorable and painful.
“Never hesitate,” Grimm ticked the rules off on his fingers, “never show weakness, and never tell me no. So, when that promotion offer comes across your desk, know who it’s from, and know what your answer should be.”