Chapter Nineteen
Broadlake could be lying about Jude Jingo possessing him. I didn’t discount that. Yet somehow, against all odds, I found I believed this shell of a man.
And according to him, my father had believed him too.
If Vance Broadlake was telling the truth, then he’d survived possession by a doppelganger. That meant there was a chance Troy could too. I just needed to find out how. I couldn’t lead with that, couldn’t let him know the import of what he was telling me, so I began with something else.
I licked parched lips. ‘Convince me you hosted Jingo. Tell me things about Jingo that I can verify.’
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.
‘He calls people by their titles,’ he said.
‘You’d think it’s him showing respect, but it’s not.
It’s because he has already lived so many lives that he always needs to remind himself what you are to him.
’ His hands twitched against the chains.
‘He doesn’t eat in front of people. He’ll order food, push it around, and drink instead.
He watches everyone all the time. He loves to collect rumours, hearsay, gossip.
He likes to blackmail. Likes to have powerful people do his bidding through means fair or foul.
He doesn’t care which. It’s all about power. Control.’
My stomach dropped. He was right. He was absolutely right. Jingo did collect information about others; he had told me so himself. But if I knew that about Jingo, others surely did too.
‘Tell me more,’ I demanded.
‘When he tells a lie that matters, he touches his throat once. Just once. A brush of his thumb across his Adam’s apple like he’s steadying his words, the lie, before he speaks it.’
‘That’s not proof,’ I said, but I wracked my brains, trying to remember if Troy had touched his throat at dinner.
It might not be proof, but if true, it could be invaluable to know. A tell in every body.
Broadlake leaned forward. ‘I know more. I can tell you more. Jingo always has a second – someone who holds the boring parts of his life for him. Properties, bills, keys, bank accounts because he can’t keep anything in his own name for long.
He sheds identities like a snake sheds skins.
’ His eyes were bright with the need for me to believe him.
‘The second he had when he possessed me had served him longer than most. Jingo recruited him when he was a young lad. Django Reed. That’s the name you can verify.
Pull his finances. You’ll see rents on places no one lives, utility bills that spike and then go flat, cars bought and sold and bought again.
Reed keeps the assets safe while Jingo steals bodies. ’
He hesitated and then decided to divulge something else, something darker that gave him pause. ‘He started the Kellmoor War. He killed a centaur diplomat and staged it to look like a rival clan did it. I know it’s a wild claim, but it’s true. I swear it.’
I studied the man as dispassionately as I could. ‘Why would he start it?’
‘Because they denied him. Refused to work with him. And because chaos is always a win for him. While people watch the fires burn, that’s when he steals from them. He likes watching people burn and calling it politics, calling it power. He doesn’t care about collateral damage.’
That hummed. I remembered a conversation with him, when he called a young dryad he’d killed with a pair of scissors ‘collateral damage’.
Goddamn it, I believed the prisoner. I fucking believed him.
Broadlake continued, ‘There’s a file you can find. A date. A name. A groom gave a statement and vanished two days later. Joshua Green. Jingo was in him then. He killed the centaur.’ His gaze locked onto mine, pleading and raw.
I leaned forward. ‘What more can you tell me? What more did you see?’
‘I didn’t see it all, couldn’t access his memories the way he could access mine, but whatever he thought, I could hear.
Gods, how I wished I couldn’t.’ He shuddered and started to shake.
‘He doesn’t care. Doesn’t feel. Just wants more.
More money, more success, more praise. More power.
Power is the one thing that drives him beyond anything else.
He was helpless once, and it moulded him. ’
I let it all sit and thought of Troy. ‘He could access your memories?’
‘Yes, to a degree. I could fight him on it, make it harder for him to access in a split second … but he threatened my ma when I did it, so I didn’t make it harder for him after that.’
‘Why does he change hosts?’
‘The bodies, if he stays in them for longer than a decade, they start to degrade, but he … he always wants to leave sooner than that anyway. He likes bodies in their prime. He’ll take over others, if he must, but if they’re ugly or weak he’ll discard them quickly. Like he did me.’
My heart was hammering. We’d reached the crux of the issue. Keeping my voice friendly and light, I asked, ‘That’s right. He left your body, but tell me … how did you survive, Vance?’
He picked at his nails. ‘I’m not sure.’
He was lying.
I hardened my voice. ‘Yes, you are. Tell me.’
He chewed on the stubby remains of his fingernails.
‘I … I … he attacked his next host. I knew it was coming. I didn’t want to die,’ he whimpered.
‘I wasn’t ready to die. Jingo has to leap, to leave the body just before death.
Too soon and he’ll get pulled back in and risk being stuck in the body at the moment of death.
He must leap at the last breath, and it must be timed perfectly or he perishes too.
It’s why there are so few doppelgangers.
He doesn’t need a prepared host though,’ Broadlake said hoarsely.
‘Not if he’s desperate. He can latch onto the nearest soul with enough life in it.
A passerby. A stranger. Anyone breathing.
They don’t even need to be Other, though he prefers it. ’
Given how long he seemed to have lived, I’d say Jingo had his extraction down to a fine art. ‘How many doppelgangers are there?’
‘He knows of two others in the whole world.’
I kept the shock off my face, and leaned back. I’d expected more, far more. ‘How do they reproduce?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t care about kids. He can live forever, swapping bodies for eternity. What use has he for a child?’
I swallowed that titbit, imagining the monster who tortured me living forever. I struggled to reboot my brain and focus on the here and now. ‘How old is Jingo?’
He shook his head. ‘Old. Older than time. His memory is broken, faulty. He can’t remember all that has gone before. Another reason for a second – one who can remember where the gold is buried.’
I leaned forward. ‘You’ve told me how he behaves. You’ve told me what he’s done. Now I need you to tell me what matters.’ I let the silence stretch uncomfortably. ‘How did you survive, Broadlake?’
He licked his lips. ‘I was desperate. I knew what he was going to do. Knew he was going to kill another wizard to take over – wizards are his favourite. He gets the power of the body he’s inhabiting, and he’s always loved the IR.’
‘Vance,’ I pressed. ‘How?’
‘I … I used the IR. I gathered the intention to …’ He dropped his voice to a whisper.
‘… to sever my soul from my body. It doesn’t kill you right away,’ he whispered, eyes wide.
‘Not instantly. You’ve still got … momentum.
Minutes, sometimes. But you start to fade.
But I’ve heard souls can cling if they die with purpose. ’
My gut dropped like I was on a rollercoaster ride, only I didn’t have my hands in the air and I wasn’t saying ‘Wheee!’ I did feel nauseous though.
‘When he leapt from me, I leapt too. He had goaded the wizard into strangling me to death, and that was it. I was dying. I was sure of it. But as I took my last breath, Jingo leapt into the wizard, and a human came around the corner. He shouted at Jingo and ran to me. Turns out, he was an ambulance driver. He did CPR, got me breathing, and I dived right back into my body. When I woke … I got arrested. Slung into Wraithmore for your abduction and torture. And you’d better believe I’ve wished every day since that I’d died that day. ’
‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ I said, and it wasn’t hard to put empathy into my voice, because I was. I knew what it was like to have someone else do something to your body that you didn’t want. Albeit my trauma had involved being sliced to pieces rather than possession.
Sliced to pieces by fucking Jude Jingo. I still couldn’t believe it. I was numb now – had to be, had to keep my cool – but later I would rage and scream, or perhaps cry.
‘Where would he run to? Who would he run to?’ I asked. ‘Give me a place. A person. Anything else you heard that he thought was private.’
Broadlake flinched. ‘He … he had a place he went to when he needed to breathe. A house by the sea. Not his, not in his name. Reed’s.
’ He shook his head hard. ‘I never saw it. I just … felt it in his thoughts when he longed to go. Salt air. Cold stone. The waves. The sea is important to him. He was born aquatic.’
Jingo had told me he fell on the creature side of things, but I’d had no idea he’d been born in the water. How on earth had he ended up on land?
He’d possessed a mermaid, I realised, or a merman. Used their legs to get onto land and start a life of possession and theft.
Was there more to his subsummation of Troy than I knew? More than showing two fingers to me and Kate? More than power or money? Was an ancient revenge still driving him?
I’d have to tell Ji-ho to focus on a coastal bolt-hole.
I tapped my fingers on the metal table. ‘Tell me more about what it’s like being controlled by him. When he’s inside someone, can the host hear? See? Do they know what he’s doing or are you focused inwards on his thoughts?’
Broadlake’s expression crumpled. ‘You’re awake.
’ His voice broke on the second word. ‘You’re trapped.
You’re … watching yourself ruin your life and there’s nothing you can do.
Sometimes he talked to me inside my own head, just to remind me he could.
’ He swallowed hard. ‘He liked that. He liked knowing I was there to witness my own destruction.’
That made my skin crawl.
‘Can the host feel pain?’ I asked. ‘If Jingo breaks a hand, if he takes a beating, does it hurt the person underneath?’
Broadlake nodded, eyes bright with tears. ‘Yes. Gods, yes. You feel it all. But you can’t react, can’t stop it happening. You can’t protect yourself. You just … endure.’ He sucked in a shaky breath. I could relate to that. I, too, had to simply endure.
I pushed the memories away with effort. ‘Did Jingo feel it? The pain?’
He shook his head. ‘Not directly. That’s one of his strengths.
He doesn’t feel a damn thing, only the echoes from us, if that.
That’s why he doesn’t eat in front of people.
He despises it. He doesn’t get the pleasure of eating, the pleasure of touching, but nor does he get the pain.
The host feels it all.’ He wiped his nose.
‘Jingo’s connection is with the host’s soul, not with the body. ’
My head was beginning to pound after a long-ass day. ‘Explain it simply,’ I snapped and forced my voice steady. ‘Give me the three most important rules. Tell it to me straight.’
Broadlake nodded fast, grateful for the instruction. ‘Right. Rule one: if he’s inside you, you’re awake. You can see. You can hear. You can feel. You just can’t move.’
He swallowed. ‘Rule two: he can’t leap whenever he wants. He has to do it at the last breath. Too soon and he gets yanked back in. Too late and he dies with the body.’
His eyes flicked up to mine. ‘Rule three: when he leaps, he drags the host’s soul out with him. That’s why the body dies empty. That’s why the host never survives.’
Bloody hell.
Broadlake continued, disregarding the keep-it-simple rule.
‘He goads someone into killing the body he’s in, and just before the moment of death, he leaps from his current body, and he drags the current host’s soul out too, but when he bonds with a new soul, the other one returns to its body, but it’s too late. The body is already dead.’
‘How did you find out all of this?’
‘From him, from his thoughts. They’re loud in your head, shouting over yours.’
‘So say the body dies, what happens to the untethered soul that Jingo rips out when he leaps?’
‘I don’t know. Jingo assumes they die, just like the body does.
But I didn’t die, because I severed my soul from his before he made the leap and returned to my own body.
Then, by a miracle, someone saved my life.
They used CPR to the tune of “Nelly the Elephant”.
I still love that song.’ He absentmindedly started to hum it, rocking in his chair, chains clattering on the table in an awful accompaniment.
‘Focus,’ I snapped.
‘Right.’ He stopped humming. ‘All I’m saying is, it’s a miracle I lived.’ He paused. ‘Or a curse.’
I chewed on everything he had told me, mind whirring at a hundred kilometres an hour. With effort, I forced it to stop and think. What other information did I need to glean from him?
Weaknesses. Jingo’s weaknesses.
‘If Jingo doesn’t feel pain,’ I started, ‘what gives him pause? What is he afraid of?’
‘Being trapped, being contained or controlled. He hates cages.’ His lips trembled. ‘And fire. He hates fire.’
I questioned him for half an hour, pushing and rehashing old ground, hoping he’d rephrase something and give me more, but it was clear he’d pushed a lot of things down and wasn’t willing to lift them up and look at them.
I really couldn’t blame him. I had repressed a lot from that period of my life too.
‘All right,’ I said, even though a dreadful suspicion was creeping through me.
‘You’ve given me enough to start pulling threads.
’ I stared at him until he met my eyes. ‘But if you’re lying to me, Vance …
if you’re using Jingo’s name to buy sympathy or freedom …
I will make Wraithmore feel like a spa break. ’
Broadlake flinched. ‘I’m not lying,’ he whispered. ‘I swear it.’
Robbie stopped humming and confirmed, ‘He’s not. He told you the truth. I made sure of it.’
‘You’re a piper!’ Broadlake gaped.
I looked at the poor prisoner who had already suffered a great deal, and with regret, I slid into his mind and inflicted more. I removed Vance’s memory of Robbie humming, of his revelation.
Robbie had risked himself on my behalf by piping Broadlake, and it was only right that I return the favour. No one could discover that the king of the ogres could pipe, or he’d be a dead man walking.
So, for the man I loved, I used my sub-powers, breaking my own rules. Again.