Chapter Thirty-Four
We dropped the Sandman at the Four Seasons, then continued on to Elias’s place. I knew my way around Newstaten relatively well, but it was a big city. The area where the Hawthorne place was wasn’t one I’d been to before, and the buildings, the streets, were all unfamiliar.
There were alleys here, and it was mostly residential.
We passed a park with a wrought iron fence and a fountain I could see through the greenery.
We went down another street and past a large cemetery.
It said North Cemetery on the gate, which would put this in the North End.
That had never been a relevant area to me personally, given it was mostly nice houses with big gardens, very expensive, and it had no sights or landmarks of note apart from the old cemetery.
In the front, Thaeros tapped his fingers against the wheel. “Echo, are you sure this is a good idea?”
“I don’t have ideas, just paths forward.”
I reached for my watch, covering the face with my hand to calm myself. “How do you know which path is the right one?”
He rubbed his face. “Because… I don’t know how to explain it. I shouldn’t tell you, not yet. But imagine you are given the choice to go through two doors. One is a little narrow, the other has sharp spikes and barbed wire around the frame. You’d know which one to go through, right?”
“Then why does this feel like such a bad idea?” Thaeros asked.
He had a point. I rubbed my hands on my knees. “That lawyer Brit…he was at the Moonlight. I remember him. He didn’t just come to Newstaten today.”
“No, but I was never sure where he was staying,” Echo said. “Besides, getting to him wouldn’t have done anything about the problem.”
“Which is?”
He looked at me. “It’s Cecil, all right, but…are you familiar with the adage ‘dosis facit venenum’?”
Thaeros clicked his teeth. “That’s the original Latin for ‘the dose makes the poison.’ Suitable, given the guy’s a snake.”
Echo shook his head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s not Cecil who’s the poison. It’s that he had potential, but a drop of greed here, a dash of jealousy there, and that potential turns dark. It had years and years to fester, to ruin all that potential.”
I didn’t respond. I still wasn’t sure Echo had the good intentions he proclaimed to have.
At the same time, Soyer had been…fond of Caecilius, if that was the word.
If Caecilius had been totally rotten, I didn’t think someone who’d baked cookies for children and taught them that beet juice was a potion would have even given him the time of day.
“By all accounts, he does have potential for stupid ideas,” Thaeros said.
Echo turned his hands palm up, looking at them as if he were reading his own future there.
“You’re not wrong. It was never going to go anywhere.
Maybe someday, but not that way. Not with a class system, not with humans becoming our slaves.
” He sighed. “He’s not able to see how flawed his plan is, not anymore. ”
The conversation trailed off there, and about five minutes later, we arrived at a gate set in the middle of a wall that was about as tall as two of me. I leaned forward over the middle console to get a better look.
“This is where Elias lives?”
“It really is difficult to believe you don’t hang out here all the time,” Thaeros said. “Echo, what now?”
“Just wait. I’ll talk to them.” Echo opened his door and got out, heading to a speaker system integrated into the wall itself.
I leaned forward to get closer to Thaeros. “What is going on here, Thaeros?”
I’d seen Thaeros aloof that first day they’d come to the Moonlight, but right now, they seemed guilty.
They seemed miserable. “I…I told him I wouldn’t do anything that gets you hurt.
I want you to know that. That was before we’d met, and I just didn’t want to hurt anyone.
He said that was the entire point here. I came to Newstaten to get away from things and live a quiet life here, you know?
Then Echo walks into the Moonlight this morning and tells me my fucking brother has it out for you, but the second favor I owed him would be all about thwarting Peiras.
That’s really all I know.” He gestured to the now-empty passenger seat.
“I’d never even met the Sandman. I mean, the fucking Sandman?
That’s not the crowd I hang out with, Amory.
I worked for Shamhat, not a ’cubus but almost as good, you know? All this? Above my pay grade.”
“I still don’t know who that is.”
“The Sandman?”
“No, Sham…”
“Shamhat? You don’t know Shamhat?” He gave me those big, incredulous eyes again.
I shook my head. “Nope. Never heard of them. But…I’m still new to everything, to the underground. To pawns and cursed.”
He was staring. “No one even says that anymore these days. We’re all just supernaturals.”
I exhaled heavily. “I did know that. Sorry.”
Outside, Echo was making his way back to the car. The gate was starting to move, sliding open to let us in.
Echo got back in behind Thaeros. “Drive. It’s straight ahead.”
Thaeros did. “What did you tell them?”
“That I was here to see the Lord Elias Hawthorne and that it’s urgent. That I have Amory with me.”
Thaeros’s neck muscles tensed, and he bit his lip, completely ruining his makeup in that spot.
I used the short drive to look around at the garden.
It wasn’t even a garden, not really. This was a park with bushes trained into spherical shapes and flowerbeds stretching around trees.
Most of it was covered in snow, but since nothing much was in bloom, I saw artwork dotted around the sleeping landscape.
Some of it was concrete, some abstract. One piece was an obelisk with a weathervane on top—a bird in flight rather than a rooster—and the sight of shimmery feathers against the sky reminded me of Soyer.
Thaeros stopped in front of a massive building, the entrance making it look like a set from a fairy-tale movie. Stone steps led to a door—modern looking, which made it feel at odds with the garden and the gate, with the sheer size of the building.
The door opened, and Ambrose came out. I didn’t see Elias. I could tell when Ambrose spotted me though, our eyes meeting and something sparking in his, perhaps relief. He waited at the top of the stairs.
“All out,” Echo said, not that I needed the instruction.
Thaeros turned off the car and was clearly more hesitant than me to get out.
“Is Elias here?” I asked while making for the door.
Ambrose’s gaze flicked from me to Echo. “What is this?”
“It’s important.” Echo gestured at me. “We’re friends. Well, we will be, at any rate, so I’m technically paying it forward. Cecil tried to abduct Amory maybe half an hour ago. You can’t tell the two absent Lords or the Lord Shuck.”
“Why?”
Ambrose sounded pretty calm. I wasn’t sure how he could be. This situation deserved freaking out. I only didn’t because I’d burned off a lot of that energy on those nineteen flights of stairs.
Echo sighed. “You know what I do. You know how accurate I am.”
Ambrose raised his right brow. “Yes, and I know you usually take a pretty sum for the pleasure of your predictions.”
“Well, have a freebie.”
“Oh, Amory!” I heard Elias, and saw him at the door a moment later. “Won’t you come inside? You look so cold.”
Ambrose beckoned me to him, so I went up the stairs. I was absolutely not prepared for him to grab me with inhuman speed. I barely had time for a breath in before he had one of my arms pinned behind my back and me in front of him, holding me there with his arm around my neck.
“You two don’t move.” Ambrose walked backward into the house and kicked the door shut. He was not easing his hold, not even a little.
“That looks very uncomfortable, Ambrose,” Elias said. “Are you sure it’s necessary?” He wasn’t standing that far away in what felt like a wide entrance area, not that I could really see with how pinned I was.
Ambrose growled. “It’s fucking necessary. Grab his left arm and bite him, then tell me if it’s really him or an impostor.”
Elias pointed at himself. “Me? You want me to bite him?”
“This is not the time to fuck around. Just do it.”
Elias looked at me. His eyes were huge, and he was biting his lower lip. “Um. I…am sorry. In case this is really you, Amory.”
“R-really me?”
Ambrose made a low noise. “No talking.”
Elias reached for the arm Ambrose hadn’t pinned, and while he looked hesitant about it, he bit my wrist. The pain of it barely even registered, because having my other arm pulled back in this unnatural way hurt a lot more.
After a moment, Elias looked back up and licked pink off his bottom lip. “It’s him. Let him go. Let him go now, Ambrose.”
He did, and the very next moment, Elias’s arms fell around my neck. “I said to visit me, but not like this. Why would you do that and scare me so?”
“What the fuck happened?” Ambrose asked, his voice gruff but calm. “Explain, now.”
I tried to extricate myself, but Elias held me in place. “Uh, I was asleep. Someone knocked, and I figured it was Jules or Soyer. Thought he’d lost his key.”
Ambrose frowned. “Jules?”
“The house pawn.”
He nodded. “Continue.”
“Well, it was this guy who’d been at the diner for tea. British accent. And those fancy gloves, you know?”
Elias pulled back. “Gloves? Do you mean custom gloves? Italian?”
I rubbed my arm. “I didn’t ask where he got them, but I guess they looked custom made.”
Elias’s eyes went wide. “Oh, shit.”
Ambrose made a grumbling sound. “What? Why do gloves matter?”
Elias hugged himself. “Well, I happen to know that a certain someone used to have a personal glover he used as his forwarding address.”
Ambrose bared his teeth, but still kept calm. “Stop with the subtlety. This is not the fucking time. Who has a glover, and why do I care?”
“Caecilius,” Elias said. “He had a glover in Florence.”
Ambrose’s nose flared. “Fuck me. Why on my watch?”