Chapter 25 #2
“But he remembered your whole life, Kit,” Ted said softly.
“He talked about it after you were gone, especially in the last few years. He remembered the day you were born. So if the elixir lasts twenty years, it only wore off in the last four before he died. Before that, it was grief. And he could have done better. Near the end, I know he wished he would have.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with Whitman,” George interjected.
“In Mom’s song,” Ted said, “she was supposed to marry another fae, they’d been promised, but she met her human and ran away instead. It was right before the fae closed off their realm again.”
“It would have humiliated him in Faerie,” Mary-Alice added. “Weakened him enough to want revenge and possibly made him follow her, even though coming here meant never being able to go home.”
“If he wanted to kill her and Dad though, why not both of them at once?”
“It was the truce,” Mary-Alice said. “He couldn’t hurt any human in the province. Once he was bound by that, he couldn’t touch your dad.”
“Until he could,” Gus inferred. “How did that happen?”
“Salter didn’t know the specifics. All he knew was Dad approached Whitman.
He said Whitman told him Dad threatened him and things got out of hand.
Whitman had this way of talking that made it seem reasonable at the time, for Salter to take the bribe and falsify the records.
Kit...do you think Dad knew Whitman killed Mom? ”
I thought about it, but if he had, why would our father go after Whitman without any help?
Why would he think he could win up against a fae?
He wasn’t even a mage, he was an ordinary human without a lick of magic.
But what if… “Or he found out Whitman was fae and he saw an opportunity to get more elixir. Maybe he thought he could force Whitman to give it to him and ended up dead instead. Whitman probably thought he got away with another murder. At least until Salter started trying to contact us.”
Gus added, “If Whitman knew Salter told Ted all about it, then he was a threat too. Especially given he’s married to an O’Shea. And once we started looking into your disappearance, that made us threats too.”
My scalp prickled. “Which means he had free reign to hire people to shoot up your house. Most likely paid Lester Tomlin to kill us, too.”
“Wait, Lester tried to kill you? That slimy, no good bastard! He came after me at work, that’s why I took Mary-Alice and ran. And that’s exactly why I sent you the music box letter, so you’d leave it alone and not try to find me. You can’t cross a fae and walk away, Kit.”
“You’re my brother, Teddy. I couldn’t leave you in danger,” I said, my voice thick with guilt. “Not again.”
“Well, I wish you would’ve. Now we’re all screwed. If he’s coming after you, Whitman must suspect you know either what he is or where we are.”
“And there’s no proof,” George muttered, agitated. “We’ve got nothing to tie Whitman to any of this, legally speaking, not unless Meggie will turn over the magic showing he killed Mrs. Lovely.”
“She can’t,” Mary-Alice said. “The way the spell is designed, it stays locked unless he kills one of us.”
“That’s some good news then,” George offered. “If he can’t kill you, then—”
“Not good news,” she countered. “He could disappear me, lock me up. He could do a lot of things that don’t kill me. And besides, that pact doesn’t extend to Ted, or Kit. We don’t even know if the human part of the truce does.”
Jesus. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I was suddenly freezing. If the truce hadn’t been protecting me, why wasn’t I dead already? He’d had plenty of opportunity.
“What about Mr. North?” Ted asked, hope in his voice. “He probably knows something by now, right? He said he’d help one way or another.”
My gaze flicked to Gus, who appeared briefly pained before his features settled into something grim. “He’s dead. A car accident, which is starting to sound like suspicious timing. Wonder what I might find out if I start digging.”
“Gus!” George objected. “Whitman has connections and he’s rich as sin on top of being fae. We can’t go around slinging mud at him or we’ll all end up six feet under. Look what happened to Salter. Even if we did find some miracle proof, how the hell are Mounties supposed to deal with fae?”
“I don’t know. How the hell are any of us supposed to?”
“Wait, what happened to Mr. Salter?” Mary-Alice asked warily.
“He was murdered.” Gus didn’t elaborate, only rubbed his palms over his face like he was exhausted to the core.
Ted looked to me as if I held any sort of solution to this mess. “What are we going to do?”
Shaking my head gently, I appealed to Gus with my eyes for exactly the same thing.
But it was George who answered. “There’s nothing we can do yet.
For now, we let things cool down. Kit knows you’re okay, so he’ll lay off poking around and he can let Whitman think you’re gone for good while we figure out a plan.
Maybe even let it drop that you’re in Montreal or further west to muddy the trail. ”
“And then what?” I demanded. “They can’t stay here forever. Their lives are in Halifax. They can’t just disappear forever.”
“Kit,” Gus said, and my shoulders paused in their climb to my ears.
“George isn’t telling them to disappear forever.
He’s saying for now. For now, we let Whitman think it’s over.
And we go back to Meggie when the coast is clear to find a way to deal with a fae for good. She’s got to have some ideas.”
I didn’t like it. I wanted it fixed. I wanted to know everyone I loved was out of danger, including Gus and George. But I had no way to make that happen.
“Are you going to be all right here?” I asked Ted and Mary-Alice. “Have you got enough supplies? It doesn’t look very comfortable.”
Mary-Alice offered me a wry smile. “I’ve slept in worse places. We’ve got food, shelter, and some books. We can make it a while longer.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Ted asked, looking me over, concern twisting his expression. “You’ve been through an awful lot, and then we dragged you across the world into another kind of trouble.”
That was it. I couldn’t stand the self-recrimination in his voice. My throat closed up, so I took the few steps to my brother and grabbed him in a fierce hug. He clung to me like a little boy even though he was taller than me these days.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I was worried about you, is all.”
“I’m so sorry, Kit. I was just trying to keep you safe.”
“That’s my job, you drip.” I pulled him back to arm’s length with my hands on his shoulders. “I’m supposed to keep you safe, not the other way around. I’m the big brother.”
Ted gave me a watery half-smile. “Yeah, but I’m bigger than you now. So maybe we’re allowed to protect each other.”
I let go of him and stepped back. “Fine, but no more keeping murderous plots hatched by asshole fae a secret. Or any other murderous plots, for that matter. Better yet, why don’t we avoid murderous plots all together?”
“God, this better be the only one,” Ted grumbled, scrubbing a hand back and forth over the top of his head. “My nerves can’t handle more.”
Mine couldn’t either.