Chapter 27 Grim
After cleaning up after myself—and Cedric—I went to retrieve the asshole’s body from the morgue. Not because I gave a damn about what happened to it, what happened to him.
I did, however, care about the particulars of the shit shows at the library and, later, at the McDonald’s getting back to The Few.
A body disappearing from the morgue only to show up again would already raise enough red flags with the human authorities, and those of us who had dealings behind the veil and in the alternate dimensions all had our mortal-world contacts.
Grapevines existed, too, and the last thing I needed at that moment with so much hanging in the balance was for someone to go snitching about Cedric’s ass sitting in a drawer.
There was also the episode with the self-driving cars and the runaway bookmobile I’d needed to cover up.
I’d already erased Helena’s involvement by retrieving her phone and removing her mangled Beetle from the scene.
Now I had Cedric, still in a body bag, laid out on the enormous oak desk in his pretentious, dark-academia-style yuppie office tucked away in the rear of the sprawling oval library of the Hallowed Halls.
Flora had deposited his soul here, too, setting the lantern that held his wretched spirit upon a nearby shelf crammed with Cedric’s books on magic and necromancy.
Back at the morgue, I’d unzipped the bag partially to make triple sure I had the right asswipe.
I did.
I’d left the bag that way, and glaring down at Cedric’s dead face with those chilling and now-sightless and unblinking ice-chip eyes, I frowned at catching something odd. Something I hadn’t noticed before.
A dark line, illuminated by the glow of Cedric’s own soul, marked his throat.
Indicating his decapitation scar… had bled.
Which must have happened in the restaurant. Or before. He’d been clothed then, of course. In a high-collared coat, which would have hidden the phenomenon. And to show signs of being bloody now, postmortem, the scar had to have reopened before death. His latest death.
All of this pointed to the idea that something had… upset him.
“You bled,” I said, trying not to sound startled as I peered up at the lantern. “Bet that wound confused the fuck out of the coroner.”
Uncharacteristically, the soul within that lantern hadn’t stirred when I’d entered with its usual vessel, though it had brightened with interest. Now, as I turned away to pace in the office, it dimmed again, waiting no doubt for me to state my business.
And I did have business.
“Don’t think this means I give a rat’s ass what happens to you,” I growled, just to dispel any illusions he might be laboring under. “I’d throw your carcass in a wood chipper myself if I didn’t need to put you—all of you—somewhere where I can keep a watch on you.”
The soul didn’t respond, but it had to be listening.
“Was this your doing?” I held up a slip of torn parchment between two skeletal fingers, the note I’d taken along with the book I’d found in Helena’s apartment.
The small volume had caught my eye after she’d fallen asleep, her soul at last disentangling from mine, and I’d snagged the book from her nightstand before going to plug in her phone and leave my keys so she’d have a relatively safe way to get to work.
I didn’t want her walking or taking public transport—not with her life dangling by a thread.
Maybe, with the Fated mark on her soul, The Judge wasn’t any safer than the rest of the world, but lending it to her made me feel better.
And in this situation, false comfort was still better than no comfort, wasn’t it?
False or not, that comfort had been short-lived.
Because of this note. The one that said “Yes, Helena, he’s real” in scripty blue handwriting I’d never seen before.
But just because it didn’t match Cedric’s tight cursive didn’t mean it wasn’t his.
If he could enchant a bookmobile to go rogue, he could forge a note in Swahili if he wanted.
“Found this in a book,” I grumbled. “About me. Someone had to have planted it there knowing she’d go looking for answers.”
With my hooded mug on the cover of that volume, which Helena had bookmarked with what had to be a hundred tropical-flower-speckled page flags, what else could that note mean?
“Then again,” I muttered, “who else could have planted this for her to find?”
The glow from the lantern increased, the aura from Cedric’s noxious green soul washing all in an eerie light and casting his pale face a sickly hue.
“I guess the real question is why you did it. Obviously, you’ve been following me. You must have been there that night I met her on that balcony. You saw then what I did—didn’t do.”
Cedric’s soul flickered. Did that mean I was on the money? Or out in left field…
No. I was onto him. I had to be.
“Was that how you knew where to leave the note?” I asked. “That would also explain how you knew to look for her at the library after the incident with the elevator.”
I stopped pacing to turn toward Cedric’s body, which lay between me and the glowing lantern.
Dark wood-paneled walls surrounded us. Above, from a ceiling enchanted to display the night sky and its star systems, hung a magic-suspended mobile of the planets and their current alignment.
“The question is why?” I said. “If you knew she was the missing soul right from the beginning, why wouldn’t you try to take her sooner? Unless… the elevator was your doing.”
Rage boiled up inside me, born from the idea that Cedric would have sought to hurt Helena right from the start. I rounded the desk, went to the shelf, and seized the lantern, bringing it close for inspection.
The soul bobbed around inside, banging against the glass panes as though startled.
He should be afraid.
Even I didn’t know what I was capable of these days.
This accusation, however, that Cedric had triggered the elevator’s failure made little sense. Because, in that instance, I’d again felt the pull for Helena’s soul.
Even if Cedric had rigged the elevator, that didn’t explain the note in the book about me. Helena didn’t need to be tipped off that I happened to be real for Cedric’s plans to undermine me to work. In fact, her doubts would only have served his purpose.
So why eliminate her suspicions?
“Why leave her the note?” I demanded. “Why tell her about me if you were just there to finish her off—or to ensure she was dead—just so you could nab her soul and rat me out to White?”
The light in the lantern sparked and flashed, flickering and sizzling—probably telling me off in spirit speak.
“You were waiting for me to slip up, weren’t you?
” I asked. “Following me around and biding your time for the moment I screwed up badly enough. But you needed insurance. You needed me to be invested. You knew I’d save her again to cover my ass.
And you thought you’d get her involved and asking questions… Is that it?”
That seemed like a stretch, too. The Few might have forgiven my initial slip, but they wouldn’t have tolerated my bid to cover up my part in a missing Fated.
To get what he wanted, Cedric had never needed me to become interested in a human.
To care about one…
All he would have had to do to put my ass in a vise was to secure Helena’s soul himself and deliver it to Sir White.
At the end of the day, did it matter what Cedric hoped to accomplish with the note?
“Maybe I fucked up,” I told him as I carried the lantern to the desk.
“But you fucked up worse. By screwing with me every chance you got. If you hadn’t hounded me so much, followed me around like a sniveling dumpster rat, right at this moment, I might be tempted to believe you’d really grant the life you’d get by taking up my scythe to Helena.
Too bad I know you. And how you’d sooner snatch her spirit out of her first thing while I watched… right before sending me to hell.”
The light from Cedric’s soul died down to a soft glow, the orb inside going still.
But maybe he wasn’t throwing a fit because he understood—finally—there wasn’t any use.
I opened a drawer, shoved the lantern inside, then shut it sharply, sealing Cedric away in the dark, too wary he’d find a way to tip himself over, bust out of the lantern, and rejoin his form. Go after Helena again…
I certainly wasn’t willing to risk rejoining his serpent’s soul to his physical form just to interrogate him. Especially not when I was unlikely to get honest answers anyway.
At the same time, I needed to park him here just in case he was working with someone else. Like Mephistopheles. Or another bad actor he might have made an alliance with.
Johann never hazarded to leave the Netherworld, and only Flora, Cedric, and I had clearance to come and go. So now, if Cedric did have an accomplice, at the very least, they wouldn’t be able to get to him.
The only problem was, if there was a coconspirator, or even a separate conspirator independent of Cedric, then Helena was still at risk.
Clenching the note tight in my hand, I swept from the office and through the cavernous, dimly lit library with its towering book-lined walls and rounded, balcony-lined floors that climbed to oblivion.
Halls of more books connected to the main chamber, a good portion of their numbers readable only by The Few.
Could the book Helena had in her possession have come from this same chamber, pulled and planted by Cedric himself? Or had someone else placed it for her to find?
The only other being who could have planted the book was Flora. Unless the book hadn’t come from the Hallowed Halls.
Flora wasn’t the clandestine sort. She spoke her mind, and the two of us trusted one another because we had to. There was nothing I could conceive of for her to gain from such an action, either.
No matter the case, something was afoot, and the only person who could provide me with any answers to help clarify what that was just so happened to be the one being, the one woman, I’d already sworn to myself I would stay away from.
I kept forbidding myself from doing things regarding Helena. Those promises—the ones that tied back to the oath I’d taken—kept flying out the damn window every time I interacted with her.
But I had to know where she had gotten that book. Because she would have said something before now if Cedric had been the one to hand it to her.
Maybe none of this mattered. Maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie.
The Jenga tower currently stood, after all, and we—me, Helena, Flora, and Johann—were just waiting for the trigger event to occur so we could all play our parts in a controlled demolition.
So it wouldn’t do well for me to go mucking about trying to get answers to a mystery that was likely not a current problem.
Unless it was…
Until this latest discovery, it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be additional enemies at play. Perhaps even a broader conspiracy to subvert and depose all three of us.
Or, at the very least… me.
If silence and solitude were my main companions in this role, paranoia was too often a special guest. But what was that old saying?
You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you…
Helena could clear this up in one conversation. By approaching her again, I’d only be tying up a loose end. Or else discovering a new proverbial bomb to dismantle.
Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to see her again, speak to her.
Ask her why she’d done what she had. Kissed me like that…
Then again, this whole note thing wasn’t a stone I could afford to leave unturned. Not if Mephistopheles or another entity happened to be pulling strings.
Not when it was more than just Helena’s life on the line. Her soul had become caught in a trap—one that looked more and more as though it had been designed to bait me.
Flora and Johann could be just as compromised as her. And those factors left me with no choice.
I would ask her where she’d gotten the book—that was all—and just consider getting to see her a secret silver lining to a visit that I would keep professional.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.