Chapter 71
Gideon
“It’s…ink.” Lyssa stared at the dozen jars they’d found in nearly every cookbook on their family’s bookshelves, which Gideon and Keeley had carefully hauled back to the healer’s quarters, where the baby guvres pranced about, playing a form of peekaboo with their parents in the windows.
Nobody stopped them, lest this room become the adults’ next target.
“It’s the ink Papa used when he was spying on Evie,” Gideon said, urging her to look closer. “They’re extremely rare.”
“How does it work?” Keeley asked, picking one up, popping off the lid. Gideon took it gently from her hands.
“Lyssa, may I use your quill?” Gideon asked, and his sister handed it off with a distrustful stare.
“Do not bend it.”
Ms. Erring walked past them, stopping to blurt, “Don’t even joke!” Clearing her throat, she mumbled, “As you were.”
Lyssa scrunched her nose, staring down at the empty parchment when Gideon bent to scribble on it. “It looks normal to me.” Lyssa tilted her head.
“But when I put a mere drop on a different piece of paper…” Gideon completed the action, and the women gathered round to watch the sentence scribble itself in Gideon’s exact writing. “It copies down anything written from that specific pot of ink.”
Lyssa appeared troubled by this news. “That’s a horrid invasion of privacy.”
“Lyssa, where is Evie’s work journal?” Ms. Erring asked skeptically.
“Under her pillow.”
“And you know that because…” Ms. Erring continued, staring at her.
“Because I read it,” Lyssa explained shamelessly.
The HR woman’s eye twitched before she moved on. “I give. What is the point of rehashing this? The mystery of the notes has been solved. Who cares if Griffin was hoarding ink?”
“If he used this ink in his correspondences with Benedict, we might be able to get some important information out of it.”
Gideon took another one of the vials, dropped a bit of ink onto blank paper, and they watched. And waited.
Until words began to form, slowly but surely. No, not words. A heart? And two names in the center.
Evie and the Villain.
Gideon chuckled, crumpling the paper up before it could reveal more, setting the inkpot aside. “That was one of Evie’s, then.”
Keeley rolled her eyes. “What if all of them were hers?”
But it seemed Lyssa had been doing her own investigating while their backs were turned. Staring wide-eyed at the parchment in her hands, she held it closer to her face. “I don’t think this one was hers.” She gave the paper to Gideon.
And when he saw what was written there, he understood why.
Villain’s office has been infiltrated. Bomb planted to destroy office unsuccessful. No casualties. Another method must be used.
Signed,
A man trapped.
“Did Papa write this?” Lyssa asked.
“Likely,” Gideon murmured. But something niggled at him that the answer was no. “Could have been Marv.”
“Marv didn’t plant the bomb,” Keeley objected. “He was accounted for at the front gate through the entirety of that incident.”
A chirp interrupted them.
Clarke stumbled over his sister in an effort to climb up Becky’s skirts, and she let him, holding the animal tightly to her chest. “Do we find it odd that the parents have been trusting us with the babies without any qualms?”
Blade huffed. “I think turning the kitchens into a colorful cartoon painting wouldn’t be considered ‘no qualms,’ but why would they? We’re unpaid childcare.”
“How would a guvre pay you?” Lyssa asked, tapping her chin.
Gideon sighed. “Death by melting, likely.”
Lyssa gestured to her dress that had appeared when the starlight and venom met. “Or a tutu.”
“One has to wonder which is worse,” Becky grumbled, patting Clarke’s back when the animal let out a rumble-like burp.
The sound startled Lyssa into dropping another bit of ink onto a blank sheet of paper, and words slowly formed across the page.
True love was never part of the plan.
Signed,
A man trapped.
“It was my father. It must have been. I’m sure.” Gideon held up the paper, reading it again, wondering why the more he stared at it…
He wasn’t sure it was his father’s. He wasn’t sure at all.