29. Leah
Leah
“Well, it’s no castle,” Syrus smirks as I stare up at Hathwell’s townhouse.
“I’ll remind you we’re not here for you to see how Hathwell Reed measures up to the Lord of Malice,” I tut.
“Good, because I can tell you now he definitely doesn’t,” Syrus replies in such a suggestive tone that I roll my eyes, which only makes him laugh.
I glance behind me to make sure I haven’t attracted any attention, but the street is busy, and no one stops to look at me as they hurry past. There’s no one inside to take note either.
Evie was right: the house has obviously been empty and unattended for a while.
The windows are caked in three months’ worth of dust, and the plants out front—which were ruthlessly manicured last time I was here—haven’t been trimmed in a while.
“If Hathwell really intended to go on a trip, he would’ve organized for servants to come around and maintain things,” I point out as I move around the perimeter of the house and find a spot to climb over the back wall.
“You think that was just a ruse to explain your absence when the time came?”
“Sure. If I die a day into my marriage, that looks fishy, but if some terrible ‘accident’ occurs while I’m off traveling some distant part of the land, who’d think to be suspicious? It sounds more than plausible. Plus, the trip worked as an excuse to move the wedding along quickly.”
Once over the wall, I crouch down at the back door. “This lock looks pretty simple. Do you think you could do something with your shadows?” I ask.
“I thought you’d never ask, my dear vulture,” Syrus says as I draw my Infernum knife. I wedge the tip into the keyhole and watch as a dark mist forms in my palm, traveling down the blade and into the lock. There’s a click a moment later, and I try the handle—the door opens.
I can feel the smug way Syrus’s presence prowls around my mind, like the cat that got the cream. It secretly makes me feel exhilarated, how good a mood he’s been in since we finally embraced this strange, intense thing between us. I’m trying hard not to question it, not when it makes us so happy.
Inside, I tread the corridors of the house I only ever spent a few hours in, trying to remember the layout from Hathwell’s brief tour.
“All right, perhaps it’s not a complete dump,” Syrus admits begrudgingly. “But there’s a distinct lack of three-headed cats, don’t you think?”
As he’s speaking, it occurs to me that there was one room I wasn’t allowed to see on my wedding night.
“Let’s check out his office,” I say. “There might be something there.”
There’s nothing strange about it at first glance.
There are a few shelves of books that don’t look like they’ve ever been read and a desk with piles of paper on it, some with the name of Reed Mills on the header—the factory belonging to Hathwell’s father—as well as a few letters bundled away in the drawers.
I’m going to open them up and see who they’re from when I feel Syrus’s attention sharpening.
“Look at that bookend on the right again,” he says.
I turn my gaze back toward the shelves, squinting at the object. It looks more like a sculpture than a bookend, made of polished stone and carved in a vaguely familiar swirling shape.
“Does that look like a rune to you?” Syrus says.
“Maybe,” I say, moving closer to study it.
I pick it up, but unfortunately, it doesn’t trigger the opening of a secret passage or anything similarly exciting.
I go to put it back, but as I lean forward, I feel a little unevenness under my feet.
I pause, shifting my weight back and forth on the rug.
There’s definitely more give than there should be.
I flip the edge of the thick carpet, exposing the corner of what looks like a hatch, half covered by the desk.
“Well, well,” Syrus says as I bend down to shove the desk aside.
It’s big, and I assume I’ll have to put my whole body into it, only to find it’s no match for my newly built muscles.
Once it’s out of the way, I pull the hatch open.
Directly underneath is a full staircase with a shiny brass banner leading down under the house.
“I know those stairs,” I say.
I’m looking at them from a totally different angle, but I recognize the banister, the ornate style out of place in such a gloomy spot. I hurry down the steps and am immediately confronted with an open doorway to another room.
The same windowless chamber I was nearly sacrificed in.
“Shit, Hathwell wasn’t just working with the sorcerers. He’s the host of their fucking clubhouse,” I say, stepping into the room, empty but for the altar table still in the center of it.
“One of them, anyway,” Syrus says darkly, but his touch against my mind is soft and comforting. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say, swallowing. “I mean, it’s bringing some of it back. The fear, the blood.”
Syrus shifts inside my head, restless. “I regret how…unrestrained I was that night.”
“You do?” I ask, doubtful. “I thought you said they deserved it?”
“They did. I regret it because it hurt you. Not because of them.”
I step around the chamber, treading softly, a part of me afraid to disturb the silence.
“I wonder where the bodies are,” I say. “Someone cleaned this place up.”
I study a faint blood stain on the floor—you wouldn’t notice it unless you knew what to look for.
The memory of the sorcerer I stabbed on this spot doesn’t feel quite so awful anymore.
I’d say Infernum toughened me up, but in general I’ve seen less violence during my months there than I did on the plains.
No, what’s missing now is the gut-wrenching guilt.
“It would appear that they came back to cover their tracks,” Syrus agrees.
I walk along the side of the altar, only to stop mid-stride.
A pair of feet stick out from the far end of the table.
I keep my distance as I round the edge of the altar, looking down at the man slumped against it, arms chained to the table legs, his eyes closed.
“It’s Hathwell,” I say.
It took me a second to recognize him. He’s a far cry from the fashionable, healthy young man I met in my father’s parlor.
His clothes are filthy, stained with dirt, bodily waste, and what looks like old blood, while his blond hair hangs limply around his gaunt face.
There are some fruit rinds on the floor, and he’s surrounded by the crumpled paper wrappings that bread comes in from the bakery, so he’s clearly been fed at some point, but still he’s very thin.
Above the hollowed cheeks, his right eye looks almost sealed shut, a deep purple lump forming over it, and his bottom lip is swollen.
“Looks like he’s taken a beating,” I say, nudging him with my boot.
He startles awake at the prod, staring around wildly. When he focuses on my face, it takes him a moment to recognize me, and when he does, he loses even more color from his already gray complexion.
“N-no,” he stutters, eyes wide with fear. “Not you. It wasn’t my idea, I swear. I’m a friend of demons—I’d never kill them!”
“What are you talking about?” I demand. I thought he was rambling about the ritual, but his last line makes no sense.
He drops his voice to a whisper. “Is…is it still in you? The demon?”
“Let me handle this,” Syrus says.
I feel him move closer behind my eyes, and when Hathwell looks suitably terrified, I assume Syrus must’ve shown him a flash of red in my irises.
“What do you think?” Syrus speaks through me, my voice coming out in a low growl.
Hathwell yelps and tugs pointlessly against his chains. “St-stay away from me! I told you, I didn’t lay a hand on those demons. It wasn’t me.”
“Wait,” I say, Syrus retreating so I can use my own voice again. “Demons, plural? Does that mean you know who’s been smiting them and opening the rifts into Infernum?”
He clutches his own throat, as if trying to hold back any words that might betray him, shaking his head desperately. “No. I can’t say anything. They’ll kill me,” he moans.
“Who? The ephilium?” I press. “Are your friends—those sorcerers—working with them?”
“I can’t,” he repeats. “They’ll destroy me.”
“It might be time to get a little more persuasive,” Syrus notes, his voice gentle but firm. He doesn’t want to push me into anything, but he’s letting me know what has to be done.
I draw the new knife Syrus gave me to replace the one the ephilium took, crouching down to make sure Hathwell can see it clearly.
“So you and your little black magic friends were opening the rifts. And then what? Binding demons to fool Infernum’s wards into letting them pass?
That’s a strange little hobby you have there,” I say, toying with the blade to show off the long, sharp edge.
“Why were you going to Infernum? Why summon such a powerful demon for the ritual with me?”
“I…” He swallows, tears starting to shine in his panicked eyes. “You have to understand, my life won’t be worth living if they find out I betrayed them.”
I sigh. “Why did you take water from the Morphos?” I try instead.
He opens his mouth, ready to refuse me again, then closes it. He looks confused.
“What did you say?” he asks warily, as if this might be some trick.
“The Morphos. The lake in Malice. Why was water stolen from it?”
“I…I don’t know,” he says. And then, relieved he can give me some kind of answers at last, he straightens up. “Truly, I have no idea. I’ve never even heard of that lake.”
I sit back on my heels, bewildered. “So the sorcerers were the ones smiting demons and sneaking into Infernum, but they didn’t touch the lake?”
“He could be lying,” Syrus says. “It might be worth trying to torture the truth out of him. Lives depend on it.”
I glance doubtfully at Hathwell. He’s such a mess, I’m not sure we can push him much further.
“He’s already been tortured,” I point out. “And he’s afraid of me—well, of you—but it’s obvious he’s equally scared of them. Maybe even more so. Otherwise, he would’ve folded right away.”