Chapter 50 #2
I held the image of the building in my mind. The atrium, the security scanners, the long corridor leading to William’s office, the narrow side paths I’d walked a hundred times. Every door, every window, every wall I could remember and a few I couldn’t.
And as I held the image, I thought of exactly what I needed from them.
Stand at every door. Every window. Every wall. Don’t go in. Don’t engage. Don’t let a single one of them leave.
The hum rippled out, low and absolute. I felt the pull of something on the other end of it acknowledge me. Not in words. Just a single, immediate wave of compliance that moved through every one of them at once, the way wind moves through a field.
I opened my eyes, blinking back my surprise. “Done,” I said evenly, as if I’d just ordered a pizza.
Annabelle was sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed, watching me with what almost looked like curiosity now. “Seems we have a fast learner in our midst.”
“Jeez. With all this praise it’s a wonder my head even fits through the door anymore.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she shot back, the corner of her mouth twitching despite herself.
“How many did you send?”
I shrugged, not having the slightest idea. “I didn’t count but I’m sure it’s more than enough.”
“Well.” She let out a low whistle. “I’m sure William’s having an absolutely lovely time right about now.”
The thought of him. Of his face the moment a hundred demons appeared at every exit of his sacred building like they’d grown out of the stone. It gave me more satisfaction than I cared to admit out loud.
I crossed the living room to the bar cart against the far wall and poured myself a finger of whatever Karl had been keeping in his crystal decanter back in the day.
The bottle had probably been gathering dust there since long before I’d landed in Hollow Hills, but it was top-shelf bourbon by the look of it, and right now I wasn’t feeling all that picky.
I tipped the glass back and let the burn run down my throat without flinching.
I could feel the demons at Temple now. Could feel them lined up along the perimeter, three deep at every door, throwing whatever passed for shadows in the rain.
I could feel William inside the building, and the rest of the Council with him.
The fear running through them, acrid and metallic on the back of my tongue.
Even at a distance, even through the throne’s strange and indirect awareness, I could taste it.
Good. Let him taste mine for a change.
I poured another finger and turned to face the room.
“They’ll call,” I said, sure of it. “They have to. Even William’s not stupid enough to think he can fight what just landed on his doorstep.”
“He’ll try to negotiate,” said Dominic, who had drifted over from the fireplace to inspect the bar cart’s offerings with the unhurried judgment of a man who took his liquor seriously.
He plucked the decanter from my hand and poured himself a glass without asking.
“Buy himself time. He didn’t get to be Senior Magister by losing well. ”
“I’m counting on it.”
Trace turned from the window. “And when he does?”
“Then I tell him exactly what I want.”
“Which is?”
“His head,” I said icily, the words sitting heavier in my mouth than they had any business sitting. And I meant every one of them.
The stunned silence that followed was interrupted by the shrill sound of my phone ringing.
I looked down at it and read the screen. Unknown caller. The number wasn’t one I recognized, but the moment I heard the phone ring, I knew exactly who it was. Every cell in my body knew.
I let it ring twice more, just to make him wait, before I finally picked up.
“Senior Magister,” I said, beaming like we were old friends. I leaned a hip against the bar cart, the glass loose in my hand. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
“What have you done?” His voice came through the line strained and tight, stripped of every ounce of the polished, paternal warmth I was used to hearing from him. The first time in my life I’d ever heard him sound afraid.
“Jeez,” I said pleasantly. “Good news travels fast.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He was almost panting, the tremor underneath his words audible. “Do you understand what you’ve just become? You’ve made yourself an enemy of this Order. An enemy of every Anakim who has ever stood for what is good and just and—”
“I think you did that yourself, William,” I cut him off, my voice level. “When you tried to kill me. When you killed my father. When you sent Alford into my house in the middle of the night and shipped me off to Sanguinarium for good measure.”
A long, taut silence stretched on the other end.
“How do you know about—”
“About that little plan? Because it already happened on my other Timeline.” I let the words sit. “Yeah. That’s right. I got out. I came back. And I came back specifically to make sure you pay for every last thing you did to me and the people I love.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched until I could hear his breathing. Heavy. Uneven. The breathing of a man whose carefully built world had just been pulled out from under him in the span of a single phone call.
When he finally spoke, his voice was different. Lower. Calculating.
“Jemma, listen to me. Whatever you are now, whatever you have…taken upon yourself, there is still time. We can talk about this. There is still room for an arrangement that—”
“There’s no arrangement, William.”
“—that benefits everyone. You don’t have to do this. The destruction you’ll bring down on this world if you turn that army loose—”
“That army hasn’t done anything yet. Notice that?” I rotated the glass between my fingers. “They’re standing outside your front doors. They haven’t kicked anything in. They haven’t touched a single one of you. That’s me being polite, William. That’s me asking nicely.”
His breath hitched and the sound of it was music to my ears.
“What do you want?” he asked finally, his voice low. The question of a man who had run out of cards.
“I want a truce,” I answered, sweet as sugar.
“A promise written in blood that the Order will leave me and my family alone from here on out. And that includes my baby brother,” I said, not bothering to share Ares’ name with him.
He didn’t deserve to know anything about him.
“From now on, he is my responsibility and I will bear the full brunt of that, no matter what happens. But you…you don’t get to hurt us anymore. ”
“We…may be able to arrange something.”
“Great. There’s just one condition, though.” I paused. “The truce comes with your head on a platter.”
He didn’t speak for a very long moment.
Then he laughed. Low and dry and hollow. The laugh of a man who’d already done the math and didn’t like the answer.
“And if I agree to that,” he asked, testing the waters, “what happens to the rest of my Council?”
“They walk.” The words came out before I’d even thought about it. “So long as they agree to the truce.”
“You give me your word.”
“I give you my word.”
Another long pause.
“My only ever objective,” he said, his voice strange now, the way an old man’s voice gets when he’s unwinding something he’s held tight for a long time, “was the safety of this world. The protection of innocents. The balance of powers. I have done things, terrible things, in the service of that goal. I’ve never apologized for any of them.
I never will. Because I believed, Jemma, with my whole heart, that I was holding back something that would have unmade everything we’ve built.
Something exactly like the army standing outside my building right now. ”
“Save the speech, William.”
“I am telling you this,” he went on, ignoring me, “because I want you to understand. If giving you what you want means you call those things back to whatever pit you pulled them from, if it means this Order survives, if it means my comrades go home to their families tonight, then yes, Jemma. I agree.”
I set my glass down on the cart.
Well, shit. I hadn’t exactly expected that. I’d expected him to fight, to bargain, to stall, to call my bluff and dare me to do my worst. What I had not expected was for him to simply agree.
Which meant, of course, he wasn’t agreeing.
“Then I’ll see you in an hour,” I said, showing nothing in my voice.
“I’ll be in my office.” A beat. “Come alone.”
“Not a chance.”
“Fair enough,” he said and hung up.
I lowered the phone and set it down beside the empty glass.
The whole room was watching me. Trace from the window. Dominic from the bar cart, his glass paused halfway to his lips. The Roderick sisters arranged across the long sofa near the fireplace, three faces angled at me with various shades of incredulity.
“Tell me you didn’t just agree to walk into Temple,” said Annabelle flatly.
“I didn’t agree to anything. He did.”
“Same difference.”
“He’s lying,” said Trace, his voice low. “You know he’s lying.”
“Of course he’s lying.” I pushed off the bar cart. “He’s been lying since the day I met him.”
“Then why—”
“Because it doesn’t matter, Trace.” I crossed to him, holding his gaze. “He can lie all he wants. He can have a hundred contingencies stacked behind that office door. He can have Cinderdust strapped to every Sentinel in the building. None of it changes what’s going to happen tonight.”
Dominic’s mouth pulled at the corner. “Which is what?”
I held his gaze. “That he’s paying the fucking piper tonight. One way or the other.”