Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
I called the sushi place, the Cat’s Pause, and asked if the Grand Sorcerer was there.
“Who?”
“The grand…You know, lady with a scarred face and a fedora.” I was trying to make it sound like official business, but the grand sorcerer didn’t have business hours.
“Oh, Anna? You just missed her, but her daughter’s here if you’d like to give her a message.”
“Her daughter? Oh. That would be…”
Another voice came on. “Hello, mysterious caller. If you’re stalking my mother, I’ll stalk you. Literally.”
I froze for a second, then shook my head. “I have no idea what that means. Something to do with celery? I’m actually looking for you, so this is perfect.”
She sniffed. “This is what’s wrong with stalkers these days. They have no endurance. You should stalk my mother to the end, not switch halfway just because someone else answers the phone.”
I smiled. She was goofy. “I’ll keep that in mind, but the only person I want to stalk, I already live with.”
“Oooh, the plot thickens. Who is this? Never mind, it’s better not knowing.”
I laughed. “I’m Nova Nativitae. Or Estrecha. I don’t know, but they only aliases anyway. From my research, you were part of the team that convicted Mr. Good, and it seems that you’ve been able to get in and visit him in his high security facility. Could you get me in?”
She whistled. “You work for Mr. Good?”
I made a disgusted sound. “No. I’m actually going to shake him down for intel.”
“Ballsy. I like it. I also don’t think it’ll work, but it’ll be a fun outing. Your number is coming from in between dimensions. I recently learned a spell about tracking calls, but it’s not going to work with wherever you are. How can I pick you up if I don’t know where you are?”
“Oh. I’m at Mercury’s mansion.”
“Mercury’s mansion? The antiquities dealer? Am I supposed to know where that is?”
“Your dad should know. They’re besties.”
“You can’t give me his address?”
“I don’t know it, either. I’m just living here until I find a job. Also, I need to teach Bones a few more recipes.”
“Hm. Who is Bones?”
“The butler. Should I take him with me when we go see Mr. Good? Also, when can we go? There’s no rush, but since there was another attempt on my life, I’d really like to find out if he’s the one behind them or not. Although he’s already behind bars, so if he’s doing it, how could I stop him?”
“Hm. Maybe with more evidence, we could give him the chair.”
“Oh. That seems kind of final.”
She chuckled darkly. “That’s the idea. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes, that is, if my dad does have his address. You didn’t ask your landlord for it, so does he not know you live there?”
“Oh, he does.”
“He just doesn’t want you to know where you live?”
“I don’t think he minds, it’s just never come up.”
“Well, there you go. You’re pretty chill. I’m looking forward to meeting you. Don’t bring the butler.” She hung up, and then I was left with twenty minutes to get ready for a meeting with Mr. Good, who would have so many answers that he probably wouldn’t give me. This was probably all a waste of time, but what else could I do? I wasn’t going to wait for something else to try to kill me and end up hurting Mercury instead.
I shook my head and pulled out a paper and nubby pencil I’d found in a dresser drawer. I needed a list of questions, because Mr. Good would be diabolical about answering. Still, if I could see his face, I should be able to read him. It was worth a shot, and I wasn’t sure what else to do. Visiting the scene of the crime had been absolutely worthless. Not even the kissing had been any good. I mean, the kiss was probably fine, but I was too angry to think about it fondly.
When the Grand Sorcerer’s daughter knocked on the door, I was ready for her, but when I opened it, no one was there. I shut the door and opened it again, and this time it was in Apple City, where a tall redhead stood wearing a chic suit.
I wore my funeral dress with combat boots, but still, it was all black, and my arms were covered with an armored vest over the top.
“You’re the girl from the auction. I saw pictures of you and the amazing gems in the paper. Who did your dress? It was phenomenal. A lot of people are going mad trying to find out who it was, but it’s like a state secret.”
I blinked at her. “Oh, Sebastian’s just probably on a drunken spree. Sebastian Hammermill. You can track him from the Fashionarie in Apple City. You never know what you’re going to get with him, but it’s always exciting.”
She grinned at me. “Fun. Like your hair. Not the dress. No offense.”
I laughed. “None taken. The dress was for the next time I went to a funeral, you know, so I could be dressed appropriately, but it turns out, I needed it to visit the prison instead.”
“That’s handy. I have a whole closet of appropriate clothing. Happily, I also have a whole closet of inappropriate clothing, too. My mother helps me stock it.”
“I like her fedora.”
She beamed at me. “She’s determined to make it her statement, like mob bosses should also be grand sorcerers.”
“Why not?”
She led me down the steps in Apple City to a large dark car, with another one ahead and another one behind. An ogre was inside the backseat, but the redhead didn’t seem to notice the enormous hulking female as we climbed inside.
“Hi,” I said to her.
She grunted.
“Don’t talk to the guard. She finds it offensive, like you’re intentionally trying to distract her from her work, although how that would be possible, I have no idea. She’s a workaholic.”
“We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Nova Nativitae Estrecha.” I held out my hand, and she hesitated a moment before she took it, shaking enthusiastically.
“Oh! I’m Gabby Marigold. Not really, but my husband’s other names annoy me. I’m married to the most self-absorbed genius you ever don’t want to meet. Not that he doesn’t have perfect manners and a perfect body, and a face that makes you want to scream, it’s so pretty.” She sighed dreamily.
“He sounds very nice. Like my ex fiancé.”
She refocused on me. “He was a self-absorbed narcissist?”
“Oh, no, he’s like prince charming, always ready to save the day or give you the perfect compliment. He’s pretty. That’s what I meant. Pretty, not anything against his character. He always has perfect manners.”
“Oh. Boring. So that’s why you dumped him.”
I blinked at her. “No, actually, we broke up when I died.”
She stared at me. “He didn’t like you dead? Lame. Some guys can’t appreciate a soul.”
I laughed. “If your husband died, you’d just make the best of living with a corpse?”
“Of course. What’s the point of being married if you aren’t in it for the long haul? I’m also a sorceress, so that makes me more possessive than most. I’d probably get some lessons from Mercury or my mother, although she doesn’t think I should dabble in dark sorcery. You have to really invest your whole life in it, or leave it alone, but Mercury would give me a few lessons on raising the dead, right?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t like the living, and you’re very alive, so…”
She pinched my cheek. Not too hard, but firm. “So are you, and he likes you.”
“He doesn’t like me. He’s made that very clear.”
“Oh. My bad. Do you want him to like you?”
Her bright eyes were so energetic. I looked from her to the ogre bodyguard, then back to her. “I mean, it would be nice to be liked.”
“In general, but specifically…”
I sighed heavily. “I don’t know. Supposedly, you’d be a lunatic to want a dark sorcerer to like you.”
“That’s true. To be honest, you do strike me as somewhat of a lunatic. You are the girl who made out during that funeral, very publicly, with none other than our necromancer. And then the auction, shooting like that with those guns. You didn’t bring your guns?”
“No, I thought they wouldn’t let me into the prison with them.”
“Good thinking.”
I sighed again. None of this felt very well-thought out. I liked to plan meticulously, but I didn’t have time, and ever since I’d failed Mercury’s auction, and then gotten him injured at the scene of the crime, I’d felt like there wasn’t much of a point to trying. But still, I had to do something. “Yeah. You’ve talked to Mr. Good before, and you were one of the lawyers that prosecuted him. Is there anything I should be on my guard against?”
“Oh, you’ll be fine. What I mean when I say that is that I had to get a special dispensation for you from the president to get you to see him, because he’s that dangerous. He’ll get in your head, twist you into a pretzel and spit you out.”
I stared at her, shock and fear comingling in my gut. “You got permission from the president? Of what?”
She shrugged. “The country. It’s my father-in-law, so it’s not like it took more than two minutes, but still, Mr. Good is seriously bad. It’ll be really fun to watch you shake him down.”
She was the president’s daughter-in-law? Her husband was the president’s son? No wonder she didn’t want to think about his name. What if I got her injured somehow? It would be a national incident. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Do you really think he’ll turn me into a psychopath?”
“Oh, no. I think that living with a necromancer already took care of that.” She patted my hand. “Don’t think too much about it. It’ll be great.”
For some reason, that didn’t help me feel better about this whole thing. Should I go back home? No. Absolutely not. If Mr. Good were going to rip me apart, he should do it far away from Mercury, who would only end up hurt. Again. And to think how much of Mercury’s money I spent on Sebastian and the shoes, all for nothing.
The drive to the outskirts of Apple City, across a bridge, and then to the high security prison, was interrupted by several check-points, each one increasing my nervousness. The gates were thick, impenetrable, so how could someone behind these walls possibly have anything to do with the enchanted viper? And if it did, how could I possibly get anything useful out of a conversation with someone that terrifyingly diabolical?
We got to the island, the high security gates, eight-foot-thick stone walls, and then several buzzing layers that went over my skin irritatingly.
“Magical barriers,” she said, giving me a smile with gritted teeth.
I nodded, like I understood what that meant. Finally, the car pulled up at an entrance with barred doors, six guards, and all of them terrifying and studded with weapons of magical and more mundane type.
The door opened, and the ogre got out first, much faster than you’d think someone so large could move. She scanned the area, then spread her palm and cast some kind of magical check before she nodded at me and Gabby.
I got out and felt even tinier compared to the enormous ogre, but I wasn’t here to cower. I stood up straight and tried to own the funeral dress and boots. I would get answers from Mr. Good. I had to do something right.
The halls were cool, iron, stone, and other materials closer to plastic, but magical. It felt alien, like I was walking through a dimension into another world, dangerous even with Gabby and her ogre bodyguard, not to mention the other bodyguards who surrounded us. She did not take her security lightly. Or someone else didn’t. Probably the president’s son, her husband. I’d seen him a few times at events, and he was pretty, but very, very snobbish. How did someone this crazy attract him?
Neither one of us spoke until we reached a door with a grill window. She flashed me a smile. “Showtime, Nova. Keep that poise you’re already notorious for having.”
Poise? I could probably do that if I didn’t have shooting or kissing as options. We walked past another guard, and then through a door to a room with a glass partition, but on the other side of that, a large prisoner with a shock of white hair completely clothed in orange was chained to the floor. The chains were ridiculously thick, but when he looked up at me and smiled, I didn’t think they were nearly thick enough.
This was Mr. Good. Notorious bad guy. Murderer. Psychopath who lived to corrupt the world if he possibly could. I stared at him, rooted to my spot near the door, frozen until Gabby exclaimed.
“What are you doing here, you vicious viper?”
I glanced over at her and then saw the man, tall, lean, cadaver-like with small horns and a vicious hooked tail. He ignored her, instead smiling at me. “I’m Mr. Good’s lawyer. Miss Nova, it is a pleasure.”
Mr. Good’s lawyer knew me. That wasn’t a good sign. No, actually, it was perfect. I was here for answers, and I was going to get them. I gave him an icy smile. “I do hope so. I’m afraid I don’t know you. And your name is…”
He smiled and then bowed very low. “I’ll be waiting outside.” He walked past us, smelling of apricots and with his silvery tail giving one slight flick.
Gabby looked from the lawyer’s retreating tail, then back at me. “I can’t leave you alone with Good, but I’ll just be working over here in this chair with my ear buds in while you have your conversation, okay?” She shot Mr. Good a scowl and then dragged the chair over to the corner with a horrible screech and sat, pulled out her briefcase and started going through her paperwork, typing rapidly while her head bobbed in time to her music.
I glanced over at Mr. Good, who was still sitting, chained to the floor on the other side of the glass, smiling at me. He looked vastly amused. There was something disarming about his expression, like he didn’t mean any harm, but the size of his hands and the raw power of his body reminded me of Mercury. His hair made him look respectable and wise, but his large hands told a different story.
I sat down abruptly, crossed my ankles, and leaned forward. “Mr. Good, why would you want to kill me?”
“I can’t think of a single reason,” he replied pleasantly. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve rarely been so amused as when tales of your exploits reach my ears. Amusement is one of the things I live for.” His voice was low but genteel. It was a devil’s voice that could convince you to give him your life and thank him for the opportunity.
I shivered and tried to focus. “How did tales of me get to you?”
He shrugged. “I hear things. Literally. I have magical implants, spells, things like that,” he said, cocking his head, “inside my brain. They could cut it out of me, but it would kill me.”
“Not a lot of people would think that was a pity.”
His smile sharpened. “No? You might be surprised. What is your favorite color?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Mine is the color of your eyes. I couldn’t resist those eyes when your mother turned them on me.”
I froze for a second before the ludicrousness hit me, then I snorted. “Oh yes, my mother is a renowned seductress. How could you help your interest in me based on her? That is what you are inferring, isn’t it?”
He studied me intently. “Do you really want to know? You’re here, so you must, but you aren’t going to find any satisfaction in the truth. It will cut you so deeply, you may never recover. Tell me, will you have the truth from me?”
I stared at him, trying to read him, but I couldn’t see anything other than sincerity and amusement. “If you’re capable of the truth, I would be delighted to have it. Don’t worry about my delicate human feelings.”
He laughed and shook his head. “It isn’t the human that makes you delicate. No, it’s goodness. Do you know why I’m called Mr. Good?”
“For irony?”
“For my mother. She was a nun that lived her life to save the downtrodden and unfortunate. She gave her life for others and was rewarded severely for her efforts. Goodness is weakness, and weakness breeds corruption. Your mother has none of that.”
I scowled at him. “First she’s a seductress, and now she’s corrupt? I’m patiently waiting for you to tell me some truth.”
“No, you’re hearing it, but can you see it when it’s against everything you know or understand? Do you honestly think that a woman who sells her body to a man for power and connections isn’t already corrupt? She wanted to think that I was corrupting her. It gave the entire sordid affair a sense of drama and romance, but she never had any real goodness that wasn’t motivated by her own self-interest. That’s why I liked her so much.”
I stared at him, looking for truth and seeing it, but at the same time, was he seriously trying to convince me that he’d had an affair with my mother? “You liked my mother because she was purely motivated by self-interest?”
“Mm. I almost loved her.”
“Almost? How unromantic.” I frowned at him. He was getting less terrifying with every word. He just didn’t sound incredibly evil. I shivered. Ah. That’s what made him so scary, the way he could normalize evil until it changed meanings entirely.
He continued, musingly, “I would have loved her if I’d spent more time with her. She’s like that. So incredibly persuasive, and her will is as delicious as that streak of ambition and cunning. She could have ruled the world if she’d wished to. Pity her drive isn’t in that direction. Most people aren’t entirely corrupt.”
“You are.”
His smile gleamed like an oil slick. “I try, but even I have a twinge of conscience now and then. For instance, you, poor child without a penny to your name, at the mercy of a dark sorcerer, how could I leave you in such terrible straits, your own dear father?”
I froze and stared at him while my heart pounded in my chest. So that’s what my mother seducing him had been leading to. “You think you’re my father? You’re delusional.”
His smile turned shark-like. “Am I? I see things as clearly as you. Except when personal feelings get in the way. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to have no personal feelings. They always get in the way. Your mother slipped under my guard, though. I don’t feel too bad about it. Who could resist her, even after she defaced herself so that she could steal a respectable identity? Not me.”
“You’re Mr. Good. You never feel bad about anything you do.” What was he talking about? Stealing a respectable identity? Defacing herself? He was mad.
His smile was gentle. “And you’re my daughter. I should feel bad for being with a married woman when your existence stole the immortality I sold my soul to get. Still, you’ve been very amusing, particularly recently. You are so much like my own mother, and yet, you can see like my own father could see, and with your mother’s cut-throat nature and business acumen, you are certainly amusing.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’m not here to talk about my mother. I don’t care whether or not you seduced her, or why you’d do such a revolting thing. I need to know who murdered me, killed all those people, and chopped off my fingers!”
He smiled. “I haven’t got the slightest idea who murdered you. You left the safety parameters your mother set up, and I reinforced, putting yourself at the mercy of the cold, cruel world. And then you moved in with a necromancer once you came back from the dead. Your murder is very mysterious. Be sure to let me know once you discover the truth. I’m sure you’ll manage.”
He leaned back, with all the signs of being finished with the conversation.
I stared at him. “That’s it? You really didn’t kill me?”
“Kill you? My dear, I’m going to give you everything I own. That’s why Apricot is here. You smelled him, didn’t you? He’s as sweet as he smells. You’ll have to bite him now and again to keep him in line, but I have no doubt you’ll manage. You’ll do beautifully with all of them.”
I stared at him for a long time, but there was only one conclusion. “You’re mad.”
His laugh was low and horrifying. “It comes and goes. Currently, I am in a state of deepest, darkest earnestness. I’ve made you my heir. No, I’ve passed on all my worldly goods as well as the businesses that I’ve run so meticulously over the years without your having to wait for me to die to inherit. Anyone else in the world would be mad with delight.”
“You’re a gangster. What kind of business does a gangster have?”
He made a jerk of his wrists, like he was going to wave a hand, but the chains wouldn’t give him that much mobility. “This and that. Apricot will tell you all about it.”
“I’m not talking to Apricot, or whatever his name is.”
“You can call him whatever you like. You’re the boss now.”
I shook my head at him. He was as maddening as he was mad. “I don’t want your business, or your lawyer. If I wanted a lawyer, I’d hire one that wasn’t a demon.”
“But demons make the best lawyers and he owes me a lifetime of servitude, which I am now passing on to you.”
I stared at him. He seemed to be more amused than serious. He was just messing with me. I shrugged. “Fine. Why did you get my mother pregnant if it would transfer your priceless immortality to me?” Not that I believed him.
He shrugged his large shoulders, copying me, only more mocking. “You were an accident. I assumed that your mother would take care of things that threw off her trajectory, but instead, she took it as a challenge. I should have realized that she would since she never wastes an opportunity.”
I flinched, because that was the absolute core of my mother. And he knew that. So well. Which meant that he knew her.
“She wouldn’t ever have an affair with a monster like you.”
“Unless it profited her business. Her husband is her one point of softness, and he made an error that she had to resolve by turning to an old friend. You can look up the history of Clarence Corp. What condition was it in nine months before you were born? I think you’ll find the records very interesting.”
I shuddered. “You seduced someone you knew loved someone else?”
“Of course not. I was seduced by someone who loved someone else. She did it extremely well, but what do you expect from Viva’s only offspring? Retta showed you the old clips of your grandmother. When Lira came to me with an intent to seduce for profit, I didn’t try to resist. I’ve always wanted her to be my accomplice, but she needed to prove that she could force the mighty and great to protect the weak.”
“My mother protects humanity because that’s what she is. You’re the goblin.”
He laughed, loud and hearty. “I’m a goblin?” He shook his head and gave me a gentle smile. “You should meet your grandfather, your mother’s half-goblin father. Now that would be an amusing meeting. He’s here in this prison. You could stop on the way before you go home. That is, do you call the Necromancer’s monstrous mansion home? I wouldn’t want to mislabel things before you’ve sealed the deal.”
I stood up. “You’re worse than my mother. I’m not going to get anything useful out of you.”
“Other than one of the largest conglomerates in the world? No, nothing very useful at all. I’m going to enjoy watching what you do with my empire. With Mercury by your side, you could accomplish anything.” His eyes gleamed with something, likely avarice, but I couldn’t be sure.
I shook my head. “Stop saying that. I’m not taking your empire, even if I were your blood daughter. I’d never take anything from you.”
He nodded soberly. “Including my immortality. You see how well that worked. It’s already done, Nova Star. Apricot is drawing up the papers as we speak. I wasn’t sure a delicate, upright specimen of maidenhood could handle it, but your alliance with Mercury, as well as those fabulous guns and your friends, like the one sitting in the corner pretending to not hear our conversation, you’ll do fine. Even without them, you’ll fight your way to the top. You take after your mother that way.”
“My mother has worked her whole life to make a difference in the lives of countless humans. Yes, she’s expanded her business, but only so that she has more resources at her disposal to protect humanity.”
He nodded sagely. “Absolutely. The trouble is that the end never justifies the means. It’s one of those laws that you have to follow to stay on the side of good. She understands that and always has. The fact that she’s chosen to protect humanity has nothing to do with her being good. Good is weak, and your mother is never, ever that. You now have Retta’s contract. That should be uncomfortably awkward for everyone. She was terribly obsessed with Mercury, but he refused her. She was too alive for him.”
“So am I. He won’t have an alliance with me and help me conquer the world like a psychopath.”
“No? Has he not shown signs of obsession and, dare I say it, love? Or do you simply refuse to see it?” He tsked and shook his head. “So blind in personal matters, even when it’s so blatantly obvious to everyone else.”
“I can’t read you well enough to know whether anything you say is true. This was all a waste of time.”
“Actually, you know that everything I say is true, but you can’t accept it. You hold your mother up as a paragon of virtue, a hero in the battle to save humanity. You came here to find out if I’m behind your murder, but what does it matter who is trying to kill you? The important thing is making certain it doesn’t happen again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can’t inherit my empire without inheriting my enemies, can you?”
I turned towards the door. “I’m not interested in your empire.”
He smiled, very wide, very terrifying. “Oh, I know. That’s what makes it so terribly amusing.”
I was not amused.
A shock went through the building. The lights flickered, and Mr. Good’s eyes twinkled while I held very still. Had he done that? If he’d made a deal for immortality, who knew what he would have done for magic.
Gabby sprang out of her chair, sniffing the air, then grabbed my arm. “We’ve got to go.”
Another shock hit the building, and that time when the lights flickered, it was dark longer. “Is that an earthquake?” I asked.
Mr. Good laughed. “Your necromancer has come for you. After all, you belong to him. He announced it publicly at the auction. Yes your alliance will do just fine.”
“Come on!” Gabby tugged me towards the door. “We’ve got to get you out of here before he rips the entire place apart!”