Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
T he ma?tre d’ was quick to lead us to the table off to the side, somewhere it would be easier to talk and not feel like we were in a fishbowl. I’d never come here without an entourage of bodyguards, as well as my parents and Philip. I’d never realized how many of these polite and well-mannered people could curl their lips with such clear contempt. They never shown half that much life and expression with the Clarences. Mercury was hated and envied, while I was ogled and desired, also held in utter contempt. Maybe being able to read people wasn’t always a blessing.
I grabbed the waiter before he could leave to get our waters. “I’ll have the lamb shank navarin with whatever sauce Francoise is making tonight. My companion will have the Bouillabaisse. No wine. Thank you.” I turned to smile at Mercury, who was looking at me with a slightly puzzled smile as the ma?tre d’ hurried off. Oh. I’d just ordered for him like I would normally when I went out to dinner with people at a restaurant I knew. I was officially rattled.
I grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry. I should have let you order. I’m just nervous. It’s our first date, and I am not sure what to do. Sorry. You should probably distract me by taking off your shirt.”
He covered my hand with his, the connection silencing the rest of the world. “Bouillabaisse is perfect. Ever since the boat, I’ve been craving a nice, hearty fish soup. If I took off my shirt, absolutely no one would be more surprised and appalled than they already are. My existence is an insult. Shall we go? The food was supposed to be good, but the atmosphere is not.” His glance around at the other diners was twice as condescending and contemptuous as theirs.
I snickered, smiling up at him and fighting an extremely strong urge to climb into his lap. “You’re so French.”
“Not French. I just lived there for some time,” he said with a marvelous twitch of his eyebrow.
“A hundred years is some time.”
“So is a month. You’re clearly more familiar with this restaurant than I assumed. Did you come here often?”
I stared at him, frozen in the act of lifting my water glass. I didn’t want to tell him about my engagement dinner with Philip when I was trying to focus on the present with Mercury. “It’s very good food, but it’s a place where you go to be displayed. Have you come here often?”
He shook his head. “I have not, but it was recommended to me by…”
“The gothic lord of darkness actually came out in public? Is this the third time in a year?” Vincent Bellham approached our table with a charming smile that was slightly too delighted, followed by Anna, Gabby, and the president’s son, Apples. Gabby dragged a chair from a nearby table, not trying to minimize the noise.
“Please, allow me,” a waiter said, forcibly ripping the chair away from her. The redhead raised her hands in surrender and then let the waiter arrange four more chairs around our table. I sat there watching the proceedings while my heart pounded faster and I wanted to lay my head on Mercury’s shoulder and shoot someone. What a barbaric impulse. It must be the goblin in me. I didn’t want our dinner interrupted, even by friends, but we had to be polite. Or did we?
Nova didn’t care what she did in public, and neither did my necromancer. I stood up, warring with the manners that my mother had instilled at me from the womb, and then with chin lifted high, I sat on Mercury’s lap and firmly put my head on his shoulder. I stared stonily at Gabby, daring her or anyone else to comment on my public display of affection.
“Good idea sharing a chair,” Anna the Grand Sorcerer said, glancing casually at her husband. “Except it might get in the way of eating.”
“It’s very good food,” he said, giving her a smile and raising her hand, kissing the back of it, “But is anything worth the distance of the space between chairs?”
She laughed and shook her head at him. “Don’t ask me to choose between you and sushi. Don’t ask.”
“So, what are you guys doing out in public?” Gabby asked, leaning across the table to study me.
“I’m courting Mercury,” I said, and pulled Mercury’s arm around my waist. I probably should have asked him if I could sit on him, but me, him, and public were always a disastrous combination.
“Oh.” She nodded wisely. “Do they have sushi? You should always have sushi when you’re courting.”
I raised my hand to get the waiter’s attention, and I pointed at Vincent Bellham. “Tartiflette,” then at Anna, “Escargots a la bourguignonne, and then the Steak Tartare.” I pointed at Gabby’s handsome husband who was looking at me with amusement and something like awe. “Coq au Vin, and for the lovely redhead, the same as her mother.”
I put my head back on Mercury’s shoulder, and that time gripped his lapel, like otherwise someone would force me to do something else difficult.
“You don’t have to order for others,” Mercury murmured, then pressed a kiss to my hair and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer. “Do you want to go?”
“No. We’re courting, and the food really is worth it.”
“But we could have it delivered. The Afghan is waiting.”
“I put on a dress.”
“You could take it off.”
Gabby gasped and her mother choked on her water and started laughing while I myself sat bolt upright to turn and stare at Mercury in his tuxedo with that gleaming hair, and gleaming eyes, raging mischief, like he lived to shock the easily appalled.
Right. He did that, particularly when it came to his friend, Vincent Bellham.
I shrugged and put my head back on his shoulder. “We’re a couple,” I said as primly as I could from that position.
“I can see that,” Gabby said, eyes dancing before she elbowed the handsome, aloof man beside her. “Aren’t they a cute couple, Apples?”
“Oh, they’re very cute. Adorable. I’ve only seen such cuteness a few times in my life. Such as that time I was being chased by a polar bear. Polar bears as so cute. They’ll hunt you for months, tracking you in all kinds of weather so that they can rip you apart and eat your steaming organs.”
The president’s son was also secretly a lunatic. That explained it. “Not to be rude, but why are you all here?” I asked.
“For the food,” Anna the Grand Sorcerer said, nodding firmly. “I’m always all about the food. But since we’re all here together, someone really should address the very public display of extremely disturbing powers that someone showed a few days ago.” Ah. Mercury raising an army of the dead hadn’t gone unnoticed. I guess she didn’t buy the ‘cleaning up Apple City’ spiel.
Gabby snorted. “Really? Who’s going to address that? They’re a cute couple. You don’t accuse cute couples of disturbing the peace.”
“Particularly when it might implicate you,” Apples said, nudging his wife.
She beamed at him. “Yes, especially then.” She turned to frown at me. “I didn’t think that you’d jump. Are you crazy?”
I just stared at her. “You told me to jump. You said that was the only way to save everyone.”
“Well, yes, but I obviously didn’t mean it. If you weren’t such an extremely competent diver, you would have smashed your skull on that water. It was no joke.”
“You told me to jump because you thought that I wouldn’t? That’s just annoying. Mercury, I shouldn’t have ordered for her.”
He raised my hand and kissed it, sending a sweet shiver through me. “She doesn’t deserve your talents.”
Gabby leaned forward to study me more closely. “Are you actually a gifted orderer? That’s the most useful thing I’ve ever heard. I just wanted you to stand there on the bridge so that the mental necromancer would see your danger and chill out with all the theatricals, but instead, you dove right in. The percent of people who wouldn’t hesitate is in the negatives.”
“You can’t have a negative percent,” Apples said, breaking a bread stick into pieces and putting them in his wife’s mouth.
“Don’t ever marry a genius,” Gabby told me, seriously, around her bite. “They’re always correcting you in public.”
“And private,” Apples corrected.
They beamed at each other. So cute. Like polar bears.
Vincent Bellham cleared his throat. “Mercury, I heard about your new and unique initiative. You raised an army of undead in order to clean up Apple City? It’s time someone did something about all the littering, but that must have been slightly unnerving for all the live residents.”
“Must it have been? I don’t see why.” Mercury nodded at the waiter, who put his salad in front of him.
“Because they were dead and rotting,” Gabby said, taking her salad from the waiter. “People get freaked out about that kind of thing. I think it’s the smell.”
“Excuse me, but I believe that congratulations are in order,” my mother said from right behind my shoulder.
I froze, feeling the blood drain out of my face while I stayed paralyzed in his lap. I wanted to leap off of Mercury and deny that I’d sat on a man’s lap in public in a restaurant as respectable as this one, but she refused to admit that I was her daughter, that she had goblin blood, that she’d ever betrayed my father with a monster like Mr. Good, for money.
I turned my head slowly to look at the woman in the stunning dark blue dress that set off her eyes and tan perfectly. “Mrs. Clarence,” I said coldly. “What congratulations could I possibly want from you?”
She smiled her most charming smile at everyone at the table, even Mercury. “Congratulations on being named Mr. Good’s heir, naturally. That much is public knowledge. You’re quite the heiress. You must be very pleased.”
“Mrs. Clarence, will you join us?” Mercury said, sounding even and unemotional, but his hand slid over my stomach, holding me securely in place. It’s like he knew that I was thinking about leaping out the nearest window.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” she said, even as she sat down on my abandoned chair.
“Not at all,” Oswald Mercury said while everyone else stared at her.
“Of course not,” Vincent Bellham echoed, smiling at his wife and nudging her slightly.
“Yes, please stay,” everyone else said in so many words, although I couldn’t quite make out what Apples was mumbling under his breath.
I wanted to scream at her, accuse her of hypocrisy, and demand to know if she’d actually murdered Patricia Watford, but she wouldn’t react to accusations or emotions. However, she was here, and wanted to talk about my exciting inheritance. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? Why would a notorious criminal donate everything he has to a good cause? You know what I would do with a business like that, dissolve it, distribute it, and purge it from the world. So why would a criminal give all of his business, publicly, to me? I wonder if it has anything to do with the Seven Sundry. Have you heard of it?”
She held her breath for a half a second, enough for me to know that I’d rattled her before she gave me a bland smile. “Yes, you should be looking into Mr. Good’s former associates. From what I understand, they were a group of criminals that taught him to cut his way to the top.”
“And the half-goblin who was one of their leaders? What do you know about him?”
Her eye twitched before her calm smile was back in place. “Was there a half-goblin? I don’t recall. I found out everything I know about the Seven Sunderers from my research when Good started asking about you.”
“Why would Mr. Good want to know about Nova?” Gabby asked, scowling at my mother like she’d personally threatened me, her good friend. Only she was allowed to throw me off bridges.
My mother shook her head and replied quietly, “Why does Mr. Good want to know about someone? Because he wants to use them for his purposes. Nova isn’t only the granddaughter of a notorious dancer, she’s also quite the businesswoman, which is why her cousin Cassandra left everything to her in her will.”
My stomach tightened, and a chill ran over my skin. “No, she didn’t. I’m already refusing Mr. Good’s fortune. No need to add another one to the list.”
Her lips twisted. “You went to see him. If you didn’t want to get involved in his business, you should have stayed away. People were watching Mr. Good, and they saw you."
I held very still at her tone, the weighted warning in it. People were watching me now, and she’d come here, publicly, and was linking her name with mine and therefore his, something she’d cut her face off to get away from. Those connections she’d severed so long ago, she was making them again. Because I’d gone to see him.
I was suddenly incredibly furious. "Maybe I wouldn’t have gone if I’d been able to get straight answers from you!” I yelled. It wasn’t a loud yell, but it was loud enough that it should have gotten everyone’s attention in the restaurant. Weirdly enough, no one looked up. Oh, right. I was at a table with a bunch of sorcerers. No one else in the restaurant would be able to hear us.
“Mind your tone,” she said with that cool calm that made me want to scream.
I grabbed a butterknife from the table and glared at her.
“Mrs. Clarence,” Bellham said, injecting a world of calm reason into this conversation. “You’re saying that you’re related to Miss Nova?”
“No,” I snapped, standing up and breaking out of Mercury’s arms to glare at her. “I’m not good enough for the Clarences, and their perfect ideal world. If you don’t mind, you should be on your way. I’ve recently become engaged to a dark sorcerer. That’s why we’re here, to celebrate the occasion, you know, to be on display so everyone can see that we’re together and all those irritating suitors stop vying for my hand. I couldn’t possibly take Cassandra’s stocks and position. Absolutely not.”
Her smile was blinding. “Engaged? Congratulations truly are in order. May I see the ring?”
I blinked at her. She was happy to hear that I was engaged to a dark sorcerer? My confusion diffused all of my anger, leaving me limp and unresisting when Mercury’s hand slid over my left. He held it up to reveal the most exquisite engagement ring I’d never seen before. It matched the Daphne set, which was still safely in Mercury’s vault. It was all silver and gold filigree wrapped around a glittering aquamarine. Big but not too big, just perfect. The metal warmed on my hand, curling around my finger so it would be difficult to get off.
I swallowed hard and then looked up to give my mother a watery smile.
She wasn’t looking at the ring, but at me, eyes calculating, lips curved. “It’s lovely. As are you. Do whatever you like with Cassandra’s stocks, money, and belongings. Sell them, donate them, burn them.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
Her brow rose. “It’s not from me, but from her. She worked tirelessly for everything, from her apartment to her collection of lovely firearms. Also, I have a shortage of relatives. If Mr. Good can publicly declare you his heir, it is requisite that I claim you as well.”
But not as her daughter. “You’re going to make people think that Mr. Good and the Clarence’s are connected.” I frowned at her. That seemed like a very bad idea if she’d been running away from that world for some reason I still didn’t understand.
Her smile was calm, her words firm. “We are, now that he’s made you his heir.”
She was so exasperating. “I have no more connection with him than I do with you. Both of you are mad. Play your games without bringing in someone who isn’t interested.”
“You’re not interested? But I found out so much useful information about the fire.”
I held perfectly still while my heart raced and I wanted to scream, run away, and curl up on Mercury’s lap. Finally I sat with a sigh of defeat, back in Mercury’s arms because I couldn’t possibly stay upright on my own against my mother’s force of will. I felt so much better on his lap, with his warmth seeping into me like a cozy fire on a cold day.
“What did you find out?”
She smiled and leaned back, satisfied with her victory. “It was caused by demonic magic, interestingly enough. The darkest kind of magic, and the darkest kind of fire. Infernal flames devour everything, but here you are.”
“I wasn’t in the fire,” I said numbly.
“No, of course not, or even you would have some scars. All of you here have magic of some kind, so I shall ask the general group. What would be the purpose of taking someone’s fingers, nose, and other parts of their body before killing them?” It was surreal listening to her talk like she was at a board meeting when she was discussing my murder.
No one looked horrified at the question, just like it was a technical debate. “Sampling can be done by humans under demonic influence,” Apples said clearly with a great deal of certainty. “It’s purpose is to channel the life force and physical constraints of the victim to the demonic human.”
Gabby looked at him with a wrinkled brow. “You’re saying that someone is running around with Nova’s face right now?”
Apples shrugged. “And the rest of her. Interesting that there’s been no sign of the culprit since the fire. Once they start destroying, they don’t stop, and that fire took a lot of lives.”
“You made a study of demonology?” Mercury asked, looking at Apples with interest for the first time.
He shrugged and took a bite of salad, apparently done being useful.
“Why would a demonic human want Nova’s face?” the Grand Sorcerer mused.
“Well, she’s now an heiress twice over,” Gabby said. “Or maybe she has a thing for dark sorcerers and wants to seduce the Dealer.”
“I wasn’t Nova at the time. I was actually…”
My mother gave me a sharp look. Magic users were not to be trusted. Neither were mothers. Apparently.
I gave her a bland smile and continued. “Cassandra Clarence. So whoever took my face, my life, my fingers, wanted to become Cassandra Clarence. Unfortunately for her, without surgery, I look like this.”
Apples whistled appreciatively. “That’s what I call, poetic justice.”
Mercury growled, tugging me closer. “All of this was told in confidence. None of you may use the information you have learned for any purpose whatsoever, in or out of a court of law. This is a private dinner and you are not under the authority to disclose anything. Understood?”
Apples hesitated, then nodded. “Very well.”
Vincent sniffed. “I am always discreet.”
Anna the Sorcerer shrugged. “Who would I tell? My squirrel? I suppose there’s Libby, but she wouldn’t have the slightest idea who Cassandra Clarence is. I’m personally a bit fuzzy on it.”
Gabby held up her phone, showing her a picture of Cassandra Clarence and a brief description of my epic life.
“Ah, thanks Gab. So, this demonic girl must be stopped before she opens a portal to the underworld and launches the second Armageddon. Yes? But how do we find her?”
“I’d like to know how she was able to enspell so many to not question the fire or the deaths,” my mother said tersely. “Is that a demonic talent as well?”
“Interesting,” Mercury said, but his hand tightened in a way that said it was more frightening than interesting.
“That is interesting,” Bellham agreed.
I slowly said, “The snake that attacked us was a dark magic construct. Would that be the same magic that the demonic human could use?”
Apples perked up again. “A dark magic construct? What level?” That last bit was addressed to Mercury.
“Level five,” he said with a twitch of his lips. He found Apples amusing for some reason.
Apples whistled again. “A level five magic construct would be impossible for a bumbling novice to create. No, she’s probably working with a dark sorcerer, someone who’s studied.”
“It’s perfectly possible for a human to study such things. All they need is the power from a demon,” my mother said, ever defending human’s capacity to achieve greatness, even if it was great evil.
I frowned at her. What did she know about humans channeling demonic energy?
“Mr. Good has proven it quite possible,” she added, noticing my accusatory glare. “He began as human as anyone, but became something else entirely.”
“Not entirely,” Murcury murmured, for some reason squeezing my hand, like I might feel bad about her speaking disrespectfully about Mr. Good.
Vincent Bellham said in his calm, even voice, “So, we cannot be certain that this murderer is acting alone or with another dark magic user. We only know that she or he has or had Miss Nova’s face, hoping to become Miss Clarence, presumably to steal her identity, but probably panicked and lost control of the infernal flames when faced with the error.”
Gabby snorted, “Faced with the wrong face.”
“It’s not that funny,” I said, frowning at her. “All those people died.”
She sighed heavily and batted her lashes at me. “I know it’s not funny that people died, but it is funny that she was defaced.”
“Not yet. We’ll have to defeat her and then deface her,” Apples said.
I groaned and turned so I was hiding in Mercury. “What is wrong with these people?” I whispered.
He patted my head, then rubbed my back with slow circles of his warm hand, sending tingles of happiness through me. “Basically everything. They’re too powerful, too obsessed with sushi, and too happy. It’s a devastating combination.”
“Here is your buillabaise,” the waiter said, interrupting my cuddle to place a steaming serving plate in front of Mercury. The soup looked and smelled amazing, as did the dark bread that came with it.
I sat upright with a sigh, because I would have to move or he wouldn’t be able to eat. He shifted me slightly to the left, closer to my mother, but still snuggled against his side as he leaned forward to take a bite.
My mother accepting her salad, no dressing, with a nod at the waiter and took a tidy bite, and then my dinner was placed in front of me, and I realized how starving I was. Every few seconds while eating, the light would catch on my engagement ring, and I’d feel delight mixed with shame for dragging Mercury into a deeper level just to scare away my mother. Particularly since it hadn’t worked.
The next few minutes were quiet while everyone ate with enthusiasm, even my mother, who ate more intently than usual. Had she not been eating much recently? She was thinner and wore more makeup to camouflage her under-eye circles. Maybe she was mourning for me, or maybe she was worried that whatever murdered me was coming for her.
Mercury put a spoonful of soup in my mouth, and that’s when I realized that I’d stopped eating. His soup was so good, almost as good as my lamb. I shyly gave a bite of my dinner to Mercury, and he took it almost viciously. I smiled at him and forgot about the weirdness of sharing utensils with another person in public, with my mother right next to my elbow. I liked eating with him like this, being with him, even in the middle of the contemptuously respectable.
Once I’d eaten enough to take off the edge, I turned to my mother. “Why do you think someone would want to take my place? It would be the perfect position to destroy the company, but do you think it’s more personal? Something involving your past?”
She wiped her mouth and turned and slipped me a wallet with the skills of a born pickpocket. I took it with the same ease.
“It’s impossible to say. I’ve upset many people in my time. Some from simply existing, and others by actively working to destroy what they represent.”
“What do they represent?”
“Destruction. Wanton destruction of all joy, hope, love, and goodness.”
I raised a brow at her. Goodness wasn’t a term I’d throw around lightly with Mr. Good on my mind. “Why do you destroy their destruction? Shouldn’t you be building instead?”
She smiled slightly as she stood. “Indeed. It is time I built something lasting. Hopefully, you’ll help me with that legacy, Miss Nova.” She smiled at Mercury and offered her hand. “Monsieur.”
He stood and took it with a slight bow. “Madame Clarence. It’s been a pleasure.”
Everyone else stood too, but she didn’t say anything to anyone else, just turned and walked out like the beacon of perfection she was.
Once she was gone, we all sat down with a slight thump, like we were all drained by her brilliance. Gabby gestured at the extra chair and it flew over to another table, startling the people there. Then she scooted next to me and grabbed my arm to whisper in my ear. “Is that really your mother? She’s more terrifying than Mr. Good. The whole time I was sitting up straight and sucking in my stomach. I don’t even know why.”
I patted her head. “She is a force to be reckoned with. You did wonderfully well for a magic user. She never approves of magic users, but you didn’t wilt at all.”
“I saw her at the trial, Mr. Good’s, and I thought it was weird the way they didn’t look at each other. I mean, I expected her to not look at him because he’s too lowly for her to acknowledge, but he didn’t look at her either, and he openly threatened or gloated at everyone else who testified against him. Not her. He just ignored her. Did she really…” She winced. “I’m not supposed to know, but I overheard some things.”
I gave her a look. “It’s inconceivable, right?”
She elbowed me. “Well, not if they conceived you.”
Mercury groaned and then stood, setting me on my feet and taking my hand. “As pleasant as this dinner has been, and the food and my charming fiancé were the only pleasant things about it, it is time for us to go home before one of us dies of bad puns. You’re all beyond help. Shall we, my dear?”
I tucked my arm in his and let him escort me out of the restaurant, past the many stares at the unholy magic users Mrs. Clarence had deigned to dine with.