Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
Whitehall in daylight is something else entirely.
Before, with the paper lanterns lit and the music pouring out, and students filling every corner, the house had read like something out of an Eighties movie. Now, in the Florida sunshine, it looks like it could have been the house in Rebecca, only before the crazy lady burned it down.
Mostly, it looks classy and moneyed. And that, of course, makes it look intimidating.
“You okay?” Tia asks as she rings the bell.
“Ask me in an hour.”
“I’m asking you now.”
I shrug. The walk over had been quiet. Chase walked us as far as the coffee place, then let us go, his hand brushing mine once before he turned back. But not without reminding me that he doesn’t trust the Oneiroi, who he basically considers doom preppers on overdrive.
But this isn’t about the Oneiroi as much as it is about me. And since I’m kinda sorta sure that Sebastian Vance is at least a relative—if not my dad—I figure he’ll dive in to help me.
As to whether he is or isn’t, I still want to know—or, at least, I think I do. But that’s not on today’s agenda. Not with the world falling apart and me needing to keep myself together.
Today, we’re standing on the Oneiroi’s doorstep to get answers, and if Vance being my dad means he’ll help me, then great. But right now, the rest of it needs to stay firmly locked.
That, at least, is my plan.
I turn to Tia. “Maybe I should back out. I can text him that it’s just you meeting with him. I think if I ask, he’ll help you out.”
She cocks her head and gives me an evil eye stare. “Daddy issues are not on the agenda, remember? Today is about getting answers that can save the world. Family bonding comes after you know he’s not going to freak and bail on you without sharing intel.”
“Right,” I say. “You’re right.” Honestly, I’m glad she’s right. I’m not in the best headspace for confirming paternity.
She leans over and bumps my shoulder with hers. “Atta girl,” she says, then lifts the brass knocker and lets it fall.
The woman who answers is maybe sixty, with her hair pinned back and reading glasses on a chain.
“Miss Lyte and Miss Mendez?”
She takes a step back before either of us can answer. “Please come in. He’s expecting you both.”
The house is quiet, and without the music and the bodies and the press of people, it smells like floor polish and old paper and something I can’t place. We pass the sweep of that Scarlett O’Hara staircase as she leads us down a long hall that had been cordoned off during the party.
We pass several doors and a glass case full of old bound pages, most of them turning brown around the edges.
A moment later, we reach a set of double doors at the end of the hall, a brass plaque on one door acting as a silent announcement that we’ve arrived at the library.
She opens the door, and Vance rises as she ushers us in. He’s in dark slacks with a button-down open at the collar and no tie. And I think I see a bit more gray at his temples than the last time we met.
“Can I offer you coffee? Another beverage?”
Tia and I exchange a glance, then both shake our heads.
“That will be all, then, Gretchen,” he says, and she slips from the room.
“Ladies?” He gestures to an oval library table, and Tia and I settle in beside each other at one of the oval’s rounded ends. Vance continues to stand as I look around, both out of nerves and because I want to check the place out.
Mostly, the library looks like a library. Shelving that seems to go on forever, manuscripts in at least two cases that I can see. And on the far side of the room there’s a comfy-looking chair by a window.
That’s when I realize that this is the lesser library. The one where you can walk out with a book. The heavy-duty research stuff is somewhere else, hopefully in this house and not in a vault in Switzerland.
“Well,” he says, taking the seat on the far side of the oval, “you’re here about your bloodline. Where would you like me to start?”
“It’s just, well, at that meeting during the party, you mentioned that some bloodlines have the power to shore up the barriers.”
“So I did. The Imperial line. Why do you ask?”
In for a penny…
“Because I think…well, were you talking about me?”
“Cora, my dear. Of course.”
Even though I was expecting it, I am stunned. “Oh,” I say, because apparently my brain is now on hiatus.
“At least, we believe so,” he amends.
“Okay. Tell me why.”
“The Oneiroi’s working theory—which is supported by close to three centuries of evidence collected by people far smarter than I—is that the Imperial line, your mother’s line, has carried the power since before the emperor’s death.
The line scattered after the emperor was struck down.
Most branches died out. What survived went underground.
Most changed their name, believing it was the assassin’s intent to completely destroy the emperor’s line.
Your mother was the last documented heir we were able to confirm. ”
“And me,” I say.
“And you,” he agrees. “Which is why our door has been open since you came to this campus. You are, as far as we know, the only living person whose blood fed the barriers. And, as such, the only one who can now shore them up.”
“Hang on,” Tia says, looking disgusted. “Fed?”
He chuckles. “Not literally. Upon creation, the emperor claimed the barriers as his own, and that claim was proven through blood. Much like a computer now does tasks for the fingerprint that guides it.”
I glance at Tia, who shrugs. “I guess that makes sense,” she says as I nod. Honestly, it makes perfect sense to me. Like something I’ve always understood but had temporarily forgotten.
“Explain what you mean by shoring them up,” I say. “How does that work, exactly?”
I expect him to answer just as casually and quickly as he’d answered Tia. Instead, he hesitates, as if debating with himself.
“Hello? I thought you said you were going to tell me everything.”
“That’s the trouble,” he says. “We don’t know everything.”
“Oh,” I pause. “In that case, just tell me what you do know.”
“In truth, very little. We believe—but cannot fully confirm—that there is a ritual. But the honest answer is that no one currently living has ever seen it done. We have a body of theories. We have records of attempts that were made before the line died out…all failures.”
“In other words, you don’t even know for sure it can be done.”
“We are reasonably confident the texts are not wrong. We are reasonably confident that the imperial line is the family heritage those texts describe. We are not certain that you, in particular, are the one who can do it, but only that if anyone living can, it must be you. There is no other heir.”
Tia leans forward. “What about the keystone? The Widow Maker?”
“Ah,” he says. “Now there’s something we’ve been very interested in for quite a long while.”
“I bet you have.” Tia’s eyes don’t leave him.
“You told us during the party that dark times are coming,” she says.
“And that the Oneiroi would be prepared. Adric—you know who that is, I’m sure—calls your people vultures who long for the chaos.
Pretty clear you’ve been getting ready for a long time.
So my guess is you also know where the first crack is going to open.
Which means you’ve been watching the Widow Maker since before any of us even knew it was a problem. ”
Sebastian doesn’t even try to deny it. On the contrary, he looks almost proud when he turns to me and says, “You chose your friends well. As for the question, we’ve been preparing for the fall of the barriers for the better part of seventeen centuries.
But wanting it and being prepared for it are different things.
Compounds in three countries. Safe houses.
Stockpiles of food, fuel, medicine, books, seeds, and tools.
A clinic. A foundation. An ancient and still vibrant network across most of this hemisphere.
The Oneiroi do not believe the barriers can hold.
We have not believed it for a very long time.
And, of course, we have planned accordingly. ”
“And the Widow Maker?” I ask. “What’s the deal there?”
“That spot has been our primary subject of study since the sixteenth century. We did not call it the Widow Maker, then.”
“And it’s the keystone,” Tia says.
“For centuries, that was undetermined. Now, the answer is yes.”
“And now it’s breaking,” I say.
He nods. “And faster than any of us anticipated. Which is why I’m very glad you are here today.”
“In that case, share everything with me. And specifics, please. Not just theory.”
“We have maps,” he says. “Records of activity going back to the society's arrival on this continent. We have earlier records, too, that exist in fragments. Notes on what was tried at other thin places in Europe that did not have a member of the imperial line present, and why those attempts failed. A timeline showing how dramatically activity has accelerated since the start of this academic year. Names of every member of your line we have traced, including yours and your mother’s.”
“I want copies,” I say, barely able to control myself. This could be a goldmine, and I desperately want to get as much of this collection as possible in front of Chase, who’ll have a much better sense of what those documents reveal than I will.
“Of course,” Vance says. “But originals stay here. I’ll have everything scanned and sent to you. Some images today, the rest by tomorrow morning. And, of course, the door is open. It has been since the term began.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”
He dips his head briefly, then clears his throat.
“Cora, I want you to know that I—” He stops. Then looks down and clears his throat again. “Just that you seem to be a remarkable young woman. I’m sure you would have made your mother very proud.”
“Thanks,” I say, not entirely sure why my words are almost a whisper. What I do notice is that Tia’s taken my hand, and she’s squeezing way too hard.
I clear my throat and smile at Vance. “Well, then. I suppose we’re settled.”
“For today,” he says, rising with us. “Yes.”
I hesitate, not sure if I should shake his hand or what. I end up just clinging to Tia with one hand, and sliding the other into the pockets of my jeans.
Sebastian sees us out through the back door, pointing out that it’s the quickest route to the coffee place. “And in the short time I’ve known you, I’ve learned that you do like coffee.”
As the door clicks shut behind us, I can’t help but laugh at that. Because, yeah. Coffee. And that’s a hell of a lot easier to wrap my head around than bloodlines and barriers and rituals and a man who might be my dad.
We end up sitting outside with two iced lattes and a brownie we don’t need.
“Are we going to talk about it?” she asks. “The whole is he/isn’t he paternity thing?”
I shake my head. “My brain’s not ready for that.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I get it.”
I’m about to drown my emotional goo in a bite of brownie, but I’m waylaid by the chime of my phone.
Then another chime.
And another.
I pull it out of my back pocket and find three new emails from an address that ends in , all with multiple attachments.
“He didn’t waste a minute,” Tia says, leaning over to look.
The first one I open has a scanned map of the area with the campus represented by a small grid in the corner. Black dots are scattered across it, and the biggest dot sits right over what I know is the Widow Maker with a red ring around it.
“Well, that’s gotta mean something,” Tia says.
“Yeah, but what? We already knew it was a hotspot.”
“True that.”
The second email is a timeline. Years and incidents in a column, going back to the eighteen-forties. I flip through, then stop short when I see Cassandra Marie Lyte, right next to Cora Ann Lyte, along with both our birthdays. And they’re both on a list entitled Maternal Line.
And in parentheses next to my name is the notation, Paternity unknown.
Tia reaches over and squeezes my hand on the table.
I meet her eyes. “It’s really him,” isn’t it? Vance is my deadbeat dad.”
“I think so, yeah. But maybe he was just a really good friend to your mom who wants to help. Maybe he stepped up to help your mom because your dad was such a shit.”
“Maybe.” But I don’t believe it. I draw in a breath and look around at all the normalcy that surrounds my very strange life. And today Sebastian Vance made it even stranger. Because if it is true, why hasn’t he told me?
“Maybe he’s scared,” Tia says when I ask as much.
“Scared?”
“Like, what if he says, Luke, I am your father, and then he gets a paternity test, and really your dad is Boba Fett.”
“Okay, first, you’re insane. And second, thanks for making me laugh.”
She shrugs. “It’s what I do. Gotta have a hobby since I can’t do spells.”
“You’ll get your mojo back,” I tell her as we start the walk back to Hamilton Hall. I want to look at these images on a screen bigger than my phone. Because I’m betting there’s some gold in those pics.
“I’m going to figure this out,” I say as my phone chimes yet again, “All of it. The bloodline. The barriers. The Widow Maker. Adric. Kali. My mom. Sebastian. All of it. Because no way in hell am I letting this realm get squashed like a bug.”
“Right there with you,” she says. “Not keen on the whole dying thing either.”
She reaches over and twines her fingers with mine. “You’ve got this,” she says. And, honestly, right then, I believe her.