Chapter 12 Ember #2
Every atom of my being stilled. The air was saturated with secrets.
The look that passed between them enraged me.
It was all so obvious now—I’d been kept on the outside of something bigger than me, bigger than my sistren.
The betrayal cut deep, but even while bleeding out, I wanted back in.
I wanted us back, and if letting the hurt of this moment go was the way, I’d let it go.
“Yes, yes.” I pushed all my frustrations into a tiny box inside my heart.
“Get to the part where you tell me, in detail, what has been going on behind my back.” The two of them shared that look again.
Like they were considering the wisdom of coming clean with me.
I practically threw myself backwards in my chair.
“For fuck’s sake. How long has this been going on?
” Rage churned within me in waves, a rising tide, tight pressure mounting in my chest.
Lara finally had the decency to act worried. “It wasn’t like that, Ember. We had to keep this small. So small that you, Sera, and Max would stay safe.”
Rhiannon stared into her cup of tea. “And Sera still got hurt. That was a message.”
I shook my head, crossing my arms tight across my chest, the crisp fabric of my navy three-piece suit crinkling under the pressure. “Start explaining or I’ll start making calls about the two of you.”
Rhi pried one of my hands out of the pretzel I’d formed across my chest. “You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t, Em.”
I snatched my hand back from her. I hated being called Em, and she knew it. “Then explain. Now.”
Rhiannon sipped from her teacup, her lipstick leaving a mauve stain on the porcelain. When the cup clinked on its saucer, she closed her eyes for a half-second, her impossibly long lashes fluttering. “Since the Consulate formed, there have been Authority moles.”
I nodded. This was a well-known fact, and frankly, even if it wasn’t, it would be easy to believe from a strategic standpoint. “Just as we have people inside their institutions as well.”
Rhiannon sighed. “Not in the same way, Ember. The humans’ ability to sense us has kept us out of their inner circles. They have our own spying on us—changing the course of our operations.”
I swallowed hard. It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe that our people would do such a thing. Everyone had their price. It was the way Rhi’s shoulders sagged when she spoke, like knowing these things was unbearable.
“The Authority has infiltrated the Consulate at the highest levels.”
If she thought I would react with shock, she was wrong. All I felt was numb—a dull feeling of acceptance washing over me. Yes, that made sense. The way things had moved around just enough to give us the impression progress was being made, but nothing really changed. Circumstances simply shifted.
The names humans once called us were no longer acceptable in polite society, but it was rare for a parapsych and a human to become friends—or for average parapsychs to hold high-paying jobs, or positions of power at all—at least in wider society.
Our mere existence was no longer considered a blight on humanity, but neither were we allowed to operate in the open.
Instead, our people were relegated to the shadowy bits of society.
There when humans needed us, but otherwise pushed to the edges.
“And what does this have to do with Lara and the murders?” I asked, hoping to get to the point sooner.
Lara answered this time, crossing her arms over her chest. “The Authority has been weaponizing parapsychs against one another. They have a powerful Cognoscenti in their employ, who has predicted some of the most powerful parapsychs the world has ever seen. Mediums who can walk in the netherworld, thaumaturges with the ability to do actual magic, seers who don’t need divination tools… ”
I shook my head as she trailed off. “No one like that exists. We would hear about it.” Lara and Rhi shook their heads, in almost perfect unison.
Understanding dawned on me, like fog clearing in my mind.
How had I missed this? “They hire other parapsychs to kill them—or frame them for crimes so perverse they end up in the Asylum…” My stomach turned as reality crystallized—as all of the experience my long life had afforded came to a fine point. “Where they are…”
I couldn’t say it, but Lara could. “Studied.”
The things they might learn chilled me to the marrow in my bones. If they learned the truth of what and who we were… would any of us ever be safe again?
Rhi’s eyes closed, as though she was warding off some horrific knowledge. “There is one who would help us—who has always helped us when she could. No one knows who she is. We call her Mother.”
Lara and I both leaned towards Rhiannon now.
In this moment, we felt like us again. Centuries ago, before our swords were stolen, we were more than just good at our work as mediators between the Trinity and the Consulate—we protected our people better than the Maere in any other territory.
I’d never been surprised that someone had tried to eliminate us—they hadn’t been the first to attempt it—only the first to succeed.
Rhiannon continued, lowering her voice, as though by instinct. “Mother has many operatives. Lara is one of them. She takes out as many of the killers as she can, before they’re able to destroy promising parapsychs.”
A lump formed in my throat. That was all well and good, but it didn’t make what I’d said before any less true. The kinds of parapsych talent Rhiannon described just didn’t exist. “And what happens to the people she’s saved?”
Rhi and Lara shared another look, but Lara answered me. “We don’t know.”