Through the Looking-Glass
18
For a moment, she sat as still as if he’d cursed her, not breathing, swallowing or even blinking. Then she choked out, “I don’t believe it.”
He merely looked at her, hands cradling his teacup.
Hysteria threatened. “Do you hear me? I can’t believe a word you say!”
“But you can believe everything Mr. Hartgrave says?”
Oh, God.
“I presume by your accusations that he has made me out to be the cold-blooded killer,” Kincaid said. “Let me see: He will have been the wronged employee who was simply stunned to discover what was happening under his nose, who barely escaped death himself and who has been waiting for the proper moment to heroically take me down. Well? Am I right? ”
This was ten times worse than fighting off a physical attack. She couldn’t think of a way to prove to herself that Kincaid wasn’t right. Every problematic thing Hartgrave had ever done came back to her now like a rushing, choking flood. His uncanny ability to distract. His evasive language. His two occasions of violence. Even his unpleasantness in the first weeks of their acquaintance, which now seemed like a warning signal.
She no longer knew what to believe about him—about either of these two men. Why hadn’t she considered that people who caused head injuries were not the sort one ought to trust, let alone fall in love with?
She cast about frantically for something solid to grasp and came up with Bernie and Willi. Yes, surely she could believe they were just as they appeared— surely she could trust their judgment.
Unless they’d been duped, too.
Didn’t Bernie say he couldn’t get Hartgrave to tell him things? And Willi—he hadn’t seen Kincaid kill his wife. He’d returned home just after her death, which meant his information about what had happened came from someone else. Hartgrave.
“But why?” Her question was so faint, she had to repeat it: “Why would he do this?”
Kincaid gave a deep sigh. “I’m sure he has his reasons. Psychopaths and terrorists always do.”
A memory presented itself: Hartgrave, floating next to her in his room, insisting no one ought to do magic. That he didn’t want to live in a world with its widespread use.
She put her face in her hands and moaned .
“Do you believe me now, Dr. Daggett?”
“Yes,” she said. The word was bleak.
An edge crept into his voice. “Imagine the harm he could wreak now we’ve no hope of finding magically talented people before he does.”
She could imagine it, easily. It wasn’t her imagination that was wanting, but her common sense. In a war between good and evil, she’d picked the wrong side.
This— this —was what came of reading too many fantasy novels.
“We were surprised these recent years produced few prospective wizards, but now I see someone was getting to the rest of them first,” Kincaid murmured.
She thought of the woman in Baltimore, the green dot that disappeared, and her inhalation turned into a sob. She had been so relieved . But there were two reasons someone might disappear from the tracking system, and one was permanent.
Kincaid handed her a handkerchief and did her the favor of looking at something other than her bitter tears. “How did he convince you to put yourself in danger for his cause?”
The irony was so terrible, she almost couldn’t get the words out. “I thought I’d be saving lives.”
“Dr. Daggett—please realize I’m not blaming you.” He turned his gaze back to her, and the earnest expression in his eyes pierced her a few more times through the heart. “He would have understood your usefulness, once he saw what you could do. I’m certain he spent a great deal of effort gaining your trust. ”
Seen that way, he did. He kept spending time with her when he didn’t have to. He declared himself smitten. He made her fall for him.
He must have seen that manipulating her feelings would blind her to every inconsistency.
She had an overpowering desire to be deposited in her bedroom (her original bedroom, back at her parents’ farm) and there remain for the rest of her life, where she could do no more harm. Hero, indeed. She’d been nothing but a rube, and Hartgrave had played her perfectly.
“In any case,” Kincaid said, grimacing, “I am responsible for unleashing him upon the world. I must set things right.”
An eerie echo of Hartgrave, sitting next to her at Mexican Foo, saying, “It’s my bloody responsibility.” She shivered. In the light of new information, it sounded altogether different from the way she’d first taken it.
“I’m sure you can appreciate this is a crisis,” Kincaid said. “I must find him before it’s too late, and your help could prove critical. Is there anything else you would like to know to reassure yourself of my veracity?”
She tried to say no, to suggest they do what was necessary, and found she couldn’t get the words out. How could she have qualms about bringing Hartgrave to justice after what he’d done?
A question. She should think of a question. That used to be so easy.
“How did he make you think he was dead?”
“Ah.” Kincaid sighed. “A clever diversion. When I confronted him about the people he’d killed, he teleported to a cliff at Land’s End—south of here,” he added, waving a hand. “After I followed him there, he threw himself off head first. Now I realize it was only an illusion, but it looked real enough at the time. Particularly when he blinked out of existence on the tracking program.”
Kincaid shook his head at the memory. Then he added, “I’ve no idea how he found a way around the system.”
She could see the path before them. She would explain how Hartgrave managed this feat, and Kincaid would—no doubt—figure out how to recreate the effect. She’d lead him to the Inferno, his helpers in tow. She’d break through Hartgrave’s protections. And then—then—
Her stomach gave a horrible jerk.
“Please,” she gasped, launching out of the chair, book falling to the floor. “Bathroom.”
Kincaid swept from the office and opened the door next to it, the room from which Jack—oh God —had exited before the fatal blow.
She did not, in the end, shift her semi-digested lunch into the toilet. She spent a minute heaving uselessly over the porcelain before slumping against the wall, physical and emotional distress unrelieved.
If only she had time to think—to cut through the haze of shock. But the longer they waited, the greater the possibility Hartgrave would flee his bolt-hole. It had already been, what, fifteen minutes at least? She glanced at her watch.
His watch .
Her stomach lurched again and her skin crawled. She grappled with the clasp, wanting it off. But as the watch slid from her wrist and hit the floor, something glinting on the back caught her eye. She picked it up, tilted the metal casing into the light and read:
JMH&LWH
5.8.1978
She frowned at it, then sucked in a breath as comprehension dawned. He’d given her his mother’s watch. A watch that seemed to be a gift—a wedding present?—from his father.
Even Kincaid had said Hartgrave deeply missed his parents. How could he give her such an important link to them if she was nothing but a weapon to him?
She could feel hope insinuating itself. If she didn’t want to be pulled back into his thrall, she had to ruthlessly stomp on it. The watch probably meant nothing—the only pre-microchip model close at hand.
Though he really hadn’t needed to give her a watch at all, had he, since he wore one?
“Dr. Daggett,” Kincaid called from the other side of the door. “Is everything all right?”
“No!” Everything was horribly wrong, and she had to buy herself more time. “Please, I can’t come out yet.”
His answer was delayed just long enough to convey disappointment. “You must let me know if I can help.”
She stared at the watch, trying to reevaluate—again—all she thought was true.
Hartgrave had been prickly to a fault at first, there could be no denying it. Still ... perhaps that was more in his favor than not. He’d seen right away what she was. Why wouldn’t he immediately have grasped the possibilities? The fact that he hadn’t tried to ingratiate himself from the start—didn’t that suggest something other than calculated seduction?
Other counter-evidence occurred to her in a jumbled rush. Hartgrave had said he didn’t want her involved at all—wouldn’t he have known by then that she would gladly charge in without being pressed into it by reverse psychology? He’d offered her a chance that very day to bow out—could that simply have been manipulation? He’d spent hours with the autodidact in Baltimore—why would he need so much time if his intention was to murder rather than help?
She shivered. Perhaps he liked torture. Kincaid had called him a psychopath. Or maybe Hartgrave tried to talk autodidacts into quitting by telling them a tale about killer wizards. Those who believed—like Bernie—would go on living, while those who didn’t ...
That gave a sinister cast to Hartgrave, on the subject of the Baltimore woman, saying he “eventually convinced her.”
She exhaled, pressing shaking hands to her eyes. How was she supposed to determine the truth with no ability to gather more evidence? Which principle of fantasy adventures applied here, that the orphan was by definition the hero or that you couldn’t go wrong paying heed to the wise old wizard?
She needed to stop comparing her life to novels, that was what .
Hartgrave had, at best, knowingly allowed her to draw wildly incorrect conclusions about his past. That was a fact. She had no proof Kincaid was lying to her.
However ...
What if Kincaid’s sarcastic summation of what he thought Hartgrave had told her was actually true? What if Hartgrave, after joining the Organization and inventing the tracking system, had discovered with horror its true purpose?
He would feel partially at fault—guilty. She could imagine a scenario in which he might try to hide his role, even as he bristled at the idea that his attempt to fix the resulting disaster was praiseworthy.
Oh yes, she could easily imagine that. She knocked the back of her head into the wall in disgust. Imagination had put her in this situation. Anything was possible, but only one possibility was real, and if she made the wrong choice, she would doom herself and future autodidacts. One person had already died today, and who was to blame for that?
Unless ... unless that death had been a clever illusion.
This was dreadful. She simply didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. But no way around it: She had to pick a side, either with the man she wanted to believe or the man she feared was right.
She looked between the watch in one hand and Kincaid’s handkerchief in the other.
“Dr. Daggett?”
Time up.
She got to her feet, stuffing the watch and handkerchief deep into her pockets, and opened the door.