26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Two days passed, and I was still no closer to understanding the splitting headache I’d experienced in the warehouse, but I could feel something—magic, but not.
Not mine in the same way the power of death wasn’t mine.
The chill hadn’t vanished. There was a cold foreboding lodged permanently in my bones.
I sat in Wesley Lake’s office across from the politician who looked like he could sell you a car, barter for your soul instead, and then receive thanks for the opportunity.
“Graves’s counter legislation is due Friday,” he said. “Were you able to review the documents I sent out?”
I pulled my attention away from the chill inside me and focused it on Lake. “Bold ideas,” I noted.
“I cannot lose this election,” he said. “If Emmett passes his naive ideas about everyone hugging and helping each other, it could be another ten years—until the next election—before magicians hold a place of power again. These murders have destabilized our position in the city. The others know we haven’t caught him. It looks weak.”
“Level with me, then,” I said. “You and I both know the murders aren’t about the election.”
“What makes you say that? So far all of the victims work for the Council.”
There—one tiny, rapid blink. I wondered how his own lie tasted in his mouth.
“Clayton Pope didn’t.” And he didn’t mention what had happened at my building Sunday night, which meant he didn’t know about it or was sitting on the information to use later.
“That is an anomaly.” He slid effortlessly into his next argument, slimy as a worm. “Perhaps he opposed Emmett and needed to be removed from the picture.”
“Are you suggesting Emmett killed him?”
His hand flattened on the desktop and he examined his fingernails. “Or a supporter. I’m the last person to suggest a Council member would stoop so low, but people will surprise you—not always in a good way.”
“What will you do if Emmett wins?” I asked.
“He won’t. They’ll see my side before the election.”
“So confident. If Emmett or a supporter means to eliminate the competition, perhaps you are also on the killer’s list.”
He flashed me a dazzling, but heartless smile and said, “I’ve been in politics since I was nineteen. If you think this is the first time my life has been at risk, you are mistaken. I’m not worried.”
“Do you think Emmett faked his attack?” I asked. There was a truth underneath Wesley’s lies. I just needed to suss it out and carry it home to examine it further.
“I think the world is full of possibilities,” he said. “I never rule anything out until I have evidence to prove otherwise.”
I leaned back, draping one arm over the arm of the chair and nodded, pretending to contemplate as I pictured Wesley with an owl mask covering his face.
This would be easier if anyone other than the dead and Emmett Graves had seen the masked man.
I had no clues to go on, no idea of his build or movements.
Nothing to give him away.
“What is it you want from me?” I asked.
“Your continued support, of course, and perhaps you could use some of your connections to make the more influential people in this city sympathetic to my cause. You have another full moon gala coming up, right? I’d love an invitation.”
I breathed slowly, leaving a moment for him to think his request had landed firmly on my good side.
“Mr. Lake, I deal in exchanges, not devotion. If you wish me to further your political cause, you may want to try offering something of mutual benefit.”
Wesley paused, mulling it over, and lowered his voice to a whisper as he leaned over the desk.
“I recently learned you have become close to a new friend,” he said, and the cold in my bones seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Rook, is it? I don’t really care about the fights he hosts at his club, but you two—a fascinating match.
What’s so appealing about him? You’d think you’d hate him for leeching away even a little bit of your control over Ashbruck. ”
I snorted. “You’re blackmailing me? Do better than poking at my relationship.”
“Three years ago you were attacked behind your nightclub by an opponent. A witness said you died; your body was cold, heart stopped. You were dead, and then you weren’t.”
“Stroke of luck, and your witness is mistaken.”
No one but Rook had ever come so close to discovering my secret. Fucking hell.
I would have to kill a Council candidate. How messy.
“I would be careful whose word you accept over mine,” I warned, leaning toward him, conspiring in the same low tone. “The wrong information can get you killed in a city like this.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Dig a little deeper, Wesley. You’ll find I don’t make threats. Come to the gala, shine your face and bat your eyelashes at every simpering voter you can win over to your cause, but don’t depend on my loyalty. I’m the only one who has ever earned it.”
I stood and walked out without excusing myself.
***
A message waited in The Looking Glass, marked with a little envelope and the number one on the Midnight Chat.
veilknight
When will you summon Death?
j-aust13
Why do you want to know?
veilknight
Professional curiosity. Do you have the ritual? The knife?
j-aust13
I am close enough that you needn’t worry about it. My warehouse is secure in the meantime. No one will obtain it but me.
I had planned another session in the Prague collection on Thursday, when Rook wasn’t working. Despite his loud boredom, he seemed content to stay with me and search the books for the one I needed, occasionally interrupting my tense examination with some wit or innuendo.
Are you going to ignore the fact that you said ‘relationship’?
How could I when the dead hadn’t let it go since I left Wesley’s office?
It had slipped out so easily, with such confidence—a fact, even though Rook and I had never called it that.
He said love was for losers with no ambition.
Did he want a relationship? The thought that he might not want to define us that way was a snake coiling and uncoiling in my stomach.
The spirits did not aid in lessening my rumination about it.
Relationship! He said it—re-la-tion-ship.
Oh! This is exciting! I swore I heard the sound of spectral hands clapping. Austin, you have to say something to him!
A boyfriend will make your life so much better.
“Surely one of you had an absolutely dreadful love life when you were among the living. You can’t all be rooting for us.”
We’re all rooting for you.
“I’d say ‘get a life,’ but that’s a bit rude, I think.”
But despite my doubts, I still found myself staring at the side of Rook’s head as he paged through a book on Thursday.
He glanced up and smirked. “We’ve been here an hour and you’re already admiring me? Focus.”
“What are we doing?” I asked.
He squinted at me and lifted the open book. “Looking for your—”
I slammed my book shut. “Bloody hell, not that! What are we doing? What is the expiration date on this…this relationship?”
Rook snorted and leaned back in his chair, his arms squeezing across his chest. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“I can’t break up with you if we aren’t together,” I said. He already stared at me like I’d gone batty, so I confessed. “I told you Wesley Lake threatened us.”
“And I told you I’m not worried about it. His threats are empty and a desperate attempt at controlling you.”
“I called it ‘my relationship.’ It just slipped out.”
“Okay. I’m failing to see the problem here.”
I stroked my thumb up the crease between the book’s pages. “I don’t love you.”
Are you sure about that?
You definitely caught feelings.
You’re usually a better liar than this.
I blinked and ignored the dead’s inability to let me have one serious moment alone with Rook.
Rook, who laughed. He was laughing at me again. “You don’t have to love me. Do you like me? Is fucking and spending time with me enough? You’re overthinking it. If you’re happy, then keep doing what you’re doing.” A beat, then, “I’m happy.”
It hit me like a word in a foreign language I suddenly understood the meaning of.
All the nerves in my stomach were fear that he’d leave, and fear was even more foreign than happiness.
But the banter I’d become addicted to, the warmth that contrasted the new cold inside me, the little smiles he dragged out of me with less and less effort… seemed like happiness.
“Maybe I am overthinking it.”
He leaned across the space between us and kissed me. “Stop overthinking it. It can be a relationship, even if it isn’t a normal one.” He laid his hand over mine and then gripped my fingers, rubbing them in his that seemed so much hotter than mine.
“Fuck! Your fingers are like ice.”
“Speaking of abnormal.” I cleared my throat. “Ever since what happened the other day with the vision or whatever it was, I’ve been cold. Everywhere—deep inside, too. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“A curse maybe?”
I turned my hand palm up so he could massage heat into my frigid skin. “It’s not magician magic. It’s not mine. Something burrowed inside me.”
“Like a parasite?”
“Like a resident. Like the way I can funnel death into people—it isn’t mine.”
Rook tapped the book in front of him. “Then keep reading. Maybe something here can explain it.”
It was three hours later when Rook shoved a small, bland book into my hands with so much force I almost dropped it. The cover was brown with age and stains, the pages more cream than white, and the title was printed in peeling gold-foiled letters.
Grimorio del Respiro e della Morte
I opened it to the page Rook had marked with his thumb and he withdrew his hand.
Evocare la morte
Below the page’s header was a drawing of a woman of cold shadow in a magic circle. The rest of it was in Italian. It would take me a few hours to translate it, but this was it. It had to be.
My breath stopped; I forgot the cold in my bones, and a righteous anger ignited in my chest, burning away every other care or want—the killer, the election, my confusion about Rook. The lure of finally destroying Death remained a single, burning obsession.
Soon, I would avenge my mother.