Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“What?” A coldness creeps over my skin as I feel like I’ve been stripped bare for the world to see.
“Ed is here with us now,” Valdemar says, his voice low, quiet, as if keeping this between the two of us— three of us.
“How?” Tearing my eyes from Ed, I try to hold my gaze on Valdemar. “Can you see him? Is that your gift?”
“No. But you can.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” The speed of my response betrays me.
“Yes, you do,” he says.
Ed was the only person who knew I could see the dead. I’ve never spoken to anyone about my ability, yet Valdemar is regarding me as if I’ve just told him I can hopscotch. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s not a gift, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I blurt out, forgetting myself for a split second.
“I never said it was.”
“No one would want this. It’s of no use to anyone other than to drive them insane,” I say.
“Yet here you are, and so is Ed.” He sounds pleased about this.
“Is he always with you?” I ask.
“Not all the time. There are times when I can’t seem to reach him, but I always know when he’s here. I can feel him.”
“This is so messed up.” Placing my hands over my face, I rest my elbows on the table. “It’s your fault he’s here, your fault I only get to see him like this. Because you killed him.”
“He asked me to,” Valdemar stresses.
“Why? Why would he want that? He had his whole life ahead of him. Nothing is as bad as taking a bullet to the head,” I argue.
Valdemar’s eyes widen as he leans over the table, closing the gap between us. “Believe me when I tell you, angel, that the bullet to the head was the better option.”
There’s a coldness running through me which I ignore, too rattled by this conversation to pick up on the chill.
“How can that be?” I feel like I’m on a roller-coaster—the ups and downs, the speed at which this tale is racing, and the wind harsh against my face. I just want it to stop, to get off and catch my breath.
“Because we’d been set up.” Valdemar sits back, his body slackening as if he has no energy to retell this part of the story.
“Set up?”
Licking his lips, he straightens as if bracing himself to relive something he has no desire to. “We thought that once Jacinta had faked her reaction to the drug, the staff would carry her off into the private function room and Fortunato would be called to deal with the situation, seeing as she happened to be the girlfriend of a Raven Hand. He wouldn’t want any bad blood between us or suspicion raised about why Jacinta had reacted the way she did to a harmless glass of whisky.”
“Then why use yourselves? Why not use some lesser-known Raven Hands?” I ask.
“Because I would never send another Raven Hand to do my dirty work.” There’s anger behind his words, as if I’ve insulted him by even insinuating this.
“You did with Ed,” I point out.
“Ed and I were equals. He was my Blood Brother. And he was integral to the plan, as was Jupiter.” Glancing around the room, he tenses his jaw. “What I’m about to tell you has to stay here. I wouldn’t tell you at all if I thought I could withhold it, but again, I owe you this—the truth, all of it. I just have to hope you honour these secrets, not out of consideration for me but for what you’ll do to these people if you tell the world what they can do.”
Swallowing hard, I nod. I would never want the world to know I see the dead, that my brother could see the future. We would be ridiculed, disbelieved, taunted at the very least—or at worst, hunted down, rounded up, deemed a menace to society, or experimented on until there was nothing left of us.
“We had much bigger things in mind than trying to catch Fortunato out at drugging his customers. We figured if we could track him at all times, we could assassinate him.”
“How were you going to get a tracker on him?” I ask.
A smile creeps into the corners of Valdemar’s mouth. “Jupiter can track people—anywhere, anytime. That is his gift.”
“How?” But then it hits me when I recall my first meeting with Jupiter and Valdemar’s subsequent reaction.
“Once he’s touched a person, he knows exactly where they are at any given time. One touch,” Valdemar confirms.
Shit. I see now why Valdemar doesn’t want me to publish this. I can’t imagine the outcry if the general public knew that someone was walking the city who could track anyone just by touching them. No wonder Valdemar had been so insistent that I didn’t let Jupiter touch me. But why would he care about my privacy? Surely it would be to his advantage to have his second-in-command know my whereabouts?
“So, you guys faked the reaction to the drug to lure Fortunato into the room so Jupiter could touch him. But it didn’t work out?”
“No. Fortunato was already there along with Dr Tem-Pest, but they weren’t interested in Jacinta. They had their sights set on Ed.”
A freezing fog fills my lungs.
“They knew he was a Raven Hand,” I guess. The tattoo on his left hand would have been a giveaway. “They knew you were there to foil their little experiment.” I’m surprised there isn’t a mist curling from my lips as I speak, the coldness having wrapped itself around my chest cavity.
“And to this day, I don’t know how. Maybe they’d been watching Ed. Maybe they’d known all along what we were planning. Who knows, but either way, they were waiting for us in a good old-fashioned ambush.”
Stalling, Valdemar blinks and pushes back in his chair as if he’s trying to get away from what happened next.
“Do you know what Adolphe Fortunato does to people who cross him?” he asks.
“Not specifically. But I’ve never looked into him. Like you pointed out, he’s not a man to tangle with.”
“I never saw for myself what he did to traitors, but there were rumours, whisperings on the grapevine of what would become of someone who’d crossed him. And like with all rumours, there always has to be an element of truth.”
My stomach drops to my toes. I can’t look at Ed or I’ll crumple in the chair.
“What did you hear?” I swallow hard.
“Angel, you don’t have to—” Valdemar leans forwards as he speaks, but I don’t let him finish.
“Don’t patronise me. I’m not some delicate wallflower. I’m here for the truth. You said that yourself. So give it to me. All of it.”
His eyes pool, a sadness seeping into the depths of his pupils like those of a consultant before he tells his patients they only have hours to live. “The rumours were that he would skin people, then cattle-prod the open wounds or pour acid onto the skin and watch it bubble. He would infect people with a disease Dr Tem-Pest had cooked up in his lab, aptly named The Red Death, that would make his victims dizzy and experience sharp pains before bleeding profusely from their pores.” Valdemar’s voice goes quiet, like he had more things to add to the list but can tell that I don’t want to hear anymore.
There is no air in this room. My head spins, the room sways, and Ed’s outline shimmers.
“Fuck.” My throat closes because I know exactly how the next part of this plays out. “He saw his death, didn’t he? Ed saw what that fucker was going to do to him,” I guess.
“He wasn’t the only one.”
Confused, I stare at Valdemar.
“In times of great stress, the brain works in strange ways. As I walked into the room, I saw Ed being manhandled, realised this whole thing was a set-up, and then, through our bond, I saw exactly what Ed saw,” he explains. “As soon as I saw his vision, the look in his eyes, and the nod he gave me, it ripped me in two and broke me in ways no one should ever have to endure.”
My tongue swells, and I feel like I can’t swallow. I may not be able to see the vision as my brother or Valdemar did, but I know that whatever he’s about to tell me is going to haunt me for the rest of my days.
But I have to know.
“What did you see?” I dare to ask.
Valdemar pauses as if gearing himself up or waiting for me to change my mind. Eventually, he speaks, his voice low and smooth, as if he’s trying to soften the blow of each word. “I saw Ed being bricked up behind a wall, alive, and screaming for someone to kill him.”
Gripping the edge of the table, I almost fold in on myself.
“That’s why he asked me to shoot him. He knew what awaited him, what agony he would have to endure, knew the arduous death that would claim him slowly with pallid breath and invisible hands.”
A cry claws its way up my windpipe. I manage to swallow it.
“Wait a minute.” Pressing my hand to my forehead, I point at Valdemar. “You said he was never able to stop his visions from happening, that no matter what he did, they happened anyway. Are you telling me this was the only time my brother managed to cheat fate? Please tell me it was, or I swear to God….” I glance at Ed, wishing he would open his mouth and tell me something, anything.
But just like my mother, he is silent.
I look back at Valdemar, knowing I’m not going to want to hear what comes next.
“Ed always said his vision would happen regardless of his interventions. Fate is like that. But we learned, over the years, that he could influence minor parts of the scene—blur the details, so to speak.” Valdemar pauses and eyes me carefully before continuing. “The only way we cheated was that Ed was dead before they bricked his body up.”
“No.” Sucking back tears, I wrap my arms around my waist. “We cremated him. My dad had to identify his body. I put my hand on his coffin. I kissed it before they took him away. It’s not possible.”
Loss swells inside me, anger, fear at what Valdemar is about to say.
“It’s with the greatest sadness that I tell you the box you burned was empty, as your brother’s dead body had already been taken from the morgue by Fortunato’s men and placed within the walls of his mansion along with all the other unfortunate souls who crossed him. Ed was to be made an example for the rest of Fortunato’s followers that even in death, you didn’t escape his wrath. The only comfort we can take from this is that he wasn’t alive when it happened like Fortunato intended him to be. Ed succeeded in that part.”