There were so many things I could think of in that moment as I followed Barney into the Justice Department and he started taking the stairs up to the fifth floor.
But for some reason, all my mind locked on was the fact that the Zero Prophecy had been nothing more than a lie. A mere fiction.
Before I could blame Max for drawing me into that fiction, I remembered what Olivia had said about him. He believed it was true.
… Olivia didn’t.
So who was right?
I went back to the point I’d made in the drawing room before I left Max behind. What is a prophecy in the first place? If you believe that the world is ultimately changeable and that within the hearts and minds of humans is the capacity to alter their futures, then a prophecy is nothing more than a prediction. A prediction that, if people choose to believe in, they can make real. If, on the other hand, you believe a prophecy is set in stone, then it is set in stone. Your belief won’t matter; the prophecy will always win.
I found myself staring at my hands.
What did I believe? What was true?
We reached the top of the stairs.
Though there’d hardly been any officers on duty in the rest of the police station, the top floor was full of activity. I saw suited and uniformed men running everywhere. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to Barney, even though Barney was sweating profusely as he grabbed his hat and pushed it around and around his hands.
He walked to the room Peter had told him to head to.
I followed.
I managed to squeeze in just before he could close the door behind him.
Peter was seated in front of a desk, a man who looked like he was the Chief of Police behind the desk.
Both men looked up.
“You have the file?” Peter asked through clenched teeth.
Barney managed a nod even though it looked as if he was about to freak out completely.
He stumbled over his own feet but eventually made it to Peter, handing him the file.
Peter snarled but received it.
Then he slammed it down on the Police Chief’s desk. “Here it is. Here is all the evidence you’ll need to take down the Knights family. Now leave, Barney.”
Barney didn’t say another word as he shuffled out of the room.
I stayed.
The Chief of Police winced. “Keep your voice down.”
Peter leaned back and laughed. “There’s no point. No one’s seen Max for hours, and as for Jason the sorcerer,” Peter said with a laugh, “he’s otherwise consumed.”
The Chief of Police looked over the rim of his glasses at Peter. “Do you know how dangerous it will be for me to pick a side too early?”
It was a hell of a direct question.
“You won’t be picking a side. You’ll be doing your job, believe it or not. A job that, for the first time in years, will not be dictated by the Knights family.”
“If Jason finds out—”
“Jason will not find out. Jason is too busy. He, just like his brother, believes in the words of the prophecy his father made up. It will keep both boys well and truly occupied while we do the rest.”
The Police Chief looked down at the file, then up at Peter. I didn’t need to be an emotion reader to appreciate that he was obviously trying to come to a decision.
“It’s finally time for Madison City and the Justice Department,” Peter emphasized that, “to shrug off the yoke of the Knights family.”
“I thought… that the hidden sets were protected by a powerful sorcerer memory of Paul Knights?” the Chief managed, his Adam’s apple actually shaking as he swallowed hard.
Peter snorted as he sat back comfortably and locked his hands on his knees. “A technicality. Plus, we’re not that interested in those.”
“We aren’t?”
“No, we’re interested in the seventh set,” he said, his voice practically ringing.
The Chief made a face. “I thought that was apocryphal? I thought it was just more of the crap Paul Knights made up to keep this city under his thumb?”
“This one is true. The seventh set of the Hidden Grimoires will allow its wielder… certain powers over the minds of others. Over their dreams, to be specific.”
The Police Chief actually shuddered.
As I stared into his eyes, it was almost as if I could see a struggle going on with his conscience. As if I could see, in real-time, the battle for his morality.
“I don’t get it – how do we get the seventh set? I thought that’s what the two Knights brothers were currently battling over? I thought you required a sorcerer to do it? Speaking of which, why couldn’t Jason do it?”
“Because he’s not a particularly good finder. I had to feed him the location of his brother’s secret mansion. And that is the only reason we’ve managed to divert his attention. As for the grimoires, though you need to be a sorcerer first, you need to be a finder as well in order to locate the seventh set and create it.”
“We have no other sorcerer. We can’t help you.”
“You won’t have to,” Peter said.
Did something strange happen to his voice? Did it do something weird?
Did his emotions suddenly become murkier?
“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve procured an actual sorcerer? That bounty hunter woman? Samson, or whatever her name is? I thought she was currently holed up in that mansion with Mr. McIntosh and Max Knights?”
“She is. But we can draw her out. It will only be a matter of time before Jason manages to break through the mansion’s defenses, anyway.”
The Chief snorted. “Which will presumably land her in Jason and Internal Affairs’ clutches, not ours. Exactly what kind of plan do you have?”
“A cast-iron one. I assure you.”
“Even if you did somehow manage to get her, what next? I heard Internal Affairs sealed off the location of the other sets. And don’t you need the other sets in order to generate the seventh? I mean, if my reading of this situation is correct. It is pretty hard, considering the number of lies that have been generated from this stupid prophecy, for starters.”
“Correct. You will need to be in the location of the other six sets to create the seventh. As for accessing it – once more, leave that to me. I think you’ll find I even have my fans in Internal Affairs.”
Something in me started to stiffen. It climbed up my back, sank into my skull, and locked in place like a clamp.
The Police Chief sighed. “Even if you manage to do this, will it be enough? Will you be able to,” his teeth clenched, “change the hearts and minds of the city quickly enough to regain power and reinstate peace?”
“Leave that to me,” Peter said as he suddenly stood. He smoothed down his tie, opened his lapels, and straightened them with a rough tug. “I have been in security all my life.”
The Police Chief snorted. “Security doesn’t always lead to peace. You have to assure me of this,” the Police Chief said, his voice punching down low. “If I’m to help you, you need—”
“You will get your peace. I will assure you that once the seventh set is procured, you will regain full control of the streets.”
The Chief leaned back. “Then what exactly do you need me to do?”
“You had a stint in the Army, didn’t you, Chief?”
The Chief frowned. “I did – but what’s your point?”
“What was your specialty again?”
“Blasting. Why?”
“A rare skill. Do you mind if you show me how it works?”
“What?”
“A little demonstration, if you will.”
What the hell was Peter doing? Was he about to attack the Chief?
Even as I thought that, I realized I was wrong. Because even as I thought that, a blast of fear sailed into my stomach and made me stand all the straighter.
No. Peter was after me.
I had no idea what blasting was, but I was about to find out.
The Chief, apparently, did
not need to be told twice.
He closed his eyes. And that was all it took. Something shunted through the room and slammed into me. It wasn’t a standard attack, though. And even though, a second before, I’d managed to charge myself with magic, it didn’t matter. The blast didn’t slam into my body – it slammed into my mind.
It felt like being hit with the thought-equivalent of a battering ram.
I gasped and fell backward, and before I could stop myself, I became visible.
Peter was on me in an instant. I tried to fight him off. I tried to kick. I tried to do anything and everything, but whatever the hell the Chief had done had fried my brains. I just couldn’t concentrate. I heard a click as Peter pulled something out from behind him. The next thing I knew, a pair of sorcerer handcuffs appeared in his hands. I recognized them from the incident in the gardens.
He brought them toward me.
“What the hell is going on?” the Chief demanded as he rushed around from the side of his desk.
“Like I told you – I have things under control.” With that, Peter clasped the sorcerer handcuffs around my wrists.
I felt myself shutting down. It was like I was some electronic equipment, and somebody had just pulled the plug on me.
My eyes fluttered closed. Before I could lose consciousness, I had time for one final thought. I’d failed. The Zero Prophecy might not be real, or maybe it was real – the point was, I’d just allowed myself to be captured. And this was it.
Chapter 10
I kept falling in and out of consciousness, slipping around as if I were trying to gain balance on an icy surface.
I was aware of several things – being moved, the sound of some kind of vehicle, and the handcuffs perpetually locked over my wrists. Voices too. Heavy footfall. I could also feel a familiar wash of magic. It didn’t take too much concentration to appreciate it was Peter’s. I recognized his magic from the case file. The case file that was still in my pocket, to be exact, along with that archive box and all the other files I’d managed to grab up. But none of that mattered, did it? Because the only frigging thing that mattered right now was that I was trapped and there was nothing I would be able to do to get free.
I’d never been handcuffed with magical handcuffs before, let alone sorcerer handcuffs.
There was no way around them. They did something wholly strange to my magic, feeling like they were eating it, like they were leeches sucking at my power. If I was stupid enough to try to gather a charge, they would lap at it greedily until I felt as if I’d been sucked dry of blood.
I lay in the back of what felt like a troop transport, my body jittering around, as no one had bothered to secure me.
Thoughts flashed through my mind, sparking in my consciousness like little flames in the dark. None was more powerful than Max.
If I was wrong, and I’d left him in vain, then what would happen next would be purely on my shoulders. If the Zero Prophecy was true, then I was about to condemn humanity. But you know what? Even if it wasn’t true, I was still in a lot of trouble.
… But there was an important distinction there, wasn’t there? One I tried to appreciate, but one that was pretty hard to wrap my head around when my head felt like it had been rolled into thin pastry dough.
But… I fought. Fought to understand.
Because, as always, understanding seemed like the only thing I was capable of.
Eventually I felt the car stopping.
There was some hubbub as people talked, and I was thrown over somebody’s shoulder.
I knew that if I had any hope of getting out of this, I had to come up with a plan. But with no way to break through the sorcerer handcuffs, how the hell was I going to do that?
And before you point out that I could simply find a way as a complete finder, I had no access to my magic.
So I was nothing more than a sitting duck.
Peter was around, though I wasn’t over his shoulder. I recognized his voice.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he was Max’s uncle.
Why the hell had Max never told me? Fair enough, it sounded as if they were estranged, but that wasn’t the point. It was something I’d needed to know.
But then I thought about things from Max’s perspective. It was clear now that both Max and Jason believed in the Zero Prophecy. They hadn’t been trying to manipulate me. They didn’t know their father had created it. They’d been schooled in it from birth – just further insurance their father had bought to make certain that he would ultimately find the seventh set and take full control of the city. And what better way to control your sons than to do so through an unshakable, unbreakable prophecy?
My mind suddenly pointed out Max’s mother’s diaries.
Weren’t they a spanner in this theory? Jason had been after them, after all. He’d thought he needed them to find the seventh set, right?
So what were they really?
Max’s mother had been a sorcerer, so were they some kind of set of instructions to help him find the seventh set?
Though Max had been adamant that his mother hadn’t helped his father in his treacherous quest for the sets, by the sounds of what Olivia had said, she had.
The more I concentrated, the more problems I found.
One particular one slammed right into the center of my head. If I hadn’t been lying down, it would’ve thrown me backward.
Max hadn’t known about the seventh set. If his father had schooled him from birth to be the finder who would locate the seventh set, why the hell hadn’t he told Max about it? And why had he told Jason he would be the sorcerer of legend? Why had he told the brothers two separate stories?
Something just didn’t fit.
I was still missing something, and it was driving me insane.
I felt myself being carried for some distance, and though my eyes wouldn’t work, I knew where I was. I remembered the specific earth-laden scent in the air. We were down in the tunnels, headed toward that door. So Max had been right, after all, ha? That door had led to the six sets.
I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d thrown my help behind Max earlier? If I’d used my sorcerer magic to push through that door, break the sleep spell, and access the sets earlier? Would I be in this situation? Or would this whole damn situation have been solved already?
There was no way to frigging know.
I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d just concentrated on finding Olivia earlier, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Maybe the whole freaking city wouldn’t be in this situation. She could have revealed what she’d known, and things wouldn’t have escalated to this point.
Then again, if things hadn’t escalated to this point, Internal Affairs would’ve continued doing what they were doing, and so would Peter. The city would continue to live under shadowy figures, and no one would truly be free.
There was that damn word again. Free.
For someone with as much power as me – ignoring my current circumstances – why did I feel as if I hadn’t been free since I’d become a frigging witch? No, I wasn’t talking about the fact I was contracted to the government and had to live and work with Josh McIntosh without complaint. This had everything to do with the curious fact that often when you acquire more power, your world becomes more constrained, not less constrained.
There was a sense of utter anticipation in the air as people waited in front of the door. I still couldn’t see, but I could tell from the general pressured silence that the assembled men were waiting for Peter to open the lock.
Eventually, I heard a click.
I swore my stomach chose that moment to eject from my body, taking the last of my nerve with it.
“Finally,” Peter said as he led us all through with a brisk wave of his hand.
My eyes were finally starting to resolve things. Not that that really counted for much. Who cared if I could see my circumstances? I still couldn’t do anything about them.
As soon as I thought that, I clenched my
teeth against that mutinous concept. Because it was wrong. It went against everything I’d been teaching myself over the past two months. More information was not less useful – it was often crucial to finding a way out. So I wouldn’t allow despair to climb any further up my back. I watched, and I waited.
We were led into a clinical steel corridor. It looked as if we’d wandered onto the set of some kind of futuristic sci-fi film. The corridor was cut in shades of polished steel and white metal.
Footfall echoed out like the pound of a drum.
Though I now had enough power to open my eyes and prick my hearing, I hadn’t experimented with forcing any more magic against my sorcerer handcuffs.
There was no point in wasting it.
As if to reaffirm that, I watched as Peter turned around and looked right at me. He tilted his head to the side and smiled. “You’re awake then, are you? I wouldn’t bother trying to get free. You can’t. I wouldn’t bother trying to waste your magic – you can’t do that, either. Simply watch and wait. We’ll use you later.”
On the promise that he’d use me later, I wanted to make a fist and pound it into his face repeatedly.
I got the impression that if men like Peter didn’t exist, situations like these wouldn’t be possible. It was because men like Peter continually sought to gather more power that peace was so hard to find. It was precisely because of men like Peter that lies like the Zero Prophecy made so much sense. They tapped right into people’s natural suspicions of each other.
Promise humans absolute power, and they will do anything and sacrifice anything to get it.
At the thought of absolute power, my back itched, for once more I remembered the contents of my vision where I’d been torn apart by chaos. That was the consequence of using the seven hidden books, wasn’t it? Or had it just been a convenient lie concocted with magic and drugs? One that had been fed to Max using his mother’s fabricated diaries? Which meant, what? His mother had always been in on this? Then why didn’t Jason know about her house?
“Almost there,” Peter said, his voice dropping down low and practically dripping with menace.
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