How to Wake an Undead City
Page 20
“I assumed your bond was stronger because Woolly helped raise you, but it’s possible the connection goes deeper. She’s always viewed you as her child, and she always welcomed your friends. She’s a significant figure in your life.”
“I’m not sure if I can forgive Maud for this,” I admitted. “But if I don’t—if I can’t—there’s no hope she can ever forgive me either.”
“Love drives us all to make mistakes in the name of protecting those we cherish.” He lifted his end of the bookcase, and I did the same, helping him set it back in place. “The ends don’t always justify the means, and the reverse is also true, but I think, in this case, Woolly is cognizant enough of her past, her history, and her present circumstances to make a sound decision for herself.”
Linus jolted, and then he laughed outright.
“Babies again,” I muttered. “She hit you with the nursery ideas, didn’t she?”
“She’s got a detailed list of how she wants each nursery to look.”
“Each nursery?” I felt faint. “How many kids does she think I’m having?”
“From my count?” Linus pursed his lips. “Twenty-four. There was also a puppy this time, so that’s new.”
Eyeing the ceiling, I huffed, “You’re choosing pets for them too?”
Woolly zapped me with the image of a small puppy with russet fur and only a hint of scales covering her forehead zooming through the house while a boy with Linus’s hair and my eyes toddled after her, clapping his hands with delight.
“Not a puppy.” I heard the wonder in my voice, the acceptance that Lethe’s baby bump was an actual child, not just a persistent food belly. “Lethe and Hood’s daughter.”
“Only one?” Linus chuckled. “No litters in her future?”
The old house appeared to consider that, but she had her priorities in order.
Priorities that made a lot more sense considering they would be her grandchildren. No wonder she wanted a house full of them.
Unsure, I asked the old house, “Do you want me to call you Mom?”
Woolly shared the same image as before—the house as viewed from the driveway.
“Okay.” I lingered a moment longer. “If you change your mind…”
The floor beneath us rolled in a gentle wave, Woolly urging us along.
Obviously, she had absorbed the chaos of my day while sharing her vision for the future with me.
“She’s right.” I nudged Linus toward the stairs. “We have to go.”
“Where will you get your sample?”
“There are a few warped planks I’ve been meaning to replace near the back stairs. I can shave a slice off one of the raised ends without doing much damage.”
“All right.”
We bumped into Amelie on the porch, who was sitting on the swing with a box of toiletries at her feet.
“You guys look like you’re in a hurry.” She glanced up, checklist in hand. “Am I in the way?”
“This won’t take but a minute.” I chose the board with the worst damage, knelt beside it, and pulled out my pocketknife. “Brace yourself, Woolly.” Tension strummed through our connection as I cut a sliver as big as my thumb. “Done.” I checked with her, but she pushed assurance she was fine back at me, so I turned to Linus. “Your room or mine?”
Amelie cleared her throat and got busy sorting and resorting her piles.
“Yours,” he decided. “You don’t have anywhere to spread out in mine.”
“True.” Holding the sliver in hand, I led the way up to my room. Linus cleaned off the desk while I gathered my supplies and pulled up my chair. “Please let this work.”
“It will.” Linus sat on my bed to give me room. “What kind of charm do you have in mind?”
Lacroix wore his as a quarter-sized medallion around his neck, but I had other plans.
“Not a charm.” I opened the locked desk drawer and produced the goddess-touched artifact. “A weapon.”
Afraid to read his expression, worried his concerns might spill onto me, I blocked him out and took my trusty knife in hand. I used the tip to hollow out the rounded end of the stake enough for me to press the sliver from Woolworth House into the hole. The next part was tricky, so I closed my eyes and reached deeper into that well of knowledge, both what I had been born knowing and what I had learned from the Marchand collection, and selected the right tools to create the perfect instrument to bring down Lacroix.
Slicing open my thumb, I smeared the length of ancient ash wood with sigils whose purpose I twisted to suit my needs then pressed the wound onto the end like a cap.
Magic punched out of me, hit the stake, and rebounded as the artifact fought back.
One final push drained me, and I slumped over the desk as exhaustion swirled around me.
* * *
“Tell me I didn’t impale myself.” Eyes shut, I patted my chest and abdomen. “It would be super embarrassing to forge my first weapon and then kill myself with it.”
“You didn’t impale yourself.” Linus sounded amused, so that was good. “You’re not dead, either.”
Hands falling to my sides, I exhaled with relief. “The stake?”
“See for yourself.”
Cracking open my eyes, I noted Linus had carried me to my bed and dropped me on top of the covers. The stake rested on its side on my desk, and it glowed red with power, pulsing almost like…a heart.
“It worked.” I pushed upright to lean closer. “It actually worked.”
“Now that you have your weapon, how do you propose we get close enough to Lacroix to use it?”
“I’m thinking your mother can help with that detail.”
Furrows pleated his brow. “Mother has no means of accessing city hall.”
“Good thing we don’t need city hall.”
“You want her to let us into the Lyceum.” He considered me, and then the stake. “If she revokes her protections, and we fail, the Lyceum will fall.”
Us.
We.
That Linus viewed me as his partner, in all things, made my heart swell until I worried it might burst.
“If we fail, we’ll be dead,” I pointed out, “and the fall of the Lyceum will be someone else’s problem.”
“I’ll call Mother’s temporary aid. Henrik will know where to find her. We can meet in the barracks on Habersham Street.”
“I need to see Amelie before we go.”
“All right.” He must have read my desire for a private chat. “I’ll be at the gate with Hood.”
Unsure how to dim the stake’s glow, I stuck it in the front of my bra while I sifted through my drawers. To mute its light, I ended up pulling on a black tank top I covered with a matching turtleneck I already regretted in this heat. On my way downstairs, I rolled up the long sleeves. Marginally cooler, I made a pit stop in an unoccupied guestroom then sought out Amelie and found her unmoved.
“Back again?” She set aside her clipboard. “Did you need something?”
“Yeah.” I claimed the spot next to her on the swing. “You have all the passwords for my bank accounts, right? The hidden ones?”
“I set them up, so yeah.” She frowned. “I sent you hard copies so you could go in and change them.”
“I never got around to it.” I shrugged when she rolled her eyes, unsurprised I had dragged my feet. “I’m glad, all things considered.” I reached over and took her hand. “I have to go do a thing, and if I don’t make it back from that thing, I need you to do a few things for me.”
Amelie tightened her fingers around mine. “That’s an awful lot of things.”
“First, I want to bequeath Adelaide enough money to pay off her family’s debts so she doesn’t have to marry Boaz if she doesn’t want to go down that road.” Though I was starting to worry she was too set on her path. “Second, I want the deed to Woolworth House signed over to Lethe and Hood.” They were the only ones I would trust to protect Woolly, Oscar, and Keet for me. “Third, I want you to take what’s left and start a
new life for yourself. You won’t have to have the new identity Adelaide promised you. You can buy your own. You won’t have to live on an allowance from Boaz, you’ll have plenty of money. You can have the fresh start you wanted, without any strings attached.”
“That’s…” She sniffled, her eyes glittering. “That’s an amazing offer, but you’re going to do the thing, and you’re going to make it back from that thing.” A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Atonement can’t be bought, it must be earned. I’m learning that.” She brought me in for a hug that reminded me of my childhood, or maybe it was the way Woolly lingered nearby. “If the worst happens, and it won’t, I’ll coordinate with Mr. Hacohen to make certain your other bequeaths are awarded.”
“There’s a fourth thing,” I said, untangling from her before I lost my nerve. “Tell Boaz to find a woman he can love and dedicate his life to making happy. Tell him not to settle and not to let her settle either. Tell him…I forgive him, for everything, and I wish him every joy.”
Wiping her nose with a crumpled invoice, she laughed. “Assuming Adelaide takes the money and runs.”
“Assuming,” I agreed. “But my possible untimely death might come too late to save her. I think she might actually care about the oaf.”
“No accounting for taste.” She attempted a smile that slid off her mouth. “Grier, don’t go.”
“I have to.” I gazed off my porch, across my yard, to what I could see of the city. “There’s too much at stake.” Thinking of the literal stake in my bra, I barked out a laugh. “Remember what I said.”
“I’ll remember.”
As I took the steps into the yard, I pretended not to hear her weeping.
Saying goodbye to Lethe would gut me, and I figured I needed all the guts I could muster for what we were about to do, so I took the coward’s way out and met Linus at the fence without looking back.
Hood stood at the gate, his mouth tight. “You’re ready to go?”
“Yeah.” I tugged on the collar of my turtleneck. “I’m ready.”
He narrowed his eyes on me. “You’re sure?”
Of course, he knew what I was doing. I probably smelled like the big chicken I was. “I can’t face her.”
“Too bad,” Lethe snarled and launched herself at me, wrapping me up in a combination of hug and chokehold. “You don’t get to leave without me. Screw telling me goodbye, I’m going with you. We’re doing this together.”
“You’re pregnant,” I wheezed. “You can’t risk your daughter.”
Drawing back, she punched my shoulder. “Then I guess you’ll have to babysit me for a change.”
“You’re impossible.” I rubbed my throat. “Hood, I can’t believe you’re okay with this.”
“You’re pack” was all he said, all he had to say, and I fought tears all the way to the van.
Eleven
We found the Grande Dame watching a screen with three Elite who appeared to be tracking movement; theirs or Lacroix’s, I wasn’t sure. She wore black cotton slacks paired with a ruby blouse and tennis shoes that matched her top and reminded me a bit of Dorothy’s slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Her hair was pulled up in a militant bun on top her head, and fine tendrils had escaped to frame her face.
This was as casual as Clarice Lawson got, and that was before you noticed the pearl studs in her ears or the cosmetics that almost succeeded in hiding her exhaustion.
“Mother,” Linus said when we entered what passed for Savannah’s Society headquarters these days.
Monitor forgotten, she rushed to Linus and pressed a kiss to each of his cheeks. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s been a busy few days for us all.” He glanced around, and I did too. We noted how the men and women no longer stood apart from the Grande Dame but with her. Days spent in the tight confines of the barracks, paired with their horrendous loss, had demystified her in their eyes. “Grier and I need a moment of your time.”
“Of course.” She turned back to the small gathering. “Keep an eye on them. I won’t be but a minute.”
The others nodded, first to her and then to us, before returning to their stations.
“Come this way.” She led us to a single room that must have been meant for an officer. “This is as private as it gets here, I’m afraid.”
There was nowhere to sit except on the bed, so we all elected to stand.
“I’ll ward the room,” I offered and set about getting it done.
After our ears popped, she studied Linus. “I heard an interesting rumor.”
His calm left me in awe of his acting skills. “Oh?”
A bad feeling coiled in my gut. Had he not told her what happened?
“I was contacted by the unit commander at Atramentous of all places. Apparently there was a bit of a dustup when three unauthorized persons used a stolen code to gain access to the Athenaeum.” Keen eyes spearing him, she continued. “They assaulted an officer on their way out, the same officer whose code had been used, then cut a path of destruction right through the front gate.” She let that settle between us. “This is, to my knowledge, the first time a prison break has occurred in Atramentous’s history. It is also, as far as I know, the first time non-Elite personnel have viewed the Athenaeum in its entirety.”
Lips curving, Linus slid a glance my way. “That is an interesting rumor.”
“What were you thinking?” Gone was the cool, the calm, the collected. Her fury crackled in the air around us. “You helped Grier break back in after I finally got her out? Why on earth? And with Boaz Pritchard of all people? He was appointed to her for a reason, to keep an eye on her, not let her run wild.”
The amusement fell away, and Linus turned serious. “Boaz was our way in.”
“Goddess,” she exhaled. “That explains the female guard’s code being the one compromised.”
The urge to defend him after he had finally, finally stood up for himself kicked my pulse up a notch, but I held myself in check. We were here to ask for her help, on multiple fronts, so I let the insult slide.
“Tell me the rest.” She snapped her fingers. “And tell me the truth, all of it. Or else I can’t help you fix this mess.”
Linus shared a lingering glance with me, asking for permission. He would tell the story to prevent me from ratting out Boaz, but I was in this up to my neck too. I wasn’t going to let him drown alone.
“Boaz told us special dispensation had been granted for us to visit the Athenaeum and that his request to escort us was approved.” I wet my lips. “We didn’t realize until after we had gained access that he hadn’t been completely honest with us.”
Awarding me her full attention, she glowered with abandon. “What would possess you to return there?”
“We planned a trip to Raleigh to visit Dame Marchand. We intended to barter with her for access to the Marchand’s collection on the goddess-touched condition. We needed those books in order to find a way to void Lacroix’s resistance to my magic. With him out of power, and his compulsions broken, his army would fall apart. We could reclaim the city with minimal casualties.” I fidgeted where I stood, recalling how many lives had already been lost. “On our way, we stopped in Atlanta to meet with Tisdale Kinase, to ask for aid she ultimately denied, and Johan Marchand—Severine’s husband—paid us a visit. He informed us his wife was dead and presented me with a letter from her.”
Curiosity overcame her, and she shifted closer to me. “What did it say?”
“A lot of things. Private things.” Hurtful words I hoped I wouldn’t have to relay in their entirety, even if they came from a cousin and not her. “What matters is the Marchands donated their entire collection to the Athenaeum to prevent me from gaining access.”
“And Boaz, being an Elite,” she finished, “knew where to find the Athenaeum.”
“He helped us for the sake of the fallen.”
The slight purse of her lips hinted she hadn’t bought the line, not in its entirety, but she let it go. “After all you’ve s
uffered, you returned to Atramentous.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t hesitate.” A note of reluctant pride entered her voice. “You went back there for the good of the Society.”
More like the good of Savannah and all her inhabitants, but I took the out I was given. “Yes.”
The Grande Dame worried one of her earrings. “How did Boaz get you as far as visitation?”
“He forged paperwork that indicated Commander Roark had granted our petition.”
“He was there when Commander Roark died,” she murmured. “There were no survivors to contradict him.”
“That’s my understanding, yes.”
“The paperwork would have held,” Linus continued the story, “except he wasn’t given an access code. He was forced to borrow one from the guard working visitation. She was a willing participant until we prepared to leave, when Boaz made it clear in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in her sexually now or ever.”
“Foolish boy.”
For once, we were in total agreement, though I couldn’t bring myself to admit it out loud.
“This is what happened.” She massaged her temples. “Linus, you and Grier were granted permission from Commander Roark to visit the Athenaeum. Boaz met with Roark to collect the clearance papers, and that’s when Elite Heath entered the room and opened fire.” Her arms lowered as she reimagined those events, twisting them to suit her. “That’s why Boaz accompanied you to Atramentous, to arrange for the use of Elite Barfoot’s code since no new ones could be issued until an interim commander could be appointed.”
“The video won’t corroborate your version of events,” Linus said gently. “Elite Barfoot and Elite Marx won’t either.”
Not to mention the guards we took out at the gates, some with more force than others.
“I’ll handle it.” She pushed hairs away from her face. “I’m the Grande Dame, and you were acting in the best interests of the Society.”
“Protecting us might cost you your title.” Linus measured her with a frown. “Are you prepared for that?”