“I think so, yeah.”
“I’ll be leaving you in good hands,” Keely assured him. “Conrad’s got a handle on things, and Baldassare is recovering nicely. He’ll make sure you get wherever you want to be before he heads home himself.”
“What about the others?” he asked.
“Let’s see…we got Addie out alive, but she’s got no family and she lost everything. I’m trusting you to make sure she gets her shot at becoming a proper priestess. She’ll make a fine one.”
“I can handle that,” he said.
“The Inquisition technically owns the Wolf’s Tooth, but I can’t imagine they’re going to do anything with it. No one wants to go back to Haywoodshire. I’m afraid it’s going to be a haunted wasteland for a while. I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d do whatever you can to help out the refugees, including Minda’s family. We managed to swing them a full pardon from the Inquisition, and they still technically own land, but they’re going to have problems.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Tobias promised.
“Minda’s decided to stay dead. She says there’s going to be too many things that could go wrong if Jane Carver starts asking questions about what happened to her. She’s coming with me to look for the book and bringing Nolan. Seems if his life’s going to be turned upside down regardless, he’d rather be hanging out with people who’ve seen what he’s seen, not tagging along somewhere he has to pretend he hasn’t seen it in order to feel normal.
“Evadne’s coming, too. Baldassare wanted to come with us—turns out the Inquisition killed that sister he was looking for, and I’m sure they made an enemy for life there—but he says he owes it to her to go back home and figure out how to salvage their family fortunes. He’s going to bide his time and trust Evadne to make things difficult for the Inquisition in the short-term.”
“Sounds like quite the little army,” Tobias smiled.
“Oh, and there’s one more guy. I don’t think you’ve met. Name’s Clay. Not from around here, but Scarlet dragged him into this and tore up his mind something awful. Best I can tell from his ramblings, he was an undertaker some—”
“Clay Ambleforth?”
“You have met him?”
“I’m afraid I must have led Scarlet to him.” Tobias sighed. “He’s a descendant of Lord Vyncent Amberford. Yes, leave him to me. I’ll see what I can do for him, and he may be able to tell me something he didn’t before when I was looking for you. I was in a hurry, and not too concerned what he could tell me about the book at the time.”
“Excellent.” She favored him with a brilliant smile. “I couldn’t leave without knowing if you’d be all right, and saying goodbye. I owed you a goodbye. But time’s wasting. I’ll do my best to stay alive, and I think we both know that staying alive is a specialty of mine.” She leaned down to kiss him again, and this time he managed to return it gingerly.
“You know I’ll be coming to chase you down again,” Tobias warned her as she turned to go, her lovely new cape billowing around her.
“I know,” Keely said. “And when you do, I promise not to run as fast as before. What I don’t promise,” she said, looking back with a wink, “is not to lose my dress again.”
The Wolf’s Tooth still loomed in the distance as they headed out from Fodderen in the direction of Lake Etherea to follow their scant clues to the fate of the Grimm Truth.
“It does make a helluva monument,” Nolan said, looking up at the tower of rock. “As ends go, it’s one Ulric would have been okay with.”
“I know I’m pretty pleased with how I died,” Minda said. “Of course, I get to have it both ways. I hope Doryne and Nessa like it up there with him.”
“I hope they all like being the heroes of the song Tobias commissioned while he was asleep,” Keely said. “I thought the minstrel showed a lot of promise.”
“At least they don’t have to actually live with it,” Elissa said dryly. “I thought you were going to drop that bit about me being a miraculata once it got the Inquisition out of the way.”
“Well, it didn’t get the Inquisition out of the way, did it?” Keely asked. “We might as well make it count for something.”
“You know I’ve had to convince three different people already that I’m not a miraculata?” Elissa asked.
“Did it work?”
“No!” Elissa cried, exasperated. “That’s the worst part!”
“Excellent.” Keely grinned. “Only a true miraculata would deny her holiness. Keep it up. No one’s going to believe it was an unknown girl like you and not Jane Carver who rid the world of a monster like Scarlet if they don’t buy into the story of you being a miraculata.”
“And what happens when they start asking me to perform actual miracles?” Elissa demanded.
“That’s the great thing about miracles,” Keely assured her. “They never work by request. But here’s something that might cheer you up, Jenny: It’s not just you that was wrong.”
“Oh?” Elissa asked archly.
“You did get so caught up in the notion that hurting Scarlet would inconvenience her, you forgot to consider all the other ways she could be inconvenienced. But I was actually wrong about a couple of things, too.”
“You were wrong?” Elissa asked, sincerely shocked by the admission.
“In the end, I couldn’t fix everything.” Keely sighed, her face falling. “I had to settle for keeping things from getting worse. Not sure yet how I’m going to deal with that.”
“And the other?”
“Apparently,” Keely said, a shadow of a smile returning, “you can con crazy.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Leonard & Ann Marie Wilson met when she showed up on his doorstep where they quickly bonded over nearly everything, including their shared love of writing. Two years later they were married and collaborating on nearly everything, including writing as freelancers for role-playing games.
After taking a break from their writing aspirations to collaborate on a family, they’re back and focused on fiction.
If you enjoyed Lethal Red Riding Hood, please help yourself to a copy of our prequel short-story, Conspiracy of One.
For more about us and our work, check out our website, Lost in the Wood, or visit us on Facebook.
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Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 51
