by Eva Chase
Whatever spell he’d cast on her wasn’t broken. Her lips curled back as she tried to find words she could speak. “He’s lying,” she said. “He’s had a lot of practice at it, so he does it well. You can’t listen to him.”
“Oh, and they should listen to you? The Justice Division will definitely hear about this. High ranking Assembly members tramping around one of their colleagues’ homes searching for monsters on the word of a known degenerate? How long do you think your careers will last after this gets out?”
“If there’s nothing to see, what does it matter to you if we look?” Remington asked. The question would have reassured me if her stance hadn’t been so hesitant. She wanted him to convince her there was nothing to see. It’d be easier for her to believe I was a lunatic than that he was the head of some crazy conspiracy. Of course it would be. That was why his faction had been able to operate for so long.
“The principle matters,” Frankford said. He stood there, managing to look haughty even with his arms still restrained behind his back. “The fact that you’d take this witch’s word over mine matters. What kind of justice is this if any maniac can send the Assembly scrambling across the countryside? By the Spark, don’t you have better things to do?”
Justin Brimsey shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He didn’t want to be here anymore.
“You can’t listen to him,” Naomi said. “He’s trying to cover it up, still. You have no idea how many people he’s hurt.”
“How?” Miriam Travers said. “With these ‘monsters’ you’re going to claim are lurking around this property? Have you seen them too?”
My cousin hesitated. “No, but I know Rose wouldn’t make something like that up.”
“I’ve seen them,” I said. “So has he.” I squeezed Gabriel’s shoulder where I was still holding him.
“And me,” Damon said grimly. “And believe me, you won’t get it until you’ve seen that thing for yourself. Why the hell do you think we went to all this trouble to get you out here?”
Remington stiffened at his brash tone. A gleam of triumph lit in Frankford’s eyes. “You see,” he said. “This is what I tried to tell you about. The lengths her little group will go to. The disrespect they have for anyone who’s earned their authority. I know you’re smart enough not to be manipulated by ploys like that.”
They weren’t smart enough not to be manipulated by him. The Assembly members exchanged a glance, and I could read their thoughts on their faces. This whole situation was ridiculous. They’d been dragged out here for some sort of petty grudge-match. They might not have any great love for Frankford, but asking them to believe in a conspiracy of this size was a whole different ballpark.
They didn’t have any love for me either. He’d already poisoned them against me as well as he could.
I’d faced off against Frankford once and taken a deal to save myself and my consorts. But I hadn’t really saved anyone that way. I’d only given him the opportunity to hurt more people. This time I wouldn’t make that mistake.
If I had to go down to take him down too, then so be it. I hadn’t come this far for nothing. His demonic reign ended now.
I brushed my hand over Gabriel’s forehead and kissed him there. “I love you,” I murmured, needing to say it one more time so he’d know he hadn’t lost me anymore than I’d lost him. His breath stuttered as I stood up. Ky gripped him, helping to keep him steady.
“Sprout,” Gabriel croaked. The nickname wrenched at me, but I’d already committed to my final plan.
I’d never cast a spell this finely complex before, and I had to work it fast. But I couldn’t say I really cared if I hurt Frankford a little in the process. My fingers interlocked and broke apart. I called up all the energy of my spark, sending it to my hands as they darted and spun to draw the spell I needed.
Ruiz caught the movement. “Lady Hallowell!” she said, starting to move.
Not fast enough. With a tearing sensation in my chest, I threw the illegal spell into Frankford’s face.
“You’ll tell us the truth,” I said. “What’s in the cave down the cliff here? All of it!”
The other investigator grabbed me, but Frankford was already under the truth-spell’s effect and the compulsion of my question. His mouth twisted as he fought it, but only for a second.
“There’s a portal,” he said in a strangled voice. “To another plane of existence, where creatures live with powers unheard of here. We call them demons.”
His face flushed red. He yanked at his arms, but Ruiz clamped them in place. “Lady Hallowell told us the truth about what she saw?” she demanded. I guessed there was nothing illegal about taking advantage of an unsanctioned truth spell once it’d already been cast.
“She did,” Frankford grated out.
Brimsey’s face had paled. “What in the world do you do with these ‘demons’?” he said.
“We siphon power from them for our own ends,” Frankford said. “We—damn it—we let them drink magic from our witches in return.”
A chill ran through me. The files I’d read hadn’t been that clear about exactly how the witches his faction had used intervened. It wasn’t just about controlling the demons. It was about feeding them.
“I’ve heard enough,” Remington said. “I need to see what in the name of the Spark is going on.”
She turned on her heel and stalked toward the trees that hid the cliffside. The other two Assembly officials and their assistants hurried after her. Ruiz shoved Frankford toward her car.
“You stay with them,” she said to her colleague with a jerk of her head toward the people heading cliff-side. “Lady Hallowell isn’t going anywhere, are you?” Her gaze settled on me.
I shook my head. When the enforcer released me, I sank down with Gabriel again. Something in Ruiz’s eyes softened. “I’ll call for a medic as soon as Frankford is secure,” she said.
At those words, a desperation Frankford hadn’t quite reached before crossed his face. As if he’d only just realized how fully he’d lost, how far he was about to fall.
“Stop them!” he cried out to the guards he’d brought with him. “Don’t let them near that—”
Ruiz cut off his voice with a hand smacked across his mouth, but the guards were already charging after the other Assembly officials. The enforcer with them whipped out a spell, but the nearest guard deflected it and sent her stumbling backward. Frankford’s forces were well-trained.
I sprang up and dashed after them, but Thalia was even faster. Her breath rasped as we chased after the guards.
The enforcer tossed out another spell, managing to tangle one guard’s legs so she crashed to the ground. Remington whirled around at the sound of pounding feet as we reached the trees. She swept aside the spell another guard cast with a snap of her hand. The third guard hurled herself straight at the International Relations head.
“No!” Thalia cried. Her arms flung out. The magic she sent with them was more an instinctive parry than a consciously constructed spell.
The force of it smacked into the guard, shoving the woman to the side. Toward the edge of the cliff. Her arms wheeled, but she was already tipping. She plummeted over the edge.
Her body hit the rocks below with a sickening thump that made me wince.
The enforcer had just caught up with us. “We need another medic,” she muttered to herself, striding up to the cliff. “We…”
She glanced down. Her jaw set. She closed her eyes and turned away. She didn’t need to say anything for me to know there was no saving that witch.
“Go back to the house,” she ordered me and Thalia. “Keep away from the cliff.”
“We were just trying to protect—” I started.
“Go.”
Remington hesitated and then walked on toward the cliff’s path. I wavered, torn between wanting to confirm that they’d witnessed the horror below and not wanting to witness it again myself. The enforcer glowered at us. Thalia gripped my arm, and I turned back toward th
e trees.
The rest of my group and Ruiz was clustered around Gabriel, who was lying on the ground now. My heart stopped for a second before I saw him blink. Naomi looked up at me from where she’d crouched by my side.
“I think he’ll be all right as long as he’s seen to soon,” she said.
“The medic should be here in twenty minutes,” Ruiz said.
I caught her eye and gave her an apologetic bob of my head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything earlier.”
“It’s quite the story,” she said with a ragged chuckle. “I think I’m going to have to see it for myself when my partner gets back.”
I sat down next to Gabriel, stroking his hair as he rested. He tucked his head closer to my knee. The other guys surrounded me, Seth setting a hand on my shoulder, Damon posing protectively at my other side, Jin rubbing my knee, Ky squeezing my hand.
We sat there for what felt like a long time, but it might have only been a matter of minutes. Then the Assembly officials trudged over to rejoin us, and I realized I hadn’t needed to be there to be sure of what they’d seen after all. Gwen Remington’s face was nearly green. Justin Brimsey swayed a little on his feet, his eyes blinking fast. A tremor ran through Miriam Travers’s shoulders.
Remington stopped by our group and peered down at me. After a moment, she found her voice.
“We’ll need to talk further about your behavior here today, Lady Hallowell,” she said. “After we’ve dealt with Charles Frankford and his allies. I understand you have documents we could make use of?”
I nodded, feeling dazed. Ky scrambled up. “I can start transferring them to you right now,” he said. “I just need a little information to access your network.”
Another car pulled up, and we drew back from Gabriel as the medic knelt to do her work. I stayed close by, my hand still resting on his head. He flinched at one of her spells, but then his bright blue eyes opened and found mine. A pained smile crossed his face that sent an ache through my chest.
I forced myself to smile back. We’d done it, what we’d come here to do. How huge a price we’d be paying for that victory, I didn’t know yet.
Chapter Thirty
Rose
I might have been happier to see the gate to my home if I hadn’t known leaving it again in the next few days would essentially be a crime. “Stay on your estate until you hear from us,” Remington had told me sternly as we’d been piling into our two vehicles, and Investigator Ruiz had given her statement additional weight with a firm nod from behind her. I had to assume that applied to all of us, not just me. Not that I would have wanted to let my consorts leave my ring of protection until I knew where we stood with the authorities anyway.
Naomi parked the rented minivan next to Jin’s Nissan near the garage. I gave Gabriel’s hand a squeeze, and he stirred where he’d been leaning against my shoulder, dozing. The medic’s work had patched him up just fine, it seemed, but it’d also left him drowsy.
“Do you need help getting out?” I asked him.
“I’ll be all right,” he said with a half-smile. His gaze lingered on my face longer than it really needed to, as if he were making up for the time when he hadn’t been around to look at me. “I’ll just take it slow.”
We all gathered on the front drive as we got out. Lesley was holding her phone. She glanced up at me, her mouth twitching as if she wasn’t sure whether to grin or not. “I just heard from my cousin,” she said. “Enforcers came by my estate and arrested both of my parents.”
My heart leapt. The Justice Division was already acting on the files Kyler had transferred to them.
Had they picked up Dad too? While the medic had been treating Gabriel, I’d told Investigator Ruiz more about how his scheme had intersected with the Cliff and what he’d told me in the cave, but she’d been too occupied handling all the new information about the Frankfords to bring me in for a formal interview yet. Dad’s name was all over their records, though.
“You could go home then,” I said to Lesley. “I mean, after the Assembly has cleared you to leave. I’ll tell them you were just doing what I asked.”
She frowned. “They can’t blame you for what you did. You were trying to protect all of us. I still can’t believe—that’s really what they meant to do with me—” She shivered. “I don’t know. It might be good to stay a little longer, until I know for sure what’s happening with the whole conspiracy. If that’s okay.”
“Of course!” I said quickly. “You can stay as long as you need to. The Spark knows I’ve got plenty of room around this place.”
I’d need to call Imogen when I had the chance. If the enforcers had picked up Lesley’s parents, they’d probably come for Imogen’s aunt and uncle too, but I could at least tell her why properly now.
But first I had problems right here to deal with. Across from me, Damon folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Gabriel. “Looks like I’ve got to be the one to say it. Are we really going to pretend that this guy didn’t run off on us and leave us in the lurch after tearing you down? He changes his mind at the last minute and all is forgiven and forgotten? I don’t think so.”
Gabriel tensed beside me. Naomi took in the group of us and motioned to Lesley and Thalia. “I think we’ll leave you and your consorts to work this out without an audience,” she said.
I grasped Gabriel’s hand again as the other witches headed for the house. “He just suffered a near-fatal wound,” I said. “A wound he got saving my life. It’d be nice to give him more than five hours in a moving car to recover before we’re interrogating him. And anyway, it’s obvious to me from how things went down by the Cliff that he was always trying to help us.”
“I don’t care what he was trying to do,” Damon said. “I was here. I saw how he left you. He ripped your heart in half.”
I couldn’t say that assessment was inaccurate. I swallowed hard. “Damon…”
“It’s okay,” Gabriel broke in. “I can talk about it, answer whatever questions any of you have. Explain myself as well as I can. I owe you all that much. Especially you.” He looked at me, his mouth twisting.
“Let’s at least get inside where you can sit down and rest,” I said.
By the time we reached the hall, my guests had already dispersed to their rooms upstairs. My consorts and I ducked into the living room. Gabriel sank into an armchair near the door with an air that suggested he felt he needed to prove he could sit on his own. Damon took a spot beside me on the sofa, braced as if he thought he needed to be on guard for my sake. I nudged him, and he just looped his arm around mine. The twins and Jin settled onto the sofa across from us, their expressions a mix of curiosity and apprehension.
Gabriel bowed his head for a moment. Then he looked up at me. “I was scared for you,” he said, his voice rough. “So fucking scared. I believed you could beat the Frankfords—that’s not it—but I was afraid of how far you’d have to go to do that, how much of your conscience you might end up sacrificing… I tried to talk you down, but it wasn’t as if I had a better strategy to offer you. But I knew I could contribute a hell of a lot more as a sort of double agent.”
“You could have told us that’s what you were planning,” Seth said. “Or at least told Rose instead of tearing into her like that.”
Gabriel winced. “I wish I’d seen a better way. But I needed Frankford to believe I’d really defected. If you hadn’t seemed hurt enough, if anyone had given some sign they weren’t as concerned as they should be… He’d have seen through the ploy. I had a hard enough time getting him to use me as it was.”
The memory of that moment when he’d left swam up through my mind with a jab through my gut and a new understanding. “That’s why you stopped the car and provoked the argument outside the gate. We knew he was monitoring what was happening there. You wanted to make sure he saw it.”
“Yeah.” The anguish couldn’t have been plainer on Gabriel’s face. “I’m sorry, Rose. It’s been killing me knowing how much I must have hur
t you. If I’d seen some other way to do it… I just hope I’ve saved you from more hurt than I caused. That’s all I could ask for.”
“You really can’t know, can you?” Damon muttered. “And you all accuse me of using stupid tactics.”
“Gabriel did get us intel that we hadn’t managed to get on our own, and not for lack of trying,” Ky pointed out. “It might have taken us weeks and weeks more before we knew how to bring in those Assembly officials.”
“Or maybe we’d have figured it out ourselves in another couple days without the whole heartbreaker routine.”
“We can’t know either way,” I said. “And that’s all in the past now. All we can do is go forward from here.” I let out a ragged breath and met Gabriel’s eyes again. “Don’t you ever go off like that again without telling me what’s going on first. You have no idea… The things you said…”
I was starting to choke up. I blinked hard, struggling for words. Gabriel made a strangled sound and scooted forward on his chair to grasp my knee. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Damon repeated in a mocking tone.
Gabriel turned to him and then the rest of the guys. “I should apologize to all of you too. We’re all… We’re all family now, right? And I left all of you, in the worst way. I’m sorry for that too. You deserved better from me.”
Even Damon’s anger wavered a little at those words. Jin cleared his throat. “It’s been a long day. I say we all take some down time to process everything, see how we feel after that, and we can always talk more later, as much as we need to.”
Damon looked as though he might argue, but he stopped himself with a grimace. Seth and Ky nodded. Before anyone could get up, I held up my hand.
“There’s something else we should talk about now, at least briefly,” I said. “The way the Assembly officials and the enforcers were talking to me—I used illegal magic on Frankford to get him to admit the truth. They could charge me with a crime just for tricking them into coming out to his property. And I don’t know how many people who aren’t even part of his faction might have the same prejudices against taking unsparked consorts. I could still be arrested. We could all still be in danger. I just want you to be prepared. If they come for you, I’ll fight them with everything I have. You can count on that much.”
