Secrets of the Guardian (Waldgrave Book 3)

by A. L. Tyler

  There was a moment of worry, several weeks down the road, when Devin’s body had botched the repair on his intestines by trying to regrow the lost sections, clouding them full of regenerative scar tissue; the doctor had excised the offending masses, and while he believed Devin was in the clear, he warned them that there would probably always be a risk of rampaging regenerative tissue from time to time. He was finally graduated part time from I.V. nutrients to liquids, and then there came the day that the doctor gave permission for his first solid food in two months. Lena took a day off from politics to throw him a small party with Cheryl; given that the vote had just come through, and Lena was free to travel with Howard’s permission, she thought this might also be a good opportunity to have a serious discussion with Cheryl regarding her past.

  But while they all sat around eating toast triangles, she couldn’t help but notice that Cheryl didn’t seem to be enjoying herself as much as she ought to. She had been so worried about Devin the whole time, and just when he seemed on the brink of full recovery, she was still nothing but somber. Lena kept trying to keep the situation light and friendly, but Cheryl absolutely refused to join in.

  “So what do you want to do when you finally get out of bed, Dev? No, seriously, anything you want.” Lena flicked a toast square off the nightstand, barely missing Devin’s face.

  He picked it up and tossed it back at her, sighing. His small, lopsided smile crept onto his face. “You know, I think I’d like to take a break from saving each other’s lives, if that’s at all possible.”

  Everyone laughed but Cheryl, who only looked at the floor. “That’s not funny Devin.”

  Devin’s smile fell slightly. “Alright, I’m sorry.”

  Lena quickly cleared her throat and threw the piece of toast back at Devin. “She’s right, Dev. Not funny. Saving each other’s lives is much better than the alternative…”

  “Yeah, I guess. You need to stop getting yourself into trouble.” He threw it back with a wink.

  Lena caught the toast and went silent for a minute. She looked carefully from Devin to Cheryl, and let her gaze hang on the young teenager. “Speaking of trouble, there’s something I need to talk to Cheryl about. It’s something I found out recently, or relatively recently, that I think we should discuss between the two of us. I think it might be best if we kept it a secret.”

  Much to Lena’s surprise, Cheryl gave her a terrified look. Her jaw dropped a little and she stood up off the chair she was sitting in, going pale. Tears ebbed into her eyes. “Lena, I’m so, so sorry…I thought it was for the best!”

  The distraught girl looked over at Devin. Clenching and unclenching her fists as though they had minds of their own. “Devin, I’m just so…so…”

  She choked up and then turned and half ran out of the room. Lena gave a puzzled look at Devin, who nodded in Cheryl’s direction and Lena got up to follow her. She was already gone when Lena got to the hallway, but she took a moment to think and then went straight to the servants’ quarters on the first floor; sure enough, Lena could hear her muffled crying from the doorway.

  Lena had never actually been in the servants’ quarters before. It was poorly lit by a few ceiling light fixtures, but otherwise very large and very clean. The walls were white and the floors were grey linoleum. The room itself was large enough to sleep around fifty people comfortably if they kept the aisles between the cots modest. At the moment, all of the cots were folded up and pushed up against one of the walls, making the space feel even larger than it really was. Rosaleen had set up a few privacy screens around the permanent beds to make smaller, cozier bedroom areas.

  Mrs. Ralston and Howard had seen to it that there were comfortable sleeping arrangements for the regular staff in the form of twin size beds; both Mrs. Ralston and Cheryl had been offered regular rooms when Master Daray had died, and both had refused because they had grown so attached to the situation of rooming with each other and the other staff when they were around. The offer remained open to this day, in case if Cheryl had ever felt that she wanted more privacy, but Lena understood how close human-borns were to each other; they were family without asking or even knowing each other. Close enough to risk their lives for one another.

  Cheryl was curled up on her bed across the room, face pushed into her pillow as her sobs slightly shook her body. Lena walked over, still not sure why Cheryl had suddenly become so hysterical, and sat on the bed next to her. Cheryl turned her face to the side. Her eyes and cheeks were all red from being so upset. Lena reached out and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it out of her face.

  “Cheryl, what’s wrong?” Lena asked. “Did I upset you somehow?”

  Cheryl only emitted a high pitched noise and sniffled, turning her face back into the pillow. I’m so sorry. I can’t even tell you how sorry…You’re too good to me for not telling them. I’m going to be in so much trouble.

  “Okay,” Lena still didn’t understand why she was so upset—she was acting ridiculous, but there was clearly something that she had missed. “Okay, come here. It’s okay.”

  Lena hoisted Cheryl up to a sitting position so that she could put her arm around her shoulders. Cheryl leaned her face into Lena’s shoulder, and Lena used her other arm to brush her hair out of her face again.

  “It’s okay. We can fix it. Why don’t you just tell me what this was all about?”

  Cheryl gave another sniffle. He told me no one would get hurt. That’s why I did it. He told me no one would get hurt.

  Cheryl was shaking. Lena felt her stomach drop; she already knew what Cheryl was about to tell her. It was Rollin. “Cheryl, what did you do, exactly?”

  Cheryl took pause before answering. I stole your itinerary from your trip and some emails off of Howard’s computer and gave him some bank account stuff, too. He said the money was for hotels to get human-borns out of bad situations, and after Marie and everything…I’m so sorry! He never told me he wanted to buy guns and kill people!

  Lena tried to remain calm. Rollin had alluded to a spy inside Waldgrave; after so long, Lena had started to believe it had been an idle threat or an intimidation tactic. She knew Cheryl was sorry, and that she wouldn’t have done it if she’d known how crazy and violent Rollin really was; he could be deceptively diplomatic and charming when he needed to. She also knew the Council would kill her if they ever found out, given the current climate with regards to human-borns. She cleared her throat; it had gone dry. “You’re not still in contact with him, are you?”

  Of course not! But oh, my God, if he ever finds me…He sent me an email after he killed all those people and you got away, and he wanted me to find a way to sneak people in here at night, and I said I wouldn’t do it and he said I was a traitor and that he’d kill me! After what he did to Devin…he’s a monster. I’m afraid, Lena. If I stay here, he’ll find me eventually, I’m sure. And I can’t leave because he’ll find me then, too.

  Cheryl went silent. Lena’s mind was buzzing. There was only one thing to do about it. “Cheryl, I need you to tell me and show me everything you gave to him. All of the emails and which bank accounts. Can you do that?” Lena tilted Cheryl’s chin up so that their eyes met.

  Cheryl nodded. She wiped at her eyes and whimpered. “Lena, it wasn’t just me. It was a lot of people, at the last Council. He said if we just took a little from everyone, then none of the Council members would notice. So many of the bills and shopping and stuff gets handled by the house staff, they all had the information, and everyone knew they had it, and Rollin is so hard to say ‘no’ to. He said it was fair to take it because so many people were getting turned out of their houses, and they were hungry, and they needed money. I thought the money was to feed people, not for guns…”

  Lena took a deep breath; Rollin was sadistic. He claimed to be a human-born, but he ran the show like he wasn’t. He knew how to use their empathy against them to get whatever he wanted. He shot people not to kill them, but to make them suffer. She was beginning to wonder if he was empathetic
at all, because he seemed to enjoy tricking and torturing people so much; she wondered, with fear in her heart, if there was such a thing as a Silenti who could enjoy feeling the angst he put others through—a Silenti psychopath. “Okay. I can fix this. And I’m going to keep your secret if you can keep one for me. As far as him finding you goes, there’s something else I need to talk to you about—we can make it so that he will never find you. We can give you a new life. I’m planning to go on a trip soon, and I think you should go with me, if it’s what you want after we finish talking. Do you know Master Astley?”

  *****

  After talking Cheryl into a stunned silence, Lena ran up to Howard’s office on the second floor. As was typical for Howard, the desktop was sitting there, turned on, with several windows open, including his email. Lena went to the navigation bar and clicked it; all of Howard’s frequented sites were there, including the many banks and investment firms that he used to spread Waldgrave’s money around to make the accounts less conspicuous. And there, scribbled on several yellow sticky notes attached to the right side of the monitor, were all the passwords, usernames, and the account numbers that they went with. Lena was flabbergasted; while she didn’t make a habit of yelling in the house owing to an embarrassing event that occurred during her first Council, she felt the situation appropriate.

  Howard! Can I see you in your office please?

  She waited in silence for his reply; seconds later, in an annoyed tone, it came. Now?

  Now!

  Lena sat down in his chair and grabbed a sticky note. She went to the indicated site and typed in all of the necessary information; access to an account holding more than thirty thousand dollars was at her quavering fingertips. What Rollin could have done with so much money, she didn’t want to know. Somewhere, he already had these passwords; if he wanted to, he could drain the account. Of course, that would reveal his hand and close the steady stream he had been tapping without notice for months.

  Howard opened the door; they shared an odd look. Neither one had ever seen the other from the opposite side of the desk.

  Howard’s eyes fell on the computer and the sticky note in Lena’s hands. “What are you doing?”

  “Well, Howard, I think we need to have a discussion about password protection, and how it doesn’t work if you keep your passwords on your computer!” Lena reattached the note to the side of the computer and shot Howard a stern look as she crossed her arms.

  “You called me all the way down here for that? We’re discussing what to do about the situation with the human-borns upstairs. It’s important. This couldn’t have waited?” His voice was surprisingly gentle given that she had just verbally accosted him; Howard, by this point, was used to Lena having a point. She knew how important his work was, and even when he couldn’t see a point, he knew there was probably one coming.

  Lena tried to choose her lie carefully. It wasn’t Cheryl’s fault, but Lena didn’t want to bring her under scrutiny before she tried to whisk her away to her real family. “I was just talking to Devin, and he said something about remembering overhearing something while he was having the crap beaten out of him one time. None of this stuff with Devin matters—he barely remembers, and I’m the one who pieced it together anyway. So let’s leave Devin out of this one on the inquisition, okay? Rollin mentioned access to bank accounts. Several of them. So, I thought I’d check, and I have to wonder how long you’ve had your passwords in plain view of everyone who wanders into this office? Seriously, do you know how many people go around the house dusting and vacuuming and stuff during Council?”

  Howard gave her a grave look. He turned his head slightly to the side, and his voice dropped to a low hum. “You can’t be serious. They wouldn’t dare…theft isn’t in their nature.”

  Lena rolled her eyes as she sighed out heavily. “It’s in Rollin’s, and I think we know now that he’s been able to convince people to do worse.”

  He came around to the other side of the desk and started pounding away on the keyboard. After several minutes, he looked down at Lena. “Nothing appears to be missing here. It was a good theory, Lena, but it’s not—“

  “I have a feeling he was taking money out. Just a feeling. Check again, okay? Closer. He might not have accessed them for a while.” Lena got out of the chair so that Howard could sit and watched over his shoulder. All of the bank accounts were fine; the mutual funds, however, showed some mysterious behavior. Money had been transferred out at intervals from the accounts, as was typical, to various other accounts for use with paying bills and whatnot. But some of the money that was being transferred out was going to accounts that Howard did not recognize—never more than a few hundred dollars per transaction. With the heating, cooling, gas and electric, water, various travel arrangements, and every other bill incurred at Waldgrave, running so high because the house was so enormous and so many bills needed to be paid at irregular intervals, the sums going missing were paltry.

  “I never would have noticed.” Howard mumbled as they stared at the screen. “It’s all set up to be automatic. And they’re investments—they’re supposed to fluctuate. It’s perfect. It would have taken me months to notice, if I ever did, that a little here and there wasn’t going towards the bills and expenses. Especially with the amounts of guests we have in and out of the house all the time…”

  All in all, Rollin had taken nearly four thousand dollars out of just a handful of accounts, and that was only what they had found so far; it was an astonishing amount of money, but pocket change compared to the vast fortune the early Darays had made off of their advanced intuitive knowledge of the stock market. Four thousand was a lot, but not nearly enough. Putting up so many people in hotels, with that many guns and that much ammunition, would have to be much more than four thousand dollars.

  Lena furrowed her brow, trying to pretend she didn’t already know where the other money had come from. “How would he get the rest?”

  Howard was quick to answer her question. “He’s stealing from the other families, too. Wherever he had supporters with access. He’s skimming his funds off of so many accounts that no one has noticed. Or if they have, they probably just thought it was a bank error or petty theft and changed their passwords. We need to tell people, and orchestrate a mass password change or he’ll grab whatever he can before he loses access to the money. And we need to find a way to trace the accounts he’s putting money into.”

  Howard got up out of his chair and gestured Lena to follow him. He took her up to Master Daray’s office on the third floor, where several Council Representatives had convened to discuss the next move in the war against Rollin. Howard made the announcement that Lena had uncovered how Rollin was supporting his efforts, and the new discussion of organized password and account reassignment started. Lena tried to keep a modest distance between herself and the limelight, but couldn’t help noticing the impressed stares she was getting.

  It felt like spring had just finished when the leaves around Waldgrave were already starting to change again from green to ruby, orange, gold, and russet; summer was over. The password switch went on without a hitch, people were keeping a closer eye on their finances, and no one had seen or heard from Rollin since. Most everyone who didn’t live at Waldgrave had gone home at that point, some with open thanks to Lena for uncovering the ploy, to make their arrangements to return in late fall for the Council meeting. The situation with the rogue human-borns had faded into the background of Griffin’s sudden reclusive behavior. Things had gone unusually quiet on the political front; the calm before the storm. The claws were about to come out, and Lena was sure that she would be in murder trials up to her eyes by the Council meeting three months away. But for now, she was all too grateful that the world had stopped revolving around her.

  Devin was making quite a comeback, and soon enough Doctor Evans had given him permission to be up and around for short periods of time, which he usually used to hang around in the kitchen joking with Cheryl and entertaining Darius by catapult
ing food across the room using a spoon propped on the edge of a plate. By this time, Darius was picking up words very quickly and relying less and less on communication through his thoughts. And thanks to Devin, he had not only learned to say “potato”, but that the tubers were more than just a food—they were effective objects for tossing, banging, stuffing down his diaper, and in mashed form they also made for excellent hair care products. While everyone got a chuckle from the toddler’s antics at some point or other, Mrs. Ralston was not amused.

  Howard had become baffled by the arrival of a letter late in the summer; apparently, he informed Lena, Cheryl had some undocumented human-born relatives in South Carolina who had been looking for her for a number of years. Apparently, one of Dr. Lyle Evans’ interns had conveniently uncovered this fact while taking a medical history from a man in Charleston. Lena and Cheryl both acted entirely surprised to find this out, and Howard gave his permission for Cheryl to go to her family if she felt she wanted to, but cautioned her that he most certainly couldn’t leave Waldgrave given the mess other Council members were about to make; she would have to wait until after the Council meeting, at least, before he would be able to take her. Since Lena had strategically asked to get a driver's license for her eighteenth birthday that summer, she offered to take Cheryl as soon as the arrangement was cleared.

  Howard’s eyes landed on her heavily. “I think I’d have to think about that one for a while.”

  Lena tried not to seem too put out. She understood his concern; it seemed that every time she left the house something was bound to go wrong. However, it was abundantly clear that no one had managed to kill her yet. “Okay. Just think about it for a while. And just remember that it’s a luxury trip this time, so no political pressure. If something happens I’ll be home in a heartbeat, without any debate.”