Give Up the Ghost: The Nightwatch Series Book 2

by Cassidy, Debbie

  Kris locked gazes with me over her head, his face a mask of torment, eyes glistening with moisture. And then he began to rock his sister. “Hush. Hush, Ela, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

  Like hell it was.

  * * *

  Kris drained the wine in his goblet and ran a hand over his face. “I knew I was taking a risk coming back here. I knew there was a possibility that someone would recognize me, remember the bounty, and come after me. But Mornor is my home. I’m supposed to be safe here.”

  The dining room was brightly lit as if Kris was trying to dispel the shadows that were crowding his mind.

  Henri had taken a position by the window, and I’d joined him, not wanting to sit, wanting to do something. But right now, Kris was a broken man.

  “She was always volatile as a child,” he continued. “Mercurial at the best of times, but that settled as she grew older. We were close. We loved each other. I don’t understand what happened.” He poured more wine. “I don’t understand how she could hate me so much as to want me dead.”

  “You went away.” His mother entered the room wearily. Her face looked drawn and pale. “You left her, and she was bereft. She locked herself away for weeks. It was the estate that brought her back. Someone needed to take on the responsibility, and I admit I pushed it on her.”

  “Mother?”

  “I thought she needed the crutch, the distraction. By the time I realized the estate had become her obsession, it was too late. All she talked about was the fact that it wasn’t really hers even though she maintained it. She wasn’t a duchess. It didn’t help that several suitors changed their minds when they realized the estate was still in your name. No one wanted to tie themselves to her and an estate that would never be theirs.”

  Kris groaned. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course, you didn’t,” his mother said with a sad smile. “I made you leave. I made you promise to run, and you did. I couldn’t bear to live in fear any longer. But I didn’t consider the effect it would have on your sister. The sister who adored you. You were her anchor, and when you were gone, the estate became her anchor, and you became the villain who was preventing her from claiming it.”

  “She wanted me dead so the estate would legally pass to her.” Kris’s tone was flat.

  “Elantria has always had a unique way of thinking and feeling,” his mother said. “In this case, I think it was more than that. She wanted to punish you for leaving her.”

  “So, she arranged to have me killed?” Kris looked exasperated. “A little extreme, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think Elantria understands the difference.”

  She was unwell. Mentally, or whatever daemons called it. She needed help. But her actions had cost us our only chance of getting to the archivist.

  Kris met my gaze. “I’m sorry, Kat. We’re almost out of time. The thinning will only be open for another eight hours if that.”

  There was a weight on my chest that made it difficult to breathe because our failure meant only one thing …

  “There’s still time,” Henri said. “There must be something we can do.”

  “We can’t go to the Blacktree event without Elantria,” Kris explained. “And if we can’t go to the event, we can’t meet the archivist.”

  “Why do you need the archivist?” his mother asked.

  “We need his pass to get into the archives,” Kris said absently.

  “Then why not just use Elantria’s pass?”

  The room fell into silence.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, what?”

  “Elantria was appointed as one of the archivist’s bookkeepers last year. She has the highest clearance level. She’s been working there for decades, and the appointment was long overdue. It’s a comfortable wage that pays nicely for the estate’s expenses.”

  Kris paled. “I didn’t even consider—”

  “That your leaving would leave us penniless?” Her smile was tired. “I didn’t allow you to consider the options. I wanted to save your life.”

  Elantria had a pass. She’d had one all along. She could have walked us into the archives, but she’d wanted to hurt Kris. To kill him, and because of that, we’d almost lost my only chance to save my gramps. A confusion of emotions rippled through me—anger at Kris for being a target, for fucking this up for us, and panic because the clock was ticking.

  I drew a breath through my nose. None of this was his fault. We wouldn’t have made it to Demonica and gotten this close to grabbing the book if not for Kris.

  “Where’s the pass?” Kris asked his mother.

  “You’ll have to ask Elantria. She’s sedated but awake. In the rose wing.”

  I pushed back my chair. “I’m coming with you.”

  * * *

  Elantria’s room was floral and opulent and cushy. Huge bed, fluffy pillows, velvet drapes. She lay tucked up in bed, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.

  “Ah, Kristian. How nice to see you alive and well.” She giggled.

  What the hell had they dosed her up with?

  “Where’s the pass?” Kris asked bluntly.

  Her expression hardened, and she spewed a string of words in the daemon language.

  Kris’s jaw ticked. “I left because if I’d stayed, I would have been killed.”

  “And you left us to a slow death. You could have taken us with you. You could have taken me with you.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I loved you so much.”

  Kris’s throat bobbed, and he crossed the room to her bed and perched on the edge of her mattress.

  “I’m sorry. I truly am. I never intended for any of this to happen.”

  “You shouldn’t have killed him,” Elantria said, her voice small.

  “It was an accident.”

  “It was stupidity.” She turned her face away from him.

  “Do you really want me dead?” he asked softly.

  “I did an hour ago. Now … Now, I just want you gone.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask for me to sign over the estate?”

  She turned to glare at him. “You think that would make everything all right? That signing a piece of paper will absolve you of the pain you’ve caused. Fuck you, Kris. Just get out. Just go.”

  “I need the pass to the archives, Elantria.” His tone was firm.

  She laughed. “You need. You want. No. The answer is no.”

  “Elantria, this isn’t about me and you. It’s about an innocent man’s life.”

  “No.” Her eyes hardened. “It’s about hundreds of innocent lives and several innocent heads.”

  My scalp prickled, and the unease that had gripped me ever since the council had asked me to come here flared full force. “What do you mean?”

  She sat up, her lip curling. “You come here to steal something you know nothing about.”

  “I know that your people stole the book from us.”

  “Like fuck we did. It was given to us, just like we gave you the Demonica Extrata. It was an exchange as part of the treaty. You gave us something of great power to hold, and we gave you something of ours. And every one hundred years, emissaries meet, and there is a showing of the artifacts and a re-signing of the treaty by the kin of the original signatories.”

  “Fuck.” Kris sat back and looked at me. “The Watch wants to break the treaty.”

  The knowledge hit me hard, knocking the breath from my lungs. The sneaky bastards. They wanted me to steal the book so the daemons would have nothing to show at the ceremony. Kris was right, they wanted to break the treaty.

  But why? “I don’t understand why they’d want to do that.”

  “Trade would stop,” Kris said. “Daemons on the mortal realm would be at the mercy of your Nightwatch, and Demonica would no longer have a say in their foreign citizens’ welfare. The treaty protects registered daemons and ensures they get the same rights as any other supernatural citizen.” Kris stood slowly and stared at the cuffs on his wrists. “They have us in cuffs. A
ll of us, and with the treaty broken, they can do what they want with us. We can’t even run. They shut down the registered thinnings. And activate the cuffs.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He held up his wrists. “These aren’t just power muters to allow us to utilize the universal glamour. They contain trackers as well. They’re the Nightwatch’s way of controlling daemons. Who knows what else they can do?”

  But the treaty protected the cuffed daemons’ rights.

  “Who knows what they plan to do with us,” Kris said softly.

  The implications of what he’d said sunk in, and panic gripped my chest because this was going in a direction I couldn’t afford it to. “No.”

  The pity in his eyes made me want to scream.

  “I can’t let you take that book, Kat.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “They’ll kill my gramps.”

  He gripped my shoulders. “Is your gramps’s life worth hundreds of innocent daemon lives? If he knew what you were about to do, if he knew the implications, would he ask you to go ahead with it?”

  Gramps’s face when the council had asked me to get the book came to mind. He’d shaken his head, his eyes pleading with me.

  No.

  He’d known, and he’d tried to warn me.

  The fight rushed out of me, and ice filled my veins, and then Kris was pulling me into his arms. Hot tears stung my eyes and stained his shirt.

  I’d failed, and I’d done it by choice.

  I’d failed, and Gramps would pay the price.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Being back, it felt like we’d never left, as if the time in Demonica had been a dream and nothing more. For Henri and me, it was a case of whatever happens in Demonica stays in Demonica. And with regards to the book … well, I’d basically returned with a death sentence for my gramps.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, everyone had gathered in the lounge to get an account of what had gone down in the daemon realm. My mouth was sick of speaking, and my brain was tired of going over and over the implications of what we’d discovered.

  Tris sat beside me, her hand on my arm, a reassuring presence while everyone absorbed what we’d told them.

  “Why would the council do this?” Mai asked.

  “Power,” Jay said. “The treaty is based on a balance of power. The Watch spreads propaganda about daemons, that they are rare in this realm, that they stay via visa, and only a select few are given longer residency. It’s their way to continue to seem like they have the manpower, like there are more of us than them. The truth is that Demonica provides a majority of the supernatural workforce, even though they have to be registered and cuffed in accordance with the treaty. They provide a promise to furnish forces if the fomorians attack again. The Nightwatch provides harbor and access to the mortal plane. That’s all. They have nothing else to offer but that.”

  “I don’t understand why Demonica signed such a one-sided treaty.”

  “Because Demonica is locked in dimension,” Kris said. “The only way onto any other realm is via the mortal realm. If the Nightwatch closed the thinnings, there would be no more interdimensional travel for daemons. My race has learned and grown by exploring other realms, and it did so covertly eons ago. Now that we’re a known entity, we’re bound to a treaty to get the freedom to roam.”

  Mai gnawed on her bottom lip. “So, the council wants to take away the daemons’ power to roam and keep the resources that have already been provided … the workforce.”

  “Maybe it’s more than that,” Tris said. “Remember what Karishma said about the Academy, about there being issues with the number of shadow knights?”

  I looked down at her. “Yes, I remember.”

  “What if they need bodies on the front lines?” Tris added.

  “Not just bodies,” Jay said softly. “They want blood.”

  What Karishma had told me about the Nightbloods using daemons’ blood to make themselves stronger in the fomorian war came to mind. “You think they want to pimp out Nightbloods with daemon blood?”

  “And cause addiction,” Lark said. “Look at Lex. He’s a mess right now as he goes through withdrawal.” He looked to Kris. “I think we might have to give him a small fix, bring him down slowly.”

  “He’s a killer,” Henri said. “He should suffer.”

  Lark pressed his lips together in a tight line. “He’s a victim of a cult. Brainwashed to believe that supernaturals are evil, brainwashed to hate his own minor taint. Making him suffer won’t help us get answers. I believe we should help him and undo the damage these Custodians have done.”

  He looked to Kris. “Could I have some of your blood?”

  Kris looked like he was somewhere else. Probably back in Demonica with his mother and his sister. I guess going back and finding out how his sister had suffered was something that was playing on his mind. At least he’d signed over the estate before we left.

  There was a long beat of silence.

  “Kris?” Lark asked again.

  “Huh?” Kris looked over at him.

  “Blood, can I have some?”

  “Sure,” Kris said.

  “If we’re in trouble at the mist border, then why not ask for help?” Mai said. “We have a treaty in place. Demonica is our ally; all the council needs to do is ask for aid.”

  The answer was obvious to me. “Because if they ask for something, they’ll have to give something in return, and I’m guessing they don’t have anything to offer.”

  They had nothing to offer, and so they’d tried to use me to do their dirty work. The revelation about my heritage had come at just the right time—question was, what now? What would happen when I went back empty-handed?

  I buried my face in my hands. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t let them kill my gramps.”

  “Then we don’t.” Jay pushed off the mantelpiece. “I have an idea, but whether it works will be up to you.”

  * * *

  Agents escorted me through the back corridors of the Nightwatch headquarters and into the plush side of the building. My heart was in my throat, beating wildly at what I was about to do, but like hell would I show how nervous I was.

  The guards stopped outside the same doors I’d been shoved through the last time I’d been brought here. At least this time I wasn’t cuffed. At least this time I was here of my own will.

  “Are you sure about this?” Karishma had asked.

  Was I? No. Did I have a choice? Not really.

  The agents knocked and then pushed open the door. I stepped into the gloom. I mean, what was it with the lack of light? Were they trying to set an ominous ambiance to throw me off guard?

  It was working.

  My pulse fluttered in my throat, but I acknowledged the council members with a brief nod and locked gazes with Karishma for a moment. Her smile was tense but encouraging.

  Okay, here went nothing. “Thank you for meeting with me.”

  Faraday’s gaze slipped to my empty hands. “Where is it?”

  I offered him a close-lipped smile. “Where it belongs, back in Demonica.”

  Faraday’s nostrils flared. “What is the meaning of this?”

  I crossed my arms under my breasts. “I was about to ask you the same question. What is the meaning of this? Of sending me to Demonica to steal a book you gave to them willingly as part of the fomorian treaty? What could you possibly hope to gain by such actions?”

  Faraday’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Justice.”

  I tapped my chin with an index finger. “Don’t I? I know that you want to break the treaty, and you want to strip daemons of their rights so you can use them for whatever you want. Maybe conscript them into the Watch or throw them onto the frontlines at the mists. I know something’s changed enough for you to shaft your allies rather than asking them for help. What I don’t understand is what.”

  Carmichael cleared his throat. “Kat, I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did. I rea
lly wish you’d simply followed orders. That book was essential to our plans.”

  “Plans you only cooked up when you discovered my secret. So, they were pretty impromptu.”

  His throat bobbed.

  “You failed,” Faraday said. “You know what that means.”

  This was it. This was my moment. “Yes. It means you’ll let my gramps go immediately.”

  There was silence, and then Faraday let out a sharp bark of derisive laughter. “I think your insanity is beginning to take effect.”

  “No. I think I have information that could land you all in some deep shit with the Demonica government. If they find out what you tried to do, that you tried to breach the treaty, then they could effectively recall the Demonica workforce. Then where would that leave the Watch? How shorthanded would we be?”

  Carmichael paled, but Faraday sat back in his seat with a smirk.

  “You think they’ll believe the word of a dirty daemon blood? A Nightblood that shouldn’t exist. You’re a nobody, Miss Justice.”

  “You’re right. I’m a nobody.” My smile was smug. “But I have friends in high places.”

  Karishma pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ve signed a Sworn witnessing everything that occurred at the last hearing.” She looked down on Faraday. “I don’t take kindly to being lied to, councilmen. I don’t take kindly to being used. If anything should happen to Jacques Justice, Kat, or myself, the Sworn will be delivered directly to Jeriah, the archivist in Demonica.”

  Faraday looked from Karishma to me then back to Karishma. “You’ll regret this, head weaver.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Remember who keeps your golem in check, Faraday.” Her smile was pure sadism, and his throat bobbed. “I’d sign the release orders if I were you, and a full pardon, and I’d do it now.”