Crook of the Dead (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 3)

by Jen Rasmussen

  Well, he’d been right about that. And if Jonas Goode’s ties to Amias were as close as his wife’s—an assumption I was comfortable making, given he was the one who bugged my apartment—then killing him might be a sign that one or the other of them was out of the fold.

  I was rolling the dice on it being her. A falling out that made her resentful enough to chop a guy up might also make her resentful enough to talk about it.

  Which was the whole point of taking valuable time, down to only three days before our clock struck zero, to go see her. It was a big gamble, and I knew it. It was just as likely that Jonas was the one outside the fold (a good ways out, now). Maybe he’d betrayed them, or screwed up. Madeline as an enforcer wasn’t exactly hard to believe. She’d had no problem killing her own sister, for Amias’s sake.

  Rebecca did not approve. She went so far as to call me foolish. And although she didn’t say it, her tone implied that I might even be a coward, trying to weasel out of the fight at the last second. But three days was enough—one to visit Madeline, one for travel on each side. People took business trips that short all the time. I fully intended to be back in New Hampshire by Halloween.

  There was something different about Madeline the last time I saw her. Something sad and almost desperate. And now I could add alone and incarcerated to that list. It was as vulnerable as I was ever likely to find her.

  And whatever else about this mission might be based on hopes and suppositions, one thing was certain: Madeline Underwood knew stuff. She knew the birds, how they’d been bred and trained, how to deal with them. She knew what Amias was planning, probably down to the specific details. She might even know where Henrietta Traven was.

  And she definitely knew what had happened among Amias’s crew that was bad enough to end in an ax murder.

  So it was pretty simple, really. My job was to convince her to tell me some of these things that she knew.

  It was nighttime on the 28th when Wulf and I walked into my freezing apartment—the last time I’d been there, it had still been too warm to turn the heat on. The place felt alien to me. To both of us, actually. Wulf spent most of the remaining hours of darkness pacing restlessly, which made me edgy. I made sure not to look in any mirrors as I got ready for bed, for fear of seeing Helen Turner’s face.

  First thing in the morning, I dropped Wulf off at Martha’s so he could visit with Jack Nimble while I attended to my business with Madeline. It was a hard thing, being right next door to Charlie’s house and not stopping to say hello or drop off a pie. My melancholy only deepened an hour and a half later, when I pulled into the parking lot of the bleak, forbidding prison.

  I was ushered into the visiting room after I showed all the ID I had, filled out a couple of forms, and submitted to a moderately undignified search. I was expecting one of those glass walls with the phones you talk through, but it was just a long table, visitors on one side, prisoners on the other, and guards all around.

  As I sat, I saw graffiti carved all over the table’s surface. Which made me question just how hard those guards were watching, if they were just letting people vandalize the place. And what were said vandals carving with? How were people just hanging out in there with pointy objects? I wasn’t feeling especially safe and secure by the time Madeline was escorted in, and seated opposite me.

  She looked even thinner than usual, something I wouldn’t have thought possible. I’d never known her complexion to be anything short of cadaverous, so the paleness was expected. The glassy, shell-shocked look that had replaced the usual sharpness in her eyes was less so.

  That lost look reminded me of her sister. The memory of Penny Dreadful, whose unavenged ghost still stood between Madeline and I, hardened my heart.

  “You came?” Madeline asked.

  As the answer was pretty obvious, I assumed the question was rhetorical and didn’t respond.

  “You came,” Madeline repeated. “Just you.”

  “You were expecting Amias, maybe?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was.” Madeline shook her head, as if to clear it, but her confused expression didn’t change. “After everything I’ve done for him. He wouldn’t abandon me—”

  “It would seem that he has,” I interrupted. I sensed my advantage, and I pressed it. “Nobody else is coming, Madeline. I’m all you’ve got.”

  Her eyes got some of their edge back as they focused on me, and she frowned. “All I’ve got for what? What do you propose to do? Why are you here?”

  “Here’s a different question: Why did you kill your husband?”

  Madeline’s eyes slid away, and she moved, as if to rise. Then she seemed to think better of it, and instead sat up straighter. Maybe she just wanted to tell somebody, even if it was me.

  “He hit me. Again. And I won’t be hit like that. My parents… I won’t allow it. I promised myself.”

  “You weren’t above hitting your brother, though.” Another ghost between us. Although Max Underwood was alive, he’d been barely more than a wraith when I found him.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Where is Max?”

  “Why did you kill your husband?”

  “I told you. I won’t stand for that. He… there was blood,” Madeline said. “In… when I had to use the toilet. You know.”

  “He hit you in the kidney?”

  “I suppose. He punched me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of you.”

  That was a bit of a surprise. I blinked at her and said nothing.

  “The defenses, around the flock,” she said.

  “Do you mean Silas?”

  “He was part of it, yes. Jonas wasn’t pleased when you found them anyway.”

  “But that was weeks ago.”

  She shrugged. “His anger built. That incident was just how it began. It got worse from there.”

  I shook my head at her. “But that makes no sense. Amias can’t have been angry about us finding the birds. If he didn’t want us to know things, why would he leave Bella Traven’s body specifically where he knew I would find it?”

  Madeline smiled then, without showing her teeth, a predatory smile that made her look more like herself. For at least a minute, maybe two, neither of us said anything.

  Finally I leaned forward. “Don’t you want to get back at him, Madeline? Because it’s like I said. Nobody else is coming. If you want revenge, helping me is your only shot.”

  “Ah.” Madeline’s posture relaxed as she leaned against the back of her chair. She looked almost amused. “But revenge against who?”

  “Amias,” I said. “The man you served faithfully for years, only to have him abandon you to this fate?”

  She nodded. “Yes, there’s him. But I already took my revenge against the other.”

  “Jonas? Yes, I’d say you did.”

  “He didn’t, you know.”

  “He didn’t what?’

  “Amias,” Madeline said, baffling me further. Hadn’t she just been talking about Jonas? Was she confusing the two in her mind?

  Crikey, she’s crazy.

  Well of course she’s crazy, she chopped up a guy with an ax. And her family doesn’t exactly have a history of mental stability.

  “Amias didn’t leave Belinda’s body there,” Madeline went on. “He would have pulled you into his web eventually, of course. But not until he was ready. Not until it was too late.”

  “Oh come on,” I said. “It was obviously Amias who killed her.”

  “Not at all,” said Madeline. “Once you have the birds, it’s easy, you see. Easy to do what he does. We raised them, from eggs. Trained them. Spent time with them.” I thought I saw her wince a little, but it might have been my imagination. “So much time.”

  “So you’re saying what? It was your husband who killed Bella and left her body there?”

  “Not at all,” Madeline said again.

  “Then who?”

  Madeline threw back her head and laughed. It was quite alarming.

  Shit
, she really has snapped completely.

  Yeah, hello? Ax.

  A guard approached, but Madeline shook her head, her face immediately stern again. “I know how long I have,” she snapped at him. “I’m keeping track. My time is not up.”

  The guard gave me a questioning look. I nodded in return. Yeah, I know her laugh sounds like she’s been locked up in Mr. Rochester’s attic for a few years, but really, we’re fine. I just said something funny, that’s all. Damned if I know what, though.

  Madeline didn’t seem in any particular hurry to tell me, either. She just sat there, staring at the table, chewing the inside of her cheek.

  She’d said her time wasn’t up. But how much longer did we have? I had to figure out how to get her talking.

  “I’ll trade you,” I said finally. “Information for information.”

  Madeline’s head snapped up. “Max?”

  “Of course not Max! Do you seriously think I would ever tell you where Max is, or let you anywhere near him?”

  She sniffed primly, like I’d just said something vulgar. “What, then?”

  I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I struggled to think of anything I knew that would be of use to Madeline Underwood. Especially in her present circumstances. I knew a fair amount of Amias’s background now. Would she care about that? Or the things I knew about Bristol and its founders? That Silas Underwood had once killed a little boy’s dog, and then thrown the boy himself into a well? Even if she didn’t already know that story, I couldn’t see how it would serve her to hear that her relatives were just as awful as she was.

  Her relatives…

  “Where’s your brother?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “I mean Mark, not Max.” I’d almost forgotten the other Underwood sibling. I hadn’t had much contact with him, apart from the time I shot him in the leg.

  Madeline’s eyes became guarded. “Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been gone since I got married.”

  I was on to something. I could tell by her face.

  “Did Jonas hurt him?”

  “Certainly not! Mark would have killed Jonas.”

  Would he have used an ax?

  “Amias, then?” I asked.

  Madeline was quiet for a few seconds. “It was a great honor,” she said finally. “A confidential mission of great importance.”

  “Which was what?”

  She glanced down at the table. “I can’t tell you.”

  I smiled. “That’s because you don’t know, do you? You have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. And you’re pissed Mark got picked instead of you.”

  “My time is nearly up now.”

  “So Mark is off doing some kind of glamorous espionage thing, drinking martinis and seducing secrets out of beautiful women, while Amias has abandoned you to rot in jail.” The chances of Mark seducing anybody or anything were pretty much zero, but I felt that painting this particular picture justified taking a little latitude. “That doesn’t piss you off?”

  “Have you anything to offer me?”

  I had a flash of inspiration. “I’ll tell you where Mark is. And tell him where you are. Maybe he doesn’t know what happened. Wouldn’t he try to help you if he did?”

  “You don’t know where Mark is. You just asked me.”

  “No, I don’t. But I’ll find out. If you give me something I can actually use, and it turns out to be true.”

  Madeline looked like she was going to laugh again, but she put her hand over her mouth and got herself under control. “You’re asking me to trust you?”

  I shrugged. “No need. If you’d prefer I just go, and not come back when I find out about Mark, that’s fine. But I’m the last visitor you’re likely to get, Madeline. Halloween is the day after tomorrow. Amias is too busy to care what happens to you.” I leaned forward and spoke just a little too loud. “He’s left you behind.”

  A guard walked by, barely pausing to tell us we had two minutes left.

  I opened my mouth to tell him that was fine, we were done now, but Madeline started talking first.

  “I think I will tell you, after all,” she said. “It’s a funny story. And it’s such a shame to have a joke and not be able to share it, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never imagined you to be the joking type, to be honest.”

  “No. I wasn’t.” She smiled her tight, close-lipped smile again and said, “Nobody killed Bella Traven.”

  “I saw her, Madeline. I assure you, somebody killed her. Unless you’re telling me that wasn’t really her?” I supposed that was possible. There wasn’t much left to identify her with.

  But Madeline shook her head. “No, it was her. But here’s the funny part: nobody did it. Only the birds.”

  “Are you seriously telling me she just happened to get mauled and eaten by shadow eaters by accident? And expecting me to buy that?”

  “Don’t care what you buy,” Madeline said. “But that’s just what happened. Like I said, we spent a lot of time with them. Training them.” She shrugged. “Bella took a misstep, I’m afraid. They’re very quick to anger. Don’t you think that’s odd? That such small creatures would have emotions? But there’s no doubt they do. They get angry.”

  I gaped at her. “You’re saying that Bella Traven was working with you?”

  It had to be a lie. I had no reason to trust Madeline Underwood.

  Then again, I had no reason to trust the Traven sisters, either.

  Phineas trusts them.

  Phineas trusted Mercy, too.

  “If that’s true, if the birds killed her on Silas Underwood’s lot or wherever you were training them, then who moved her body?” The question sounded odd. My mouth was dry.

  “Someone who wanted to bring you into the picture before Amias was ready for you. Someone who wanted you to look into things before it was too late.” Madeline shook her head as her eyes went far away again. “Amias was so angry. We were punished. And then we were supposed to watch you, to see how much you suspected, and what you’d found out.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who wanted us to look into things?”

  “I don’t know,” Madeline said. “Not me. Not Jonas. Jonas thought it was me. He gets almost as angry as the birds. Got almost as angry, I should say.”

  The guard was coming back. Our two minutes were up.

  “Who else could it be, then?” I asked. “Who else is involved in this besides you and Jonas?”

  Madeline stood up, and the guard took her elbow. “I honestly couldn’t say. Hettie was outraged when Bella died. Perhaps she had second thoughts in a moment of weakness.”

  “Hettie? Henrietta is working for Amias, too?”

  “We’ve got to go,” said the guard.

  Madeline kept talking over her shoulder as he led her away. “You’ll come back now? When you know about Mark? What I’ve just told you should be payment enough.”

  I thought of Penny and Max, and was about to tell her to fuck off. But a person should keep her promises if she can, even to evil witches. It’s what separates you from them.

  “Yes, I will,” I called after her, and then she was gone.

  I stood in the parking lot outside the prison for a long time, leaning against the back of my car and staring at an empty cigarette pack that had been run over so many times it was almost part of the pavement.

  Bella was working with him.

  Henrietta was too. Maybe she still is. Or maybe she double crossed him when her sister died.

  What about Rebecca?

  But he’s threatening Rebecca. She’s gathering her defenses even now.

  Or is that just an act?

  Why didn’t she look for her sisters?

  We still don’t know where Henrietta is.

  The thoughts were a jumble that led to no real conclusion, apart from one: there was a houseful of witches back at the farm, including my new friend Claudia, who might very well die if I didn’t
do something.

  Amias was coming.

  And the Traven sisters could not be trusted.

  I was talking so fast when I called Martha—as if that would somehow speed up my journey—that I’m not sure she got it all, but she said she’d be happy to keep Wulf with her for a while. We’d missed her birthday, but she’d saved some cake for Wulf in the freezer. He and Jack Nimble could have a party.

  Which was good, because I was afraid the sixteen hour drive might cut things just a little too close. I went straight from the prison to the airport. The good news was, there was a direct flight to Manchester, New Hampshire, which saved me the time of dealing with Boston and renting a car. The bad news was, a mechanical delay held that flight back for more than two hours.

  It was late night by the time I arrived. It was another hour and a half before I got out of the cab at the little grocery store in Lady’s Slipper. That put the time after midnight. It was October 30.

  See? A whole day to spare. I’d told Rebecca I would be back by Halloween, and I’d meant it. I just hoped I wasn’t coming back to a trap.

  The whole town was closed down, of course, and the wind blew hard through the empty streets. I was shivering already. Hiking through the dark—with baggage, no less, although I’d packed light—wasn’t an appealing prospect. With no other options available, I had to settle for the built-in flashlight on my phone.

  Since that lit up three steps in front of me, at best, I fell several times on my way back to the farm. At least it was too cold to worry about ticks. I had way too much going on to be dealing with Lyme disease. I tried to pretend not to realize that at that point, it probably would have been just as fast to drive.

  When I finally stumbled around the lake to the edge of Traven Farm, I halted quite dramatically, like I was teetering at the edge of a cliff—I’d remembered the magical boundaries at the last second. I stood by the water, staring at the burned-out shell of the house and wondering how the hell I was supposed to get past the spell.

  I was seriously considering just curling up in the grass and sleeping there until morning, when I saw a light bobbing toward me.