Bedtime Story

by Robert J. Wiersema

  I could barely speak. “He just … gave it to you?” And I knew, even as I formed the words, that this wasn’t what had happened.

  She smiled even more widely, baring her teeth. “Eventually.”

  The coldness of her voice was almost enough to take the legs out from under me.

  “So you know,” I said. “You knew about this all the time?”

  “Of course I did, Chris.” She looked at the book. “It’s mine.”

  “But did you … Did you know what it did? What it would do to my son?”

  She entered the room, holding the gun casually, as if without a care. The barrel, however, never wavered.

  “Let me take it,” I said, grasping at the last strands of hope. “Let me just borrow it. I’ll take it home, and let my friends look at it, and I’ll bring it right back. I swear. I’ll drive it back down myself.” My voice was growing ragged, desperate. Pleading.

  “Why would I let you do that?” she asked.

  “To save my son.”

  She took another step toward me. “And undo all the hard work I put into this?”

  “What?” I had to brace myself against the desk.

  “Did you really think that Lazarus Took could have done something like this?” she asked, pointing at the book. “Please. Lazarus was a second-rate dabbler, at best. He had a few charms, and a knack for separating people from their money, but really he was little better than those pathetic kitchen witches of yours, with their praising of the goddess”—she made the word sound like a sneer—“and their crystals.” The stone that Nora had given me still hung on the leather thong under my shirt. “Lazarus couldn’t have cast a spell like that if his life depended on it.”

  She took another step forward, so only the desk separated us. She leaned forward, her smile so wide and close that, for a moment, I thought she might sink her teeth into me.

  “It was mine,” she said plainly, almost laughing as she watched my expression.

  “But that’s impossible,” I said, turning it over in my mind. Even if she had faked the publication date inside the book, she was clearly younger than Matthew Corvin—she wouldn’t have been born at the time the book had claimed him.

  She bobbed her head girlishly. “I’ve already told you everything you need to know, Chris. For someone who seems to have all the answers, you’re not very good at putting things together, are you. Tell me, didn’t it strike you as odd that there wasn’t any mention whatsoever of children in anything you read about Lazarus Took? No mention of family in the papers at the Hunter Barlow? Didn’t that ever occur to you?”

  I hadn’t even noticed it. No children meant no grandchildren …

  The only possible explanation was growing within me with a sickly power. She must have seen it on my face.

  “I even told you,” she said, clearly relishing the moment, “back in that very first e-mail, who I was.”

  I thought back, trying to ignore the undeniable presence of the gun, trying to visualize the e-mail.

  C. Agatha Took. But please call me Cat.

  “Cat Took,” I muttered. “Cora Agatha Took?” My mind rebelled at the thought, buzzing hysterically.

  “In the flesh,” she said, turning a little, showing herself off. “And quite nice flesh it is, too, don’t you think? Your friend Tony Markus certainly thought so. Poor man. All those hopes and dreams and …” She jerked the gun in her hand. “Bang.”

  I flinched, and she laughed.

  “You must be—”

  “I celebrated my hundredth birthday last year,” she said. “Well, it was a quiet celebration. Just the two of us.”

  Two of us? I shook my head, still trying to understand what she was telling me. This couldn’t be Cora Took—Cat looked like she was in her mid-twenties, at the oldest.

  “How?”

  She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “You’re holding the answer, Chris.”

  She extended her hand for the book.

  The Queen was sitting on her throne at the far end of the marble hall, wearing a gown so colourful it might have been made of peacock feathers, her pale face flat and expressionless.

  David hesitated a few steps away from her, his feet refusing to take him any closer. It lasted only for an instant, but it was too much for the captain, who shoved him forward with a blow that took his breath away. He stumbled, catching himself before he fell to the tiles.

  “Kneel before the Queen,” the captain snarled, pushing down on his shoulder. David’s knee hit the tiles hard, and he winced.

  “You are right to fear me,” the Queen said.

  David didn’t speak, but stared down at the floor, anything to avoid looking her in the eye.

  “You may rise,” the Queen said, her voice cold.

  The captain pulled at David’s shirt, hauling him to his feet.

  The magus was slower in rising.

  After several moments of silence, David couldn’t fight the impulse and he glanced at the Queen, only to find her staring back at him.

  “I believe you have something that belongs to me.” She extended her hand.

  Something in her voice …

  David had to force himself not to reach into his tunic and hand her the Stone. The power of her gaze was almost impossible to resist. More than that: he wanted to give it to her. He could feel the urging in his muscles. The thought of just handing it to her, of seeing her smile of satisfaction. He wanted so badly to please her. Just hand it over. The fight for the Sunstone had nothing to do with him anyway. Just hand it over. He could save himself.

  He reached up—

  The magus stepped forward. “Your Majesty.”

  “You dare speak in my presence?” the Queen roared.

  As her attention shifted to the magus, David felt an easing in his mind, a quieting of the imploring voice.

  The Queen turned her head slightly, and the captain slapped the old man across the face so hard that he stumbled to one side. He didn’t fall, however, and pulled himself to his full height.

  “I stand before you, one of the Brotherhood, the keepers of the Stone, sworn in allegiance to the kings of Colcott.” His voice was unflinching. “It is my right and obligation to speak.”

  “In the absence of the King, your allegiance is to me,” the Queen said, almost dismissively. “The Stone—”

  “The Stone is in our keeping. And the King is not absent,” the old man said, his voice growing stronger. “He is here. Still the rightful heir, and the rightful owner of the Stone.” As he spoke, he lifted his hand to his chest as if scratching himself unconsciously.

  “The Stone belongs to the one who holds it,” she said, rising slightly, coiling herself, turning her attention back to David. “Dafyd, give it to me.”

  She seemed to have two voices: the one which he heard her speak, and a low, insinuating whisper that echoed in his skull: Give her the stone. Give her the stone.

  “Dafyd,” the magus said. “Don’t listen to her. Don’t—”

  David raised his hand to his tunic, slipped it into the opening.

  Give her the stone.

  His fingers curled around the leather bag, feeling the warmth there.

  “Dafyd!” The magus barked his name in a commanding tone that drowned out the Queen’s voice in his head.

  David dropped his hand, turned to look at the old man.

  The magus was facing him, his right hand extended, his left hand tight around his amulet.

  “You fool,” the Queen cried at Captain Bream. “He has a moonstone!”

  As the captain lunged, David could hear the magus’s voice inside his head. Run, it said. Run to the King.

  David didn’t hesitate. As the captain reached out for the magus, David spun away and raced toward the curtain behind the dais.

  “Get the boy!” the Queen screamed. “Get him!”

  His feet slipped on the slick tiles, but he found his balance. He could hear the captain behind him, too close. Too fast for him to outrun.

  He
pushed the curtain aside, throwing himself into the King’s chamber. He had just long enough to see the King on the bed, his haggard, shrunken face looking at him in surprise, before the captain tackled him to the floor.

  David’s face crashed into the tile. His nose snapped, his mouth filled with blood. He tried to drag himself forward, coughing, but the captain held him fast. He could feel the man’s hands tearing at his clothes, ripping his tunic open.

  “I’ve got it,” he cried out, standing up, holding the small leather bag high in the air.

  The Queen swooped into the room and snatched it from his hand, as David spat blood onto the cold grey tile.

  Jacqui had been driving so long she had started to think that she was lost. Hopelessness threatened to overshadow her urgency. But when the narrow road widened into a circular driveway, she knew that this had to be the right place. The house before her was a stone monstrosity that seemed to jut out of the darkness. A red VW sat parked in front of the steps.

  She pulled in behind the car and turned off the engine. “I’ll be right back,” she said to David. “Okay? I’m just gonna see if anybody’s home.”

  She took care on the steps, half shrouded in shadow. The last thing she wanted to do was fall and break her neck.

  Glancing back at the van from the porch, she couldn’t make out David in the dark. She turned toward the doors, which were faced with frosted glass.

  Taking a deep breath, she knocked.

  She waited, listening for any hint of motion inside. She still had no idea what she would say to the woman when she opened the door. One step at a time.

  No one appeared. She knocked again, louder this time, bruising her knuckles against the wood.

  Still nothing.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, before pounding on the door with the side of her fist, calling out, “Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?”

  She tried the door: locked.

  Chris was obviously inside the house, but David was in the van and couldn’t be left for long. What was she supposed to do?

  She pulled off her sweater. The sea air chilled her bare arms as she folded the sweater in half, forming a thick pad which she held against the glass near the doorknob. Holding it with one hand, she brought up the other elbow and smashed it, several times, against the window. She didn’t stop until she felt the sweater starting to fall inward, heard the tinkling of glass on the floor inside the house.

  She punched the rest of the glass away and reached in, turning the bolt on the lock.

  With one look back at David, Jacqui opened the door.

  A row of guards stood at the castle gate as Mareigh approached. Flames leapt so high from the torches in the walls that it was almost as bright as day.

  Her heart was racing, but she didn’t even slow down.

  “Which one of you is the captain?” she asked, stopping in front of them.

  “Ma’am,” one man said, stepping forward. “The gates are closed.”

  “Are you the captain?” she asked. Just her luck: someone she had never served in the tavern.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, standing there stiff-backed.

  “I need to see the King,” she said, fighting the quaver she could feel in her throat.

  “That’s impossible,” the captain said, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword.

  He stopped himself when she held up her left hand, the signet glittering on her ring finger, catching the torchlight like a small ember.

  “I have come to see the King,” she said, extending the ring toward the captain as she drew the letter, still sealed with the royal crest, from her blouse.

  “He’s been expecting me.”

  Reflexively I clutched the book close to my chest and took two steps backward. “You did this,” I said. “You did this to David. To all those other children.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Cora asked, withdrawing her outstretched hand. “If it meant that you could live forever? Eternal youth, with none of that Greek-myth be-careful-what-you-wish-for crap? Forever young, forever beautiful? Who wouldn’t want that?”

  I threw my head back, trying to stave off the flow of tears that threatened. I looked away from her, around the room where Lazarus Took had spent the last years of his life, reading and writing.

  “I should have known,” I said. “I should have known it wasn’t him.”

  “It was his idea,” she said, and I looked back at her, at her wide eyes and the dark barrel of the gun. “Well, sort of. Lazarus always said he wanted to write something that would make him immortal. Something that people would remember.” She shrugged. “That was one of the things he did, one of his little gifts. He wrote those books.” She said it as if this left a sour taste in her mouth. “Those little spells that captured his readers, that pulled them into the story. Well, not literally.” She smiled again. “That part was my idea.”

  She took a step to one side, starting to edge around the desk. I took a step in the opposite direction, trying to keep as much distance between us as possible, as if the width of a stride would protect me against a bullet.

  “Lazarus was a dabbler,” she continued. “Reading cards and writing those books. Oh, he was a grand performer when he needed to be, but he didn’t know anything about real magic.”

  “But you did.”

  She nodded. “It’s in my blood, you see. Everything that you read about those old magicians, it’s always about the men. The almighty William Thorne. The evil Lazarus Took. But the real power, that came from the women. It always has. When they arrested Thorne, they thought they were rescuing my mother, that this poor, innocent, virginal girl had fallen under the devil’s spell, and that, praise the Lord, they had rescued her before he had a chance to defile her.” She spat out a laugh. “Little did they know that it was her hand on the blade that cut the throats for the ritual sacrifices. That it was her body that was the font of what little power Thorne ever had.”

  “Your mother? Thorne?”

  She nodded. “He was never the same after she was gone. He spent the rest of his life chased by the police, writing his ridiculous books, building up his legend, while my mother disappeared into the darkness of history with her child.”

  “You? You’re Thorne’s—?”

  “I’m my mother’s daughter,” she snapped. “And that’s all that matters. She taught me everything she knew, showed me how to awaken the power within me, to harness the power of those around me.”

  “Lazarus.” I took another step away and she took a step closer.

  “He had some power,” she conceded. “But he’d never have been able to use it on his own. I showed him some tricks, let him shine like a beacon, drawing people to us. People and their power.”

  “And their money.”

  She waved the comment away. “Money’s of little concern. There’s nothing you can buy that people won’t willingly give.”

  “Or that you can’t take,” I said, thinking of the book in my hand, of Tony Markus.

  “If something was meant to be mine, what difference does it make how I came by it?”

  “But you’re killing my son.” As I spoke the words, I felt my fear vying with a sudden flash of anger.

  “So?” she said. “I needed him, to keep me alive. Do you spare a thought for the pig on your plate as you tear into its flesh?”

  I lowered my head, unable to look at her any longer.

  “You poor, poor man,” she said, condescension dripping from every word. “You came here thinking that I would help you, that you could count on the poor, sweet, naive girl, when all along …”

  She made another movement toward me, and I backed into the doorknob: there was nowhere left for me to retreat.

  “When I came in, you seemed awfully interested in seeing what was behind that door. The key’s in the desk.”

  I didn’t move.

  She waved the gun between me and the desk. “Go on,” she said. “Satisfy your curiosity. No secrets between us now.”

  I still didn
’t move. Paralyzed by fear, by the horror of what she had done.

  “Open the door, Chris,” she said coldly, her voice cutting the air between us. “You might as well. You’ve got absolutely nothing left to lose.”

  I stepped to the desk and pulled open the drawer, watching her closely. I glanced down to see a brass key in the tray alongside two fountain pens.

  “So what are you going to do to me?” I asked, looking up again.

  “Well, first,” she said, taking another step toward me, so close now she could have reached out and taken the book. “We’re going to take a look at what’s behind door number two.” She gestured with the gun. “And then we’re going to go out on the balcony and you’re going to take a dive onto the rocks.”

  I gasped.

  “And then I’m going to call the police and tell them how I tried to stop you, but you were so overcome with grief about your son that you couldn’t go on. Inconsolable. I’ll cry and I’ll heave my breasts and the police will feel so sorry for me it’ll never occur to them to look for any other possibility.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  She looked at me as if I were a misbehaving child, and she spoke to me the same way. “In that case, I’ll shoot you in the head. There are dozens of ways to make a body disappear.” She shrugged as if it made no difference to her. “So why don’t you open that door.” She spoke the last three words in a low, almost guttural voice, a command that I was powerless to resist.

  I slowly fit the key into the lock.

  The tumblers opened with a heavy click.

  I glanced at her, and she nodded.

  “Go ahead.”

  I turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

  “Oh God,” I muttered.

  “I suppose I should make the introductions. Chris Knox, this is Lazarus Took.”

  As David struggled to his feet, he felt the magus’s hand on his arm, helping him rise. “I’m sorry,” he sputtered, spitting out another mouthful of blood. “I tried.”

  The magus shook his head. “It’s enough,” he said. “It will have to be.”

  The captain pushed past David, reaching for Loren’s neck. He grabbed him around the throat, dragging him down.