Page of Tricks, page 15
“But your new toy has ties to Quentin’s bit of fluff, doesn’t he?” The duke looked at the window again. “You are both staggeringly naive to think that I wouldn’t find him. I hate to resort to threats, but you leave me no choice. You are going to use every tool in your arsenal to separate Quentin from this American he is bedding. Control his mind, use your own American, do everything that you can to tear them apart. Destroy Riley, and you will destroy Quentin’s will. You must sever his ties to that dreadful country and give him no reason to remain.”
Freddy blinked sluggishly.
“Bring him home, Frederick, or I will do to you what I am instructing you to do to Quentin. I will ruin Brennan. I will wreck his mind and his body. I will devastate him until he is nothing but a shell, and then I will move on to you, because if you fail me again, then it is clear that you will never succeed at this task, and there will be no further need to keep you around.”
Freddy gasped for air and sagged in the seat as breath came to him at last.
“The choice is yours.” The duke returned to his seat as though he hadn’t just threatened to kill his own boy. “Break Quentin, or I will break you.”
Freddy’s look of horror was all the worse for the crack in his composure. “Why? Why go to all this trouble? Why would you kill one of your own children over this?” He sucked down air. “Why is he worth more than me?”
The duke placed his hands on his blotter and looked Frederick right in the eye.
“Because he can learn magic,” he said simply, “and you cannot.”
Freddy’s horror transformed slowly into something else. Laurence could see it.
Defeat.
Freddy had finally lost this battle.
Laurence’s eyes snapped open, and he drew a breath almost as deep as Freddy’s had been.
Everything he’d been through, everything Freddy had done to him, seemed to take on new light. It snapped into place like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and in the space of a single breath, Laurence saw a much bigger picture.
Freddy loved Mikey, and was doing all this to save him.
Would Laurence do anything differently in Freddy’s shoes? Sure, he didn’t have the same gifts, but if he was forced to ruin someone to save Quentin’s life, he could do it.
No, scratch that.
He would do it.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet and rubbed his ass to get some feeling back in it as he took deep breaths to make the blood flow. As he looked around the village, he saw a few people going about their business, washing clothes or preparing dinner out in the cool evening air, and he cracked a smile.
He had the information. Now all he needed was a plan.
25
Quentin
An unfamiliar ringing sound percolated into his consciousness, and Quentin stirred slowly at first. The noise was jarring, like an old telephone.
Telephone.
He jerked wide awake and grabbed the phone up from his bedside table. The light cast from the screen was bright, and he squinted as he thumbed the slide to answer the unfamiliar number.
“Yes?”
“Quentin? It’s Rufus.”
“Rufus,” he echoed. Another second, and he was awake enough to realize who that was. “Ah. My apologies for any delay. I was asleep.”
He had no idea how he’d managed to get any sleep, and he certainly didn’t feel tremendously rested, but he supposed that any sleep was better than none whatsoever.
“Then I’m sorry I woke you,” Rufus said, though he didn’t sound sorry. “I have a spell that should protect Laurence’s mind from telepathy.”
Quentin swung his legs from the bed and stood quickly. He intended to go open the curtains, but two steps into the process remembered that he really didn’t know this room’s layout all that well, and it was too small to just go striding around in the dark. “That’s excellent. Has it worked?”
“No. Laurence must still be wearing his talisman.”
Quentin felt for the edge of the bed, then crept his way through the narrow gap between it and the absurd desk crammed into one corner of the room. “I thought that Windsor would provide enough of an esoteric connection to override the pendant?” He felt blindly for the curtains and drew them open, but the effect that had on his ability to see around the room was negligible.
It was dark outside. There were street lights, and the warmth of restaurants and pubs open at whatever hour this was, but other than that, night had well and truly set in. Still, in early November, that could mean it was barely six in the evening.
“I suspect, but can’t confirm, that it’s because Windsor is only an adolescent.” Rufus sounded more interested in the intellectual stimulation than in in the fact that he couldn’t reach Laurence. “It may be possible to overpower the connection, but that’d probably kill Windsor in the process. I’ve taken pictures of the spell you need, I’ll send them over as soon as this call’s done.”
“For Laurence to cast?” Quentin asked cautiously.
“Yes, because your brother will allow him all the time in the world to do that.” Rufus’ sarcasm dripped from the phone. “No, if he were to cast it on himself, you’d need a different spell. This one is going to require chalk and some Latin. I presume you do speak Latin?” The sarcasm returned again.
“Of course,” Quentin snapped.
“Will wonders never cease. You’ll need to have Laurence in the same place as you when you cast, obviously. And you have to get that talisman off him and out of range of his aura. Usually anything over ten or twelve inches is plenty.”
Quentin nodded to himself as he watched a couple emerge from a restaurant down on the street. A man and a woman. They walked with their hands clasped together. She laughed at something he said to her, then they leaned in to kiss.
He felt a stab of jealousy flare in his chest, and turned his back on the window.
“You could fly to London,” he muttered.
Rufus laughed briefly. “This isn’t dial-a-witch, Quentin. I’m not going to fly halfway around the world for you.”
“For Laurence,” Quentin argued. “He’s your student, Rufus!”
“I never agreed to babysit either of you, and in this instance, you don’t need me to. You can use magic, and you’re immune to your brother’s psychic abilities. I’ve already had to leave my sanctum to use a phone. That’s more than enough to get the job done.”
Coward.
Rufus refused to leave his precious sanctum for much of anything, so far as Quentin could tell, in case he was attacked.
Quentin ground his teeth and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was being unfair, and he knew it. Rufus’ parents were dead, for goodness’ sake, and he had no reason to believe that whoever had murdered them wouldn’t come for him also, given half the chance.
“I apologize,” he said once he trusted his voice. “You are quite right.”
Rufus paused, then sounded shocked. “Wow.” He sighed loudly. “I’m sorry too. I know this is scary for you. Look, let me send you the spell. There are some physical actions to perform with it. Are you familiar at all with oratory gestures?”
Quentin hesitated. “For rhetoric?”
“Perfect. It’s like you’ve been groomed to be a sorcerer or something.” Rufus’ tone turned dry. “If you get stuck, call Myriam. She leaves more often than I do.”
“All right.” He perched his backside against the windowsill. “And thank you. I realize this has been quite an obscure spell to dredge up.”
“It was an interesting test of my organizing skills, that’s for sure. Next up, your location spell. That ain’t gonna work with the talisman in play, but I think I’ve found an alternative for you.”
“How so?”
“Well, when Windsor first brought Myriam here, it was because he wanted me to find a way to send him to Laurence. He knew Laurence was in trouble, but Windsor can’t fly that far. He’s too young. It wouldn’t take me much longer to figure that one out.”
“But the talisman?” Quentin prompted.
“Yeah, that’s the catch. But I could send him to you instead.”
Quentin frowned deeply. “Wouldn’t you require some of my blood?”
“Only if I didn’t know where you were. Location spells are a pain in the ass. But I can send him anywhere I have a personal connection to.”
Quentin crinkled his nose at that. “And that means what, exactly?”
“It means I need to have been there in person and formed an emotional connection to the location. Fond memories, an important moment, that kind of thing. I can send him, all you need to do is be there to meet him when he arrives, or he’ll probably try to fly the whole way to Laurence himself.”
“And you’ve been to London?” He eased away from the window and into the horrible stiff chair by the desk, where he grabbed a cheap biro and flicked its lid off with his thumb. He drew the hotel’s headed notepad over and poised pen tip to paper. “What address?”
Rufus snorted at him. “No, I haven’t. But I have been to Paris.”
Quentin blinked slowly. “Paris,” he echoed.
“It’s an outdoor location, so he’ll look pretty natural there. Assuming they have ravens in Paris, but people will probably just think he’s a really big crow if they don’t anyway.”
“Rufus!” He slapped the pen down. “I’m not in bloody France!”
“Details,” Rufus dismissed. “There’s a direct train to Paris every, like, five minutes or whatever. The trick is getting Windsor back to England, but I think what you can do is get the train out to get there as fast as possible, then just take the ferry from Calais to Dover. He can get himself on the ferry. All you have to do is meet him on it.”
Quentin momentarily wondered whether he could reach out through the telephone to strangle Rufus. He’d never thought to test the range of his telekinesis, but now was an incredibly appealing time to imagine how it might work.
“You can Google up all that stuff yourself, though,” Rufus went on. “Or ask Siri. Whatever works for you. Go to Paris, text Myriam your ETA, then we’ll figure out when’s best to do this. Probably once it’s night in Paris, but I’d estimate sunset’s probably around five or six in the evening, as it’s the northern hemisphere and Paris is around fifty degrees north, so kinda around the same latitude as Vancouver—”
“Rufus,” Quentin cut in.
“Huh?”
“The address,” he reminded the witch.
“Oh, you don’t need one. It’s the Jardins du Trocadéro. Do you know it?”
Quentin narrowed his eyes and tried to recall. While he had attended a few catwalk events in Paris, the city was hardly one he knew backwards. “I think I know the Trocadéro,” he hazarded. “Near the Eiffel Tower?”
“Bingo! There are a bunch of water cannons at the Trocadéro end of the pool. I can send Windsor there.”
Quentin scribbled Trocadéro on the notepad, since he found it best to write down the things he truly wished to recall later, and nodded. “You left your sanctum?” He asked it as a light tease, on the off-chance that he could perhaps build a few bridges and forge some sort of rudimentary friendship with the man Laurence spent half his free time with.
“Text Myriam with an ETA,” Rufus said, suddenly curt. “Can you make it?”
Quentin twiddled the pen, then set it down with care. That was, apparently, not a subject to probe further. “I will make enquiries,” he said.
“Good. Speak later. I’ll send the files over now.”
Rufus hung up, and Quentin pocketed the phone so that he wouldn’t have to look at images of spell book pages just yet. He had too important a mission ahead of him, and no desire to destroy a second hotel room.
Paris.
He eyed the notepad with its single word.
The hotel had no concierge. He couldn’t simply pick up the phone and tell them to make the arrangements for him.
His phone buzzed against his thigh, likely with the arrival of Rufus’ documents, and broke him out of his mindlessness. He could do this! He had made it around the world several times. He had managed to figure out the Heathrow Express. He could bloody well work this out, too.
And then he would have to learn a spell.
Magic.
To save Laurence. There was no other choice. Either he allowed his fear to consume him, or it would destroy Laurence, and he wasn’t having any of that. They’d both come too far to allow fear to tear them apart.
Quentin reached for his phone and held the home button, then grabbed the pen once more.
“Siri, how do I get to Paris?”
26
Laurence
“Maybe that is the solution,” Morgan mused.
Laurence poured water into cups for everyone present and passed the cups around. “Huh?”
He and Emma had been invited to Morgan’s for supper this time, and Morgan owned a table and chairs, so they sat around it rather than on Emma’s floor. Laurence chose not to ask Emma whether she eschewed furniture by choice.
“Destroy one life to save another,” Morgan clarified as she took the mug. “Thank you,” she added. “If Frederick has targeted you as you say, because his goal is to break your lover’s will, then if you were to remove Frederick’s reason to fight, it would instead be his will broken.”
Laurence put the jug aside and bit the tip of his tongue a second. “Kill Mikey,” he said. “Because if Mikey’s dead, Quentin’s dad can’t use him as leverage any more.”
Leverage. Laurence scowled at the word. Freddy knew he was being used, but in picking his words with Laurence, was he attempting to convey the nature of the problem to him?
Was Freddy — in his own twisted way — asking for help? Or just for Laurence’s understanding?
“It’s an option,” Morgan said.
Laurence sipped from his cup and swished the water around his mouth before he swallowed. “But Mikey’s not the one doing this.”
Emma assembled half her plate of food into a sandwich between the warm slices of bread that smelled fresh from the oven, squished it down until he heard the crunch of salad leaves giving way under the pressure, then lifted it in her hands to bite into.
Morgan watched Emma eat with amusement in her eyes. “Then you will kill Frederick?”
Laurence grabbed a tomato off his own plate and tore into it. He’d walked right into Morgan’s trap there, and it was his own damn fault, so he chewed in silence while she turned that amusement on him.
“Fine,” he said after he swallowed. “He’s not the one doing this either.”
Morgan shrugged. “If you kill the father, it will stop,” she agreed. “But now you see how war works, yes?”
Laurence nodded miserably. “I can’t get to the duke without stopping Freddy. But Freddy doesn’t want to fight me, and he doesn’t want to force Quentin to go home; he’s just doing it to protect Mikey. And himself, but I think mostly Mikey. Quentin’s immune to Freddy’s gifts, and the duke is too, so the only way he can work is through us. Mikey and me.”
She nodded in agreement. “This is how men’s wars work,” she said softly. “Two men war with one another, but they cannot fight directly, so more and more innocent people are drawn in. On both sides,” she added. “Your lover is the Warrior. He will pull those around him into his war.” She picked up a walnut and used one of the few pieces of worked metal Laurence had seen on Avalon to crack it open. “You have already been drawn into it, purely because you love him. Leverage,” she said, as she placed the nutcracker down on the table.
“And if it wasn’t for me, they never would’ve found Quen to begin with.” Laurence propped his elbow on the table and planted his chin on his fist. “They used me right from the start.”
She nodded. “This is not the Hunter’s way.”
“No,” he agreed. “I’d just track my prey and end it.”
“Warriors like to pretend that is the coward’s way,” she chuckled. “But they fear it, because the Hunter’s way circumvents all their pawns and their protections. It ignores their distractions and cuts straight to the heart of the conflict.”
He eyed his plate as he mulled over her words. “You’re suggesting I assassinate the duke.”
“I’m suggesting that is your way,” she countered. “Would you agree?”
Laurence rolled a boiled egg and some leafy greens into a slice of his own bread and squished it down until he could bite into it.
What Morgan described was exactly how everything had played out with Kane Wilson. Quentin had held off Mia and Sebastian as long as he could, but the second Laurence was free, he dove into the water and killed Kane. He didn’t know that doing so would free every single one of Kane’s victims from his control at the moment of his death; but Laurence suspected everyone else involved was innocent, and nothing would stop until Kane was stopped.
Sure, it wasn’t anywhere near as simple as it sounded, looking back on it now. Back then, Laurence had only ever killed a god, not a human being. Taking a life wasn’t cool or awesome, like it was made out to be in movies. It was a job, he had to do it, he didn’t regret it, but it wasn’t easy.
Assuming, of course, that he was right about never taking a human life until Kane.
“You’re right,” he sighed. “Some people will always reject everything that might stop them.” He pursed his lips. “Do you know much about gods?”
“Some.”
He nodded a little. “Before I killed him, Jack took a human host. I mean, more than one, really. Once one died, he moved on and took another.”
“Ah.” She inclined her head. “I see what you are asking me. It depends on the god.”
“Whether the human survives it?”
“Yes.” She sipped her water. “Some gods will take over a human completely, and there will be nothing left. Others will simply ride along, and nobody is ever aware they were even there. Every option in between is available. It’s all down to the god, and what humanity believes of that god. Usually, the less there is of the host, the more physical evidence there is of the god. The body will begin to take on the god’s aspect.”
