The Witch's Consorts: The Complete Series, page 102
“That’s why Rose has been so important to the efforts to stop it,” I said. This was all information I already knew, but I reined in my impatience. “Because she has a little of the demon-type energy in her magic.”
“Yes. But the other consequence…” Paulson paused and contemplated me. “With all the reading you’ve done, what do you think would happen if we managed to kill this creature?”
What kind of question was that? “Well, I guess you’d… bury it somewhere?” I said. “Or burn the body? And then we’d be done with it.”
She gave me a crooked smile. “That would work if the demon were a creature of this realm. But as Lady Hallowell has noted, it doesn’t correspond with this world at all. The effects we would expect from an ordinary beast don’t apply.”
“Which means…?”
“One of the initial attempts to stop the demon resulted in a small fragment of its… well, let’s just say skin… being sliced off. The witch who managed that, it immediately killed.” Paulson gave me a pointed look as if to say I shouldn’t try the same myself and then opened up the folder to a photograph. A ragged bit of dark gray material with a reddish glow around the edges lay on a white surface.
“Dead flesh,” she went on. “As it were. But it would not burn away and it showed no signs of rotting. What it did do is deteriorate any surface it was placed on for more than a few minutes. It seared holes in that table. We couldn’t find any material of this world that could consistently contain it.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. If a tiny piece of the demon did that, then what effect would an entire immense corpse have? “What did you do with it?” I asked.
“We ran all the experiments we could, moving it often, and then when we’d exhausted the possibilities we could think of and didn’t want to see any more equipment damaged, we tossed it back through the portal.” She closed the folder and glanced up at me. “Which is what we need to do with that demon, alive or dead, once we manage to contain it.”
“And if we close up the portal while it’s still here, then we’re stuck with it—and whatever ways it’ll keep destroying this world even if it’s dead.”
“Yes.” Her lips formed a tight smile. “So you see, our primary focus has to be getting the one demon back to its proper home as quickly as possible. Only then can we focus on sealing its gateway into this world.”
The explanation made sense. I hadn’t seen any hint of this possibility in the Frankfords’ records—but then, how could they have known? They’d never let any of the demons through to see what effect they might have on this world.
I swallowed my nausea. “I’m sorry I was so pushy before. If you’d told us—told Rose—”
Paulson lowered her head. “It isn’t information the higher officials want spread through the entire witching community. That would cause even more panic. We couldn’t discuss it openly in front of everyone at that meeting. But—maybe I should have made more of an effort to speak with Lady Hallowell about it, to take her aside. I was startled when she burst in, and, well…”
“You don’t think all that highly of her or us,” I finished for her, without much rancor. “We’ve noticed that’s the general attitude. It’s kind of hard to miss.”
“You do want to contribute, though, don’t you?” She peered at me curiously. “You had no idea magic even existed until recently, from what I understand? Lady Hallowell has said she didn’t reveal that secret until shortly before your consorting.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But I didn’t have to see that much to believe in it. It’s hard to deny something that’s happening right in front of you. Honestly, all I want is to learn as much as I can so that I can really contribute. I’m pretty good at putting pieces together and finding possible answers… if I have all the pieces to start with.”
“And you have had access to the Frankfords’ files for weeks longer than we have.” Paulson hesitated, and then said, “You’ve requested access to the full Assembly server. There are some sections that must stay secure—I don’t have authority over them in the first place. But I can’t see any reason you shouldn’t be able to look through our general records and historical archives, in case that gives you a better grounding, more context for what you’ve read already.”
My heart lifted. “Really? That would be amazing. Now?”
A warmer smile touched her face at my enthusiasm. “I can set you up. But first—can you swear that any insights you gain, you’ll share with the Assembly rather than the bunch of you running off on your own?”
Her hand twitched as she spoke, and the air vibrated around us. I had the sense that my answer was going to be binding in a literal way. But that was all right. She’d trusted me—I could return that favor.
“I swear I’ll consult with Assembly officials before we take any action,” I said.
“All right. Then let’s get you started.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rose
Walking into the Assembly’s holding building wasn’t any more fun than it had been on my previous trip. I rubbed my arms as I stared down the dull gray hall, the faint chemical smell in the air trickling into my lungs. The afternoon had turned overcast, heavy clouds congealing in the sky, but the air conditioning in here was still at full blast.
I pushed myself onward. Coming here had been my idea, but I didn’t want to spend any more time in this place than I had to. Investigator Ruiz, my sole companion this time, kept pace with me, our shoes tapping against the tiled floor.
“I have approval to use further truth compulsion, if you think it’s necessary,” she said. “You’re not to cast that sort of magic yourself.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t think it’ll really help us with the sort of information I’m hoping to get today. But if I think one of them is hiding something we can only get that way, I’ll let you know.”
Starting things off with a truth spell made the conversation automatically twice as antagonistic. Not that I was feeling especially friendly toward the two men I might speak to today, but we’d already gotten the straight-forward facts from them. I wanted impressions, insights, the sorts of things it was easy to weasel around saying under compulsion, if they decided to. By going in with good faith, maybe I’d earn a little in return.
Or maybe they could just give enough of a damn about the rest of us to want to make sure the demon didn’t raze this city to the ground.
Ruiz motioned to indicate which door led to Charles Frankford’s holding cell. He and his wife, Helen, had led their faction together for decades, but I had the feeling he was the one more invested. He’d been the one gaining a sort of magic from it. He’d been the one who’d gone to the greatest lengths to stop me from uncovering their conspiracy.
I doubted there was anyone in the world who had greater experience with demonkind than he did.
Ruiz unlocked the door. The air in the room inside was a little warmer, but I had to suppress a shiver anyway, stepping inside to face the man who’d orchestrated so many horrors.
Frankford leaned back against the wall at the sight of me, his expression tensing in defiance even though he was looking a little haggard. The Justice division didn’t believe in torture, but I remembered what it had been like trapped in one of these little rooms for just half a day. The boredom would be eating at him, along with the restriction of movement. He was probably stewing over the possible sanctions he’d face when the current emergency was over and he could be brought to proper trial.
I wasn’t sure I could hope any guilt had come into that mix, as much as it would have been deserved.
“Lady Hallowell,” he said, his voice crisp if a little hoarse.
“Mr. Frankford. I thought we should talk a little more.”
“About what? I’ve talked to plenty of people since I’ve been brought in here. I’m not sure there’s any thought in my head that hasn’t been overturned and examined.”
He sounded almost sulky about it. I caught myself on the verge of gritting my teeth. As if it wasn’t justice for him to be here after everything he’d done. But I couldn’t let my temper get the better of me.
“You know the demon is making its way toward the city,” I said. “It looks as though it’ll reach the outskirts overnight.”
“Not my doing,” he replied flatly. “I was perfectly content to have them stay on the other side of that portal.”
“It’s your family who opened that portal in the first place,” I couldn’t help retorting. “You maintained it all this time. The fiends wouldn’t have had the chance if it wasn’t for you.”
He shrugged. “Did you come to tell me things I already know, girl?”
The dismissive label annoyed me almost as much as his careless attitude did. I dragged in a breath. “I’m here because you have been involved for so long. You’ve seen more of the demons than anyone else. I’m sure you’ve been forced to share every fact about them you’ve discovered. But there’s got to be more than that—things you couldn’t prove, ideas, suspicions. Anything your instincts told you that you never completely confirmed. We need everything we can get, even if it’s a longshot. Would you please help us stop it before it shatters this city and possibly all of us in it?”
Any emotion that had been in his eyes before had drained away. “My life is already over. Because of you. I’ve told the Assembly everything I know that could help. I’m not going to speculate wildly so that I can be blamed for further catastrophes.”
“That’s not—”
He turned his face away, his body rigid, and I knew I wasn’t getting anything else from him. Maybe there really wasn’t anything else. Ideas so shaky they led us in the wrong direction weren’t going to fix this mess.
“Mr. Frankford,” Ruiz said. “I’ll just remind you that Lady Hallowell is here by the authority of the Northcotts, and a rejection of her request is a rejection of them.”
“I’m not rejecting,” he said, sounding only tired now. “I have nothing to offer.”
The enforcer glanced at me. I shook my head, my mouth tight. We couldn’t have dragged vague suppositions out of him with any magic, even if I’d been sure he had something more than might be useful.
My legs balked for a second when Ruiz had shut the door behind us. My gaze found the other room on my agenda without any guidance.
If Frankford had given us something useful, I could have skipped the second visit. But he hadn’t. I didn’t know whether my chances were better with my second option or worse. Maybe a little of both in different ways.
“Ready?” Ruiz asked, a hint of sympathy in her tone.
“As much as I’m going to be.”
She opened the door to my father’s room. He sat up at the swing of its opening, his expression almost hopeful until he caught sight of me. His face—his whole body, really—went still.
We didn’t have to exchange a single word for me to be able to tell that he knew I was now aware of the full extent of his crimes against me. He had to have realized I’d find out after the interrogators had forced the information out of him.
For almost twenty-five years of my life, I’d known that face better than any other. Now I could hardly stand to look at it. The idea of calling him “Dad” out loud, as if nothing had changed, made my throat constrict.
“Mr. Hallowell, Lady Hallowell has requested an interview with you,” Ruiz said, breaking the silence. “She comes with full authority from the Assembly.”
Dad eyed me warily. “What do you want to ask me about now?” he said, his voice almost creaky. There was a hesitation in it, as if he wasn’t totally sure he wanted me to answer.
Did he think I’d come in here to hash out my personal complaints? Every time I spoke with him, I was reminded more and more of how little he must really have thought of me.
“The demon has almost reached the city,” I said. “We need to understand everything about it that we can. You’ve been involved with this faction… for a long time.” At least the entirety of my life, and presumably a fair number of years before. “You’ve had their power in you. You’ve been there for the rituals to use and bind them. If there are any impressions, even vague ones, that you didn’t share with the previous interrogators because you weren’t sure they were important, I want to hear them now.”
“Impressions,” he repeated dully.
“About the demons. How they behave. What affects them. What they’re drawn to or repelled by. Even if it was nothing but a hint and you’re only speculating.” I paused and forced out the last word. “Please.”
His gaze had dropped as I’d spoken, but it jerked back to my face at the plea. For a few seconds I thought he was going to refuse like Frankford had. Then he let out a ragged breath, his eyes going distant.
“I’m not sure there’s anything I haven’t already talked about,” he said. “I never delved too deeply into the logistics—I never wanted to. And we couldn’t see much of their behavior through the portal. We only knew as much as we did by how they responded to what we offered them. And we never offered more than the usual, while I was there.”
“The usual,” I prompted, even though I knew what he meant. The more he talked, the more likely something useful would come out.
He grimaced. “The creatures seemed to crave something about our essence. We’ve been over that. Taking magic from a witch appeared to sate them for a while, enough that Frankford could control them somewhat…” His forehead furrowed. “I remember thinking it was almost as if they got drunk on it, unable to reason clearly, and that was why he could manipulate them then.”
Huh. I hadn’t heard any of the faction members describe it like that before, but I couldn’t say the insight helped any. A drunken demon lumbering around the city sounded even worse than a sober one.
“Drunk could also mean more erratic and harder to control,” I pointed out.
“Well, maybe. I don’t know what they acted like when they moved away from the portal to do whatever they do in that aberrant realm. Occasionally they drifted into what looked like a bit of a stupor, but that wasn’t consistent enough that I’d stake anything on it.”
A stupor. The word sent me back a few hours to my hurried ministrations with the recovering witches as they’d panicked—sending a cloud of calm down over them. An idea prickled up from the back of my mind. We’d tried shoving the demon back, and we’d tried subtly maneuvering it into a trap, but we hadn’t attempted to lull it. There wouldn’t have been much point in simply slowing it down temporarily as an effect by itself, but maybe in combination with the other strategies we’d been developing…
“Does that get you anywhere?” Dad asked with apparent curiosity.
I wrenched my thoughts back to the present. I had no interest in discussing my uncertain ideas with him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll see. Anything else about them, or their power?”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t like to think about how it felt, having that energy in me. Like this constant tremor of wrongness I could never completely ignore. But you must know about that at least as well as I ever did.”
His tone was prodding. My back stiffened. “I don’t think you want to go there with me,” I said.
He kept looking at me intently. “It can’t have been that bad. You didn’t have any idea until I told them. Enough to light up your spark that much more, but not enough to poison it.”
“You had no right,” I said. “To do that to me—to do that to my mother… You couldn’t have known what it would do. You brought a monster’s essence to me, let it touch me, before I was even born.”
My voice was shaking by the last word. I clamped my mouth shut.
“I did know,” Dad started to say. “I told them—I wanted to stop him, to stop the whole—”
“Shut. Up,” I bit out. “I don’t want to hear about it. Your explanations have changed so many times, I can’t possibly believe any claim you make. So stop trying to explain. It’s never going to be forgivable, no matter what you say.”
His expression wavered. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” he said quietly. “I’ve seen it in you already—how important your magic is to you. How much it means to you to wield that power. You’re the witch you are because of what I gave you, Rose. Everything you’re capable of is thanks to that.”
“I am never going to thank you,” I snapped before he could go on. “Don’t you dare try to tell me who I am.” A quiver ran through my body. I didn’t think we were getting any further here—and I wasn’t sure I trusted my reactions enough to try. “That’s enough.”
I spun on my heel and stalked out. Ruiz followed, shutting the door. I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to risk seeing that she agreed with him, even a little.
Even I wasn’t totally sure he was wrong. The power I had, the exhilaration of that magic, the awe I’d been able to inspire in others… I couldn’t say that hadn’t meant anything to me at all.
“What now?” Ruiz asked.
“I think the first part of that conversation might have sparked a little inspiration,” I said. “I should talk to the Northcotts and their advisors—and my consorts.” Ky would want to be able to share his perspective based on his research, certainly. I headed toward the main doors. “We’ll need to confirm the status of the cage reconstruction, and—”
A figure in enforcer clothes burst into the hall, her gaze wild as it search the hall and snagged on us. “Lady Hallowell,” she said. “Investigator Ruiz. Your presence is requested right away. The demon has sped up its approach. At its current pace—it could be at the edge of the city within the hour.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rose
When we made it to the main Assembly building, it looked as if the entire staff was flooding out under the thickly clouded sky. Enforcers were scrambling into the cars parked along the road, and more vehicles were pouring from the underground parking garage. Ruiz’s hand clamped around my arm as a humid wind whipped through our hair.
