Deception of the Magician (Waldgrave Book 2) (10 page)

“You did?” Lena was perplexed. “Then why did we bother having this whole conversation?”

Howard gave her a wry smile. “She doesn’t want to ever talk about it again. She’s terrified, and I doubt she’ll ever feel safe here again. I’m going to arrange for her to start living with a smaller family who doesn’t have Council representation and isn’t seeking it. I think she’ll be much happier with them, away from all of this.”

“So, we’re not going to take him to trial?” Lena said in a skeptical tone.

Howard wasn’t sure he was about to do the right thing. He wasn’t sure that doing anything else would make the end results better. He wasn’t going to follow Lena’s suggestion to take the easy way out or to escape his own obligation to do what he thought was right; he was going to do it because there was no right answer, and it was time that she started living the consequences of deciding on the lives of others. He was sure she would live to regret her decision, as he himself had so many times, but she would live to regret it if she decided the other way, too; learning to live with her choices sooner or later was the cost of governing the lives of others. And it was easier for Howard to let her make the wrong decision when there was no right decision to be made.

“No. We won’t be pursuing it. And we won’t be telling anyone what happened here today.”

Even though Howard had forbidden Lena from leaving Waldgrave on a wild portal chase, she had accomplished her goal of not letting him control her ambition. There was a buzz in the Council now, and they were apt to overrule any decision Howard made in favor of a greater good. Daray was all but shunning Lena at meals, as were all of the Old Faith families who were loyal to him. She received dirty looks and a few people had even told her off for being so selfish and such a traitor to the religion. The comments she really couldn’t stand, though, were the ones where people insulted the memory of her father for making her such a “stupid, self-centered, childish little girl.”

The New Faith families, however, were divided—some of them had taken a new liking to Lena, while others were more suspicious than ever. They believed Lena was acting on behalf of her grandfather, who was trying to trick them somehow. While they weren’t sure exactly how Daray intended to trick them, they were sure Lena—and her ideas—could not be trusted. The idea of bringing the portal into New Faith possession was tempting, though, and many of them embraced the concept of sending more New Faith agents on the mission rather than rejecting the idea entirely.

The majority of the independents were in favor, which meant that the proposal was likely to pass by the required fifty percent. With or without Howard’s consent, it was likely that Lena would be the Council’s means to their ends.

“I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe they’re going to let you go. 
Make
 you go, even. You’ve put yourself in a precarious situation, and you’re going to have to be careful, Lena.” She had never seen Howard look so haggard.

Despite the fact that she reassured him she was coming back, he didn’t believe her. He was constantly worried; he was starting to look the way Ava had looked when Lena first arrived, following her around and watching her with a distant look in his eyes…remembering her dead twin, perhaps, but mostly remembering the father he had lost under similar circumstances. Lena hated it; it felt like he was already mourning her loss. He had called her up to his office to talk about what was happening in the Council and in her life a lot lately, though one day the conversation turned out to be somewhat different. Howard was sitting at his desk with the computer off; a box of old junk, possibly stuff he intended to donate to the poor, was situated near his left elbow.

He started in with a flat accusation. “You can’t just sit back and let people push you around like they do here. Don’t give me that look, because you do. You let people say things and do things that are idle threats here, but if you hear anything, 
anything
 of that nature while you’re out there, you need to report it immediately. People have killed for less—as you well know—and the person who killed my father was never caught. I don’t trust anyone going with you, Old Faith or New, because either side has a reason to take you out before or after you find it. Okay?”

Howard gave Lena a long, slow, questioning look. She nodded her acquiescence that she would abort the mission at the slightest threat; she wasn’t sure if she would, actually, but if it made Howard feel better she was willing to say she would. Howard pushed the box toward her across the table.

“I’ve collected some of his things. For what you’re trying to do, with the tracing process, I thought they might be useful to you. Sometimes having some of the person’s things can be helpful. He carried some of these things everywhere, and some of them were very dear to him. The coat is…well, he was wearing it when he…passed on. He wore it almost every day of his life, I think. My point is that they’re very dear to me as well, and I’d appreciate if you’re careful with them, but it might help you to use them and carry them around. He was a very talented Silenti, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it wore off on these a little.”

Lena pulled the box toward her. It smelled old, but there was something familiar there, too. The smell of a cologne that her father used to wear. She felt her eyes tear up around the edges and the hair on the back of her neck prickled; it felt like there was a spirit in that box.

“Thank you, Howard. Just…thank you. I promise I’ll be careful.”

Howard nodded solemnly; Lena took the box back to Ava’s room and started gently unpacking it onto her cot. She wasn’t sure how Howard anticipated her using some of it, but there were other things that would probably be quite useful. There were books, diaries, maps, shaving razors, pens, a kazoo, glasses, a pair of socks, a handful of trinkets, a family picture (Ben and his wife, very young Aaron and Howard, and a teen-aged Rosaleen with flaming red hair), and at the very bottom of the box was the jacket. It was an old, very worn sport jacket. The cuffs were slightly frayed and the interior lining had been torn in several places and then sewn back together. The initials on the inside were K. C., suggesting that the coat might have been an heirloom that Ben had received from one of his familial predecessors.

Lena pulled it out of the box and held it up before her. Even though she was alone in the room, it felt like she was being watched. Goosebumps sprung up on her arms and neck and she looked around the room quickly, expecting to see…nothing. There was nothing. She took the jacket into the bathroom and tentatively put it on. It was too long in the sleeves. And in the shoulders. And in the length. But still, Lena thought it looked good on her. She spun around once, watching herself in the mirror; though she didn’t actively know it, her father had done this same thing when he was a child.

Lena smiled and thrust her hands into the pockets; the one on the left promptly tore through and her fingers landed on something rough and crinkly. She leapt in surprise and sadness; after all, she had promised Howard that she would be very careful with these items. At first, she thought it was an old batting that had been used as the interior, but as her fingers explored, she realized it wasn’t part of the jacket at all. She caught it between her fingers and pulled it out, part of it ripping; it was a piece of plain white paper that had yellowed with age, barely two inches long and half an inch wide. Lena turned the jacket and looked at the inside lining—it had ripped because someone had caught it in the stitching while doing a repair job.

She opened the note and the goose bumps broke out fresh. There was writing on it—and it was specifically addressed to her.

L.C., Corner Diary

Lena took the jacket off and looked around the room again, thoroughly creeped out, and not wanting to go any further with her project. Somehow, her grandfather had known that she would be wearing the jacket that he had died in. He had hidden the note in the perfect place, knowing that she would stick her hands in the pockets exactly as she had and that the left pocket would rip. He had seen it all before; he knew she would be here, right here, wearing his jacket and solving his mystery.

“Lena?”

Lena screamed and jumped. Her heart skipped several beats as she spun around; Ava was staring at her wide eyed and white faced. She had dropped the mug of tea that she was carrying, and though the liquid was splattered across the bathroom floor, the mug had survived intact after making a loud clank when it contacted the tile.

“Mom! Don’t do that! You scared me half to death!”

“I’m sorry,” Ava whispered, “I just wanted to…some of the ladies and I, we’re having tea in the greenhouse if you want to…join us. I’m sorry.”

Lena stared at her mother, and Ava stared back. “I’m, um…” Lena closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to shed the aura of the past that had possessed her before. She really didn’t want to go down to tea with the other ladies—it was likely she would spend the whole time justifying why she wasn’t married and pregnant yet, and why she didn’t feel bad about “how little she had accomplished” so far in life, but she really needed a break. “Sure. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.” Ava turned and walked away. It dawned on Lena that it might have looked a little strange that she had male paraphernalia spread across her bed and her mother had walked in on her trying on a sport jacket. She looked back at the note, determined to not get paranoid again. What was a corner diary?

She walked back out into the bedroom and saw with amazement that as she had sorted the contents of the box onto her cot, one of Ben’s diary’s had been shoved halfway off a corner of the bed. She leapt on it and pried it open, expecting to see another message from the past. She was quite disappointed to discover that the book was just an old diary; in fact, most of the passages concerned the wins and losses of major sports teams and Ben’s thoughts on the weather. Disappointed, Lena put the diary back on the bed and went down to have tea with her mother.

Lena hadn’t spoken to anyone on the kitchen staff since the incident with her proposal; she was sure, in fact, that Devin was avoiding her even though he kept leaving her warning notes at dinner. Marie had disappeared without warning or a final goodbye one Friday, but Howard assured Lena that she would be much better off with her new family even though it was likely they would never see her again. Griffin had stopped talking to her, and while Hesper was offering as much support as she could, Maren was starting to become a handful and was eating up a lot of her time.

Lena found herself spending so much time alone with Ben’s old things that she began to think of him as a sort of new friend. He hadn’t really said anything since that first pocket note, but Lena talked to him all the time. So frequently, in fact, that she was beginning to worry that it wasn’t the effects of the tracing process she was trying to use to find him. The meetings were drawing to a close; it was the day before her final proposal.

When there was a knock on Ava’s door one day, and she opened it to find Devin, she was greatly relieved.      

“Hey.” She said in an upbeat tone. She wanted to give him a hug, but Devin didn’t look to be in the mood.

“Mrs. Ralston sent me up to find you. She seems to think you needed to see me.” He didn’t look at her.

“Oh,” Lena was crestfallen that he was still angry. She hadn’t asked anyone to send him up. “You found me. Devin, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He sighed and looked up at her. “Don’t go on this thing, then. People talk, and a lot of them seem to think it’s a bad idea.”

Lena looked at Devin. She missed him. She missed his friendship, and she wanted to hear about the annual Potato Race and how many anchovies Tab had eaten or carried around in his pockets for a day. “I…can’t. It’s not final yet, but I don’t think I could back out at this point if I wanted to.”

Devin gave her a look that she couldn’t decipher. He looked both ways down the hall and then pushed his way into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He grabbed Lena’s shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

“Don’t go looking for this thing. It’s trouble, and human-borns shouldn’t go messing around with things that don’t concern them. This religion isn’t you, Lena, and we both know it. I don’t even know how you can be thinking about doing something so extravagant as launching a search for a mythological—thing—when people here aren’t even being treated like they’re people. I’ve never been good at this stuff, but I’ve got a bad feeling, too. People are acting funny, and please, I’m begging you, don’t go.”

Lena let Devin hug her for a few moments before she spoke. She wanted very much to act romantically and say she would stay for his sake, but she couldn’t. Finding the portal meant more to her than anything else in the world. “It does concern me. It concerns me a lot in ways I’m not even sure you know about, Dev.”

He pulled away slowly. He might have been on the brink of tears before, but he had moved on very suddenly to frustration. His voice was just a whisper. “Why? Because I’m just a stupid servant?”

“No, not like that. It’s just that you’re not familiar with the religion because—“

“I don’t care. Don’t go because it’s not safe. You’re a human-born, Lena, and if there’s one thing you should have figured out by now, it’s that people like us are expendable. And there’s other things, too…” He opened the door and stepped back out into the hall. He looked over his shoulder at her as he walked away down the hall. In a distant corner of her mind, Lena thought she heard him using thought-speak. 
I don’t want you to get hurt…Please, please don’t go…please don’t…