Deception of the Magician (Waldgrave Book 2) (29 page)

He licked at his lips and kept staring around the room with wild eyes, as if he expected people to emerge from the walls and attack them. “God, Lena, I’m so sorry about this…I’m going to find a way to get you out of here.”

She felt her mouth moving before she knew what she was saying. “Untie me.”

Devin’s face fell. He shook his head. “I can’t do that…”     

“Yes, you can!” Lena struggled to turn her tied hands toward Devin. She spoke as quickly and as quietly as she could. “Yes you can, Devin. Untie me and then we need to get out of here before—“

“No. Look, we’ve got a few days before…” Devin’s solemn voice trailed off. Lena turned back around to face him.

“Before what?” Lena felt the adrenaline and alarm rising in her veins. Whoever was in control of her fate already had a plan for her. 
“Before what, Devin?!”

He pursed his lips. “I can’t take you out of here now because there’s too many people around. But we’ll figure something out, okay?”

“What are you doing here? These people are murderers!”

He looked away and sighed deeply. “I’m here because Rollin has money, and it hasn’t been easy for us over the past few months, Lena. We’ve all been kicked out. Probably most of the human-born Silenti have been kicked out by their families, because people are getting paranoid. No one is taking in wanderers, and most of us can’t find regular jobs; their isn’t enough to go around. We’re homeless and hungry. Tab and I followed Rollin because he provides—he feeds us and keeps a roof over our heads. There’s nowhere else for us to go without starving, physically or mentally.”

He looked sheepishly back up at Lena. She looked around the room again. “Devin, please, you have to untie me right now, or—“

He shook his head. “No! It’s too dangerous! We need to wait until—“

Someone walked past the door and Devin clapped a hand over her mouth just as she was about to protest again; the sooner she escaped, the better. Her chances weren’t good to begin with, and she didn’t see them getting any better for waiting. Devin gave her a look, then threw the jacket back over her head and tied it back in place. Seconds later, she heard the door discretely open and close as he left. Once again, she was alone in the dark.

She didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Her life seemed to be filled with a terrible irony lately. She had started a search to locate the one object that had made her life a living nightmare of political conquest. Ava was killed just as Lena started to form a meaningful relationship with her. Griffin had undergone the transformation from a friend she couldn’t trust to a foe that she could, and just as she had finally decided she would never befriend him again, he was the one person she couldn’t stop worrying about. Why hadn’t she looked in his eyes? If she had looked, really looked, she would know if he was dead now. The eyes never lied.

She hadn’t looked because she didn’t want to know. Where there was doubt, there was hope.

The person who had been the greatest antagonist of her life—killing her father and bringing her to Waldgrave—was the one person she believed possible of saving her life. Howard was right; Griffin couldn’t be trusted with many things, but if he was still alive, Lena trusted that he wouldn’t hesitate to lay down his life to save hers. He had done it before, many times over.

And then there was Waldgrave. Just when she finally had the knowledge she needed to finally sever all ties with her castle prison, she found out that Master Daray—one of the main reasons for her captivity—held the key to her release. After all the trouble and angst he had caused and the lives he had carelessly expended, Lena hoped he was suffering as he died. She had to get back to Waldgrave to get away from it. And after years of not being able to escape from Waldgrave, now she desperately needed to escape back to it and she wasn’t able.

And with so many problems to occupy her mind, she had all the time in the world to consider them and no recourse to do anything about them. For several hours she hoped that Griffin was okay, Howard wasn’t too worried, and Daray was screaming in pain; finally, through the thick, black, oppressive screen of the jacket, she heard the door reopen.

“Stand up.” Whoever it was, another male voice, helped her to her feet and then led her out into the chill night air. They walked a short distance, and then she was inside again. The room was warm, and smelled faintly of warm bread and roast beef. Her hood was lifted, and she squinted against the bright light. The bonds tying her hands were suddenly released.

Lena looked around; the table that came standard with the hotel suite had been pulled out to the middle of the room, and it was covered in food. Rollin was seated on the opposite side of the table, looking slightly better fed but still as gangly as the last time she had seen him. Behind her, Lena heard the door close again.

Rollin gestured to a chair in front of Lena. “Sit.”

Lena continued to stare around. Rollin watched her for a moment, and then poured himself a glass of wine. “Suit yourself. It makes no difference to me.”

“What do you want from me?” Lena blurted out. She felt out of place amidst the smell of food and Rollin’s audacity.    

Rollin gazed at her, staring directly into her eyes for too long. “Well,” Rollin pushed his chair back and brought one foot up to rest on the edge of the table, “I don’t want anything now. You’ve had your chance, and now the decision is in somebody else’s hands.”

“No,” Lena shook her head, “I mean, what do you want from me? Why am I here 
now?
”

Holding the glass of wine precariously loose in his left hand, he raised his eyebrows and took a quick drink. “Oh. Well, I hope you haven’t misunderstood. You’re no different than any of the others to me. You vote and use your power how you choose, just like every other member of the Council. As is typically the case, you are a victim of your circumstances this time. You’re my assurance that people give me what I want.”

“And what do you want?” Lena instinctively grasped the back of the chair in front of her. Rollin set down his glass and stood up, standing with the table still between them.

“I want what you want. What everyone wants—the opportunity to be an equal. To be judged by my choices and abilities and not by my parentage.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Lena almost smiled. His motive was so simple. “I’m alive because you think we’re the same. We want the same thing.”

Rollin clasped his hands behind his back and frowned. “No. As I said, you’re here as collateral because your birthright matters to the people I’m dealing with. I only care about your choices and actions, those things within the realm of your control, and believe me when I say you’re just like the others. I would have no qualms dispatching you this minute if I didn’t need you for my negotiations.”

“My actions?” Lena’s eyes went wide. “I’m not the murderer here. You’ve killed several people—“

“It’s ironic that you choose to care about murder as a crime now. Because it was someone you cared about, I suppose? I’m told you didn’t care as much when Pyrallis Daray murdered Darius Corbett. You never cared to bring him to justice.” Rollin’s voice was incredibly even.

“How do you--?”

The girl.
 Rollin shook his head, frowning in antipathy. 
Marie. The one you haven’t given a second thought to since she was banished from Waldgrave, and the crime she reported was ignored.

Lena shook her head in shock. “She didn’t want to—“

“You act as fits the situation to your needs. I’m sure you feel like a victim now, but history won’t view you as a martyr any more than they do the last royalty of France. In fact, you should be grateful that I’ve allowed you the liberty of being collateral. It would expedite my cause to just kill you now.” He produced a handgun from behind a bowl of rolls on the table and held it indifferently in his left hand. “Killing you would be the end of the endless preoccupation with the false religion. It’s bloodier for everyone, because I’m sure there would be a backlash of violence directed at my kind, but in the long run it’s faster than diplomacy.”

Lena stared at the gun and swallowed. “So why don’t you?”

“Because if I did it that way, I would be killing you for your parentage.” Rollin’s ironic smirk was distastefully similar to Griffin’s. “As I’ve said, I don’t believe in killing people for their parentage.”

He set the gun back down and resumed his place in his chair; he once again gestured for her to sit. After another quick glance around the room, she sat. Rollin started doling out food onto both their plates. He was taking bizarrely too much care selecting her food. Very suddenly, she had a flashback to Mrs. Corbett and her picky eating habits.

Lena’s eyes went wide. “I don’t want any. Not from you.”

Rollin stopped and glanced up at her. “You would have fit right in with the family. You’re just as paranoid as she was.”    

Lena tried not to let her voice shake. “Just because she was paranoid doesn’t mean you weren’t trying to kill her.”

A wry smile crossed Rollin’s face. “Fair enough. But as I said, I have no desire to kill you now. Eat the food or not, I don’t care.”

She could only stare at her food while he ate—there was just too much of everything. Too much food, too much room, too many guns; Devin’s words of Rollin’s wealth suddenly came to the front of her mind.

“Where did all of this come from?”

Rollin tossed his blond hair back and gave her a quick smile as he chewed a piece of steak, but remained silent. He was very good at evading her questions; she still wasn’t quite clear why she was alive or why Rollin had elected to have her as a dinner guest. Deciding to change her tactics, Lena picked up a piece of bread and started to butter it.

“You think you’re smart, but it will never work. Kidnapping a Council Representative carries a heavy penalty, let alone what you did back in Texas. They’ll execute you when they catch you.”

“I’m sure they will.” Rollin took a sip of wine and then sighed. “But this is where we differ, Miss Lena Collins. None of what I’m doing is for me. I know I’ll never sit on the Council. Someone had to bring attention to our cause and suffering, and I’m that person. The person who may have to die. The person who gets to sit on the Council is someone else.”

“And you’re at peace with that?” Lena asked.

Rollin looked into her eyes. “I am.”

Lena leaned back in her chair, the piece of bread still poised in her hand. “I still don’t think it will work.”

Rollin raised his eyebrows as he took another drink from his glass; he looked amused, but his voice was still low and serious. “And what would you propose, then?”

Lena quickly took a bite of her bread; her mind was racing. It would either work, or it wouldn’t, but Rollin was acting new to wine—she could already sense him loosening up. She reminded herself that guns and alcohol weren’t a good combination, and tried to keep her voice light. “Oh, well…I don’t know. Knowing how the Council works, I’d say you’re screwed. I know I’ve made some bad decisions in the past, but I think a new alliance is in order here. I’ll give you Waldgrave as a good-faith gift. It was built with human-born slave labor, so it really should belong to your people.”

Rollin almost laughed. “That’s quite a gesture, but it’s not yours to give if I understand the situation correctly.”

Lena’s heart skipped a beat. She tried not to seem too anxious. “So Griffin dodged another bullet?”

Rollin stared at her for a moment, then gave her an impressed nod. “Clever. Very clever. ‘Dodged’ is not the word I would have used, but he was alive the last time I saw him. He got a phone call off before he passed out, so we’ll hope he’s okay. God knows who I’ll be dealing with if he dies. We can only hope whoever it is values you as much as he does, right?” Rollin raised his eyebrows and took another drink.

Lena took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. He really would kill her—she was certain of it. He was already anticipating not coming out of the ordeal alive. “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s very much like Daray in that respect, because he just won’t die. He’s here to make my life a living hell, and it would just be too easy for him to die. But really, if you have no intention of killing me, then I see no reason that we can’t be friends.”

Rollin almost rolled his eyes as he sat back in his chair and put a foot back up on the table. 
Befriending a murderer, the man who killed your mother no less, because you see a personal benefit in it. How very much like a Council Representative.

He didn’t seem to like her any more than he ever had, but at least he was willing to discuss it. Lena raised her glass. “Call it upholding the tradition. But as you said, you’re the one who dies. I’m making a deal with the one who gets to sit on the Council.”

“Oh?”

She leaned forward in her seat. “I’m about to do away with the false religion, and as you well know, we’re going to need fresh blood to keep the Council together. I want the names of everyone responsible for the deaths in Texas, and I want to know who’s funding you. Give me the names and I’ll give my Council seat to whoever you want to have it.”

Rollin thought for a moment. He watched her closely, and Lena had to wonder what she had said that he found so interesting. “The Council has to approve your choice, though. You can’t just give it away.”

Lena shrugged, thinking it through. “I can get the votes. Between Griffin and I, we could definitely get enough votes. Let me go tonight and he might be grateful enough to go along with it.”