Deception of the Magician (Waldgrave Book 2) (33 page)

“My wife named her Cheryl, after her grandmother.”

“Cheryl…”

She had arrived at Waldgrave just after Warren Astley had been turned out of the Council and the community; Daray must have been afraid that he was going to go looking for her. Since Astley was especially not to be around Lena, it was only too convenient to keep his lost daughter in the same house. The timeline, and the bigger picture, were slowly coming together in her mind. Kelsey Astley—Cheryl—was stolen just before Thomas was killed. The reason Kelsey had been stolen was to blackmail Astley for information on Aaron and Lena’s whereabouts.

Master Daray had been lining up to claim his granddaughter after the death of his grandson, when he would have the legal recourse to call for custody of her. Master Daray had been behind Thomas’s murder the whole time, even if he was using Darius Corbett to carry out his actions from behind Waldgrave’s walls.

Lena broke out in cold sweat. He had killed her grandfather, her father, and her brother. And then he had killed Master Corbett to get rid of the evidence when he threatened to out his secrets for stealing Griffin. She felt sick again--sick, and angry. Somewhere, he was dying—probably blissfully drugged out of his mind. But Lena still had questions, and she wasn’t going to let him take the answers with him.

She looked squarely at Doctor Evans. “Where is my grandfather?”

Evans checked Griffin’s pulse and his IV, and then made for the door and gestured for Lena to follow him. He brought her to a door a ways down the hall and went in with her; Lena had only been in the room one time before, after Astley had tried to strangle her. Despite the fact that he was dying, he actually looked much better than Griffin did. He wasn’t hooked up to anything, and he was actually looking quite comfortable in his bed with his cat curled up near the footboard. He was awake, labored in his breathing, and looking extremely tired. As Evans went over and started taking his pulse and asking him questions, Daray’s eyes darted over to Lena.

Did you find it?

Lena looked over at Evans. “Can I have some time alone with him?”

Evans looked up at her. “He doesn’t have much time…” And then he glanced very suddenly back at Daray, who must have communicated something private to him, and excused himself.

Lena walked over next to the bed. “Why did you tell Astley to kill me?”

Daray stared at her, but his eyes didn’t look exactly focused. He wasn’t surprised, and figuring that he was about to die, he thought it best to go out with a bang.

Because I needed to watch over you, and Howard never would have trusted Griffin unless he had proven himself under incredible fire. Consequentially, it also made him paranoid to let you leave the house, which was an unexpected perk. You’ve all played out my plans very well.

Lena bowed down over the bed, bracing herself on her fists as they clutched the bedspread. “I know all about your plans. I know everything, and I hope you’re suffering.”

For a moment, Pyrallis’s eyes went wide. 
I take it that you found it.

“You’re a wicked man, and I want you to know that no one here will mourn your passing.”

You’re the wicked one here, Eden…I had always hoped to see the promised lands before my passing, and now we both know that it will never happen, thanks to your stubborn attitude.

Lena straightened back up, still feeling sick to her stomach. “You’ve ruined a lot of lives.”

I have no regrets.

She shook her head. “I want you to know I’m never having children.”

Daray only stared at her, his eyes still glistening with the destiny that he had evaded for so long. He coughed slow and deep, and turned away.

“I win, and there’s nothing you can do about that. This religion dies with you. But there’s one thing I have to ask you, to save the future of this poor, backwards society because there’s no use fighting over it anymore.” Lena felt her voice shaking in anger. “I want to know who stole it from you.”

He turned his head slowly back to face her. He was suddenly grimacing and wracked with a fit of coughing so severe that it looked like he was going to suffocate as he gasped for breath, and she didn’t care. But then, as he looked up into her eyes for the last time, she heard it—he was laughing. He reached out and grabbed her shoulder to pull her down towards him.

His lips were smattered with the phlegm that he had just coughed up, and his voice was so hoarse that he was barely audible. In a rank breath, he whispered in her ear, “I was a better Daray than you’ll ever be!”

And then he went into a fit of convulsions; the cat leapt up and off the bed, and then watched with interest from mere feet away. Daray’s whole body went rigid and shook; his eyes looked as though they were going to pop out of their sockets, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth as his head pitched sideways. Still caught in his grasp, Lena was pulled down so that her head was pressed to his chest, and she heard his heart go from a regular beat to a frantic, erratic pounding, like a small animal had been trapped in his ribcage and was fighting to get out. He finally went lax, and Lena pulled herself free and backed away into a corner of the room.

When she finally got up the nerve to look back at the bed, she was horrified to see that his eyes were still wide open and looking in her direction; for the first time, they didn’t contain the look of death that had resided there for so long. Master Pyrallis Daray was dead; he had taken the secret of the portal with him.

Lena got up and half ran from the room like a scared child, afraid that the old man would somehow resurrect himself and come after her. Once in the hall, she closed her eyes and took a moment to breath and steady her pulse. The noise of a shattering glass and water splattering on the hardwood floor broke her concentration, and she opened her eyes toward the sound. Howard was standing just down the hall, his hand still poised to hold the cup of water.

He had a look of utter disbelief on his face. “He’s…gone, then?”

Lena nodded in a manner that might have been mistaken for serenity if one did not know everything that she had gone through; then she closed her eyes again.

She was the last Daray. Her only relation in the world standing feet away. The last twenty-four hours had been quite a day, and while she finally felt compelled to lock herself in her bedroom so that nothing else could happen, she knew there was one last thing she really needed to do. She walked down the hall and gave Howard a brief hug before continuing on to Griffin’s room.

Doctor Evans had resumed his place beside the bed, but excused himself when Lena entered the room to meet her by the door. From beneath wrinkled, sagging brows, he looked into her eyes and she gave him a curt nod. He left the room as Lena walked over to the bedside. Griffin’s eyes were open and dilated; they wandered away from the ceiling and onto Lena’s face when she got close enough.

“Griffin, I’m so sorry…” She whispered.

What little expression he had mustered didn’t change. 
I’ll be okay, it doesn’t hurt. It didn’t hit anything—

She tried to keep her voice as soft as she could, but she could hear herself quavering. He would want to know immediately, but it wasn’t fair that he had to find out like this. “Um, no…Griffin, I mean, I’m sorry. Um, Master Daray just…he’s gone, Griffin. He just died.”

His unfocused gaze returned to the ceiling. 
What?

“He’s gone, Griffin. I thought you would want to know before everyone else does.” Lena took a deep breath and exhaled it sharply. “You’re in charge now. Waldgrave belongs to you. He died.”

They were both quiet for several long minutes; Griffin finally looked back at her.

You shouldn’t be here.

Lena reached out and touched his hand very gently, careful not to move his arm. There was a pounding in her head and an aching in her throat. “I’ll come up and see you tomorrow, then, okay? And thank you…thank you for everything, Griffin.”

She turned to leave. When she opened the bedroom door, Daray’s cat ran in and past her. She turned in time to see him jump up and curl into a ball near the foot of the bed; Griffin didn’t even notice. The cat was looking at Lena quizzically, as though questioning why she was there—or if she even was there to begin with; it was, perhaps, the friendliest sentiment it had ever shown her.

*****

Lena hardly slept that night. She had somehow found her way back to her room, and then collapsed onto the bed. She couldn’t bring herself to turn off the lights, and stared around the room for hours, afraid that Rollin was coming for her. She had no delusions where he was concerned—they were not done with each other. He had underestimated her once, and he wasn’t going to do it again. And Lena wasn’t going to make his mistake; she wouldn’t be underestimating him. It took hours for her to wear herself out enough to subdue the panic and adrenaline in her veins, and she finally passed out from exhaustion just after dawn.

Mrs. Ralston opened the door as quietly as she could around ten that morning, intent that she would not wake Lena up if she was still sleeping. Lena sat bolt upright at the sound of the clicking door latch and leapt to her feet.

Mrs. Ralston was wearing a startled expression. “Oh, I’m sorry—you need to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She went to close the door again, but Lena stopped her. “I’m not tired. I’m not going to sleep again. It’s okay.”

Very hesitantly, Mrs. Ralston’s face appeared again, topped with her signature hair bun. “Would you like something to eat?”

Lena didn’t even need to think. She settled into a sitting position next to the bed. “No. I’m not hungry.”

“Is there anything I can get you? Anyone you want to talk to?”

Lena laid her head against the side of the top mattress. “I don’t think so…”

Mrs. Ralston straightened up and came fully into the room. “Howard would like to spend some time with you, if you’re feeling well enough. There are some other members of the Council, too, who would like to take your story for the record—but don’t worry about that now. It can all wait for you, until you’re ready.”

She buried her face into the mattress for a moment. How her head hurt today…but she wasn’t going back to sleep. She didn’t know what she was going to tell the Council, either; telling them the truth about Ben Collin’s murder, and the possibilities of where the portal could be, was a risk she wasn’t sure she was willing to take. She got to her feet. “Is Griffin awake? Is he okay since…?”

But Mrs. Ralston was giving her a confused look. She didn’t know yet; Howard had probably made a judgment call with the doctor to wait until Griffin was stronger. There was too much risk of a power struggle if Griffin wasn’t looking healthy and up to the challenge at the time of his appointment as the head of the single most powerful Silenti house in the world.

“Yes, I’d like to talk to Howard.”

Mrs. Ralston nodded uncertainly, looking at Lena like she thought she was suffering from exhaustion, and left. Lena sank back onto the floor and leaned against her nightstand. Just moments later, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in!” She called.

Howard opened the door and stuck his head in. “Lena?”

When he saw her on the floor, he came in, shut the door behind him, and made his way to where Lena was sitting. He sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, and then slid off onto the floor to sit next to his niece. He waited several minutes for her to start talking, but she never did.

“So…” He started. Lena cringed, she wasn’t okay, and she wasn’t going to be okay any time soon. She didn’t want to have to discuss it anymore. But what Howard asked surprised her. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Lena looked over at him. His face was relieved, but still sad. His question hadn’t been sarcastic or self-serving; he was asking out of genuine concern and curiosity. And when it came down to it, she hadn’t. The mission hadn’t made her life any easier; she wasn’t any more trusted by her fellow Council members. She wasn’t happier, or freer, or any closer to having the life that she wanted.

“No.” She said quietly.

Howard paused. “What did you find?”

Lena thought. The only thing she had really found that she could tell Howard was that Pyrallis Daray had murdered Ben Collins; everything else was gone and away. She had found out that Warren Astley had been a close friend of her father, and that he had a daughter, living at Waldgrave, that he had never met but still cared for dearly. Somehow, she would clear his name of the crimes he had been convicted for, but she didn’t see how she could do it; telling Astley’s story meant revealing the conspiracy to kill her brother and father, plunging the Daray and Corbett households, what little was left of them, into investigation. She still wasn’t sure if she was going to tell them about Pyrallis Daray and how he’d had the portal all along—or at least until someone else had taken it from him; the panic that would surely ensue would put a halo of suspicion on the fact that Lena still didn’t know where it was. With Griffin slowly grappling his way back into the world of the living, and Lena not quite sure if she was there herself, there was no way they would be able to defend themselves against the litany of questions, accusations, and restrictions they were about to be slapped with.

She looked back at Howard; he looked so sad, and yet so happy that she was back. He had lived at Waldgrave on and off his whole life, watching his father take care of the Darays and all their problems; a fate he was ultimately determined to repeat. How was she supposed to tell him that Pyrallis Daray, the man he and his father had dedicated their lives to protecting from the paranoia, sometimes justified, of every other Silenti in the community, had killed his father? And now the murderer was dead. He had gotten away with it. He had lived with Howard all those years, after killing Thomas, Aaron, Ben, and probably Ben’s wife as well—he had killed everyone but Lena and Howard. And then he had lived with them; he had eaten meals with them, gone shopping with them, slept under the same roof, and not once—
once
—had he ever expressed any shred of guilt or regret. He was truly an evil man.

Looking at Howard, and his sad eyes, Lena knew that she couldn’t let the legacy live on. It was time for Pyrallis to die and be forgotten; he wasn’t going to hurt her family any more. “It was a burglar, Howard. Someone broke into his room that night and shot him in his sleep. And…” She paused, not sure if she was really ready to do what she was doing, but if she didn’t, there would always be questions. Pyrallis had died and taken the portal with him. He died with his secrets and deceptions, knowing that Lena never intended to put another Daray on the planet. “And, then I saw that it wasn’t the portal. The guy, he walked over to it and he used some kind of chisel thing to pry it open…I think it was part of a lock-picking kit. He got really rough with it, but it finally opened, and it was filled with junk, Howard. Just junk. I think it was bonded shut by the coral that grew all over it in the water.”

She looked hesitantly back over at Howard, who was looking off into a corner of the room. He nodded slightly. “It wasn’t about all this at all…” He smiled sadly. “He would have liked that. He was a fan of irony.”

They sat there together for a while afterwards before Howard finally got to his feet. He held out his hand to her. “Come down to lunch with me?”

Lena took his hand. She sat down at the table with him, but didn’t eat. After lunch was over, she excused herself to go up and see Griffin. The present Council Representatives objected to this, but Lena informed them that unless they were willing to physically stop her, there wasn’t much they could do about it. She just wanted to see how he was doing, as he was the only reason she had survived the trip to Ecuador and back. He was alone in his room this time, and wide awake. Doctor Evans had removed the breathing tube that had previously been shoved down his throat, and the cat was stretched out next to his side. He was even angled to be sitting up a little.

When he saw Lena, he was confused; then, his face fell. His voice was hoarse. “It wasn’t a dream, then…”

Lena came in and sat down on the side of his bed. “No, it wasn’t. I’m so sorry, Griffin.”

Griffin nodded slightly and looked down at the oversized cat at his side. 
Did you get to talk to him first, about—

“Before I tell you that, there’s something else that I need to tell you. Um, I never told you what I saw, back in that room. If anyone asks, you don’t know. You don’t know what happened to Ben Collins, or the portal, and you just made a stupid call trying to bring me back here because you weren’t sleeping and you lost a lot of blood from that bullet wound. The first bullet wound.” Lena closed her eyes and crinkled her brow. “And about that. I can’t tell you how completely grateful I am—“     

You should be. But did you get to talk to him about it before he… expired?

Lena glanced back at him. He was still staring at the cat. “Um, well…yes. Yes, we talked about it. He wouldn’t tell me, I think because he’d rather take it with him than give it to the New Faith.”

Griffin closed his eyes. At first she thought he was angry, but then he reached out and grabbed her hand. And then he was just quiet; neither of them had anything to say. He didn’t bother to ask about Rollin; Lena wondered if he blamed himself for her capture. Doctor Evans eventually came in to check on Griffin, and she went back downstairs.

She found the necessary Council Representatives and asked them to the library, where she gave a detailed account of how the object they had fought so desperately to track down had never been the portal to begin with, how she had not recognized Ben’s killer, and how she suspected him to be nothing more than a common human criminal.

At this point, Master Barton stopped her. “You don’t believe it was the portal?”

Lena leveled her gaze on him. “I know it wasn’t the portal. It was Silenti, and very old, which may account for my mother being the only one able to read the markings, but it wasn’t the portal. It was just a box filled with clay pots, books, and sea water. I’m afraid it was never the portal to begin with.”

He stared at her for what felt like an eternity. “Then…all of this time, all of the fighting—“

“Was for nothing. Yes.” Lena looked down at her hands. “It’s just as legendary as always. No one alive has seen it, and from my understanding, no one has since the early twentieth century. It’s long gone.”

A silence came over the room as everyone exchanged significant looks.

And then they reached the part that began with her in a car trunk and ended with the lacerations on her palms. She stuttered the whole way through, and couldn’t maintain eye contact. She felt her body involuntarily tensing up.

“I…I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m quite ready to be doing this.”

The man writing the transcript closed his notebook and looked at her over his glasses. “We could take a break, if…”

“No.” Lena said firmly. She started again, and this time made it all the way through. She asked why they hadn’t come to get her when they found out that Rollin and his gang were squatting at the motel; Howard explained that even though human-borns were transparent, it didn’t make them any less dangerous. Rollin had guns, soldiers, and was sitting in a precariously public area. She asked why he hadn’t guarded her better, and Master Perry offered the explanation that human-borns were too empathetic; stationing anyone too close to an intended victim for too long ran the risk that the guard would take pity on the plight of the captured. Rollin was brilliant and cruel, but it wasn’t the nature of human-borns to torture or threaten; they were too inept as Silenti to shut out the emotions of others, and they felt the terror and pain as clearly as the sufferer.

When she was done, Lena went back to her room and called Hesper. The conversation wasn’t long, and it wasn’t the same. Greg was doing much better; Lena wasn’t sure when she would be able to see her friend again, but promised she would as soon as the Council permitted. She hung up not feeling much better than she had before; her life was about to get difficult. The Council was fickle, and she hadn’t delivered on her promise with the portal. With Daray dead, there was no promise that anyone would actually follow Griffin in his stead; and Lena had only begun dealing with her demons surrounding her grandfather.

Two weeks later, Griffin said he was feeling well enough to be up and around; the attending Council members stayed on pending the resolution of the situation with Rollin and his group of rogue human-borns. Everyone started wearing holstered guns around the house. The day that Lena had walked downstairs for breakfast and found a half dozen automatic handguns removed from belts and laid on the table, she had raised an eyebrow at Howard.

“Okay…” She said, causing several older men to look up at her curiously. “Seriously?”

Howard waved her off. 
The guns have always been here. People usually don’t carry them around like this, that’s all. The human-borns have been moving around the area, and no one wants to get caught unprepared.

“This is a good idea?” Lena took a seat next to her uncle. “With the arguments we typically have around her?”

Howard shrugged. 
The human-borns will have guns, Lena. As we previously discussed, they need to maintain some distance from their victims, and guns are both ranged and quick. We have to stay prepared.

Since many of the Representatives believed that the portal was long lost, they had been more lenient toward the restrictions laid down for Lena. She had enjoyed going where she wanted to in the house, spending much more time with Griffin as he finished getting Daray’s affairs in order, and sorting through the numerous volumes of personal papers he had stashed in the multiple libraries and offices around Waldgrave. Despite their best efforts, they couldn’t find any of his personal diaries; Griffin knew he had kept them, and was hopeful that they might contain the last known whereabouts of the portal.