Finn Fancy Necromancy (45 page)

“Do you like the accommodations? The ARC occasionally uses this place to hold trade negotiations with some of the ocean feybloods. The rest of the time, I find it a safe, quiet place to think.”

“What do you want, Grayson?” I plopped Orion on the couch. He moaned and shifted into a less painful position, then promptly passed out.

“Oh, we have much to talk about, I think.” Grayson sat in one of the brown chairs.

I crossed my arms, the revolver resting in the crook of my elbow. “Why don't we skip to whatever this offer of yours is?”

“I don't think so. Once the offer's made, I doubt very much you'll desire to sit around talking with me. And I wish very much to talk with you now that the need for masks is gone. So we shall have our chat and deal with unpleasant offers after, yes?” He waved at the chair across from him.

I remained standing and cocked the pistol.

Grayson sighed. “As you wish. I have to say, that was quite the move, blowing up Felicity's body. I expected you to hide it, or just run, but an explosion? You've got a touch of your father's flare for the crazy.” He chuckled.

“Yeah. I'm the crazy one. So what's your offer? What do you want in exchange for not murdering innocent people?”

“Come now, surely that's not the question you really want to ask me? The one that's burning inside of you?”

“Right now? Yeah, it pretty much is.”

“Well, it's not time for that question.” He nodded at a clock on the wall. “We have at least ten minutes before the water reaches the catwalk and it's sink or swim time for your companions. Until then, why don't we play a game of twenty questions. You used to like that game, I believe.”

“How about we don't and you just tell me what you want?”

“What I want is for you to understand the choice you must make.”

“So just tell me whatever it is you think I need to understand, and I'll make the choice.”

Grayson slapped the chair arm and shouted, “Enough! You can do as I ask, or you can let your friends die. I will not debate this matter further.”

I looked at the clock. Another minute ticking away. “Fine. What am I supposed to be guessing with my twenty questions?”

“Why.”

“Because I need to start somewhere. I can't just ask if it's bigger than a breadbox.”

“No, I mean you must figure out why.”

“Why what?”

“Figure it out.”

“Aaughh!”
I shouted at the ceiling. This was insane! “Look, I understand all about your little cult and its holy crusade, okay? Magus Verona told me. You're seeking some super power to win the war and rule the world, cue evil laugh. Great. I get it. But if you're going to try to convince me you're doing the right thing, forget it. You can't kill my friends and family and expect me to drink your Kool-Aid.”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Finn. I know you're familiar with this concept. If we let the Fey or feybloods conquer us and take control of all magic, how many of your friends and family do you imagine would survive? Surely you don't want that?”

“What do you care what I want? Why the recruitment effort? Are you really that desperate for approval?”

Grayson sighed through his nose. “You haven't changed at all.”

“Sure I have. I've got these killer abs now thanks to the changeling. Wanna see?”

“I'd hoped you of all people would appreciate what I've done, and appreciate your own role in it. As much as Orion has served me well, you were the closest to a son I ever had.”

“Okay, now you're just being a freak,” I said.

Grayson slapped the chair arm again. “You will show me respect!” he shouted.

Realization crept over me then like a frozen blanket of human skin.

“No. You—no. How? What have you done?”

A satisfied smile oozed across his face. “So you finally figured it out.”

“Immortality,” I said. “You always said it was their biggest advantage. Grandfather.”

Grayson—Grandfather—gave a single nod of acknowledgment. “They have that advantage still. This,” he waved at himself, “is far from a perfect solution. There are very few who could achieve it, and fewer still willing to do all it requires. But it is a start, and it allows me to continue seeking a true solution.”

I paced the room. The seconds ticked by, the waters rose in the other room.

“That's why you erased my memory about Talking to warded spirits. You didn't want me talking to Verona because you were afraid she knew, that she might tell me.”

“Ah, so that's why you broke into the EMP.” He chuckled. “Actually, I hadn't even considered Katie. I blocked your memory for fear you would summon your mother's true spirit.”

“You're kidding me.” What had Father said when I begged him to tell me who attacked Felicity?
Go ask your mother. She knows everything about everything …

I felt like an idiot.

And an asshole. I'd found some answers with Verona, yes. But maybe, if Zeke had not been depleted from that break-in, he would have survived going berserk on Orion. And I would remember Dawn.

Orion groaned in his sleep, and more pieces fell into place.

“You're Orion's father.”

“Yes.”

“So you—” I felt sick. My grandfather had slept with Heather. He'd done so as Grayson, but that didn't make me feel any better. “Why Heather?”

“She came to me, actually, when I was my old self. I'd gone to her parents, made them an offer for their help in seeking an alchemical solution to death. But they were too far gone, using their own potions. The next day, Heather came to me and offered her services in exchange for a solution to her own problems.” He grinned. “Her services as an alchemist, that is. The other came later, after my rebirth. Sad, I suppose, that she came to me hoping to escape her parent's fate, and yet now she makes mana drugs for me. But for a while, I could almost see why you chased after her.”

I gritted my teeth against the huge Fuck You that struggled to escape. Instead, I said, “And Felicity?” It had been difficult to believe he'd been Felicity's lover. Now I knew he'd continued to be after his death, as Grayson. “You used her to create and control Mother's ghost and possess Father through the garden. But why?”

“Actually, that was a happy accident. I was experimenting with many different solutions to the problem of death, in every branch of magic and combinations of them. I thought Felicity's ability to manipulate the connection between plants and spirit held promise, that it might be combined with necromancy somehow. Imagine anchoring your life energy to a tree that lives hundreds of years. But it proved to be a dead end.”

“So you had her frame me. And then you killed her.”

“As I said, she proved to be a dead end. Yet, she almost proved useful still in the end. I made sure word of your return reached her, knowing her guilt would bring her out of hiding to warn you about me, to ask your forgiveness. And when our attack on the Other Realm failed to trap you there, she made the perfect backup plan. Well, until you blew her up. What a waste.”

I shook my head. “You really are a heartless bastard.”

“Wars are not won by the soft hearted.”

“Sounds like an excuse to be an asshole and not apologize for it.”

“Watch it, Finn. I will only tolerate so much disrespect. Especially after I've treated you so well.”

“Yeah, why
is
that? Why are you so determined to send me back into exile? Why were your lackeys told not to harm me? It's not to make a bomb of me, is it?”

“And now we get to the why,” Grandfather said.

And even as he said it, I knew the answer. All those times I'd felt his presence in the Other Realm had not been my imagination, or a friendly visit, or an attempt to blow me up. But it had given him something, just as Verona's daughter had given her the power to seal the breach. “You need me there. Somehow, your immortality depends on me being in the Other Realm.”

“Depends? No. But the cost of maintaining it without your help is—well, let's just say I must drain a lot of bodies to get the same amount of magic I can tap through our bond while you're in exile.”

“Our
bond
?” Gods. How much of me truly was my grandfather? His teachings, his influence—

“Yes, our bond—our blood, our Talker gift, our spiritual resonance—they allow me to … tunnel past the barrier between our realms as long as you are there.”

I began pacing, my irritation mounting. “You do nothing but use people! Me, Felicity—Grayson. How did he feel about you taking his body?”

“James believed in the cause. And a soldier knows they may have to lay down their life for their cause.”

“But he wasn't a soldier. You practically raised him. He was like a grandson to you!”

“Actually, James too was my son. A bastard, but mine. And until a child reaches adulthood, they are little more than parrots, repeating back what they've been told to believe by adults, by their friends, by television. Every parent seeks to mold their children in their image, views their children as their immortality. I just took a more literal approach.”

I bit back my response and turned away sharply, hiding the horror and disgust on my face.

This was the point in the movie where the idiot says go to hell and gets shot, or tells the bad guy he's going to tell the press everything and steps into the elevator with the trap door. I eyed the clock. I had to play this smart, be the clever hero, not the idiot idealist. I'd criticized Verona's choice of not playing along with Grandfather enough to at least learn his plans. I'd be a fool to make the same mistake.

But Grandfather was insane. He'd killed his own son! How could I hope to reason with him? How could I expect him to spare anyone that wasn't important to his cause?

I couldn't. Not unless it gained him something. Not unless it gained him me.

“Okay,” I said, taking a calming breath, and turned back to face him. “Okay. I get that you want to protect arcana from the Fey and feybloods. After twenty-five years of them feeding off me, believe me, I get it. But all I've seen you do is use feybloods to kill arcana.”

“And you used the Króls to fight my feybloods, or did they just happen to arrive by coincidence?”

“That's not the same.”

“Of course it is. If I need to risk someone on a menial job, why risk my own soldiers before the war? Why not risk my enemy's soldiers?”

“Huh.” I uncocked the gun, lowered it to my side. “I guess I can see that. And you really believe this war is coming soon?”

“You spent years in the Other Realm, Finn. You know how inhuman those beings are. Do you really think they're not plotting against us? Do you really think the changelings are anything but scouts for their coming attack? And the ARC lets them continue with that ridiculous ‘exchange program'! While I'm trying to perfect immortality, I guarantee the Fey are seeking ways to use magic as we do, or new ways to defend against it.”

Actually, I knew that was true, didn't I? What else could my protective Pac-Man tattoo be?

Grandfather must have seen the flicker of doubt on my face, because he leaned forward, pushed his point. “Here's my offer, Finn. Join our cause, the cause of protecting your family and friends, of protecting all arcana from the growing Fey threat. Do so, and I shall spare the lives of these girls, and everyone in the water room.”

This was it. We were getting down to it, the moment of truth.

“If you need me in exile, what good will joining you do?”

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that, unless you agree to join me.”

I paced for several heartbeats. “If you're really willing to let everyone live, then I guess I have no real reason to oppose you. What you said about the Fey … you're right. I can't deny what I've seen. And more than anything, you're my grandfather. It's hard to remember that when you look so different, but I owe you my loyalty, and my trust, don't I? So … yes, I'll join you. I just wish you'd come openly to me in the first place.”

Grandfather smiled as I spoke. “Good. I hope you'll understand if I ask for a little proof, however.”

Damn. “Like what?”

“Kill Samantha.”

“Sammy? How could you ask that? She's my sister! Your granddaughter.”

“Therefore a fitting proof of conviction for both of us. And an acceptable loss. She's little more than a mundy, Finn, worse even, since her body rejects magic, rejects the very thing that makes us special. And clearly, she won't be continuing the family line with her habits.”

“Surely there's got to be some way to prove myself without having to kill my own sister!”

“I'm surprised, Finn. She never seemed to care much about anything, not you, not our family, not even life as far as I could tell. And if you kill her with your gift, the resonance will prove your guilt beyond any doubt. It will guarantee your exile for life.”

“We don't need that. Can't you just arrange my exile, especially with the ARC already after me? Between Felicity, the EMP—”

“Your destruction of Felicity's body made tracing her death to you problematic. Breaking into the EMP isn't worthy of exile. And while there are many on the ARC who support me in secret, I don't have the open influence to simply send whomever I like into the Other Realm.”

“But—”

“Come now, surely you can see the need for this. One mundy out of billions, to save all arcana. One rather unpleasant sister to save your loving brother and niece, and all those friends who fought for you.”

I felt Zeke's baton, hard and cold against my wrist. I wanted so badly to let it drop into my hand and swing it at Grayson's head. Swing it at my grandfather. But he controlled the exits and the water. And he had decades of experience over me as a necromancer. He could rip my soul from me in the time it took me to extend the baton and swing.