The Inquisitor's Mark (11 page)

Jax picked up a controller. “Sure.”

OH HIS WAY HOME
from Bradley Prep, Dorian's phone chirped out a text notification.

He sucked in his breath and typed a response.

He broke into a run. Dad meeting Dr. Morder and Lesley in a panic could only mean one thing: more experiments. And nothing upset Dorian more than experiments that involved his sister weeping in the brownie tunnel while his father yelled at her. Even worse was when Dad enlisted Dorian as an
accomplice—forcing him to go in and “help” her.

“Help her
out
?” Dorian had asked the first time.

“Help her learn to use the magic.” Dad's face had been livid. “The brownie tunnels are incredibly charged with magic. It has to affect her. It
has
to!”

“She's scared, Dad.”

“She's a
coward
. Get in there and stop her crying!”

Dorian had found his sister a few feet inside the tunnel, huddled in a ball, sheltering her head with her arms—because, he learned later, she thought the walls were collapsing in on her. Although Dorian could see her perfectly—and could see through the walls of the tunnel to the outside physical space—Lesley was in utter darkness. His sister was an Ambrose, and thanks to the spell Dr. Morder had discovered, she could enter the brownie tunnel, but she didn't have enough magic to do anything else.

That didn't stop Dad from attempting to “cure” Lesley through prolonged exposure to the time tunnel. Handcuffing her and tethering her over to the eighth day hadn't caused her to develop any talent, but Dad had high hopes for this new procedure. He kept at it for months, and eventually Lesley started having night terrors, complete with ear-piercing screams and random sleepwalking.

Because her nightmares were usually on Wednesday nights, Dad concluded Lesley was close to transitioning after all. He pushed her harder. Once he even left her in the time tunnel for five hours straight. Dorian was sure she'd suffered
through every minute of those hours. Lesley didn't know how to make the tunnels shift her in time to end the torment, although Dad thought she might learn if provoked enough. Instead, she came out catatonic with fear. Mom had sedated her and put her to bed. That had been the Wednesday night before the eighth day when Dorian stood on the street with his clan watching the sky crack open—the night they feared the Eighth-Day Spell had been broken and the world was ending.

But Thursday arrived after all, and when Dorian and his parents returned to their apartment, they found Lesley out of bed and standing in the living room in her nightdress, drenched with sweat, trembling violently with her eyes wide open but unaware of where she was. After that, Mom begged Dad to leave her alone, and until today, he had. The nightmares hadn't gone completely away—there'd been another one last week, in fact—but Dorian had hoped that Dad had given up tormenting her.

“Finals go well?” the doorman asked Dorian, letting him into the elevator when he got home.

“I think so.” Dorian would've chosen the floor he wanted, but the doorman leaned in to press the button for him. Courtesy—or control? Dorian was never sure. “I want three,” he said quickly. “I'm visiting Gran and Gramps.”

When the elevator stopped on the third floor, Dorian got off, passed his grandparents' door, and pushed straight into a wall.

Dorian had discovered he could enter the brownie holes by accident last fall when he'd caught a glimpse of Dr. Morder emerging from a solid wall just beyond his grandparents' apartment. At the time, Dorian hadn't understood why humans could suddenly use brownie holes, but he had started exploring that very day. When Dad had finally let him in on the secret, Dorian had been navigating the tunnels for weeks without anyone knowing.

The one on the third floor was mostly a dead end and, as far as Dorian could tell, served the sole purpose of letting Dr. Morder peek inside the apartment of a clanswoman he'd once proposed marriage to who'd turned him down.
Stalk much
?

But brownies burrowed vertically too, and this tunnel had a chute that connected to the basement. Sliding down was kind of like being swallowed. It wasn't pleasant, but when Dorian needed to get to the basement undetected, this was how he did it. The invisible walls of the tunnel hugged his body and slowed his fall until he plopped out at the bottom.

It usually frustrated Dorian that the tunnel didn't extend farther into the basement, because there were some places he couldn't explore. Brownies were able to make the tunnels go
where
they wanted
when
they wanted. Dorian was getting good at shifting in time, but still hadn't figured out how to shift his location. Today, however, it was enough that he could follow the tunnel to the lab. If Dad and Dr. Morder were down here, that was where they'd be.

When he arrived, the lab appeared to be empty. The tunnel existed outside of time, according to Dr. Morder, and events happening in real time could not be observed from inside it. But Dorian had learned a few tricks. Sitting on the floor of the tunnel, he felt for the opening and pried it apart with his fingers like it was a hole in a sack. An eye peering out of the wall might be spotted, but an ear was just a dark hole if one was very careful.

“. . . how they got out,” his father was saying.

“I assume they were released,” Dr. Morder replied in a dry voice.

“By whom?”

“By their own kind.”

“You can't tell me they organized a breakout. They're animals!”

Dorian recognized the frustration in his father's voice, even though he was trying to hide his temper in front of Luis Morder, scientist and spell caster for the Dulac clan.

The Morders were descended from Sir Mordred, disgraced knight of the Round Table and supposed killer of King Arthur. Dorian didn't know if that legend was true, but he did know Mordred's descendants had mixed their line with Kin, who were more gifted in magic than other races. Dorian could tell just by looking at Dr. Morder's pale skin and startling blue eyes that he had Kin ancestors. It creeped Dorian out, but it had also enhanced the Morder family's natural talent. Most of the prominent Transitioner clans included vassals with some
type of spell-casting talent, but Luis Morder was the only person Dorian had ever heard of who could combine science and magic so well.

“Have you done anything with the blood I brought you?” Dorian's father asked.

“It's hard to work with blood that disappears for seven days at a time.”

“What? The brat
bit
me while I was collecting those samples! Don't tell me it was for nothing! Are you sure the test tubes didn't get mixed up?” Dorian heard the sound of glass rattling and knew his father was rummaging through the refrigerated cases.

“All my samples are carefully labeled,” Morder said levelly. “The ones in that case are for the next batch of families to be admitted to the tunnels.” The refrigerator door thumped closed. “What did you expect, Finn? We're talking about Emrys blood. It reinforces the existence of the Eighth-Day Spell.”

“But if it can't be used in the seven-day timeline, it won't be any help to us! I expected that we'd be able to store it, use it indefinitely . . .
afterward
. . . .”

Afterward
? Dorian frowned.
After
what?
And where did they get Emrys blood
?

“I need the magic in that blood, Luis.” Dad's voice was strained. “The brownie tunnels are not a solution for Lesley. I accept that. She can't navigate them, and they haven't activated any latent talent in her. This blood is pretty much the last option we have for curing her condition.”

“Patience, Finn. Research can't be rushed. You've seen that with the time tunnels. If we'd given up at the first obstacle, we wouldn't have what we have now.”

What do we have now
? Dorian wondered. Dr. Morder had discovered a spell that granted human families access to the brownie holes when blood from that family was sent through the tunnels. For over a year, Morder had been capturing brownies and releasing them a few at a time with test tubes of spelled blood strapped to their bodies. This gave select family bloodlines a key to the time tunnels. The Dulacs. The Ambroses. The Ganners and other families who provided security for the clan. Morder himself.

But what they planned to do with the tunnels remained a mystery to Dorian.
Besides stalking Dr. Morder's ex-girlfriend and spying on my dad, what good are they
?

“Give me time to experiment with the Emrys blood, and I'll see what I can do for your daughter,” Morder said. “There are a lot of options to explore—scientific and magical. I don't believe anyone's ever studied the effect Kin blood has on the talent of Transitioners—let alone blood of the Emrys family. It will be groundbreaking research.”

“We don't have much time, Luis. Ursula will to want to push forward with the final stage of our plan as soon as Jax brings us the other Emrys girl.”

Dorian sucked in his breath. The
other
Emrys girl? Meaning they already had one? Dorian had forgotten there were two, and he would never have guessed one of them
was a prisoner here.
The brat bit me
, his father had said.

“Ursula's manipulated your nephew into cooperating, then?” Morder asked.

“No, I asked her to let me work on him. I want to bring him to the clan without coercion.”

“I'm surprised she agreed to wait,” said Dr. Morder. “Given the circumstances.”

“Tell me about it. And it's worse than you think, because our search in Wales turned up nothing. We think they left the country immediately.”

“You think they will come here?”

“It hardly matters where they go. We'll see the effects of their freedom within a few weeks, even with them restricted to one day out of eight. Things will get ugly fast, and the two Emrys girls are the ultimate weapon against them.”

“You would condone it, then?” Dorian detected an edge to Morder's normally mild voice. “Two girls—not much older than Dorian and Lesley? And the consequences?”

“I don't
enjoy
the idea, Luis. But we'll do what we have to do.” While Dorian pondered what that meant, Dad continued softly. “Ursula thinks the timing may actually work in our favor. No one will question our decision if we appear to make it under threat of war. And if other Transitioners want to regain what they've lost, they'll have to come to us.”

Cold prickles ran across Dorian's skin. He didn't understand exactly what his father meant, but he didn't like the sound of it at all.

DORIAN LEFT THE TUNNEL
his usual way, through the exit in the park. It was guarded, but Dorian knew the man and had long since convinced him that he was running errands for his father.

Lesley leaped to her feet as soon as Dorian entered the apartment, and he gave her a thumbs-up. “Hey, Les. Everything's cool.”
Not really
. . .

Jax, who'd been sitting next to Lesley, asked, “Something wrong?”

“No,” Dorian said sharply. Lesley sat down again, her knuckles white as she gripped the game controller. Jax didn't look convinced.

Billy glared at Dorian with a suspicious expression very different from the dopey grin he'd been wearing since Sunday.
La-la Land wore off
?
Well, good. You should be suspicious of us
. Dorian didn't think he'd ever forget the sight of Albert Ganner tackling Billy in the street—not to mention the broken
bone sticking out of Billy's arm afterward. Dorian had gagged at the sight—while Sloane proved just how powerful she was. She'd moved fast, needing only one touch per person to wipe the memories of every Normal witness.

Dorian went straight to his room. He pulled off his blazer and tie, balled them up, and hurled them at the floor. Then he sank down at his desk and buried his face in his hands.

What was he going to do?

He wasn't brave like Uncle Rayne must have been. At fifteen, Rayne had refused his oath and defied his clan. Secretly, Dorian had always imagined his uncle coming back one day and doing
something
—making a
difference
. Instead, Rayne had spent his life in hiding, and according to Dad, he'd become a petty criminal. It was the word
petty
that was the insult, because the Dulac clan was full of criminals—
important
ones who had their own private bankers and had reserved tables at Manhattan's finest restaurants.

Uncle Rayne had run a shady business, and now he was dead because he'd cheated a Kin lord. Was that someone to look up to?

Dorian slipped Rayne's journal out of its hiding place. He'd found it in Gran and Gramps's apartment, stuffed inside a history textbook on a shelf in Rayne's old room. It started out as a notebook, half filled with history notes. Not far in, a page had been ripped out. More history notes followed, and then the ripped-out page appeared, stuffed into the back:

The rest of the journal was written in the back of the notebook. History notes stopped after February, where the ripped-out page had been inserted and the notebook had been converted to another purpose.

After that, Rayne wrote daily. The entries were brief, just a quick outline of his day, and each one ended with the statement:
I don't think anybody changed my memory today
. Occasionally, he mentioned “the plan,” but he was careful not to put details on paper. Dorian leafed through the pages quickly, wanting to get to the last entry.

Rayne had run away from his family, and while that meant he was free of them, his desertion hadn't served to change the clan in any way. It hadn't made life better for the niece and nephew he'd never known. True, he'd left the journal behind as a warning, but there were no solutions suggested in its pages other than the one Rayne had chosen.

Dorian didn't have the luxury of running away. Jax was here, and Aunt Ursula was going to use her magic on him if he didn't turn over his Kin-girl liege. Meanwhile Dad wanted to experiment on Lesley using the blood of another Emrys girl apparently imprisoned in this building. And Aunt Ursula was planning to use both girls for a plan that made even Dr. Morder squeamish.

Dorian covered his face with his hands again.

What was he going to do?