The Inquisitor's Mark (2 page)

THE ELEVATOR ALWAYS STOPPED
with a jerk, but whenever it went to the basement there was an additional bang that pretty much said:
You've reached absolute bottom
.

Dorian Ambrose thought the basement of his apartment building looked like the setting of every horror film ever made: moist cinderblock walls and yellow fluorescent lights. His father pushed open the elevator's metal gate, and Dorian peered down the corridor of closed doors. He knew what went on behind a few of them, thanks to some unauthorized snooping, but today he was getting an official introduction.

“Twelve is old enough,” Dad had proclaimed that afternoon. “It's time Dorian observed a prisoner interrogation.” Mom had hesitated but reluctantly agreed that it needed to be part of his training. Dorian was, after all, an inquisitor, just like his dad. When he asked questions, people were compelled to answer them. But being an inquisitor for Ursula
Dulac involved more than that.

Like cinderblock basements, locked rooms . . . and prisoners.

Dorian swallowed a little queasily.

Their footsteps thudded dully on the concrete floor. Dorian's father didn't look at him or make any effort to put him at ease. Dad was
preoccupied
—as Mom liked to say. Or in the words of Dorian's sister, Lesley, “Dad's got clan secrets.”

His father had good reason to be preoccupied right now. Two and a half weeks ago, the night sky had cracked like an egg, and every Transitioner on the planet knew that someone, somewhere, was messing with the Eighth-Day Spell. The students at Bradley Prep had talked about little else since then, trying to bait Dorian and his fellow clan members into telling what they knew. Everyone assumed the Dulacs wouldn't just stand around wondering what happened. They'd act.

Dorian had nothing to tell them. He'd done a lot of spying and eavesdropping, trying to learn what had happened at the pyramid in Mexico, without much success. But now his clansmen had captured a witness, and Dorian, to his surprise, was invited to the interrogation.

The lights flickered as they reached the end of the corridor. If this had been a movie, there would've been an ax murderer in a leather mask waiting around the corner. Instead, there was just his cousin Sloane Dulac and a security man.

Sloane thumbed on her phone when they appeared,
making a point of checking the time so they'd know she'd been kept waiting.

Dad looked unconcerned by Sloane's displeasure. He motioned for the guard to unlock the door while Sloane returned the phone to the pocket of her school blazer. She must have come straight from Bradley without stopping to change. Ever since Sloane had turned eighteen, she'd been put in charge of more and more clan business. Not because Great-aunt Ursula was getting too old to do it herself. Nobody would make the mistake of thinking that. Ursula was just training her granddaughter to be the next clan leader.

The security man went in first as a precaution, followed by Sloane and then Dad. Dorian brought up the rear, close enough to step on his father's heels. Dad spared him an aggravated glance. “Don't be nervous, Dorian.”

“I'm not,” he protested, but it came out in a squeak, and Sloane smirked.

The prisoner was tied to a chair. He was big and burly with bristly blond hair, and when he spotted Dorian, he jerked as if making a lunge for him. Dorian flinched, but a moment later, the man's eyes narrowed in puzzlement and he turned his attention to Dorian's father.

“I'll give you the chance to answer my questions willingly,” Dad said.

“Are you the Dulacs' inquisitor?” the prisoner sneered. “Do your worst. I have nothing to say to you.”

Dorian's father nodded. “I'm aware of your resistance to magical influence.” He removed a syringe from his suit coat pocket. “But even Normals find it necessary to question criminals, and they do it without any magic whatsoever.”

Dorian looked away. This man was supposed to have a head like a rock, making him immune to the talents of both the Ambroses and the Dulacs. That was
his
talent: being impervious to magical manipulation. The syringe was necessary, but Dorian didn't want to watch.

While Dad injected the man's arm, Sloane murmured to Dorian, “He held off ten of our men single-handedly, until the women and children of his clan got away. And that's after eluding us in Mexico and over a week on the run across the country.”

Her voice held a tone of both admiration and superiority, as if the man were a fierce wild animal they'd been lucky to capture. “Huh,” Dorian remarked in false appreciation. He wondered what would've happened to the women and children if they'd been caught. Would they be in the basement too, tied to chairs and poked with syringes? Would Dorian be expected to watch?

This is what I'll have to do someday for Aunt Ursula—and then for Sloane
. Dorian wouldn't take his oath as a vassal until he turned sixteen, but when he did, he'd belong to his Dulac relatives, body and soul. Lately, the thought had been making him squirm.

Now the prisoner looked confused and dizzy, his head swaying back and forth.

“What's your name?” Dorian's father asked.

“Angus.”

“Angus Balin?” Dad prompted. “Vassal to the Kin lord Wylit?”

The prisoner's eyes grew wide. “My lord is dead!” He tried to stand up, forgetting he was tied to the chair.

Dad snapped his fingers in front of the prisoner's face. “Are you a vassal to the Kin family Wylit?” he repeated, testing for the truth. They already knew this part.

“Yes!” Balin was breathing heavily. “My lord's heirs are in Europe. I must go to them.”

Dad shook his head in disgust. Dorian wasn't sure if it was at the thought of any self-respecting Transitioner swearing himself to a member of the Kin race or because the interrogation drug made the man so loopy. If they could've used their inquisition talent on him, this would've been easier.

Dad grabbed Balin's face to get his attention. “Tell me about the Emrys heir Wylit used to attack the Eighth-Day Spell. Who was it?”

“A girl, about sixteen years old.”

“And she was allied with Wylit?”

“No, we captured her and her vassal.” Balin glowered. “I was stuck babysitting that boy for almost a week. Waste of my time. I should've been on watch at the pyramids. I
would've secured the site better. I could've prevented—”

Dad interrupted him. “Did the Emrys girl survive?”

For a moment, Balin blinked his eyes blearily, trying to think. “Must've,” he grunted finally. “Somebody repaired the spell. Had to be her. Pendragon couldn't have done it alone.”

Sloane frowned. “Finn, are you sure this drug works? The Pendragons are all dead.”

Balin's wobbly head swiveled toward her. “You don't know everything then, do you?” He laughed wildly.

Dad smacked him across the face to get him to stop. Dorian flinched, but his father's voice was emotionless. “Was there a Pendragon at the pyramid?”

“Saw his mark myself.” Balin bared his teeth in a grin.

“Describe him.”

“Young—maybe eighteen. Tattoos all over his arms.”

“Where'd he come from?”

“The same place the Emrys girl came from. And that boy.” Balin's eyes swung back to Dorian, who sidestepped nervously behind the security guard.

Why does this guy keep looking at me?

Dad turned to Sloane. “If there's a surviving Pendragon, the Morgan clan must know about it. They coordinated the attack on the pyramid. And Deidre Morgan told me herself the Emrys girl was dead. I suspected she was lying at the time and couldn't do a thing about it.” Now there was a hint of anger in his voice. No inquisitor liked letting someone get away with a lie.

“There's no use blaming yourself,” Sloane said. “If you'd used your magic on Deidre, you would've broken Grandmother's truce with the Morgans.”

Left undirected, Balin was rambling about the Emrys vassal. “Told my brother we should've killed the boy. Lousy inquisitor, like you. His magic didn't work on
me
, but—”

That caught Dad's interest. “The girl had an inquisitor as a vassal? A Transitioner?”

“Yes.
Aubrey
. I thought
you
were him when you came in.” Balin thrust his chin at Dorian. “I was going to wring your neck. But you just
look
like him.”

Dorian glanced at his father. “I've never heard of a Transitioner family named Aubrey.”

“Not a family. Just the boy.” The drug had the prisoner so far gone he was babbling. “There was a father, but he's dead. Rayne Aubrey was as worthless as his son.”

“Rayne?” Dad repeated. “The boy's father was named Rayne? He was an inquisitor?”

“Rayne Aubrey. He cheated my lord Wylit, and he's dead because of it.”

Dorian's stomach turned over. Dad ripped off his suit coat and yanked up his shirt sleeve so hard, a cufflink flew across the room. “Was this his mark?” He thrust his tattooed wrist into the prisoner's face.

Balin had trouble focusing on the Ambrose mark—the eye and the scroll, the flames and the bird of prey—but then his face hardened. “You're an Aubrey, too!”

“There's no such family.” Dad grabbed the prisoner by the collar and yanked their faces together. “Rayne's my brother's name.”

“Finn,” Sloane said sharply. “Stick to the job.”

“He's telling me they killed Rayne!”

Dorian stared at the floor, not wanting to watch his father come unglued. It was the first they'd heard of Dad's missing brother in over twenty years, and this man was bragging about killing him. Dorian felt sick himself.

“But it sounds like you have a nephew who's alive.” Sloane's voice was calm. “Focus on that.”

“Jax Aubrey,” Balin agreed cheerfully.

Dad tightened his grip on the prisoner's shirt and spoke through clenched teeth. “Jax Aubrey, huh? Then let's see if you can earn the right to stay alive by helping us find him.”

Help us find him?
Dorian didn't dare raise his eyes to look at his father or the prisoner, but he was thinking that the last thing his runaway uncle probably would've wanted was for the Dulac clan to find his son.

JAX PRESSED HIS FACE
against the window of Riley's Land Rover as they drove through a college campus shortly before midnight on Wednesday. Despite the late hour, two boys were playing basketball on a court in the dark. A girl with an oversized backpack pedaled furiously in the bike lane like the lady who took Dorothy's dog in
The Wizard of Oz
.

A second later, they all vanished.

The basketball whooshed through a hoop, fell to the ground, and bounced aimlessly around an empty court. The bicycle froze in place, caught in the moment between Wednesday and Thursday. Jax turned his head to stare. For the girl riding the bike and the players on the court, time wasn't passing. But it was for the ball. Why?

“Where are we?”

Jax whirled around. He'd been alone in the backseat for the past two hours. Now suddenly he wasn't. “Holy
crap, Evangeline. I'll never get used to you appearing and disappearing like that!”

Evangeline gave him an apologetic smile. It probably felt normal for her—seven days passing in the blink of an eye. In order to be with them tonight, she'd climbed into the backseat of this car right before midnight on the eighth day last week. From Evangeline's point of view, that had been only seconds ago.

“We're almost there,” Riley called from the driver's seat.

Mrs. Crandall pointed out a street sign. “Here's your turn.”

“Is everything all right?” Evangeline asked Jax.

No, not really. Riley wants to get rid of me as soon as he doesn't need me anymore.
But Jax couldn't tell her that right now, and besides, what she really wanted to know was if anything in their plans had changed while she was absent.

“No worries,” he said instead.

They were on their way to visit the Taliesins, two Kin men who knew where Evangeline's sister had been hidden—because they'd been the ones to hide her. Like all Kin, they'd skipped over the last week and would just now be starting their twenty-four-hour secret day. Riley had timed this visit to coincide with the start of Grunsday so they could make every hour count.

If they had the chance to reach Adelina Emrys today, they were going to take it.

Riley turned the Land Rover in to a parking lot next to a building with glass walls. Bookshelves and study carrels could be seen inside. “These guys live in a library?” Jax asked. With a whole college to choose from, that's not what he would've picked.

“I'm sure it suits them,” Evangeline said. “The Taliesin family has an eidetic memory. That's their talent—memorizing everything they've ever read or heard. A very long time ago, the Taliesins were known as bards and poets.”

“Now they're cranky old men who look down on everyone else.” Riley parked the car.

Evangeline smiled without any humor. “I see you've met them.”

“But they're on our side, right?” Jax asked.

“The Taliesins want what we want—to preserve things the way they are, with the Llyrs and Arawens trapped in the eighth day and confined in prison,” Riley said, opening the driver's door. “But they want to do it by keeping Evangeline and her sister hidden away forever. I don't think they're going to like me changing the plans.”

“Are there any Taliesins left besides these two?” Jax asked as he and his liege lady got out of the vehicle. “Do they have
first
names?” He'd only ever heard them called
Taliesins
.

“I was eleven when I last saw them,” Evangeline said coolly. “They shared no personal information with
me
.”

Clearly, she wasn't fond of these guys. Jax supposed if someone had separated him from the people he cared about and dumped him someplace to wait indefinitely without telling him what was going on, he wouldn't like them, either.

Oh, wait, that's exactly what Riley did when he took me from Naomi—and what he's planning to do again when he sticks me back with her.

Jax glared daggers at Riley's back, following his guardian across the parking lot toward the library with Evangeline beside him and Mrs. Crandall bringing up the rear. A figure waited for them under the security lights near the entrance, someone with dark hair wearing a leather jacket, a matching miniskirt, and boots. Jax knew there'd be a pearl-handled pistol tucked in one of those boots and a gun holstered under the jacket. Deidre Morgan was always armed to the teeth. She probably slept with a gun under her pillow.

“Hello, Riley, Gloria.” Deidre nodded to Riley and Mrs. Crandall and grinned at Jax. “Nice to see you again, cutie. How d'ya like my private college?”

“Sweet,” Jax said. On the eighth day, Deidre had the campus entirely to herself, except for the men living in the library.

Then Deidre turned to Evangeline and looked her over from head to toe.

Riley managed a mumbling introduction between
Evangeline and his former fiancée. He and Deidre had briefly been engaged, but only because Riley had needed Deidre's mother's mercenary army to rescue Jax and Evangeline in Mexico, and there'd been only one thing Sheila Morgan had wanted in return: Riley Pendragon as a son-in-law and a vassal.

“The Morgans would have come to stop Wylit anyway,” Riley had explained to Jax afterward, “but they wouldn't have cared who got killed in the process. I had to bargain for control over the mission.”

Meaning he had to promise to marry Deidre and swear his future allegiance to her mother, or the Morgans would've made Swiss cheese out of Jax and Evangeline on top of that pyramid. The loss of Evangeline would have endangered the existence of the eighth day and the magical talents of all Transitioners, but if Evangeline had to die to prevent Normal civilization from being destroyed, the Morgans would have killed her.

Riley had traded himself for the right to direct the mission and rescue both his friends. Then Deidre had dumped him afterward because he'd kissed Evangeline.

Awkward,
Jax thought. But Deidre was their liaison with the Taliesins, who were hiding themselves and their memorized knowledge from anyone—Transitioners or Kin—who might make evil use of it.

The campus library hadn't been open at midnight on Wednesday, so the front doors were locked now. Deidre
led them around the side of the building to an emergency exit and squatted down to pick the lock. Jax watched her. Riley had promised to teach him this skill, an essential one for Transitioners who needed to enter without breaking. Now he wondered if it was a lesson he was supposed to receive before they ditched him, or if Riley had been just humoring him when he asked.

“Is your mother angry with me?” Riley asked Deidre while she worked.

“Since I'm the one who broke it off, she ought to be angry at
me
. But she thinks we cooked up the scheme together, so yes, your name is mud.”

“Great,” muttered Riley.

Evangeline looked back and forth between Deidre and Riley. Jax was pretty sure Evangeline had no idea about the bargain Riley had made to save her life.

Deidre kept her eyes on her lock picking. “But she's still got that ancient blade one of your ancestors gave mine hanging in her office. If she meant to break the old agreements between our families, she'd have taken it down and snapped it in half by now.”

“Very reassuring,” Riley said, not sounding reassured at all.

The lock opened, and Deidre stood up.

“Are the Taliesins expecting us?” Mrs. Crandall asked.

“I left a note for them in the spot we agreed upon for communication.” Deidre paused and passed her gaze
over all four of them. “Before we go in, I want to ask you about something pretty weird.”

More weird than talking about her broken engagement in front of the girl Riley liked better? Jax leaned forward, all ears.

“Did any of you see anything strange in the ruins that night in Mexico?” Deidre asked.

“Bullets were flying and the world was ending,” Riley said. “Other than that, you mean?”

“Someone who shouldn't have been there.”

Jax shrugged. None of them should have been there.

Deidre sighed and explained. “It took a while for the story to get back to me from my squad. For obvious reasons, the men who saw her were reluctant to report it. But more than one of them saw a girl on the Avenue of the Dead during the action.”

“Wylit had female vassals,” Riley said. “Several of them.”

“A young girl. Dressed in what may have been a short white dress, almost like a plain, old-fashioned shift.” Riley shook his head, and so did Jax. Deidre huffed out her breath. “With crows,” she added reluctantly. “Surrounded by crows.”

Crows? Jax had never seen any animals on the eighth day. Evangeline had told him they were rare. But Riley burst out laughing.

“Combat fatigue,” Mrs. Crandall said firmly, even
though she hadn't been there that day.

“My men don't suffer combat fatigue,” Deidre said indignantly.

“What's the deal with crows?” Jax asked Evangeline, who didn't laugh at all. In fact, she looked worried.

“A legend,” she murmured.

“A stupid legend,” Riley stated. “No, Deidre.” He held up fingers to count. “One crazy Kin lord, lots of people shooting at us, the sky broken into pieces—that's all I saw. No girl with crows.”

Deidre turned to Evangeline. “What do
you
think?”

“A sighting of the Morrigan is a very bad sign,” Evangeline said solemnly. “I hope your men were hallucinating.”

“I doubt we'll be that lucky.” Deidre shoved the door to the library open and led the way.