The Inquisitor's Mark (5 page)

DORIAN WRINKLED HIS NOSE
in distaste. The house in southwestern Pennsylvania where Jax Aubrey had lived with the Pendragon guy was a dump. It didn't even have a full second story, just a bathroom and two small bedrooms with sloping ceilings. Sloane refused to put a foot over the threshold.

The furniture was still there—ugly and sagging and stained. But all the personal items of the residents had been removed. Dad's eyes were as dark as thunderclouds when he and Dorian came down from the second floor. “The house has been thoroughly vacuumed; sheets and towels are gone,” Dad reported to Sloane. “Not a hair left behind.” Hairs could've been taken back to their clan spell caster, Dr. Morder, for use in a locater spell.

Albert Ganner, head of security for the Dulacs, was overturning cushions and examining every cranny in the sofa. Aunt Ursula had insisted he accompany them as her condition for
allowing Sloane to enter
enemy territory
. “They knew what they were doing when they vacated here,” Ganner said.

“They didn't know how to clean the windows or get stains out of the carpet, though.” Sloane stood on the front stoop, as if afraid grime was catching. “Albert, there's a cellar door and a shed in the yard.”

“I'm on it,” Ganner said. “Maybe they overlooked something.” He didn't sound hopeful.

“I'm going to talk to the old woman next door. Dorian, come with me.” Sloane turned and walked down the front steps, trusting Dorian to follow like a dog.

Heel, Dorian
.

Dad cast one last glowering look around the house. “I'll question the other neighbors.”

Earlier in the week, Dorian and his dad had visited a town in northern Delaware to confirm that “Rayne Aubrey” really had been Rayne Ambrose. Neighbors had recognized him immediately in the photographs Dad showed them, even though the pictures were over twenty years old. And if that wasn't enough proof, almost every one of the neighbors had added without prompting, “Your son looks a lot like Jax.”

It gave Dorian a weird feeling in his stomach to think there was a Dorian doppelganger on the loose.

Rayne had been a widower, apparently, and his late wife's nearest relative, Naomi Stevens, had been the one to take Jax in after Rayne's car accident—at least until Pendragon had
showed up with legal documents naming him Jax's guardian. Dad interrogated Naomi thoroughly, but she hadn't been able to tell them anything about Pendragon—or
Pendare
, as she called him. She got confused when asked how old he was and couldn't explain why no one had challenged the custody order.

“He used the voice of command on her,” Dad told Mom over the phone.

“If the prisoner was correct about his age,” Dorian heard Mom say, “he must be Philip Pendragon's son or one of his nephews. Did the Pendragon boys go to Bradley Prep? Sloane might know him.”

“Doesn't matter who he is,” Dorian's father had replied grimly. “If he's the last Pendragon, he's the clan leader—and he's got my nephew.”

Dad wanted to take the investigation directly to Pendragon's house after finishing up in Delaware, but Aunt Ursula insisted he return to New York to deal with some crisis that had occurred on the eighth day. Not even Dorian's secret method of spying had enabled him to find out what had happened. Everything was
hush-hush
and
need-to-know
only. Aunt Ursula was called to an emergency meeting of the Table, and Dad had narrowly escaped being sent to the U.K. to deal with whatever it was that had everybody upset.

Dorian caught only one conversation between Dad and Aunt Ursula before she left for her meeting. “If the reports
from Wales are accurate, this could be a crisis of epic proportions. That makes it more important than ever for me to catch up with Rayne's son,” Dad told her. “If he's really sworn to the oldest Emrys girl, he's our best chance at finding her.”

“Yes, I see the point, Finn.” Aunt Ursula had been more terse than usual.

“Someone else can conduct the search in Wales. Only
I
can handle finding Jax.”

There'd been a long pause, and for a few seconds, Dorian wondered if they'd walked out of hearing range. Then Aunt Ursula said, “Deal with it, then. And Finn—I
am
sorry about Rayne. I always hoped we'd get him back someday.”

Dad was grief stricken that he'd located his long-lost brother only to find out he was dead. Dorian had never met Uncle Rayne, so he couldn't tell anyone why he felt so connected to his uncle—or at least connected to the
teenage
Rayne. Mom and Dad didn't know that Dorian had discovered why Rayne ran away from home a week before his sixteenth birthday, when he would've been expected to swear allegiance to Aunt Ursula. And Dorian wanted to keep it that way.

Sloane ran lightly up the steps to the house next to Pendragon's and rang the bell. Dorian mounted the stairs behind her.

The door was answered by an old lady with a cane who listened intently to Sloane's pitch about collecting money for
sick children. The woman fetched her wallet and offered them twenty dollars so quickly, Dorian felt ashamed. But he accepted the bill, brushing his hand against hers to enhance his talent through physical contact with the subject.

“Thank you, ma'am.” He handed the twenty to Sloane. “Do you know the guy who used to live next door?”

“Why, yes! Jax?” The old woman's face lit up immediately. “Or Riley?”

“Riley,” said Sloane.

Finding Jax might've been Dad's first priority, but Aunt Ursula and Sloane seemed very interested in this Pendragon who'd turned up alive. He hadn't been a Bradley student, according to Sloane, but she knew acquaintances of the Pendragons, and
Riley
had been the name of their leader's son. “Where did Riley move to?” Dorian asked.

“I don't know. I'm sorry,” the old woman said unhappily, the compulsion of Dorian's magic making her apologize for not being able to answer his question. “I wish I could tell you.”

Dorian switched his focus. “Did you know them well?”

“Oh, yes!” Now she smiled. “Jax ran errands for me. And Riley fixed my electrical box so I could have a generator when the power went out. He wouldn't let me pay him, either.”

Sloane tipped her head to one side and smiled. “I hope you don't think this is odd, but I have a gift for seeing things others can't. When I rang your doorbell, I had the strangest feeling there was a
presence
here. Something otherworldly.”

Dorian delivered the question Sloane wanted him to ask. “Have you ever felt like there was an unexplained presence in your house?”

The old woman's face fell. “I did—for a long time. But I think she's gone now.”

There didn't seem to be anything else this woman could tell them. Dorian nudged his cousin. “You're not going to keep the money, are you?”

Sloane plastered another smile on her face and reached out to grasp the old woman's arm. Her other hand slithered into an inner pocket of her jean jacket where Dorian knew she kept her honor blade. The nice old lady's face took on a slack, dazed look. Her mouth fell open, and her eyelids fluttered as the Dulac talent took hold of her memory. Dorian shuddered, imagining what was happening in her brain.

When Sloane released her, the woman stared for a moment at the wallet in her hand, then beamed. “How nice of you to return my wallet! I didn't realize I'd lost it!”

“Don't forget this.” Sloane handed her the twenty.

The woman offered them each a five-dollar bill as a reward. Dorian refused, but Sloane stuffed hers into a pocket.
That's my future liege lady—not too proud to steal five bucks from an old lady
. Of course, Dorian didn't say that out loud. Instead he followed his cousin down the front steps like a . . . what? Loyal minion? Mindless henchman? Coward was more like it.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing
. That was the quote that had gotten Dorian's favorite teacher at Bradley Prep fired, he was pretty sure. Dorian thought debates about the rights and wrongs of the past and how they applied to the present made history class more interesting, but some of his classmates had complained to their parents, and one day, Mr. Brand was gone—replaced by a woman who taught strictly by the approved course outline.

“The Emrys heir lived in that house. Pendragon set up the generator for
her
, not the old woman,” Sloane said to Dorian. “Emrys and Pendragon with an alliance. Very interesting. It's like the good old days with King Arthur and Merlin.”

Right
, thought Dorian.
Except in the good old days, Sloane's ancestor was on the same side as Arthur and Merlin
. “What's next?” he asked.

“We find them. Your father wants Jax, and Grandmother wants Emrys and Pendragon.”

“What for?”

“For protection, of course. You know what Wylit almost did with the girl.”

That explained why Aunt Ursula wanted one, but not the other. Dorian felt a chill. Nobody believed a random gas explosion had taken out the entire Pendragon family. Unexplained explosions were
always
assassinations. Dorian had that on good authority. But
who
had arranged it and
why
. . . no one had been able to prove that conclusively.

“Aunt Ursula seems really worked up about what happened in Wales on the eighth day,” Dorian said. “Is that why finding these people is so important?”

Sloane stopped in her tracks. “What do you know about Wales?”

“What do
you
know?” Dorian tried to indicate with his eyebrows that he was in on all the juicy details.

“Nice try, Dorian.” She saw right through his bluff. “I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.”

“Jax! Hey, Jax! Wait up!”

Dorian and Sloane turned around. A boy ran toward them, waving his arms. “Hey!” He skidded to a stop with a frown. “Oh. Sorry, dude. I thought you were somebody else.”

“You thought he was Jax Aubrey, didn't you?” Sloane elbowed Dorian.

Dorian stuck out his hand. “I'm Dorian Ambrose, Jax's cousin.”

“Billy Ramirez.” The boy stared at Dorian's hand like it was a dead fish, and Dorian dropped it, feeling stupid. “Do you know where Jax is?” Billy asked.

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Sloane said.

“I haven't seen him since the night of the fire in town, when all that weird stuff happened,” Billy replied.

Dad, who'd heard the boy call out Jax's name, crossed the street toward them. Albert Ganner appeared as well, drawn by their voices. “This is my dad,” Dorian said. “Jax's uncle.”

“Finn Ambrose.” Dad put out his hand, and because that was expected from an adult, Billy took it.

Just like that, he was theirs.

“What happened the night you last saw Jax?” Dad asked.

Billy told them everything he knew, eagerly and rapidly—how a suspicious fire gutted a house in town and a hearse drove away with Jax inside. He told them about the unconscious man on the sidewalk who turned out to be the father of a kid from Billy's school. “Thomas wouldn't let anybody call 911, and then his dad woke up just as Riley got here—smelling like smoke, like he'd been
in
the fire—and the two of them almost had a fistfight on the lawn. Riley's friend, A.J., and some guy I think was A.J.'s dad broke it up. Riley told me to go home, and I haven't seen any of them since.”

“What do you know about Riley Pendare?”

Billy gushed. “He's so cool! He's got this classic motorcycle and the most awesome tattoos.” The kid launched into a description of the tattoos, but Dad cut him off.

“Do you have a way to contact Jax?”

“He doesn't answer my calls.” Billy pulled a phone from his pocket. “He texts me, but he won't say where he is. It's like he and Riley are in some kind of”—a flicker of suspicion passed through the boy's dark eyes—“trouble.” Dorian could almost see their compulsion over him waver. “Jax never said anything about an uncle,” Billy said, frowning. “Just a grown-up cousin, Naomi. And her kids were real little.” He took a step backward. “How did you say you were related?”

Dad looked at Sloane. “We need him.”

“I see that.” Sloane flashed her most winning smile. “Billy, you're going to be a big help to us.” Then she nodded at Albert Ganner.

Billy took two more steps backward, but it wasn't going to do him any good.

Dorian looked away.

ON MONDAY, THE INTERNET
connection at the cabin was finally activated, and Jax spent a couple hours searching through multiple (and often contradictory) Arthurian legends. “Was King Lear a member of the Round Table?” he asked Mrs. Crandall when she passed by with a laundry basket.

“King Lear is a character from Shakespeare, Jax.”

“Yeah, well, I thought King Arthur was just a character, too,” Jax muttered.

“Why do you ask?”

“The Kin woman at the Carroways' talked about somebody named Lear.” That was his impression, anyway, that she'd been talking about a person. Of course, most of what she'd said made no sense.

Mrs. Crandall set down the basket. “Do you mean L-L-Y-R?” Mrs. Crandall took the mouse from his hand and hit the back button. “You're looking in the wrong place.
The Round Table is
us
—Transitioners. If you're looking for Llyr—who are Kin—you need to look
here
.” She typed in
Welsh Gods and Myths
and selected the first result. A list of familiar names appeared.
Emrys. Wylit. Taliesin. Arawen. Llyr.

“Gods?” Jax said incredulously.

“To the Normals of that time period, the Kin were powerful enough to be gods. The Llyrs in particular were set on enslaving the Normal population. They were the
reason
the Eighth-Day Spell had to be cast. The family has mostly died out by now, and what few of them are left are safely under lock and key very far away.”

“Wait a minute. I know this.” Jax rummaged in the box of notebooks and papers Melinda had brought from
Riley's old house. And there it was—a rumpled piece of paper with a child's crayon drawing on one side, a chart in colored pencil on the other.

“What's that?” Mrs. Crandall asked.

“The cheat sheet Melinda gave me.” Jax flattened out the creases with his hand. Melinda, his tutor in all things magical, had listed names of Transitioners and Kin when he was having trouble keeping them straight.

Mrs. Crandall surveyed the list and sniffed. “Melinda left out a few important people.” Jax wondered if she was talking about herself.

Then he grunted “Huh,” as he spotted
Llyr
listed under Kin adversaries. He hadn't realized how that name
was pronounced. Melinda had told him those people were imprisoned in the eighth day—and also imprisoned
inside
the eighth day.

“What did this Kin woman say about the Llyrs?” Mrs. Crandall asked.

“Something about an oath,” Jax said. “Her eyes went all funny when she talked to me, and afterward I don't think she remembered what she said.”

That seemed to disturb Mrs. Crandall. She picked up a cell phone from an end table. “I'll text Deidre to see if she's heard of any unusual activity at the Oeth-Anoeth fortress. Thank heavens she's still willing to be our eyes and ears.”

“I guess it's a good thing Deidre didn't really care about marrying Riley.”

Mrs. Crandall looked up from the phone, startled. “Oh, Jax,” she said. “I think she cared very much.” Then she took her basket and headed for the laundry machine while Jax wondered why Deidre was still helping them if Riley had hurt her feelings.

Girls don't make any sense,
he decided, turning back to the computer to read the descriptions of the so-called Welsh gods who apparently represented specific and very real Kin families. Like Transitioner families, each seemed to have a specialized talent for magic.
Emrys
was called a wizard, although Jax knew Evangeline preferred the term spell caster. Merlin Emrys was named as if he'd been the
only one, but Jax had been told that Merlin was one of many Emrys leaders.
Taliesin
was a bard, and that matched what Evangeline said about their family.
Wylit
was a prophet, although it didn't mention him also being a complete whack job. Maybe that only applied to the Wylit Jax had had the misfortune to meet.

Arawen
was supposed to be lord of the dead, and
Llyr
was the name of a weather god.

Then Jax froze, information buzzing in his head.
Imprisoned inside the eighth day. Under lock and key very far away. Unusual activity at the Oeth-Anoeth fortress.
The words of the Kin woman fell into his brain like a puzzle piece finally snapping into its correct spot. The phrase she'd whispered to Jax had been:
Oeth-Anoeth falls to Llyr today.

“Whatcha looking at?”

Jax jumped out of his chair. Thomas Donovan stepped backward, hanging on to a bowl of cereal.

“Where'd
you
come from?” Jax yelped.

“The kitchen,” said Thomas around a mouthful of Cap'n Crunch. “Duh.”

“There's no outside door to the kitchen! What'd you do, climb in a window?”

Thomas shrugged unapologetically, as if that was a perfectly normal way to enter someone's house. Probably for him, it was.

Jax had begun to hope he wasn't going to see the Donovans at all. After Mr. Crandall's phone call on
Thursday, they'd gone straight to Vermont and the Carroways' to start their search for Addie. But apparently they'd decided to come in person to deliver a report. Jax heard the front door open, and Michael Donovan and Mr. Crandall walked into the living room with Tegan and A.J. trailing behind.

“You didn't tell me the trail was six weeks old, Crandall. And now you say she's
warded
? What're we supposed to do with that? From outside the house, I can't even smell the Emrys you've got living
here
, thanks to those things.” Michael pointed to the wards.

“Are you telling me you've come up with nothing?” Mr. Crandall asked.

“There's the scent of Emrys at that house and on the Carroways themselves, but otherwise, nothing,” Michael said.

Tegan glanced in Jax's direction and added, “The stink of Kin in that place is so deep, there's no telling who she left with.”

Jax glared at her. Tegan never passed up a chance to take a dig at the Kin and seemed to especially resent the fact that Jax was sworn to one. Just then, his phone vibrated on the desk as a call came in. Of course, it was Billy. Jax hit the ignore button.

“Unless we happen to cross the girl's trail, there's nothing we can do,” Michael said. “And if she's warded, there's not much chance of that.”

Now Jax's phone buzzed repeatedly. He sighed and clicked into his texts to read them.

“It has to be a trick,” Mr. Crandall insisted. “To flush us out of hiding.”

“Billy's a moron. It's probably a prank,” said A.J.

Meanwhile, Tegan was looking online for news reports about missing boys. Jax wanted to tell her to get off his computer, but she was searching faster than he could have.

“Call the boy's house,” Mrs. Crandall suggested.

“If he's really been kidnapped, they'll have police listening on the line,” Donovan warned them. “They'll trace the call.”

“Jax can call from his email account,” Tegan said. “It makes voice calls.”

“What are you doing in my email?” Jax demanded.

“Can they track us through the service provider?” Mr. Crandall turned on his son. “I
told
Riley it was a bad idea to get a connection.”

“Not a problem.” Tegan's fingers flew across the keyboard as she leaned forward, her tangled orange hair a curtain around her freckled face. “Jax is using a service
provider out of New Zealand right now.”

“I'm
what
? What'd you do to my computer?” Jax peered over her shoulder, totally mystified by the windows of codes and nonsense symbols whizzing by. He guessed she was hacking into computers on the other side of the world, and although he was surprised to see Tegan demonstrate this kind of skill, he probably shouldn't have been. “Are you stealing credit-card numbers while you're at it? Draining bank accounts?”

Tegan stood and offered Jax the chair. “Shut up and make the call.”

“No,” Mr. Crandall said firmly. “No calls.”

“They can't trace this computer,” Tegan insisted. “I've hidden it.” Then she launched into an explanation involving
encrypted open proxy servers
,
dynamic IP addresses randomly routed through fifty different countries
, and
automatic port shuffling
. Mr. Crandall listened with his mouth hanging open, then looked at her father.

Donovan shrugged. “She's smarter than you and me combined, Crandall. If Tegan says it's safe, it is.”

“This is a terrible breach of security,” Mr. Crandall growled. “Riley picked a fine time to jump over seven days!” But he waved a hand, giving permission.

Mrs. Ramirez was delighted to hear from Jax. She exclaimed about how much Billy had missed him and how Jax was welcome to visit anytime. The more she talked, the more everybody in the room relaxed, because no way
was this the mother of a kidnapped boy.

“Can I speak to Billy?” Jax asked.

“Billy's at golf camp. He won a scholarship after someone saw him play at school. I always knew he had a gift for it,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “His father and I are so proud of him.”

The Donovan twins glanced at each other. “Billy almost knocked himself out swinging a golf club in gym class,” Thomas whispered. Tegan nodded.

Mr. Crandall made a
cut
gesture, and Jax ended the call as fast as he could. “Someone's altered her memory,” Mr. Crandall said.

“Dulacs,” A.J. agreed. “It's gotta be.”

“Why? What's the Dulac talent?” Jax asked.

Everyone stared at Jax like he didn't know the name of the U.S. president. “Dulacs can change a person's memory,” Mrs. Crandall said.

“Like Miller Owens?” Miller had been one of Riley's vassals working undercover among their enemies, and Jax had experienced firsthand the unpleasantness of having Miller's memories stuffed into his head. Specifically the memory of pain.

“No,” said A.J. “Miller could
insert
memories, but you knew they weren't your own. The Dulacs can change what you remember and believe. They can change who you are, practically.”

Jax felt a chill throughout his body. “I gotta call Billy,”
he said to Mr. Crandall.

Mr. Crandall looked around the room unhappily. He was used to sharing his opinion—loudly and repeatedly. But Riley usually decided what was right for the clan, and that wasn't going to happen today. “Go ahead,” he said finally.

Jax entered Billy's number into the computer. After several rings, a familiar voice answered. “Yeah?”

“Billy? It's Jax.”

“Jax? This isn't your number.”

“I'm calling from my email. Are you okay?”

“From your email? Cool! I've never tried—”

“Billy, are you okay?”

“I'm fine. But I'm so
mad
at you! A secret day of the week? Why didn't you tell me?”

“Where are you? Were you kidnapped or not? Who's got you?”

“I'm in New York City, and, well, I was
sort of
kidnapped. But it's not that bad. They explained why they needed me, and I agreed to go with them. This is so cool!”

Mr. Crandall made a twirly gesture next to his head.

Jax wasn't sure. This sounded pretty normal for Billy. “Who are
they
?”

“Your relatives.”

“My cousin Naomi kidnapped you?” Maybe Mr. Crandall was right.

“No. The relatives on your dad's side.”

Coldness swept through Jax's body again. “I don't have any relatives on my dad's side.”

“Yeah you do. That's why we want to get you on a video call. Because they need to show you their tattoos. And they want to see yours.”

Mr. Crandall yelled some more about what a terrible idea this was. Shouting seemed to make him feel better about being stuck with the final decision. “Arnie,” his wife quietly interjected into his tirade, “we need to know for certain who has the boy. If he was kidnapped, it's because of us. We're responsible for what happens to him.”

Mr. Crandall muttered unhappy words under his breath and pointed his finger in Tegan's face. “Are you
sure
? And don't bother telling me about proxy port decryptions.”

Tegan cringed at his mangled terms. “Not even the government could trace this call,” she assured him. “Maybe, if they put all their resources on it, they could track the connection over six months. But only if it was in constant use.”

“Keep it short then,” Mr. Crandall barked.

Thomas laughed. “Less than six months, Jax. Got it?”

A.J. and his father rearranged the furniture so Jax could sit in front of a blank wall that gave no clue to his location. Jax stood off to the side and watched.

His dad had lied to him. Outright, barefaced lies.