The Keeper's Curse (18 page)

“
Cyrus was with him, for a long time. Brenna – his mother –
told me personally that Cyrus’s younger brother Brynn was stolen
from her as well. She saw it with her own eyes.”

“
But how do you know for sure?”

“
Cyrus’s father – Rhoan Crow – was Thoreoux’s right hand man.
Before Rhoan died, that is.”

Emmy
hugged herself, not expecting that at all. Cyrus worked for the man
who wanted Breckin dead. And now Cyrus was here. A large part of
her just didn’t want to respond at all; she had never dealt with
something like this before. What was she supposed to say to someone
who was being hunted like this?

“
That makes more sense,” was all she said. There was no way to
make this less uncomfortable.

She had
talked to Cyrus. She had had a conversation with someone who worked
for a murderer, and was probably going to be one soon.

Her
irritation at Breckin, for the second time that day,
disintegrated.

“
Let me come with you,” she said, taking a step toward him.
“Tomorrow, when you go to Circlet’s. Circlet must know you have a
bias towards him, but I don’t. Or at least, she doesn’t know I do.
I’ll back you up.”

He raised
his head to look at her, shock written across his face. “No, I
can’t ask you to do that. Involving you in this is a bad idea, just
in case Cyrus finds out.”

He wasn’t
done speaking, but she cut him off. “I want to help you. I found
the portal too, Breckin. I have every right to tell Circlet as you
do.” She said all of this as kindly as she could.

As she
had hoped, he seemed to respond to her amiable side. “Okay,
fine.”

She’s so weird. Oh well, I’ll take it.

They
walked back in the direction of the school; the whistle had been
blown and the hunt was over. Emmy wasn’t too surprised to find out
that Jade’s team had won, an old, white sword in her hand. Emmy
clapped, proud of her, when she noticed that Cyrus was also on
Jade’s team. And he was watching Emmy. She did a double take, at
first not believing how blatant his stony stare was, but there it
was. He didn’t even back down when she noticed him.

And just
like that, the intense dislike she had directed at Breckin just
earlier that day was dumped onto Cyrus Crow. She didn’t like him
staring at her, she didn’t like the panic he was causing Breckin,
and she didn’t like that he worked for Thoreoux. She matched
Cyrus’s glare, just to let him be aware that, if she had to, she
wouldn’t stay out of his way.

Chapter 11

Black
Eyes

“
Cyrus, dear, are you all right?”

Cyrus
snapped his head up into the gray eyes, identical to his own, of
his mother, Brenna. Despite her elaborate, embroidered dress and
her long, black hair pulled sharply back from her face in a
chignon, she did not appear like the queen she intended. She looked
like a very concerned mother playing dress up.

Ever
since he had returned to Methelwood, he had told her next to
nothing of what had happened during those years away, or why he
came back. She was so paranoid he would leave again she did not
bother pressuring him into telling her. She was simply overjoyed to
have her sons back, and expected nothing more, which made Cyrus’s
life a lot easier.

“
Yes,” she said, as he always did when she asked. “But Mother,
I have a meeting, and he isn’t going to arrive until you leave. You
better go put Brynn to sleep, it’s after ten o’ clock. You’ve been
spoiling him ever since we got back.”

“
Which is one thing I have no qualms about,” she said, bowing
down to kiss his cheek. “But, if you’d like, I’ll leave. I’ll go
read your brother a bedtime story.”

“
He’d like that.” She shuffled out of the room, relieving some
tension in Cyrus’s muscles. He sank deeper into the couch,
releasing a loud exhale. He was in his father’s old study, a place
he had remembered avoiding as a child. Brenna hadn’t moved any of
his things, which must have been quite a difficult chore to do
considering the mansion had been taken apart in Delvynmore and put
back together in Methelwood. It was like she was scared of his
ghost.

His
father had decorated it quite nicely, though. His enormous cherry
desk sat against the wall on the right side; Cyrus had many
memories of Rhoan sitting in his chair at that desk, carved like a
throne. Oil paintings of places in the human world decorated the
dark walls, which did nothing but make Rhoan crave their world even
more. Cyrus sat in the black settee, the only place to lie down
besides his father’s chair, giving him a full view of the stain
glass window depicting a bloody scene of the Lovelace Revolt of
1814. Methelwoodians, as usual, were slaughtering the revolting
civilians of Lovelace. It had been a short revolt.

Cyrus
wiggled into a more comfortable position, hoping this wouldn’t take
too long. It was weird sitting in the dark like this, the only
light coming from a dimmed torch on the opposite wall, dead silence
except for the ticking clock.

That
morning he had gotten a message on his nightstand,
reading:

Cyrus,

I need to speak
to you. Be in your father’s study room by 10:00 this
evening.

T

He wasn’t
sure how Thoreoux intended to talk to him; it wasn’t as if he could
show his face in this orb. Thoreoux had cryptically threatened him
that he could see everything he did, but since this was so vague,
all Cyrus could do was wait.

And then
something crashed through the stain glass window. Cyrus’s reflexes
were sharp, but not fast enough to shy away from all the glass
tumbling down from the air. Luckily for him he covered his face
quick enough to only receive minor cuts on his arms. Only when all
the glass was rattling on the floor did he uncoil his arms and
gape.

The white
lion that had attacked Emmy Rathers was standing in the middle of
the room on their two thousand dollar grizzly bear rug.

The
animal did not pounce or even bend lower as if ready to, clearly
without any intention on hurting him, but Cyrus inched away
anyways. But it was looking at him with golden eyes, set in a way
that depicted recognition in a very human way.

Through
the huge hole in the window another figure stepped through, only
this time it was a person. Like the lion, something was wrong with
him. His eyes did not have pupils, the sclera pure bug-like black.
His motions were also wrong; he moved, but not of his own free
will. Something was pushing the body, like a marionette being
directed by an amateur puppeteer.

The man
opened his mouth, and in a harsh whisper greeted him. “Hello,
Cyrus.”

He choked back his surprise. “
Thoreoux
? What the hell?”

The face
of the man twisted into a horrible smile. “Do you like
it?”

“
No, I don’t. Can you actually see me?”

“
Through this vessel, yes I can.”

“
What
are
those things?” Cyrus asked, disgusted. Both the man and the
lion were staring at him hungrily.

“
They’re spies. I need eyes in Methelwood, and it’s not like I
can waltz into your overprotective orb. Montesquieu has been
interpreting new spells with the Book lately. I’m quite impressed
with his work.”

“
The Book. I should have known,” Cyrus said disgustedly. “So
you’re cursing people now? You’re taking humans and animals alive
and turning them into
this
? Can they survive
it?”

“
No. The animals have been dying fairly quickly. This is the
first human to be possessed, and already he’s starting to decay.
The palewraiths are very resistant to this magic, which kills the
victims faster.”

Cyrus
rolled his eyes at Thoreoux’s arrogance, when a thought hit him.
“Wait, that would mean someone else who works for you is in
Methelwood besides me, doing this.”

“
Yes, I sent someone to Methelwood when the Eldoir moved
there. I’ve had him try out some experiments for me.”

Cyrus
crossed his arms; he didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
“Surely you didn’t ask me to meet you to show off? What do you
want?”

The
demonic smile on the puppet-man disappeared. “I want to hear about
your progress. I’ve been following the girl regularly now, but I
want the opinion from someone who has seen her with his own two
eyes.”

Cyrus
crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’m pretty sure
she’s the one. At first I thought maybe it was his girlfriend, this
girl named Rozelyn Woodworker, but then I found out she was
indifferent to him when they first met.”

“
I see. How do you know?”

“
Have you seen the way Rathers looks at him? She’s mistrustful
of him, but she stares at him like he’s the focal point of the
world. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“
How about the voices?”

“
Still there. She hasn’t actually said out loud the voice is
his, but who else would it be? I’ve got to say, you may be a
paranoid bastard, but you’ve got the most uncanny hunches I’ve ever
seen in a person. You would have made a fantastic
Eldoir.”

Cyrus
backed away further when the lion growled at him. One day, he
thought, he would have to learn to stop provoking his
master.

“
Well, she does fit the profile. Although I’m not one hundred
percent sure, what you have told me is enough.”

“
What’s funny is Persephone hasn’t noticed,” Cyrus said. It
was the first subject changer he could think of.

Thoreoux
bared his teeth. “She has always been purposefully ignorant. How
ironic is it that our little girl is friends with her?”

“
She hasn’t spoken to me once, you know. She doesn’t even look
at me. It’s like she’s trying to will me out of
Methelwood.”

“
We’ll worry about Persephone later. You know how she is with
her denial. On the matter at hand: I want to kill the girl
now.”

Cyrus’s
knees buckled under him. “W – what? Now?”

“
Of course. Listen, Cyrus, these vessels I’ve created are
under my full control. I’ll spare you the details, but more are
being made. By the end of the week I’ll have enough to kill her
without any problem. When they are ready, they’ll be sent to the
mansion. I want you to lead them to her.”

Cyrus
gaped and stuttered in a way he had never done in his life. “You
mean these weird demon people?”

“
Yes. Cyrus, the girl is getting suspicious. She and her
friends are planning to use a dream downloader this weekend. It
would be preferable if she was killed before she found out the
connection between her and Crawford. If she tells him, we will have
him to deal with as well.”

Red spots
flared on Cyrus’s pale cheekbones. He was getting rather tired of
Thoreoux telling him only part of his plans – how did he expect him
to be his right hand man when he knew so little?

“
Alright, fine. Are you going to bother to tell me who your
other ally is here?”

The
demonic smile was back. “No.”

And
before Cyrus had a chance to reply, Thoreoux’s two puppets exited
back the way they had come, through the destroyed stain glass
window.

Chapter 12

Ministrial

Finally,
after a month of waiting, Emmy was getting her cast taken off for
good. She almost skipped into Methelwood’s Mercy Hospital, and she
beamed when Milo gestured for her to come with him. Like last time,
they passed many stretchers with groaning young people on them.
Emmy recognized a couple of the patients from school.

“
I noticed that all of the diseases treated here are physical,
not mental,” Emmy said before she could stop herself.

Milo
wasn’t offended. “As a registered mentalist (Emmy learned that was
the equivalent of a psychologist) and doctor, the one thing I’m
proud to report is that mental health abnormalities are sparse and
few. Sometimes I wonder why they even have a ward, to be
honest.”

She was
taken into a white room similar to the last one. Milo asked her a
few quick questions regarding her health, and she told him she was
great, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

Emmy was
left alone for a few minutes, her dominant arm quivering in her
cast, wanting to be free.

She was
jolted out of her thoughts when two people burst through the door.
Emmy’s head snapped up, expecting to see Milo. What she was not
expecting to see was a nurse dragging in Cyrus Crow, who appeared
to have a fractured rib.

The nurse
settled him down into the bed beside her, informing him he would be
seen by a doctor as soon as possible. He was charming, assuring her
he could stand the wait. When she left, however, the suaveness
instantly disappeared, and he snapped his head in Emmy’s
direction.

“
Hi, again,” she said stiffly. She tried to keep her emotions
under control, but she felt anger bubbling inside her. She was
dubious about the strained pain over his supposedly cracked
rib.