The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (8 page)

“But you’re not an idiot,” Olivia said, then snorted quietly. “Well,” she amended with a grin. “You’re
barely
an idiot.”

“Olivia…” Chris murmured. He still hadn’t accustomed himself to Olivia’s easy way around bodies, but he could mostly ignore it. Harder to ignore was how she acted like she was having a lovely time when a grieving family stood paces away.

She shot him a quick look, eyebrows pulled and lips puckered… but then sighed, straightened, and dusted off her hands like she’d been handling flour and not a body. She turned and gave the priestesses a tight little smile. Her attempt was too awkward and toothy to be comforting, and Sister Elisabeth took a half-step back. Still, Chris appreciated the effort.

Olivia paced over to the one thing in the room that wasn’t faintly glowing with some sort of nimbus: the deep, huge, claw-footed bathtub, still filled almost to brimming with water. Green envy stabbed Chris at the thought of soaking there, which was utterly inappropriate under the circumstances.

Olivia ran a finger along the edge. The tub was close to the door, and Chris saw her measure that, looking at the door and then back at the tub, her eyes tracing a line across the floor between them. “Could a spiritbinder have gotten from here to the door after releasing the undine?” she asked Chris.

Chris nodded. “A decent spiritbinder could have been outside before he released his hold on her. He’d just have to retain line of sight with her and her place of binding.”

Olivia gave him a little smile. “I knew having you around would come in handy eventually! The less useful Buckley.”

“Right.” Chris knew by now not to take offense to her jibes, but he thought of Will again, the three of them all deciding for him what he did and didn’t have a right to know. He growled. “Bribing me into your employ certainly paid off in the long term.”

Maris cleared her throat and they both jumped. They were unused to having her at crime scenes, and they glanced at each other, and then at her, guiltily. She stood by the priestesses, arms folded and foot tapping. “Are we getting somewhere?” she asked pointedly, and Chris ducked his head in a silent apology to the two women.

“Our theory checks out so far,” Olivia said, and she leaned back against the bathtub, the strangest murder weapon either of them had seen yet. She directed her attention on the two priestesses. “Right, well, I have some questions. First! Who has access to this bathroom?”

Sister Elisabeth turned to look at her holy mother, who patted her hand and spoke on their behalf. “It’s for our use. All of our use. The family.”

“Of course,” Olivia said. “Why wouldn’t six humble priests need facilities as extensive as this?”

This was where Olivia did what she did best―set her clients on edge, trying to unsettle them and force them into revealing what they knew, which was, Chris had come to admit, considerably more than they ever initially admitted. But neither priestess looked perturbed, merely seeming to take Olivia’s words for the mean-spirited rhetorical question they were.

Olivia looked between them, then sighed and continued. “And who used it last?”

“We have strict bathing schedules,” Mother Greta responded. “All the churches do, so there’s never confusion. The Maiden has access at dawn. The Mother and Father may bathe from after the end of morning services to noon, while the afternoon and evening are reserved for Crone and Elder. Then, after full dark, the Youth may bathe.”

Olivia pursed her lips thoughtfully. Her long fingers drummed out a beat on the edge of the tub. “All pairs together except Maiden and Youth, then?”

Sister Elisabeth spoke up. “A Maiden and her Youth…” She bit back a sob, and Mother Greta pulled her close once again, shushing her, stroking her hair, and then turning to look at Olivia with a slightly chastising look.

“A Maiden and Youth are brought into the flower of adulthood and married together when they are raised to Mother and Father,” she said. “But before that, their virginity is closely guarded. It’s necessary for them to play the correct role in the holy family. It’s important to keep them separate in any situation that might provide intimate temptations.”

Chris’s attention strayed to the Maiden, her tear-streaked face pulled into Mother Greta’s side. The boy lying dead in the middle of the floor hadn’t just been a colleague to her; he’d been her betrothed, of a sort. He’d known, of course, that a Mother and Father were always wed and eventually grew into the wisdom of a Crone and Elder, but he’d never quite pieced together what role that gave to a Maiden and a Youth, that they, in turn, were paired together at a young age and expected to marry. True arranged marriage was essentially a thing of the past in Tarland, but even so, this was different. The Maiden and Youth would spend every day together, growing closer. Building a bond. What would that be like? Unbidden, his mind went to Rachel Albany, and immediately he tried to dismiss the memory of her soulful brown eyes and that moment when he’d been willing to kiss her.

“So,” Olivia said. “Mister Huxley was here right when he should’ve been, running his evening bath in preposterously clunky boots. Nothing of interest there.” She sighed. “Finally, most important question. Who can come into the church after dark?”

Mother Greta glanced down at Sister Elisabeth, who bit her lip and looked at Maris. No help there. The police officer nodded toward Olivia.

Olivia sighed.

“I suspect,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “that I know what you’re about to tell me. But please. Do tell me anyway.”

“This is a place of guidance, love, and worship, Miss Faraday,” Mother Greta said quietly. “What sort of priests would we be if we ever closed our doors to anyone?”

exactly what it sounds like,
Chris weaved.

“Wonderful,” Olivia said, “fantastic. Well.” She sighed and shook her head. “I need all three other church families here in an hour. Between Heart Church’s no doubt amazing resources and Maris, of course, do you think you could do that for me?”

“Probably,” Maris said slowly.

“Excellent!” Olivia smiled. “I’ll also need the accidental death reports for those apparently non-accidental deaths! Can you have them here with the priests?”

“Where are
you
going?” Maris demanded, and Olivia tapped at the watch lodged in her chest pocket with a long fingernail.

“
I
,” Olivia said, “spied a nice little cafe across the street from here, and I am getting lunch, because it is now afternoon, and I am starving.” She looped her arm into Chris’s, pulling him toward her so quickly that he stumbled to her side, and she patted his arm and said in a low voice, just for him, “And
you
are going to tell me what I did to make you look like you ate a lemon.”

“This is hardly time―” Chris started.

“That’s… reasonable, surprisingly,” Maris said. “Fine, have your lunch. I’ll help Mother Greta and Sister Elisabeth with the round-up, but then I have other cases to attend. Good luck, Faraday.”

“Thank you, Maris.” Olivia fluttered her eyelashes and pulled him along. “I’ll see the rest of you in an hour.”

hris took his time at the counter. He deliberated over what to order, finally settling on cucumber sandwiches and cream of celery soup. Then he took time deciding exactly what sort of tea he’d have with his meal. He was aware of the confused impatience of the poor fellow behind the counter, and, more acutely, of Olivia’s eyes boring into his back from the table she’d already taken her meal to.

“Just, do you mind? Just one moment,” Chris said, trying to sound very indecisive and apologetic. The bloke nodded hesitantly and Chris pretended to scan the different tea infusions offered while his mind worked on a way to get out of this conversation.

There wasn’t one.

He sighed.

“Just… just tea,” he said. “No flavours, just black tea, please.” He couldn’t imagine why anyone would ruin perfectly good tea with a splash of apple juice, anyway.

The bemused young man prepared his meal quickly, and Chris dared a glance at Olivia. He hoped she had gotten absorbed in her meal, but she glared at him from her corner seat, sandwiches, biscuits, and soup all untouched. He snapped his gaze away quickly, feeling as if he’d been burned. Oh, Olivia.

He didn’t really have a right to be angry at her. He had to admit that. She and Maris and Will had all made a decision without him, for him, yes. But it had been the correct decision, one that they couldn’t have made with his knowledge. Olivia had even agreed to be the villain of the narrative they’d put together, refusing to have the death investigated further, despite Will and Maris’s better opinions. Was he going to walk over there and scold her for the most selfless act he’d ever known her to have done?

“Soup’s up, sir,” the fellow behind the counter said, and Chris sighed, grabbing his tray and walking to the table as if to the gallows.

“All right,” Olivia said, nose going into the air, as he slid his tray onto the table. “Let’s hear it then, Christopher. What has you so bloody balled up at me?”

Chris dipped his spoon into his soup. It looked entirely unappealing. He made a face. And then, reluctantly, he looked up at Olivia. “William told me everything.” He steeled himself.

The reaction he expected didn’t come. Olivia paused, and he could see her wheels turning, and then she grinned. Chris’s brow furrowed. She grinned? Really? “See,” she said, clucking her tongue. She did not sound angry, or even worried. “I told them. I told them that you were altogether too clever a fellow to get taken in by the whole thing. It would never stick.”

Well. Olivia Faraday had one skill, to be sure. No matter how Chris readied himself for conversations with her, she could always,
always
make him open his mouth and say something like: “Gods, I can’t believe you! You knew it wouldn’t work, and you did it
anyway
? Would it have hurt so much to―I don’t know, be
honest
?”

Olivia glared at him flatly. She looked at his soup and his sandwiches, untouched, and, as if to spite him, dipped her spoon into her own bowl and took great pleasure in savouring the flavour, eyes closing and throat making an entirely inappropriate sound of pleasure. Chris found himself glancing about, blushing furiously.

“Stop that!” he snapped.

She lowered her spoon. She shrugged. Very unladylike. “I like onion and cheese soup, Christopher. I can’t pretend that I don’t.”

“You’re embarrassing me on purpose.”

One white-blonde eyebrow climbed in amusement. “My, aren’t we self-absorbed today?”

“Why did you go along with it?” he demanded, losing all patience, and he watched her drop her spoon and wave one hand about dramatically. These were all, he’d learned, stalling tactics while she taught her tongue the right words to say, instead of blurting out the first thing that came to her twisted mind.

“Because I thought about it,” she said finally, all playfulness gone from her voice. When he met her eyes, they were chagrined. Embarrassed. He barely recognized her. “I thought about it a lot more than I’m used to thinking about this sort of thing, Christopher, and I decided…” She growled. Her chagrin turned into annoyance. He could read her eyes well enough.
You’re making me say these things, think about these things. You bloody bastard.
Despite himself, a sad smile touched his lips, and it seemed to give her the strength to keep going. “It seemed worth the risk,” she said, finally. “At first I thought: why lie to him? What’s the point? But William made an especially impassioned speech about the value of being able to believe something less horrible than the truth, and I thought… well, fair enough. He’s not like me. An unknown truth doesn’t sit between his shoulder blades like an itch he can’t scratch. Maybe it really would be better.” She shrugged. And then a very Olivia-like smile curled one side of her mouth. “It’s very satisfying to be right,” she said. “I’m looking forward to rubbing it in their smug faces.”