Vigil (20 page)

what’s been erased. It’s a thing of mine. Wanting to know what the writer

has taken out, or as I suspect in this case, what mistake they made in spelling

or whether the ink got out of control.”

Another pause.

“I guess that makes me a dork, huh?”

Charles laughed subtly. “It certainly does. Are you finding many of

those?”

“No, just a letter, here or there. It hardly matters. I promise I’ll be along

and looking my very best in time for everyone to toast your success. Really,

this is a terrific find, and you’re to be congratulated. The find of a lifetime.”

“Thank you. You make me very happy. Don’t dawdle.”

“I’m on my way.” Adin hung up and went back to work. He really

did enjoy the work in the lab. Photographing a document and preparing it

for analysis. The careful scraping of the ink and the parchment for testing.

Disturbing as little as possible but enough to determine the artifact’s age.

Guessing who wrote it if it remained unsigned, and building a picture in his

mind about their daily lives.

Charles told him he’d found the documents on a recent trip to England,

where he’d had to pester a family named Hodgkins to let him look at some

papers before they sold them at auction, ostensibly because he’d overheard one

of them in a pub talking about them. In the case of these letters, no one

knew where or how the family had obtained them, but they’d appeared to be

the genuine article, and Charles’s reputation as an astute document hunter

had been further cemented. As fantastic a story as it was, it had turned up

a number of letters in French signed by Marie Stuart, later to be known in

England as Mary Stuart, first in the line of succession for the crown, after

Elizabeth. Mary, Queen of Scots.

In the final letter, the one thought to be of most value, Mary discusses

the restitution of Havre de Grace, and signed it, “Votre Bien Bonne Amie,

Marie R.” Again, Adin noted the strange scratched out bits of the letters,

under the last part of the word Marie, and he thought it odd only because

132 Z.A. Maxfield

it was a signature. Possibly, she’d had an ink mishap, and scraped of the

excess. It certainly could have happened, given that she’d have been working

with a quill. He held a jeweler’s loupe over the tiny letters, and froze.

Unlike the earlier incidents of this kind of erasure, these letters had

been neatly excised with nothing less than –possibly—a surgical instrument.

If he hadn’t seen the others and hadn’t been looking for similar erasures, he’d

never have seen it at all. The cut was clean and the paper that filled it exactly,

flawlessly fit it. The glue that bound the edges in place couldn’t be seen, it was

absolutely, positively perfect.

Perfectly fraudulent.

Excited to be the one among them to see the discrepancy, and completely

naïve, Adin ran to the phone and picked it up. He dialed Charles at his

home, knowing that he’d been there when they’d spoken only minutes before.

Adin assessed that placed Charles less than five minutes away, and it would

therefore be entirely possible to figure out the whole of the mystery before the

party where his find would be announced to the world.

“Charles, it’s me, Adin.” He doubted Charles knew his voice well enough

to distinguish it from all his other disciples. “Listen. I’ve found something

important enough that I think you should get down here right away...”

Adin heard the door open behind him and turned to find Charles and

Shep, resplendent in black tie, entering the tiny lab together.

“Oh, thank heavens.” Adin waved them over to his workspace. “I’ve

found something—an anomaly in the third letter that I think you need to

see right away.”

Charles looked closely at Shep, and Shep shrugged.

“That’s all right, Adin. I’ve seen it.” Charles nodded to Shep. “We both

have.”

Adin woke with a start when the door he was resting against

unlatched and Boaz opened it, leaning into the car to help him

out.

“Sorry, sir,” Boaz murmured as he accidentally jostled Adin’s

now-swollen arm. “I thought it best we have that looked at

immediately. He’d brought Adin to a modern-looking clinic at

Vigil
133

the outskirts of Paris. Over the course of the next several hours,

he and Bran helped him through the arduous and interminable

process of getting his fractured arm examined, x-rayed, and

wrapped in a soft cast. He planned to travel home to the States

and once there, he’d have to have it examined further and address

the possibility of surgery.

They’d discussed the probability quietly and rationally, that

if they didn’t hear from Donte, all three would fly to the United

States, the most difficult aspect of which would be obtaining

papers for Bran. Numbly, Adin accepted Boaz’s assurances that

within a matter of days, maybe even hours, he could procure

what they needed, and they could be on their way.

Bran watched Adin with sad and curious eyes.

“What?” Adin finally asked the silent boy.

“I’m so sorry I brought this on you, Adin. If it weren’t for

me, you would be with Donte right now.”

Adin sighed and wrapped his good arm around Bran,

gathering strength from the solidity of his caring attention if not

from his small, thin frame. “If it weren’t for you Donte would

have continued to brood and I would never have had these last

few days with him. He would have stayed in Spain and I would

have been alone. Who can say what might have happened?”

“But—”

“No, Bran, I know you did nothing to harm Donte. We should

simply drop it now.”

Boaz returned from getting Adin a paper cup of tea that

tasted like brackish fountain water. “We just need to wait for

the last of the paperwork, then you’re free to go. I have your

medications right here.”

“Thank you, Boaz.”

“I went outside and made a few calls.”

Adin’s heart raced. “Donte?”

“I haven’t heard anything. I’m sorry.” Boaz gave him time to

process it. “We should be ready to leave in two days, no more. In

134 Z.A. Maxfield

the meantime, I suggest we go someplace and lay low.”

“Fine.” Adin rested his eyes but a thought caused him to

jump. “No. Wait. I have to go see Harwiche.”

“
What
?” Boaz and Bran stared at him as though he’d lost his

mind.

“I have to see Ned Harwiche before we leave Paris. Donte

told me he’d been attacked. If it weren’t for the fact that Donte

showed up when he did, Harwiche would have died. How could

I forget? I need to go see him and ask him to tell me everything

he knows about Bran. He got me into this mess… He owes me.”

“Do you have any idea where to find him?” Boaz asked.

“No.” Adin closed his eyes again. “But I have no doubt you

do, and you will take me as soon as we’re done here.”

“Dr. Tredeger,” Boaz began.

Adin only opened one eye. “For Bran. Take me there for Bran.

All right? Maybe if it’s not too late…I can learn something.”

Boaz remained silent for a long time. “All right.”

Ned Harwiche looked awful. Adin fought back the urge to

cringe when he was ushered into an unrelentingly stark white

room and his eyes found the man, broken and bruised, sitting

uncomfortably on an ultra-modern chair. The entire scene,

including Harwiche, was straight out of Austin Powers—a

parody of über hip sixties spy films. Adin tried not to laugh when

he pictured Donte coming here. Harwiche was bandaged and

stitched in several places that Adin could see and heaven knew

what was hidden from view by his clothes. Since Adin’s arm was

bound in a soft cast, held close to his body in a canvas sling they

looked like embattled bookends.

“Adin.” Harwiche had the grace to look ashamed. “I think I

have you to thank for my life.”

Adin fought hard to keep from saying,
I hope not
. Once again,

Adin chafed at ever having been confused for this man. They

shared—maybe—height. Or lack of it. Adin guessed they were

both about five feet nine inches tall, but Adin was svelte. He

had small bones and a diminutive, distinctly planed face, high

cheekbones and deep set eyes, while Ned’s chubby face lacked

discernable structure. That the men at the cemetery took him for

Harwiche still rankled.

Adin merely shrugged.

“Your vampire arrived exactly in the nick of time.” He said

this with a pout of thick lips that was almost a sneer. “I must say

he wasn’t what I expected at all. He kept me from bleeding to

death, and called the paramedics.”

Adin took an uncomfortable seat across from him. “Did he?

Now you have the chance to return the favor. What the hell did

you get me into here, Harwiche?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Adin narrowed his eyes. “I could break the remaining bones

136 Z.A. Maxfield

in your body to see if it helps your memory. Boaz has been very

resourceful when it comes to getting me out of trouble with the

police—”

“All right, although I should warn you, I’m no longer

unprepared to deal with the threat of physical violence. I’m sorry

about duping you in the cemetery. I just thought…” Harwiche

waved his good hand impatiently. “I don’t know what I thought.

Maybe that I’d get a chance to see the men I was dealing with

before we met formally for the transfer of the boy. I never

imagined you would go with them.”

“They had guns, Harwiche. They didn’t give me a choice.”

Ned’s eyes closed. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You need to tell me about Bran. What the hell did you think

you were doing, trying to buy a
boy
?”

Ned’s face remained impassive. “He’s not a boy. He’s not

human.”

“I can’t argue that, but he is—at the very least—a fully

sentient, intelligent being. You still can’t buy or sell him.
Chain

him
.”

“There’s always been a war between humans and… for lack of

a word, inhuman entities. I descend from a long line of men and

women who knew how to make the world of the non-living run

smoothly, much as your imp Boaz does for Fedeltà. We’ve been

richly rewarded, and a number of my ancestors chose to become

like them. In the last two centuries those Harwiches, living and

undead, have made it their business to find out everything we can

about all the worlds around us. Believe me, Fedeltà and his kind

are the tip of the iceberg.”

“So you know what Bran is?” Adin sat forward. “Then tell

me. Bran needs to know.”

“What he is? You mean what he was before he was exchanged

for the human child?”

“Yes. I understand he’s a changeling.”

“You don’t understand at all. There are a million changelings.

Vigil
137

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an ordinary changeling

child or a man or woman who started out as something else.

The
changeling
isn’t an entity. It’s not a type of otherworldly being

like an imp, for example, your Boaz. A changeling is a part of a

process. A magical contract, fulfilled when whatever entity has

been entered into it becomes a human.”

“Yes, Boaz told me Bran never made the full transition to

human, that his contract was interrupted somehow.”

“Yes, but you need to understand that the contract is bound

by the blood of all participants. Bran’s original, magical family

and any living human grandparents, parents, and siblings from

his human family.”

“I see. Everyone is bound by the contract?” Adin frowned.

“Everyone living. You can see how exceedingly rare it would

be to find a magical being whose entire original nominal family

line was dead, say, to find an orphan entity with no living relatives.

And then to add in the extremely unlikely event that one might

find a child who had been exchanged with someone whose

human family was in the exact same boat. To be adopted by the

one family with few or
no
living relatives at all…”

“Shit.”

“It’s one in a million. One in a hundred million.”

“How would you know? Who’s to say there’s not a cousin or

something, still alive who—”

“The only person who would know all the facts of the

transaction would be the person who oversaw the original

contract. Genealogical studies would have been made…”

“But the odds of everyone dying are astronomically high.

Someone,
somewhere
must still be—”

“Not if one helps it along.” Ned waited for that to sink in,

and when it did, Adin flinched.