Bedtime Story (69 page)

David’s face crashed into the tile. His nose snapped, his mouth filled with blood. He tried to drag himself forward, coughing, but the captain
held him fast. He could feel the man’s hands tearing at his clothes, ripping his tunic open.

“I’ve got it,” he cried out, standing up, holding the small leather bag high in the air.

The Queen swooped into the room and snatched it from his hand, as David spat blood onto the cold grey tile.

Jacqui had been driving so long she had started to think that she was lost. Hopelessness threatened to overshadow her urgency. But when the narrow road widened into a circular driveway, she knew that this had to be the right place. The house before her was a stone monstrosity that seemed to jut out of the darkness. A red VW sat parked in front of the steps.

She pulled in behind the car and turned off the engine. “I’ll be right back,” she said to David. “Okay? I’m just gonna see if anybody’s home.”

She took care on the steps, half shrouded in shadow. The last thing she wanted to do was fall and break her neck.

Glancing back at the van from the porch, she couldn’t make out David in the dark. She turned toward the doors, which were faced with frosted glass.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked.

She waited, listening for any hint of motion inside. She still had no idea what she would say to the woman when she opened the door. One step at a time.

No one appeared. She knocked again, louder this time, bruising her knuckles against the wood.

Still nothing.

“Damn it,” she muttered, before pounding on the door with the side of her fist, calling out, “Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?”

She tried the door: locked.

Chris was obviously inside the house, but David was in the van and couldn’t be left for long. What was she supposed to do?

She pulled off her sweater. The sea air chilled her bare arms as she folded the sweater in half, forming a thick pad which she held against
the glass near the doorknob. Holding it with one hand, she brought up the other elbow and smashed it, several times, against the window. She didn’t stop until she felt the sweater starting to fall inward, heard the tinkling of glass on the floor inside the house.

She punched the rest of the glass away and reached in, turning the bolt on the lock.

With one look back at David, Jacqui opened the door.

A row of guards stood at the castle gate as Mareigh approached. Flames leapt so high from the torches in the walls that it was almost as bright as day.

Her heart was racing, but she didn’t even slow down.

“Which one of you is the captain?” she asked, stopping in front of them.

“Ma’am,” one man said, stepping forward. “The gates are closed.”

“Are you the captain?” she asked. Just her luck: someone she had never served in the tavern.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, standing there stiff-backed.

“I need to see the King,” she said, fighting the quaver she could feel in her throat.

“That’s impossible,” the captain said, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword.

He stopped himself when she held up her left hand, the signet glittering on her ring finger, catching the torchlight like a small ember.

“I have come to see the King,” she said, extending the ring toward the captain as she drew the letter, still sealed with the royal crest, from her blouse.

“He’s been expecting me.”

Reflexively I clutched the book close to my chest and took two steps backward. “You did this,” I said. “You did this to David. To all those other children.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Cora asked, withdrawing her outstretched hand.
“If it meant that you could live forever? Eternal youth, with none of that Greek-myth be-careful-what-you-wish-for crap? Forever young, forever beautiful? Who wouldn’t want that?”

I threw my head back, trying to stave off the flow of tears that threatened. I looked away from her, around the room where Lazarus Took had spent the last years of his life, reading and writing.

“I should have known,” I said. “I should have known it wasn’t him.”

“It was his idea,” she said, and I looked back at her, at her wide eyes and the dark barrel of the gun. “Well, sort of. Lazarus always said he wanted to write something that would make him immortal. Something that people would remember.” She shrugged. “That was one of the things he did, one of his little gifts. He wrote those books.” She said it as if this left a sour taste in her mouth. “Those little spells that captured his readers, that pulled them into the story. Well, not literally.” She smiled again. “That part was my idea.”

She took a step to one side, starting to edge around the desk. I took a step in the opposite direction, trying to keep as much distance between us as possible, as if the width of a stride would protect me against a bullet.

“Lazarus was a dabbler,” she continued. “Reading cards and writing those books. Oh, he was a grand performer when he needed to be, but he didn’t know anything about real magic.”

“But you did.”

She nodded. “It’s in my blood, you see. Everything that you read about those old magicians, it’s always about the men. The almighty William Thorne. The evil Lazarus Took. But the real power, that came from the women. It always has. When they arrested Thorne, they thought they were rescuing my mother, that this poor, innocent, virginal girl had fallen under the devil’s spell, and that, praise the Lord, they had rescued her before he had a chance to defile her.” She spat out a laugh. “Little did they know that it was her hand on the blade that cut the throats for the ritual sacrifices. That it was her body that was the font of what little power Thorne ever had.”

“Your mother? Thorne?”

She nodded. “He was never the same after she was gone. He spent
the rest of his life chased by the police, writing his ridiculous books, building up his legend, while my mother disappeared into the darkness of history with her child.”

“You? You’re Thorne’s—?”

“I’m my mother’s daughter,” she snapped. “And that’s all that matters. She taught me everything she knew, showed me how to awaken the power within me, to harness the power of those around me.”

“Lazarus.” I took another step away and she took a step closer.

“He had some power,” she conceded. “But he’d never have been able to use it on his own. I showed him some tricks, let him shine like a beacon, drawing people to us. People and their power.”

“And their money.”

She waved the comment away. “Money’s of little concern. There’s nothing you can buy that people won’t willingly give.”

“Or that you can’t take,” I said, thinking of the book in my hand, of Tony Markus.

“If something was meant to be mine, what difference does it make how I came by it?”

“But you’re killing my son.” As I spoke the words, I felt my fear vying with a sudden flash of anger.

“So?” she said. “I needed him, to keep me alive. Do you spare a thought for the pig on your plate as you tear into its flesh?”

I lowered my head, unable to look at her any longer.

“You poor, poor man,” she said, condescension dripping from every word. “You came here thinking that I would help you, that you could count on the poor, sweet, naive girl, when all along …”

She made another movement toward me, and I backed into the doorknob: there was nowhere left for me to retreat.

“When I came in, you seemed awfully interested in seeing what was behind that door. The key’s in the desk.”

I didn’t move.

She waved the gun between me and the desk. “Go on,” she said. “Satisfy your curiosity. No secrets between us now.”

I still didn’t move. Paralyzed by fear, by the horror of what she had done.

“Open the door, Chris,” she said coldly, her voice cutting the air between us. “You might as well. You’ve got absolutely nothing left to lose.”

I stepped to the desk and pulled open the drawer, watching her closely. I glanced down to see a brass key in the tray alongside two fountain pens.

“So what are you going to do to me?” I asked, looking up again.

“Well, first,” she said, taking another step toward me, so close now she could have reached out and taken the book. “We’re going to take a look at what’s behind door number two.” She gestured with the gun. “And then we’re going to go out on the balcony and you’re going to take a dive onto the rocks.”

I gasped.

“And then I’m going to call the police and tell them how I tried to stop you, but you were so overcome with grief about your son that you couldn’t go on. Inconsolable. I’ll cry and I’ll heave my breasts and the police will feel so sorry for me it’ll never occur to them to look for any other possibility.”

“I won’t do it.”

She looked at me as if I were a misbehaving child, and she spoke to me the same way. “In that case, I’ll shoot you in the head. There are dozens of ways to make a body disappear.” She shrugged as if it made no difference to her. “So why don’t you open that door.” She spoke the last three words in a low, almost guttural voice, a command that I was powerless to resist.

I slowly fit the key into the lock.

The tumblers opened with a heavy click.

I glanced at her, and she nodded.

“Go ahead.”

I turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

“Oh God,” I muttered.

“I suppose I should make the introductions. Chris Knox, this is Lazarus Took.”

As David struggled to his feet, he felt the magus’s hand on his arm, helping him rise. “I’m sorry,” he sputtered, spitting out another mouthful of blood. “I tried.”

The magus shook his head. “It’s enough,” he said. “It will have to be.”

The captain pushed past David, reaching for Loren’s neck. He grabbed him around the throat, dragging him down.

“I should kill you now,” he snarled, his face red and damp.

“Captain,” came a hoarse whisper from the bed. “Let him free.” The King’s voice was weak, but his tone brooked no argument. “You do not want to incur the wrath of the Brotherhood.”

Bream held the magus by the throat as he turned to the Queen. She appeared to consider for a moment, then nodded.

As the captain dropped the magus to the floor like a heap of grey laundry, the Queen untied the thong closing the leather sack.