It should have been easy.
Instead, it seemed suddenly absurd.
“Now,” Hargreaves said, as she settled with her pipe. “Are you going to tell me what this little escapade is about? I would assume Ms. Morrow is once more the self I suspected she was and set on her usual nonsense. But I can assure you, you will not find any help in breaking any barriers here. And I would advise you, as I tried to before, to not seek them. Somehow, I doubt the only thing that happened to you was you mysteriously disappeared.”
After which, the unsettling feeling shifted again.
Now it was only 20 percent terror and 80 percent something else. Something that felt like dawning realization. Though Bram still tried to protest. “Of course she didn’t. She was killed. By you,” he said, furious enough that she let her hand close around his arm, as calmly as she could manage.
Though her voice sounded tense when she spoke. Tense and faintly despairing, as if everything was falling apart in ways she just couldn’t fully fathom yet. “No, I wasn’t, Bram,” she said, and now he turned his head, eyes flashing.
“But sheknows.”
“It doesn’t matter. She didn’t do it.”
“What? Just because she’s talking like this?”
He gestured at Hargreaves—but it was a half-hearted thing now.
And she could see the conviction was gone from his eyes.
He let it sink in, long before Hargreaves cut through their argument. “So that’s why you’re here. You thinkIkilled you,” she said, so amused sounding about it that it made Bram blush. Evenin this shadowy room, she could see it all over his face, and knew it was on hers, too.
“No,” Lili said. “No we don’t think that anymore. I’m sorry.”
“You should be. What a silly thing to think, when I spent so much of my time trying to keep you safe. It never pays to try the patience of the sort of people who want to keep magic all to themselves here.”
So that’s what all her meanness was about, she thought, heart sinking even further than it already had. Trying to say without directly saying, warn without directly warning, show regard for Calabaraia without directly showing it. Instill in all of us a deep respect, at all costs.
“You love them. The beings who live there,” she said, and suddenly those stern gray eyes were soft and kind. Relieved, it seemed, that she could finally say.
“Of course I do, dear one.”
“It’s what the magical authorities do that you hate.”
“Always. Always.” She looked away, as if seeing all the words she had long wanted to say. Before turning back, resolved. “It is not for our good that I say what I do. It is for theirs. It is for his. It is for yours. Every place the authorities govern, they make a mockery of the gifts Calabaraia offers. Of the welcome Calabaraia alone should be able to decide to confer or not. They have made it a thin thing that only the rich and powerful may access, in lands such as ours.”
“So when it’s someone like me, like Anaya, like Frank.”
“You are mistakes. Statistical errors. Drawn here by others.”
Hargreaves let her eyes rest on Bram, on that last word.
And there was admiration in them. It made him rub the back of his neck and stop being able to look her in the face. Partly, Lilisuspected, because he felt embarrassed about the accusations. But there was something else in there, too.
He just didn’t know how to handle someone else seeing him.
Then liking what they saw.
She had to be the one who kept trying to figure this out.
“But if it wasn’t you, then who?” she asked, sure that Hargreaves must have some idea. And judging by thedo catch uplook on her face, it seemed that was a safe bet. A safe but wholly terrifying bet.
“Why, whoever has the easiest and only access to the vampire they framed for all of this, of course. Because someone did frame you for it, did they not? And then suddenly here was your savior, who seemedsohelpful when you needed to cover this terrible accident up. So keen for conversation about things you could never have shared with anyone else,” Hargreaves said, in an almost cheery sort of way.
While Bram’s face sank like a stone.
Everything sank like a stone.
