Apparently she didn’t need to, however. Lancelot Mortimer lifted his gaze from Luna’s face and simply stared at the boy. Nothing more. No expression to be discerned through the enchanted features. But it was enough. Tobias coughed again, and Luna could hear the shuffle of his boots as he retreated. The other Brute Boys seemed to close in behind her, and she could swear she felt hot breath on the back of her neck.
Mortimer returned his attention to Luna, the halfway-charming smile tilting his lips. “Do you know, I’ve been thinking about you a great deal since our meeting yesterday,” he said. “I wished very much, after you boarded that trolley, that I’d not let you go so easily.” He leaned in then, his sideways grin growing. “What did you think of that little tag-spell I put on you? I noticed it vanished within a very short time, before I’d a chance to do more than glance at it. Did your employer help you with its removal?”
Luna’s stomach turned over. Did this man know Mr. Grimm? But of course, there weren’t that many Dark Sorcerers walking this earth. It was only natural they would know each other.
“Now, now.” Mortimer clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “Why the sour look, my dear? Is it this face that bothers you? I know, it’s so gauche, wearing false features. I find it often better to wear it, however, when going about among ordinaries. They’re such fools for these little things and have no respect for the glory of Dire scars. Still, as you and I are friends . . .”
He turned away, putting an arm up and rubbing his sleeve vigorously across his features. It was all so quick, so violent, and the next moment, he whirled around and stuck his face right up close to Luna’s, no more than an inch or two away.“Boo!”he barked.
Luna screamed. She tried not to, but simply couldn’t help it. The scream ripped up her throat and caught in the gag as she jerked, nearly tipping her chair over backwards.
Chuckling, Mortimer retreated once more, leaning heavily sideways on his skull-headed walking stick. His face was once more the old and Dire-burnt carnage she had seen at the trolley stop. The flesh looked raw and strangely red and melted, like wax rather than ordinary burn scars. A ghastly, unnatural sight, cast into sharp relief by the shimmering orb’s glow. The goons all around drew sharp breaths, many of them choking on curses ofsurprise. Apparently, they had not seen the Big Man’s true face before now. Luna felt them drawing back from her by several paces, and tension simmered in the atmosphere.
“Would you believe me, my dear,” Mortimer said, touching the warped side of his face delicately with the tips of his gloved fingers, “if I told you that I used to be a handsome devil back in the day?” He shook his head sadly, the chestnut locks now limp gray strands, wafting about his shoulders. “So handsome, in fact, Jastira herself favored me. This was forty-odd years ago, you understand. Back when we were both young and hungry sorcerers, eager to make names for ourselves at the Nocturnus Institute of Magics. Those were the glory days, indeed!”
Luna’s eyes widened. This Lancelot Mortimer was the consort of the Shadowbane Lady? She’d heard of him, heard of the terrible darkness he’d spread across all of Plym. It was rumored that Jastira’s lover had turned on her in the end, moments before she ascended to unstoppable power, though Luna didn’t know any further details. She stared at the slender, aged figure before her. He didn’t look like the sort who would overthrow evil overladies. But then, who was she to judge?
Sighing, Mortimer rolled his head back, gazing one-eyed up at the shimmering light as though it were a window to the past itself. “I always worshipped the very ground on which she trod. Forty years later, that never changed for me. But Jastira . . . my lovely, lithe, lusty Jastira. She was seduced by a younger man. A fresh-faced idiot, who made her fancy herself in the flush of new love all over again. Oh, it was such foolishness!”
He closed his good eye. The other wouldn’t close, but glinted from behind folds of melted skin as it continued to gaze up at that orb. He uttered a deep sigh. “My Jastira, you see, was far more beautiful than other women. Age had not affected her looks in the slightest. No! She knew such spells as to keep her as lithe and plump and toothesome as the day I first laid eyes uponher! Perhaps I let myself go by comparison, but I never thought she minded. Not until that youngbastardcame along.”
He spat the word with such vehemence, spittle dotted the warehouse floor. Then he rounded on Luna, both eyes open, the one wide and seeming to quiver in its socket with the intensity of his focus. “Now, what was his name?” he mused in tones both low and venomous.
Sudden sickness twisted in Luna’s chest. Though she couldn’t say why, she realized what he was about to tell her, what he was about to reveal. She realized and, in the same moment, understood that she should have guessed the truth a long time ago. How or why, she couldn’t say. But somehow she should have known. She should have seen it, should have prepared herself. Fortified her heart against the moment about to happen.
Goddess,she prayed desperaetly,let me be wrong!
But Mortimer continued relentlessly: “By the end, he was known as the Grimshade Lord.” He tapped the smooth skull of his walking stick with his fingers, a thoughtful rhythm, then faked a shudder. “Oh! How we all trembled at the sound of his fell footsteps, echoing through the halls of Nocturnus! Such a ghoulish figure was he, and none dared stand against him, wreathed as he was in shrouds of anti-glitter, the blackness of the Void lodged deep in his eyes! But when I first met him, he had not yet earned that name. Now, let me think, what was he called in those days? Niles or Niel or . . .” His smile grew, twisted. “That’s right. Nigel. Nigel Grimm.”
Luna closed her eyes and turned her head to one side. She felt as though she’d been slapped.You don’t have to believe him,she told herself firmly, denial screaming inside her head.You don’t have to accept this!
But she knew. She’d known for some time now that Mr. Grimm—her sweet, shy, adorable employer—was a Dark Sorcerer. Had he not himself revealed some of his connectionto the Shadowbane Lady? He’d brought her to the grave of his father, after all, told her how old Alfred P. Grimm had perished.
She should have pressed him then. But she’d made the mistake of looking into his sad blue eyes and seen there his urgent desire to be kind, to be caring. To be the perfect gentleman. She’d recognized the lost soul in him, searching for some sort of ground on which he could stand, could plant himself and build something,anythingworth having from the wreckage of his life. And she’d decided to trust him. Knowing even as she did so that it was a foolish choice.
But then, she’d always been a bit of a fool where Nigel Grimm was concerned.
Lancelot Mortimer watched her closely, gauging her reaction. Luna felt his gaze on the side of her face. She didn’t want to give him any satisfaction, so she forced herself to open her eyes and schooled her expression into blankness. Then she turned. Blinked innocently back at him. It was too late, of course; he’d already read plenty in her initial flinch. But she would put on a brave show, nonetheless.
Mortimer’s lip curled in a sneer. “It was a torrid affair from the off,” he said, his words a poisonous drip in her ear. He took a few hobbling steps closer, his one eye blazing. “I suspected for weeks, but had no proof. After all those years together, I could not believe my Jastira would throw me over for a callow boy! Others whispered warnings, but I refused to listen, refused to believe, even as suspicion gnawed away at my gut.
“Then, one day, I walked in on them. They were together in Jastira’s own bedchamber, the one in which she and I had shared so many decades of delights. At first, I thought she lay there waiting for me, her luscious body thrown back upon her cushions, her hair tumbled in fiery red glory, like rivers of magma against the black sheets. How beautiful I thought herthen, and all the old feelings roared to life inside me, a furnace of heady joy!
“It was then that I saw him. On his knees. His face buried between her—”
Luna dropped her chin, stared hard at the fabric of her coat. Stared at the dirty old button directly in her line of sight. Stared at the little thread pulling loose and considered how she would need to mend it soon or risk losing the button entirely. She focused on every little fray and scuff and stain and refused, refused,refusedto hear what Lancelot Mortimer said. She wouldn’t hear it. And she wouldn’t believe it either. Belief was a choice, wasn’t it? She couldchoosenot to believe him, not to let those wicked, lascivious pictures fill her brain like a scried image. It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t let it be true.
“The boy had grace enough to be ashamed,” Mortimer continued relentlessly. “My Jastira, however, only laughed. Laughed in my face.” He laughed then himself, an insane cackle, as twisted as his own pathetic features. He shook his head, wiped a tear away with the flick of a gloved hand, then looked down at Luna again. “But I understood at last. The revelation came to me in a flash—she was testing me! Testing the depths of my love! We had grown too complacent, she and I. Too comfortable, too certain of our mutual devotion. She needed to know I was still the man who would fight for her. Who would kill for her.
“So I laid my plans. I watched my rival closely, learned all I could about him and his weaknesses. Then, when the opportunity was ripe, I challenged him to a duel, as was my right!”
Tears gathered fast, collecting on Luna’s lashes. She tried so hard not to let them fall, but one began to trickle free, and she hated herself for allowing it.
“But did that boy honor me and my position as the Shadowbane Lady’s chosen consort?” Mortimer cried, throwingup one hand in a disdainful gesture. “Did he acknowledge the unspoken code of our Order and meet me where I stood, a challenge justly issued? No! The arrogant bastard mocked me with his laughter and turned his back on me.
“Well, I could not let that stand. So I aimed a bolt of raw Dire Matter to pass over his right shoulder. A searing blast, intended to warn him of the serious nature of my challenge, to make him turn around and face me as he ought. But what do you think this Nigel Grimm did in response?”
Luna shook her head, and a second, hateful tear slipped free.
