“I thought you’d never ask, my dear vulture,”Syrus says as I draw my Infernum knife. I wedge the tip into the keyhole and watch as a dark mist forms in my palm, traveling down the blade and into the lock. There’s a click a moment later, and I try the handle—the door opens.
I can feel the smug way Syrus’s presence prowls around my mind, like the cat that got the cream. It secretly makes me feel exhilarated, how good a mood he’s been in since we finally embraced this strange, intense thing between us. I’m trying hard not to question it, not when it makes us so happy.
Inside, I tread the corridors of the house I only ever spent a few hours in, trying to remember the layout from Hathwell’s brief tour.
“All right, perhaps it’s not a complete dump,”Syrus admits begrudgingly.“But there’s a distinct lack of three-headed cats, don’t you think?”
As he’s speaking, it occurs to me that there was one room I wasn’t allowed to see on my wedding night.
“Let’s check out his office,”I say.“There might be something there.”
There’s nothing strange about it at first glance. There are a few shelves of books that don’t look like they’ve ever been read and a desk with piles of paper on it, some with the name of Reed Mills on the header—the factory belonging to Hathwell’s father—as well as a few letters bundled away in the drawers. I’m going to open them up and see who they’re from when I feel Syrus’s attention sharpening.
“Look at that bookend on the right again,”he says.
I turn my gaze back toward the shelves, squinting at the object. It looks more like a sculpture than a bookend, made of polished stone and carved in a vaguely familiar swirling shape.
“Does that look like a rune to you?”Syrus says.
“Maybe,”I say, moving closer to study it. I pick it up, but unfortunately, it doesn’t trigger the opening of a secret passage or anything similarly exciting. I go to put it back, but as I lean forward, I feel a little unevenness under my feet. I pause, shifting my weight back and forth on the rug. There’s definitely more give than there should be.
I flip the edge of the thick carpet, exposing the corner of what looks like a hatch, half covered by the desk.
“Well, well,”Syrus says as I bend down to shove the desk aside. It’s big, and I assume I’ll have to put my whole body into it, only to find it’s no match for my newly built muscles. Once it’s out of the way, I pull the hatch open. Directly underneath is a full staircase with a shiny brass banner leading down under the house.
“I know those stairs,”I say.
I’m looking at them from a totally different angle, but I recognize the banister, the ornate style out of place in such a gloomy spot. I hurry down the steps and am immediately confronted with an open doorway to another room.
The same windowless chamber I was nearly sacrificed in.
“Shit, Hathwell wasn’t just working with the sorcerers. He’s the host of their fucking clubhouse,”I say, stepping into the room, empty but for the altar table still in the center of it.
“One of them, anyway,”Syrus says darkly, but his touch against my mind is soft and comforting.“Are you all right?”
“Yes,”I say, swallowing.“I mean, it’s bringing some of it back. The fear, the blood.”
Syrus shifts inside my head, restless.“I regret how…unrestrained I was that night.”
“You do?”I ask, doubtful.“I thought you said they deserved it?”
“They did. I regret it because it hurtyou. Not because of them.”
I step around the chamber, treading softly, a part of me afraid to disturb the silence.
“I wonder where the bodies are,”I say.“Someone cleaned this place up.”
I study a faint blood stain on the floor—you wouldn’t notice it unless you knew what to look for. The memory of the sorcerer I stabbed on this spot doesn’t feel quite so awful anymore. I’d say Infernum toughened me up, but in general I’ve seen less violence during my months there than I did on the plains. No, what’s missing now is the gut-wrenching guilt.
“It would appear that they came back to cover their tracks,”Syrus agrees.
I walk along the side of the altar, only to stop mid-stride.
A pair of feet stick out from the far end of the table.
I keep my distance as I round the edge of the altar, looking down at the man slumped against it, arms chained to the table legs, his eyes closed.
“It’s Hathwell,”I say.
