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Surely it couldn’t be that easy.
Maximus broke into a jog.
Someone shouted.
Maximus stopped and listened. There was music in the distance and the murmur of voices and laughter. This place had a myriad of paths, artistically lit so that there were darkened places perfect for romantic assignations. A man could very easily get lost here.
Something thrashed in the bushes to his right.
Maximus ran in that direction.
A man came rushing out, his head down, and hurried away without seeing Maximus. Maximus ran three steps after him before he was stopped by a cry.
“Help me!”
He turned and followed the voice, nearly tripping over a body.
He knelt and felt with his hands, finding a man. His chest was wet with a warm liquid.
“He’s killed me,” Illingsworth said. “He’s killed me.”
“Who?” Maximus demanded.
“I…” Illingsworth coughed with an awful dragging sound just as Maximus found the knife protruding from his chest.
“I told him you’d come to see me, that I’d tell you about finding that pendant in his desk drawer when I was a boy. I only needed a little money, not much. It isn’t fair…”
“Illingsworth, who was it?” Maximus demanded.
The other man’s voice was being overtaken by his wheezing breaths. “Not… fair. I’m family. He owed…”
Illingsworth shuddered and went still.
Maximus swore, holding his open hand over the other’s nose.
He couldn’t feel anything.
He stood, looking around. Illingsworth hadn’t said so in so many words, but it must be his uncle who’d killed him. If it had been Noakes, would he flee the pleasure garden or go to his theater box as if nothing had happened?
Maximus started for the docks.
Behind him there was a popping sound. He turned. A woman screamed.
He was already running toward the theater when he smelled it.
Smoke.
Artemis.
Chapter Twenty
The wild hunt was turning, preparing to race away into the clouds, but Lin had made up her mind. She leaned around the Herla King and stole the little white hound sitting before him on his saddle. King Herla grabbed for her and the dog, but his fingers caught only air. Lin had already leaped to earth, the little dog clutched to her breast.…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
“Is it true?” Phoebe asked Artemis, her sweet hazel eyes worried.
Phoebe had somehow managed to get Artemis away from the others, despite Miss Picklewood’s eagle eye. They were walking now in the lower corridor of the theater.
