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“Tim is worth ten times what he’s getting paid. I wish we could offer him more money, but the Supe Community isn’t wealthy.” I picked up a charred piece of wood—it looked to be from the dining table—and tossed it to the side. “So much for that table. If Menolly hadn’t remembered seeing it, Wilbur probably would have died. In a sense, my seeing Wylie’s thoughts inadvertently saved Wilbur’s life.”
“You’re right. The Hags of Fate have a way of weaving their webs, don’t they?” Camille headed into the living room, which was smoke damaged but still fairly intact. “I’m going to check through Wilbur’s desk.”
As she rifled through his desk, Shade and I looked down into the stinking hole that had been the basement. The stairs were gone, and the drop looked precarious. The ceiling of the basement was on thin ice. I didn’t trust it not to cave in. And then, an image flashed through my thoughts. Menolly, holding something, as we knelt beside Wilbur in the torrential rain.
“Come on!” I headed down the back steps, which had managed to survive the blast, over to where we’d laid out Wilbur the night before.
Shade followed, while Morio stayed inside with Camille. “What did you think of?”
“Last night, Menolly found something that Wilbur had been pointing to. In all the excitement, she set it aside and we never bothered picking it up. I want to see what it is.” I hurried over to where Wilbur had been stretched out on the ground. After a moment of scouting around, I saw it: a small black bag, right near where Menolly had been sitting. “There!”
Shade cautiously picked it up and turned it over in his hands. “Feels awfully heavy for such a small bag.”
“Open it.”
“I think we’d better have Morio check for traps or magical spells. He has that ability.” Shade motioned toward the house, and we headed back. When we got there, Camille was sitting at the desk, absorbed in a handwritten journal.
“What did you find?” Morio said. He was flipping through a sideboard.
“I don’t know, but we wanted you to look it over first. You have the ability to decipher magical traps?” Shade held up the bag.
Morio frowned. “Some. Give it to me.” He set it on the coffee table and sat down on the lumpy sofa. A waft of dust rose up and I coughed, waving away the slightly stale scents of beer, rotting fruit, and cigar smoke.
Camille glanced up. “Wilbur is one strange puppy. He recorded everything, which can only help us. He seems to have had a pathological need to journal every aspect of his day. And trust me, you do not want to know all of his secrets. There will never be enough brain bleach to cleanse out some of the imagery he’s left me with.” She shivered.
“Like what?” I was a sucker for bad gossip, but more than that, the more we knew about Wilbur, the better.
“Like, Wilbur was expecting company four nights ago. Apparently he thought some old friends were showing up, from his time in the special ops. But he calls them Mango and Trent and refers to them both as ‘he’…not Van and Jaycee. Here he said they contacted him via phone call to let him know they were in town and would like to meet up.”
“They scammed him. Van and Jaycee…you want to make a bet?”
“Not throwing away money on that one. Of course it was them. But he thought they were old buddies from his military days. They must have done some research on his background.” She paused, then added, “He wrote that they were looking for a favor but couldn’t talk about it on the phone. He thought they probably needed a place to crash.”
“Apparently not. Wonder what they wanted?”
“I can tell you what they were after.” Shade looked up from the bag. Morio had examined it, then shook his head and handed it back.
“What?”
“This.” He withdrew a small journal and flipped through it. “Background information on you three, on Smoky, Morio, Trillian. On Iris, Nerissa…” As Shade flipped through the pages, his frown deepened. “Carter. He knows about Carter and Vanzir—that they’re demons. And…fuck. A page about the history of the spirit seals. Wilbur knows all of your secrets, including that you’ve been taking the spirit seals to Queen Asteria.”
“How the crap did he get all of that?” I jumped up, panicked. “He knows about Shadow Wing, doesn’t he?”
Shade nodded. “Yes, it appears he does.”
“Holy fuck. I just found out what the connection between Martin and Wilbur is.” Camille looked up, a pained expression on his face. “Wilbur…Martin was his brother.”
“What?” I cocked my head, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Martin was Wilbur’s little brother. He was an accountant, and he died a few years ago of cancer. Three weeks ago was the anniversary of Martin’s death and Wilbur wrote about it. About how he still didn’t understand why someone so caring…had to die that way.” She pushed back the journal, looking vaguely ill. “I guess Wilbur decided to do the only thing he knew how. He brought Martin back, to be with him. Martin’s not his slave. Martin’s his family.”
Her words echoed in the room as we stood silent. That Wilbur even had a family seemed extraordinary. But then…everybody had a family. Even if they were no longer here.
“It’s okay.” I crossed the room and dropped my arm around her shoulder. “We need to read his journal. We need to know what he’s planning. He knows all about us. He knows about the demonic war. That can change the tide of events.”
“He hid the information from Van and Jaycee,” Camille said. She looked up at me, a pained expression on her face. “He clammed up and hid the information. That’s why they beat the crap out of him. They must have returned to see if they could ransack the place and find what they were looking for. But we were already here, so the Tregart did the only thing he could think of and blew up the joint. But he didn’t try hard enough.”
I sat down beside her, suddenly understanding just what Wilbur had done. He’d put his life on the line to protect us and our secrets. “Somehow, they found out he was keeping tabs on us, and so they pretended to be buddies to gain access to the house. Do you realize that—with the info in this journal—they could mount a raid on Queen Asteria for the spirit seals we’ve taken her? We can’t leave this lying around.”
