Page 127 of Dead Vengeance

Archer’s hands land on my arms, stroking over them, squeezing. It’s calming, but it’s too calming. It’s like a soft place I’m not ready to crawl into yet. I don’t want to cry again. I just need to get through this.

The woman’s words come cold and final. “If you’d like to leave a message, I’ll have him call you.”

It’s my first instinct to yell at her. Tell her to get off her ass, walk into his office, and put the phone in front of him.

But after all, I know this is just a job to her. And she probably gets yelled at all day by people like me, caught in a system that’s too slow, too distant, in a world full of horrible ordeals just like ours.

“I’m sorry,” I find myself saying. “I’m sorry, I just… I miss him.”

I’m crying anyway. No matter how hard I try not to. The tears just come, and all I can see is him dead on the floor, all night long, alone. And where’s his body now? What have they done with him?

Archer’s arms close around me. He pulls my head to his shoulder. It already feels like it belongs there. I lean hard against him, ask into the silence on the line, “Can I leave my number?”

“I’ve got your number on my screen,” she replies, and it’s not without sympathy. “Is there a message I can pass on?”

“Yeah. There is.” I take a deep breath in, then stand straight, looking into Archer’s waiting eyes. “Tell Marsden I know exactly what happened to my brother. And that I’m expecting his call. Today. And if I don’t hear from him, I’m telling the whole world what really happened.”

“That’s…” she replies. “Um… Okay… Should we—”

“Thank you.” I click the line dead.

Archer raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re polite to a fault. You know that, right?”

“It’s not her fault,” I mumble, embarrassed. “I was rude.”

The left side of his mouth twitches up in a sympathetic smile, then he drops a kiss on my cheek.

“I’m sorry to you too. I’m sorry I’ve got you involved in this.”

“You got me involved?” he chuckles, a touch of sad humour beneath it. “I’d say that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

I manage a slight smile, maybe a small huff of miserable and exhausted laughter. “You couldn’t have known I had that skeleton in my closet. Or that the thing in your attic had something over me in that way.”

“Nor could you,” he replies, stepping away to take up the kettle that’s just screamed. “So here we are, both of us with some weird link to the supernatural. With some weird link to Tezcatlipoca. Somehow, for you, it’s your brother. And for me…” He finishes pouring the water and sets the kettle down, then leans back against the bench, folding his arms. “I guess it makes sense that he’s here, given the ley lines and the gateway. And maybe because of what I do. But it all feels very coincidental, don’t you think? Why you? Why your brother? Here? With me?”

The memory of what I’ve been trying to get out hits me in one blinding flash. “Gerald has his mirror!” I vomit at him, desperate for him to know before something else interrupts. “I tried to tell you upstairs before he knocked. I don’t know if that’s why he knocked. If he didn’t want me to tell you, but it’s too late now, because I can’t not tell you. Archer, Gerald has it. He has Tezcatlipoca’s mirror.”

The whole time I’m blathering, Archer’s just standing there staring at me, blank-faced, taking it in. The enormity of it. The bizarreness of it.

“I didn’t recognise it at first,” I ramble on, just to fill the quiet in case he’s mad at me, or doesn’t believe me. “When I saw your paper upstairs, I didn’t know. I only saw the thing in person for a second, in Gerald’s office. And I thought it was odd looking, which is why I noticed it. And then the police came in—”

“What?” He pushes off the bench, standing straight. “You saw the mirror in Gerald’s office?

“I did! Then the police, the day I got this job, they were in his office, asking about a stolen artefact. An-and Gerald paid me one hundred pounds to say I hadn’t seen him—”

“What?” he rasps. “He bribed you to keep quiet about the mirror?”

“Sort of?” I admit, fighting a blush. “But I didn’t realise what it was. I didn’t know it was this big of a deal. I didn’t know it was the mirror. And I was desperate for the money and-and…”

His hands are back on my arms. “Slow down, honey. It’s all right. Just tell me.”

God, when he calls me that. It’s such a sweet endearment. Like he still likes me. Like he still wants me. When I’m admitting to lying to the police on behalf of a man who…

Oh god.

Gerald’s stolen it.

Why has this only now really occurred to me?