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Zayan answered, “As a doornail. Snuffed out by his own evil key.”
“I’m glad. And what about that room? His laboratory?”
“I haven’t been back. As far as I know, nothing has changed.”
He tried to remember and only got visions of blood, his own blood and so much blood flowing from Bluebeard. But the crypt. He saw that earlier, while he still had his wits about him, filled with dead bodies. He asked, “Who were all those women? He can’t have killed them all. There must have been a hundred.”
Zayan answered, averting his eyes, “He could, and he did. There are many things you need to know about him, and about me.”
He set down his plate, giving Zayan his full attention. He had always suspected there were things Zayan hadn’t told him, but never imagined the magnitude of these secrets. Zayan had said nothing about the horrors in that room, and it must have been a heavy burden to carry by himself.
“Tell me,” he suggested. “But only if you’re ready.”
Zayan hesitated, but gathered strength and continued, “Bluebeard is, was, old, very old.”
“Because of his magic? How old?”
“Judging from the books I’ve seen, he probably started doing alchemy in the 1400’s, so six hundred years?”
“No way!” he said, but then he saw the certainty in Zayan’s eyes. “You’re serious.”
“It gets worse. He killed all those women, Beatrice and all his other wives, to keep himself alive. And he wanted to do the same with you. He wanted me to do the same with you.”
With that, it all started to make sense. It was horrifying, but not a surprise. “So that was his plan all along, with all the money and seduction. It always seemed too good to be true, from the first moment his letter arrived.”
Zayan nodded and confirmed it all. “He was a master of manipulation, but fortunately, I didn’t live up to his expectations. Turns out I’m lousy at deception, and on top of that, I fell in love with the man I was supposed to sacrifice. I did manage to trick him there at the end, though, so I count that as a win."
He was so proud of his heroic alchemist, his knight in shining armor. Truly, Zayan had rescued him from certain death. “You asked me out on the cliff if I trust you. I didn’t answer then, but I’d like to now. I love you and I trust you. You made the right decisions at the critical time, and we’re safe together now because of you.”
Zayan colored at this and wouldn’t catch his eye, saying, “I’m sorry I kept so many secrets. I’ll try not to do the same again.”
“Apology accepted, and when I’m feeling better, we can explore in depth how apologetic you are. But I have to ask. Do you know how to do it? How to stay alive forever?”
Zayan looked deeply troubled, but gave him a direct answer. “I do, but it’s not worth the cost. He did it with a twisted combination of broken marriage vows and blood. I know how to do it, and I could probably squeeze a couple hundred years of life from those two beakers of his blood.”
He couldn’t even imagine it. He exclaimed, “Yuck! I don’t want any part of him in me.”
“Agreed. It seems unthinkable, but I wonder. When we’re older, getting closer to the end, will we think differently? I know myself, and I’ve always given in to my darker urges. What if I turn evil, too?”
The answer to that question was obvious. Tom said, “That will be my job. I’ll be the little angel nagging you on your shoulder. But tell me, is blood the only way? Seems to me that you have some skills, Mage Zayan.”
“I don’t know, but it certainly bears some thought.”
CHAPTER 38
“By the gods, it’s a horror,” Charlie said, hands on her hips, surveying the laboratory. “I had no idea he had this hidden away. All those poor women, and Beatrice! If we’d only known.”
“Are you surprised?” Hoyle asked. “He was always a squirrelly one, all bluster and domination, never revealing anything.”
“I suppose. I wish we could have done something to save them.”
Zayan said, “I suppose we need to move forward and right any wrongs we can.”
Charlie said, ever the practical one, “First thing, we need to get rid of his body. What a mess. I’ve never seen so much blood in my entire life.”
Zayan didn’t want to have any part of that, but thinking about it, he and Charlie would probably end up manning the mops. They certainly couldn’t employ any of the hired staff, not down here with Bluebeard’s victims laid out for all to see, otherwise the story would run like wildfire through Riverford and beyond, and there wouldn’t be a stone left standing after the angry hordes descended on the castle. Most importantly, though, he wanted to do everything he could to shield Tom from the atrocity. He’d already faced far too much strife.
He said, trying to put on his practical hat, “Agreed. But before that, we need to talk. Do you want to stay on? Tom and I are still on the fence. We might want to stay, but it might also be easiest to fill our pockets with gold and scurry back to the real world. That way we could close out the whole evil chapter for good.”
