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“Seth says they’ve handled all the guards who came their way,” Ky reported, looking up from his phone. “We’re good there.”
The show was ready. We just needed our main audience.
The sound of another engine reached my ears—and another. My pulse sped up. Three sleek sedans turned onto the drive. They purred toward us and stopped several feet from the house.
Gwen Remington got out of the car at the head of the bunch, a man I guessed was her assistant following. She looked us over with a frown as I stood up. “What the hell is going on here? Where is Charles Frankford?”
Justin Brimsey was getting out of the second car, Miriam Travers from the third. They were really here. We’d done it. I’d gotten them to cross tens of miles. Now I just needed them to walk another quarter of one, and the Frankfords’ faction would never get away with their awful scheme again.
“Charles and Helen Frankford aren’t who you think,” I said. “I asked you to come here so we could show you the horrifying things they’ve been keeping on their property.”
“Youasked us to come,” Brimsey said. He took a step back toward his car. “You’re Rose Hallowell. I don’t think—”
“You know me, too, don’t you?” Thalia said, joining me. “Or at least you used to, before my consort…” She grappled with the words she couldn’t say for a moment before giving up. “Youneedto see what’s been happening here. I swear to you, we’re not the villains in this scenario.”
Honesty hummed through her voice. The Assembly officials exchanged a glance.
“Just come with me past those trees to the path down the cliff,” I said, pointing. “Or go by yourselves if you’d rather. You can arrest me first if you want to. But you have to at least look. You’ll see why this is so important. There’s a cave there, where there’s a spell giving dangerous beings access to our world.”
Another car pulled down the drive. I tensed for a second before I recognized the tan compact as the one Investigator Ruiz had arrived at my estate in. She parked behind the sedans and got out with another woman, both of them in enforcer sweats.
“What are you doing here?” Travers demanded.
“Lady Hallowell said she had information about a crime,” Ruiz said, nodding to me.
“Apparently we have to take a walk down a cliff to some cave with ‘dangerous beings’,” Brimsey said. “It all sounds like a lot of bluster to me. You lied to us to bring us out here, and—”
“It was the only way we could bring you to a place where we could prove what we need to,” Thalia interrupted. “By the Spark,Iwill lead you down there if that’s what you want.”
A shiver ran through her body as she spoke, so obvious Remington’s eyes widened.
“Please,” I said. “Why do you think we went to all this trouble? We’ve been fighting for ourlivesto make sure you see this.”
Ruiz stepped forward. “I want to have a look at whatever the hell this is. Whether the rest of you join me is up to you.” She jabbed her finger at me. “Youstay here.”
I nodded, swallowing through my tightened throat. “After you’ve seen… it… I can explain some of what I know about it.”
She nodded sharply and walked on toward the trees. Remington wavered on her feet and then hurried after the investigator, motioning for her assistant to follow. Brimsey grimaced, but he shifted forward too.
And at the same moment, tires screeched as a gleaming SUV raced onto the driveway. Charles Frankford’s thin face leaned out the open window, the wind rippling through his slate gray hair.
“Stop right there! Stop this, all of you!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gabriel
Pebbles rattled against the SUV’s undercarriage. I couldn’t see the speedometer from where I’d been shooed into the back seat between two of Charles Frankford’s guards-on-staff, but I could tell he had his driver racing us down the country roads way faster than the legal limit.
I didn’t know what he’d heard when he’d gotten that call. He’d been pacing in the stately living room of his Portland house, alternating between glaring at his phone waiting for updates from Seattle and glaring at me while he barked questions about what I thought Rose might do next, and the second he’d answered that last ring, his face had gone white with rage. He’d stepped out of the room with a slam of the door and returned a few minutes later.
“You,” he’d said with a snap of his fingers. “Come.” Like I was a dog.
But that was essentially what I was pretending to be here, what I wanted him to see me as: a poor stupid mutt who’d gotten so scared I’d run off with my tail between my legs, only realizing hours later that I had nothing left but the clothes on my back. Nowhere to turn but to the one person I knew for sure stood against the woman I was supposedly terrified by. So I’d followed him to the car.
It wasn’t that hard to act as if I were terrified when it came to Rose. The Frankfords didn’t know me or her well enough to realize I was terrifiedforher, not of her.
She wouldn’t really have tried to hurt this kid, his grandson, would she? I hadn’t gotten a clear picture from what Frankford had said of what exactly he’d heard or she’d done, but it’d sounded like the boy was still fine. If Rose had actually wanted to attack him, I was pretty sure she’d have succeeded before the Frankfords ever got wind of it.
