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The office was completely at odds with the stark, organized persona the professor projected. The desk was piled high with folders and a mountain of loose paperwork. His desk blotter was askew, threatening to spill the whole mess onto the floor at the slightest push. The ebony bookshelf hovering like a shadow behind the desk was badly in need of dusting. I was tempted to lift one of his knick-knacks from the shelves and blow the dust from its surface but doing so would tip him off that someone had been in the office. So, I stuffed my hands into my pockets and spun slowly in place, committing the room to memory, just in case we ever needed to return here. I imagined it was easier to jump when I had a clear visual to work with.
“Ah, Desmond,” Rook said with an amused chuckle. “Still a pack rat, I see.”
“You keep calling him that,” I noted. “Do you know him? I mean—outside of professor and student?”
Rook nodded. “We were turned within a month of each other. Father never intended to drag me into his world, but one of the Grimsbanes forced his hand.”
“How?”
“They arranged to set the boy’s school I was attending on fire, intending to flush me out and hold me ransom. It didn’t work out the way they hoped though. I got trapped on an upper floor and was forced to jump or burn to death. The fall would’ve killed me if...”
Goddess. That was... it was so sad. If the Grimsbanes had left well enough alone, Rook might have lived a normal, human life. Instead, their actions dragged him into a world of blood and struggle. And, ultimately, they’d still made him their hostage. No wonder he hated witches, and the Grimsbanes in particular. Eternity must have seemed like such a cheat in light of the life he could have lived.
“I’m sorry.”
Rook shook his head with a sad smile. “Don’t be. If I hadn’t been turned, I’d be dead now, and I’d like to think any life is better than death.”
Still... I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d have been happier with a mortal life. Living with the Grimsbanes for eternity would be my definition of hell on earth.
“So,” I said, trying to inject a little cheer into my tone. “Professor Valserak was turned a month after you?”
He nodded, idly flipping through the graded schoolwork on the desk, chuckling at some of the more creative notes Professor Valserak had left in the top right corner.
“He was a bastard in the traditional sense of the word. His mother had him out of wedlock and dropped him at an orphanage a few days after he was born. He did odd jobs to eke out a living, including running errands for my father. Like me, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A witch attack on father’s stronghold left Desmond bleeding out in the foyer. Father felt responsible, so he turned Desmond before he could die.”
“Then were you both friends?”
Rook nodded again. “You could say that. We were inseparable for a long time. Of course, that was before this hostage business.”
“Did that affect things?”
“It drove a wedge between us. Desmond thought I should fight, rather than submit to the role.”
“And you didn’t want to fight it?”
Rook continued to leaf through the folders on the desk, like he was looking for something which I found a little odd, but didn’t comment. When he found nothing of interest, he started rifling through the drawers. I wanted to snap at him to quit it because it was bad enough we were trespassing. If he continued rifling through Professor Valserak’s things, he’d know someone had broken in.
“I was tired of fighting war after bloody war,” Rook sighed. “So, I submitted to the ritual.”
“You trusted the witches?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t performed by witches. It was performed by a faerie noble who was impartial—aka not a witch or a vampire. It was set so that the witches couldn’t simply undo the bindings on their hostage and leave us in the lurch. Now I’m here, centuries later, trying to avoid yet another conflict. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked finally.
He shrugged. “Nothing in particular, I guess. I just…” He paused for a moment before looking up from Valserak’s desk drawers. “I had a conversation with the good professor about the Fae who were missing and he seemed… uninterested in furthering their cause.” I remembered that exact conversation but didn’t say as much. “I just thought maybe…”
“He knew something?”
Rook nodded. “Doesn’t hurt to look.”
“I guess not.”
He lifted a file from one of the drawers and flipped it open, scanning the contents with the same sort of casual interest he’d shown all the rest of Professor Valserak’s things. Seconds later, his demeanor changed entirely though. His hands formed bony claws around the file, and his breath came out on a hiss.
“What?” I demanded. “What did you find?”
Rook turned the folder toward me in lieu of a reply, and the blood drained out of my face when I processed what I was seeing. The folder was full of black and white stills. The figures in each photo were all faeries of various breeds. All of them were alternately chained to a dirt floor or strapped into nasty-looking metal contraptions. And every single one of them corresponded with one of our missing persons. Shasta’s photo was particularly brutal, the bruises on her clearly visible, even with the monochrome color scheme.
