Authors: Kelley Armstrong
Finally, Elena cut in, her voice raised enough for me to hear it. “We’ll wait out here, Sean. There’s no rule against that, right?”
The agent agreed that there wasn’t.
“Then we’ll stay here,” she said. “Where we can hear everything.”
I smiled. The agent sputtered, but there was nothing he could do. His own fault for not bothering to know enough about werewolves to realize they’d be able to hear from the hall.
I sat back and waited. Sean was here. Elena and Clay were here. Lucas was coming. It would be fine. It had to be.
When Sean came in, Thomas got to his feet. His gaze was wary, but there was no mistaking the sudden spark of warmth.
“Sean,” he said. “How was your flight? I’m sorry you had—”
“Bryce isn’t doing so well, Granddad. Thanks for asking. And thanks for calling to check on him. He appreciates that.”
“I—”
“You’ve been busy.” Sean walked toward his grandfather. “The supernatural world is going to hell. Demonic spirits are breaking through everywhere. A hell-beast materialized in the New York subway. Supernaturals are racking up body counts faster than the demons and hell-beasts combined. Of course you’re too busy to check on Bryce. Yet somehow, with all this, you’ve decided you can take a break to put my sister on trial for treason.”
Treason? What? How?
“Miss Levine is not your sis—”
“She
is
!” Sean roared, making everyone draw back. Most had probably never even heard him raise his voice. “I’m told there’s a special escape route from this building secured by locks requiring Nast blood.
Her
blood opened them.”
“Don’t bother, Sean,” Mom said. “He can’t hear you. Won’t hear you.”
Sean turned. He saw my mother and blinked. “Eve.”
She walked over and put her arm around him, leaning in to whisper, “Your dad sends his love. Always.” Then she turned to Thomas. “Are you going to look at me now?”
He sat first, then slowly lifted his gaze. When his eyes reached hers, his face stayed immobile.
“Been a long time, hasn’t it?” she said. “Twenty-two years since our little chat.”
“We’ve never met—”
“Oh, cut the crap.” She stepped up to his table. His bodyguards kept their positions, but everyone else inched back as she swept aside the pages in front of him and planted her hands on the surface. “You remember that chat. You threatened to—” She stopped. Almost imperceptibly, she turned toward Sean.
“You scared me off,” she said after a moment. “I let you scare me off. I was young and I was stupid, and I let you screw up my life and Kristof’s life and our daughter’s life, and I’ve never forgiven you for that. I don’t care if you acknowledge Savannah or not. She doesn’t need you. But you are going to let her leave. Savannah and Adam will walk out that door, and you can keep me in their place and—”
A soft, metallic tinkle. The wire binding her sword had fallen to the floor. “About time, ladies,” Mom muttered as she reached back for her sword. “Strike that. Maybe I won’t stick around, Thomas. You’ll let me go and—”
She shimmered. Not just the sword, but her whole body.
“No,” she whispered. She looked up. “No!”
She shimmered again, almost fading completely before coming back, midsentence. “Give me five minutes—” Her gaze shot to mine, and I ran to her, ignoring the shouts of the guards.
Then she was gone.
Just gone.
I knew it had been coming, but it felt as if someone had slammed me in the gut. It was like every time I’d pictured her death. I’d never known what happened, but I’d imagined it, in all the ways a daughter could torture herself with thoughts of her mother’s murder. Yet nothing I’d imagined had felt as horrible as this moment. This moment when she was here. And then she wasn’t.
Adam got to me first, pulling me into his shoulder. I let myself collapse against him, not sobbing, not even crying, but wishing I could, the grief just building.
“Let Savannah go,” Sean said to Thomas, his voice low. “Please, Granddad, just let her go. Eve said she’s not going to fight you about recognizing Savannah. I’m not either. Not anymore. Eve was right. You don’t want to see it so you won’t see it. Just let her go. Let it all go.”
I lifted my head. Thomas wasn’t looking at me. Wasn’t looking at Sean. He was staring straight ahead at the spot where my mother had stood. He looked tired. Old and tired and frail, and I knew he didn’t want to do this anymore either.
Sean stepped in front of him. “I’m going to take her out of here, Granddad.” As he turned toward me, Josef broke the silence.
“She can’t just walk away. She participated in a terrorist act against the Cabal and she must face those charges—”
“Oh for God’s sake.” Sean spun on his uncle. “Nobody believes that but you, Josef, and you’re just trying to screw me over by putting Savannah on trial—”
“Mr. Nast is right.” It was one of the men in suits. The lawyer from the intra-Cabal agency. “The charges have been laid. Unless Mr. Nast wishes to formally withdraw them …” Everyone looked at Thomas. Finally he looked at me, and it was as if he’d looked into the eyes of a basilisk. He slowly but irrevocably
turned to stone. “No,” he said. “I do not wish to withdraw the charges.”
Sean slumped a little, then recovered. “Fine. But we can’t begin until Lucas gets here. As the representative of the Cortez Cabal, under whose protection Savannah falls, Lucas Cortez must be here to witness the proceedings. As her lawyer, he absolutely needs to be here, to represent her.”
Josef glowered at Agent Stein, who stood, tugging at his tie.
“Yes, under normal circumstances, that would be true,” Stein finally said. “However, your family has protested his involvement on the grounds that as her former legal guardian and current employer, Mr. Cortez cannot be expected to be impartial in this proceeding.”
“He’s not meant to be impartial,” Sean said. “He’s her lawyer.”
“Yes, well, the intra-Cabal agency has ruled in your family’s favor on this matter. Miss Levine will be represented by Mr. Turin, one of the agency’s legal team. As for the Cortez Cabal’s interests, we are attempting to video-link in Benicio Cortez, but we’ve encountered technical difficulties.”
“Technical difficulties, my ass,” Sean muttered. “All right then, we at least need to wait until those difficulties are resolved before we begin.”
“No, we have decided that Mr. Cortez can be updated as soon as the link is established.”
Sean stood there, staring at Stein, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. Then he dropped into his chair so hard the clunk reverberated through the room.
The intra-Cabal agency—or key members of it—had been bribed, and there was nothing we could do about it. My heart started to thud harder. This was real. I was on trial for treason.
The Nasts’ head lawyer stood, cleared his throat, and began.
“It is alleged that Miss Levine was in charge of a detachment of the reveal movement, having joined the cause to aid her grand-sire, Lord Demon Balaam …”
“What?” I whispered to Sean as the lawyer continued reading the allegation.
Sean glanced over, his jaw tight. Adam reached for my hand, but pulled back, and when I tried to take his anyway, his fingers were so hot I had to bite back a yelp. He shot me an apologetic look, flexed them, and whispered, “We’ll get this sorted.”
The lawyer droned on. The upshot of the charge? I was secretly a member of SLM and had been getting information for them from the Cortez and Nast cabals—hence the treason charge. Together with my mother—whom Balaam obviously freed from the afterlife—I’d joined up with SLM in New Orleans and had been leading a terrorist cell to Atlanta. At that point, the Nasts swooped in, saved the day, and arrested my mother, me, and Adam, whom they suspected I’d duped with my version of the events.
“My version?” I said. “My version is that my mother was brought over by Shawn Roberts, to aid the
anti
-reveal movement, which Jaime Vegas will confirm. Lucas Cortez will likewise confirm that I was
infiltrating
the reveal movement when you ambushed—”
“Lucas is your former guardian. Ms. Vegas is your friend and his,” Josef said, ignoring the lawyers’ attempts to quiet us both. “She will say exactly what he tells her.”
“And your version?” I said. “Where did you get this supposed proof that I’m part of SLM? You killed everyone at that warehouse.”
“There was a survivor. A necromancer named Andrea Patterson. She’s told us everything.”
“Please,” Stein said. “You’ll both be allowed to speak.”
He motioned to the Nast lawyer, who continued. “Now, as this witness testified, Miss Levine and her mother …”
I didn’t catch the rest of what he said. Someone was speaking behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, but saw no one.
“—damned well better figure it out,” the voice snapped.
“You owe us …”
The voice faded again, but beside me, Sean had turned too and was staring at the empty space. The expression on his face …
I must have had the same expression on mine yesterday, when Shawn Roberts made my mother manifest.
“Dad?” Sean whispered. His gaze shot to me. “Did you hear … ?”
“It sounded like—” I swallowed. “It sounded like him.”
The air behind us flickered, like tiny lightbulbs flashing, so bright I had to look away.
“—either you’ll make this work or—”
The room went silent. Sean’s chair screeched as he got to his feet. I looked up.
A man stood there. Late forties. A few inches over six feet. Broad shoulders and a thickening waist, both held in check by a perfectly tailored suit. Thinning blond hair. Bright blue eyes. Sean’s eyes. My eyes.
Kristof Nast.
Our father.
He looked exactly as I remembered him. Exactly as he had the day he died. The day I accidentally threw him against a wall and killed him.
His gaze went to Sean, and his stern face lit up in a smile so big it made my insides ache.
He reached for his son, but his hands passed right through him.
“Hmm,” he said. “Not quite what I was hoping for, but I suppose I should be glad they pulled it off at all.”
“Dad,” Sean said, his voice choked.
Kristof murmured something too low for me to hear. Sean responded. Then Kristof reached out again, as if to pat him on the back and said, “I’m hoping we get a moment later, but I don’t know how long the Fates can hold this for. I need to—”
“I know.”
Sean stepped aside. Kristof—my father—looked at me and gave me the same smile he’d given Sean and I stumbled to my feet, my heart hammering, thinking
I killed you. You know I did.
It didn’t matter. He’d told me that before, through Jaime, but I hadn’t believed it. Couldn’t believe it until now, seeing it in his face as he came toward me.
“Savannah.”
He leaned toward my ear to whisper, “Your mom’s fine. Furious, but fine. I’m going to fix this for you. Okay?” He pulled back and met my gaze. “Okay?”
I nodded. He bent forward, air-kissing my cheek. Then he straightened, and strode across the room.
No one had spoken since he appeared. I think most of them hadn’t breathed.
He walked straight to his father’s table.
Thomas’s face was completely drained of color. He was shaking. One hand slid across the table top, slowly, tentatively, reaching for his son’s. “Kristof …”
“That’s not Kristof,” Josef said. “It’s an illusion. A demon’s trick. One of
her
tricks. Eve’s.”
His voice was like a mallet shattering glass, jolting everyone from a dream, lawyers and guards blinking, rolling their shoulders, whispering that Josef was right, it couldn’t be Kristof because that wasn’t possible, ghosts couldn’t just appear like this.
Thomas jerked back as if he’d been slapped, and when he did, it took all my willpower not to march over and slap someone myself. Slap Josef.
I didn’t like Thomas Nast. After what he’d done to his family and what he’d done to my mother and to me, I could never forgive the man. But to see that look on his face, that hope and joy crushed with a few words, was more than I would wish on anyone.
My father turned to Josef. “You don’t believe it’s me? Name your proof.”
“I’m not playing this game.”
“Then I will. When you were eight, you set fire to a batch of scrolls Dad brought home from a trip. Priceless scrolls that he’d gotten while in Egypt over your birthday—when he hadn’t even bothered to call you. You set them on fire. Deliberately. I told Dad I did it accidentally, practicing my energy bolt spell. I thought
I was helping you, but I wasn’t, because you only hated me all the more when I didn’t get in trouble.”
He waved at Sean. “When Bryce was five, he was angry with me because I was late for a school play. The next time he was in my office, he shredded all the files on my desk. Sean tried to take the blame. I wouldn’t let him because I knew it wouldn’t help. Bryce was angry because he thought I cared more about work than about him. He got in trouble for the files, but I made sure I was never late for him again, however angry Dad got about my ‘misplaced priorities.’?’’
“Kristof …” Thomas reached out again, his eyes glistening with tears.
“Yes, Dad, it’s me. It’s been me before, too. Three times I had your necromancer pass along a message. Three times I told you Savannah was my daughter. Three times you ignored me.”
“I didn’t think it was really—”
“You thought what you wanted. You always did. You still do. And as Eve and Sean both said, the time for that is past. Believe what you want about Savannah. I’m not here over that. I’m here to tell you to let her go. I know what your end game is, yours and Josef’s, and I’m warning you not to make my son and daughter a part of that.”
“Son?” Thomas looked over at Sean. “I would never threaten Sean—”
“I have two sons, Dad, a fact you tend to overlook. Bryce is sick. He needs help. He needs you to work with the Cortezes to stop these people and find a cure for what they’ve done to him, because what they’ve done is terrible, and it’s only going to get worse.”