CHAPTER 29
Not thirty minutes later, Alex, Bastian, and I stood in one of the restricted upper level hallways, invisibly waiting on the room service staff member to make his or her appearance. They’d said it would take twenty minutes when Bastian had ordered the dessert, and nearly seventeen minutes had passed since then. Wouldn’t be long now.
It’s always both a relief and incredibly annoying to learn that something you’ve been looking for has been right under your nose the whole time, and Mr Molony was no exception. As it turned out, he’d been staying at Adare with the rest of us all along. He’d contacted Brassal and Alva and told them that he wished to reside on the estate this year, but that he required a room that was away from the rest of the guest suites and common areas, as well as total secrecy in regards to where he was. Alva had managed to arrange a room for him within the restricted wing of the upper floor, and had personally made sure that all the other guests believed that he once again was staying elsewhere. The only people who knew the truth were a select few members of the Adare staff, and of course Brassal and Alva, who had not been at all happy about sharing the information.
“Just curious, but do we have a plan B?” Alex whispered as we waited, all eyes glued on the top of the stairs at the other end of the hall. “What if he doesn’t take the tray?”
“We’ll come up with plan B if we need it,” I answered, more than a little nervous myself, “but for now we just have to hope he does.”
“Seems we are about to find out,” Bastian said, gesturing to the stairwell where the silhouette of a head was rising up into view. “Ready?” he asked Alex, as he pulled his anchor out of his pocket and removed the thick metal ring from its chord. Alex nodded and Bastian dropped the anchor into his outstretched hand.
“Be careful,” I mouthed, which he answered with a quick “don’t worry” grin, before slipping off down the hall toward the oncoming room service waiter.
Bastian and I both held our breath as we watched Alex silently approach the unsuspecting waiter, deliberately eyeing the tray the waiter held as he went. Pausing when he reached the halfway point in the hall, Alex allowed the waiter to walk by him, then turned and fell into step just behind his elbow as he passed. With his face in the very image of concentration, Alex ever so carefully reached around the oblivious waiter, and placed the anchor on the corner of the tray next to the empty coffee cup. He had only enough time to push the charm under the rim of the cup’s saucer and leap silently to the side, before the waiter arrived at Molony’s door and shifted the tray away, allowing him to knock. Out of danger, Alex stepped over to join us again where he received a proud grin from me as well as a “well done” eyebrow raise from Bastian.
“
Are you ready?
” Alex cast into the air in front of me as the waiter’s knuckles thumped on the door.
All I did was glance up at him, but I knew he could see the answer in my eyes; I was more than ready – I was anxious. Molony knew where they’d taken Jocelyn and Steven, I knew he did, and for all the newfound restraint I’d been able to use with Alva and Brassal, I’d already decided that Molony would get none. I knew what I had to do, and I was prepared to do it, no matter what it took, and for the first time since finding out about my power, I was glad to have as much as I did. The knowledge that I had so much at my disposal was not only comforting, but emboldening, and though I may not have actually been able to use most of it, the bits that I could use were about to rain down on Molony like cinders from a firework.
“Room service,” the waiter called when no one responded to his knock.
“I didn’t call for room service!” a harsh voice barked from behind the door.
“Y-yes,” the waiter stammered, shaken, “forgive my interruption sir, but I bring the evening’s desert course at the request of Master and Mistress Bloch. They send it with their regrets that you were unable to make it to the formal dinner tonight, but look forward to seeing you at the banquet tomorrow.”
Bastian made a small sweeping gesture toward the conversation, eyeing me sideways. When he’d called down to order the dessert, I’d given him a hard time for using too much detail, though it would appear that he’d known what he was doing – and wanted to make sure I knew it.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mouthed with an eye roll, inwardly happy that he was keeping his sense of humor about him, at least to a small degree.
The waiter began to fidget as the silence drug on until finally Molony snipped, “Just leave it!”
The waiter did as he was ordered and set the tray down in front of the door, then took off toward the staircase as fast as a walk would allow. He barely had time to make it down to the first landing before I heard the shuffle of a lock, squeak of a doorknob, and groan of underused hinges echoing through the hall. Molony’s door was open, but only a few inches at most, and I could see him peering out into the hall like he expected there to be an angry mob with torches waiting for him – which I suppose he did, though we didn’t have torches… damn it.
After checking both sides of the hall a half dozen or so times, he must have decided the coast was clear and took to examining the tray at his feet. He looked at it, nudged it with his foot, bent down for a closer look, looked under the upside-down coffee cup, checked under the cloche, and even lifted the lid to the coffee urn and gave it a skeptical smell before he was even willing to lift the tray off the floor. Jocelyn had been right; this guy was as paranoid as they came. Good thing Alex was able to keep Bastian’s anchor hidden or there was no way he wouldn’t have found it.
Once another thorough inspection of the tray was done, this time at eye level, he finally looked satisfied that it was safe, and took it with him back into the room, securing what sounded like three separate sets of locks the moment the door closed.
“All right,” Bastian said, wrapping one of his hands around my arm and the other around Alex’s, “here we go. Whenever you’re ready,” he added, looking at me.
Concentrating my ability on Bastian’s, I channeled my power into his just as I’d done for Jocelyn in the graveyard. This boost allowed him to port both Alex and I simultaneously, and a moment later the three of us were in the center of Molony’s darkened guestroom. Luckily for us, Molony’s back was turned as we arrived, giving Alex the time to hide Bastian and himself before Molony saw them, leaving what would appear to be only me standing there in the shadows.
I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t nervous. I was decidedly calm, turning the steady pulse of thumping anger I felt into a driven focus. Reaching into my pocket, I let my hand rest against the Iris and did a quick scan of the abilities currently in the manor, finding the ones I was confident in using so they would be ready when the time came.
And I
was
ready. This guy was mine.
“Good evening Mr Molony.”
At the sound of my voice, he spun around with a gasp, dropping the tray he still held at his feet. “Who?...” he gasped again, raising a shaking finger at me. “How did you get in here?! What do you think you’re doing, barging into my private room?”
I could tell he was angry, but I could also see that his harsh tone and scowl were attempting to cover up how rattled and even scared he was. “I’m here,” I said, “because you and I need to have a conversation. My father, Jocelyn Clavish, was abducted a short while ago. I know you are working with the men who took him, and I know you know where they have gone.”
His expression didn’t falter even for an instant as I spoke, and had I not been standing five feet away from him, I’d have wondered if he heard me. Just when I thought he wouldn’t respond at all, his eyes flashed and suddenly he lunged toward me with his hand out in front of him like a claw, ready to latch onto the first bit of skin it touched. Unfortunately for him, I was ready. Cormac had told us that he needed physical contact in order to read and remove memories, so I’d assumed he try something like this as soon as he realized that I had information he didn’t want me having. I found the nearest kinetic, assumed his ability, and had Molony’s hand frozen in midair before it had made it even halfway to my arm.
“That,” I said, forcing his entire body backwards until he was a safe distance away, “is not how this is going to go.”
“Do you have any idea who I am?” he growled, not as phased by my kinetic demonstration as I’d hoped he’d be.
Time to up my game.
I forced him down into a chair and pinned his arms and legs to the upholstered frame. As he struggled pointlessly against my hold, I kinetically raised all the items that had fallen from the room service tray along with several other objects from around the room and began to make them fly them around the room, circling Molony’s chair. As the objects started to pick up speed, I lifted the chair Molony was trapped in off the ground, letting him hover in the air as the flatware and knick-knacks orbited him like out of control comets.
“I know exactly who you are,” I said, as in the midst of the controlled chaos I found the nearest Imparter and made a second connection with my ability. “
The question is,
” I imparted, “
do you know who I am?
”
The shock I’d been waiting to see finally widened his eyes. “You…? How…?”
He was clearly at a loss, but I wasn’t done. For the first time I was embracing what was within me, and I knew if we were going to get what we needed, I had to show this guy exactly who he was dealing with. I wasn’t scared of my power anymore and I wasn’t going to let anything limit me; not when there were people I cared about in danger.
As Molony hung in the air in front of us, I reached out again, this time melding with Alex. He had not yet had a chance to properly teach me how to cast, but that didn’t worry me. It wasn’t that I thought I could master the ability without instruction, as that would be far too reckless, but with the Iris to help me, I was confident I could use his Casting ability well enough to make the point. Careful to limit my cast to only the eyes of those in the room, I began to almost effortlessly morph the image of the space around us, twisting and deforming it slowly at first and then faster until finally, Molony found himself no longer floating near the familiar comforts of his guestroom, but the charred branches and haunting smoke of a fire-ravaged forest.
As our disillusioned Mentalist tried to keep his composure, I stepped forward, imparting to him once more over the cast crackle of the flames and howl of the wind. “
And… do you know what I can do? In a word: everything.
”
He didn’t reply, but sank further back into his chair when the items whirling around him moved faster and faster, blowing my hair back with the stream of wind they created. The images of billowing smoke began to thicken, closing in around him while I sent a bolt of lightning ripping though the sky. Faster, brighter, louder, building, building, building, until finally I saw the first flash of real terror streak across his face and I knew I had him where I needed him. I instantly severed all bonds with my assumed abilities, and as abruptly as turning off a light, the scene ended. The cast images of the fiery forest disappeared, and Molony’s chair came crashing down to the floor of his guestroom with a thud while the plates, flatware, and other items came raining down around him.
Relaxing my stance, I walked toward him as he sat slumped over in the chair trying to catch his breath. “So,” I said, hooking my thumbs onto the pockets of my jeans, “here’s how this is going to go: I need information that you have. I could go into your mind and find what I need for myself, but I really don’t think you want me to have to do that. So instead, you can tell me what I need to know voluntarily, and when I am satisfied that I have what I need, you and I will part ways like this never happened. What do you say?”
He stared up at me, the shock on his face quickly turning to contempt. “Even if I do know what happened to Clavish, what makes you think I’d be willing to tell you?”
“Because something tells me you want to stay on good terms with your boss.”
“You’re out of your league, princess.” I knew his words were meant to shame me, but I could see that what I’d said had struck a nerve. For as much as he tried to hide it, there was a twinge of fear hidden behind his bravado – a twinge I intended to use.
“He must trust you quite a bit,” I said, ignoring his comment. “After all, if I’m understanding things right, you are the only person other than Darragh himself who knows pretty much everything there is to know. Anytime someone does something that could be at all traced back to him, you swoop in and remove the memory of whatever they did, leaving you the only person who knows what happened. I have to give Darragh credit, it’s actually pretty ingenious. He can have dozens of people working for him, yet only one who knows enough damaging information to ever really be a threat. That’s a lot of power – but power always comes at a price.”
“Is that meant to be a threat?”
“No, this is a warning. What I said before is true; when it comes to abilities, I can do anything, which includes Mentalism. If I wanted, I could take the information I need right from your mind, but here’s the thing… I’m not very good at it. I haven’t had enough practice, I guess,” I shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if I were to give it a go, I’d be able to find what I need, but odds are I’d make quite a mess in the process – a mess that a practiced mind reader like Darragh would be bound to notice.” It took a moment for my words to sink in, but when they did, Molony’s face paled. “Tell me,” I went on, “how do you think Darragh would react if he found out that your mind – the mind that contains more damaging information than any other – had been compromised? Would he move you into another line of work? Maybe retire you and pay out your pension?” Again he didn’t speak, but his face answered for him. “No… I don’t think so either.”
“You’re bluffing,” he scowled, but his voice was thin.
Yes I was.
“You’re right, I could be,” I said, “but that’s not a risk I’d be willing to take if I were you. But no matter what you decide to do, I
will
learn everything you know about where my father has been taken and why. So what will it be; will you tell me what you know willingly, or do I have to rummage my way through your mind like a bronco though a glass house?”
After a long pause he finally spoke. “I suppose I have little choice,” he said begrudgingly, unwilling to admit that the choice had been an easy one.