King for a Day (15 page)

“What did he say?” I asked my mother.

“He said not to worry. That everything would work out. I assume that he meant Justin’s work. ”

Of course, that would be wrong because King didn’t really work with Justin. So what had King really meant? Had he been referring to my situation? Or his?

I swallowed back my tears and covered my face to hide the confusion and torment in my eyes.

“Mia, I know this might sound crazy, but I don’t think that man is who he says.”

She was right. She thought he was some secret government agent. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

Her blue eyes fixed on her clasped hands. “I know you’ll think I’m crazy, Mia, but when I was in a coma, I dreamed of that man. I think he brought me back. No, I don’t know how, and I won’t dare question it because I’m grateful. But that man, I swear…he’s…he’s…there’s something different about him.”

I held my hand to my mouth and nodded frantically at her. The tears began to stream. “Yes, Mom, I think you’re right.”

“Honey? Why are you crying?”

I began to sob even harder. King was alive, but I didn’t begin to understand what was really happening. I needed to leave before I lost it. “I’m crying because I’m happy, Mom. That’s all,” I lied again, feeling so ashamed of who I was becoming. I stood and kissed her forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Bye, sweetie.”

I left one final message for Justin during the cab ride back to my parents’ house, where I planned to shower, eat, and gather up some clothes and things to make it look like I’d actually taken a trip. While leaving the message for Justin, I prayed he’d told my mother the truth and had actually gone to Mexico. But given that I strongly suspected otherwise, I begged him to stay away from Vaughn and any other 10 Club members. “No more deals, Justin. Promise me.” Not that Justin would have anything to trade. Vaughn now held all the cards, including King.

I hung up and stared out the window. It was a bright and sunny day for once, but my mind felt like soup.
King…King…What is going on?
My mind whipsawed back to all of the dangling threads I couldn’t tie together. So many things just didn’t make sense: King popping in and out, telling me to run, telling me to read that horrible story about Hagne and Draco. Then there was the fact that King had said he didn’t want to disclose where he was so we wouldn’t come looking for him.
Is King hiding out from Vaughn? Is that what this was all about?

If that was the case, why would Vaughn tell me that King was dead, when clearly he wasn’t? My mother had seen King a few hours ago, about the same time Vaughn, Miranda, and her boy-toy had come to see me.

Nothing made sense.

Unless King is pretending to be dead, which Vaughn believes, and now King is trying to hide from Vaughn?

No. No. That doesn’t make sense, either. King wouldn’t hang us out to dry. Would he?
I mean, I knew the man was dark and cold, but he wouldn’t allow the Club to take “ownership” of us simply to fake a disappearance.

Ugh. I don’t know!
Maybe he would. Or maybe I was missing something. Something big.

~~

While at my parents’ house, I made a pathetic attempt to calm myself and prepare for what was to come. However, instead of getting the grip I so desperately needed, I’d ended up working myself into a frenzied panic. My tortured mind drilled in on the fact that I’d been laser-focused on stopping the Club from seizing King’s property, but I was overlooking something bigger and perhaps, more importantly, another way out. Then it occurred to me that I’d never found King’s copy of the Club’s rules.

I took a two-minute shower, threw on a clean pair of jeans and a navy blue sweater, scarfed down some cold lasagna I’d found in the fridge, and shoved a bunch of random clothes in an overnight bag. I needed to get back to that warehouse.

Yes, at this point, I realized I was grasping at straws, but perhaps I could find a loophole. For example, if I proved that King was taken or that there was some foul play, maybe the Club would have to investigate before seizing King’s property. Or maybe I’d find some other rule to escape this situation. Who knew? But I had to try.

When I arrived back at King’s warehouse, I ran upstairs to his chamber. I searched through every shelf, but only found more of King’s books and journals. There were perhaps a hundred written by hand. I only wished I had the time to read them. Sadly, however, after digging through all the shelves, I couldn’t find the rules.

I stopped to think. The only other place that I knew of where King stored his things were the shelves downstairs. I marched over to the coffee table and picked up King’s giant catalog.

10 Club rules. 10 Club rules.
Items were ordered alphabetically, so I opened the book to the first page, thinking he might’ve cataloged names of items starting with numbers first.

The first entry, however, was something I hadn’t expected. The Artifact.

Lot #: TBD. The Artifact

Origins: Unknown

Characteristics: will resurrect the dead

Crap.
I nearly dropped the catalog on my foot.
This is what King is after? An object that can resurrect the dead?

I chewed on my thumbnail for a moment, mulling it over. Was bringing someone back even possible? If King dedicated every resource he had in search of it, then I had to believe it was the real deal. Even Justin had said that when he held it, he saw things, he felt its power.

Bad power, though
.

The thoughts circling inside my head landed on one point: Why was King after it? I mean, obviously he intended to bring someone back, but who?

I checked my watch again.
Okay. Focus. Find the rules.
I hoped and prayed that I’d find something I could use to stop the Club from taking me.
Please be here. Please be here…
Nothing.

I thumbed through the R pages, and there they were:
Rules, 10 Club
.

“Lot number two thousand and seven hundred.”

I bolted downstairs and found the thing rolled up on a shelf near the front door. The entire time, the rules had been right under our noses.

I took the scroll up to King’s chamber, bolting the steel door behind me. I unwound the rolled-up paper and spread it out on King’s coffee table. A tribute to the 10 Club’s arrogance, they only had ten rules, written as if they were commandments from the Bible. Thou shalt, though shalt not, etc.

As Mack had described, stealing, killing, and welching on debts were amongst the “thou shalt nots.” In most cases, the penalties, if caught, were the member’s loss of wealth. When a member died, however, the rules shifted. Property did not go to 10 Club; in fact, members were prohibited from inheriting another member’s wealth so as not to encourage members to kill each other. Property would go to the member’s designated trust, closest non-10 Club family member, or significant other as long as they were not a member.

Shit.
There was nothing there to help me. Nothing at all. I scrunched the paper into a ball and tossed it to the floor. I had exhausted all options.

I leaned back in King’s armchair and closed my eyes. I felt like I was standing on a small stone in the middle of a raging river, staring at a flashflood coming my way. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And at every turn, my efforts to escape this horror only made things worse. The hole kept getting deeper.

You mean the river keeps getting wider?
I thought to myself.

Yes. What was I supposed to do now? Nothing but wait and hope King showed up in the nick of time to save me?

~~

Draco is not weak. Draco is not kind. Draco is colder and harder than any soul I have ever seen, and if I’d bothered to see him, truly see him, I would have known that my disgust of the man was not for his weakness but because a monster lie waiting inside. Seven months of being in Draco’s dungeon has taught me this.

And now that he has returned this book to me, I suspect my remaining days are but a handful. No doubt, the cruel, cruel man wishes me to capture my final moments of suffering so that he may revel in them after my death. However, I care not. My thoughts are focused on other miseries. My belly is large and ripe with the baby I will never see grow, and I now pray that Draco will show it the mercy he has denied my family. As hard as I try not to dwell, not to give Draco the satisfaction of seeing me weep, I cannot hide the horror I am filled with each time I think upon what he did to my mother, father, and sister. Even the head of Callias remains on a spike outside my window as a reminder of how I misjudged Draco. But I do not need a reminder.

In the first weeks after he imprisoned me, he read this journal. Draco came to my cell nightly and screamed for hours. He never hit me, but I saw the look in his eyes. Oh, how he wanted to. He wanted to tear me limb from limb. He blamed me for taking his brother, his peace of mind, and most of all, for destroying a love he never had. The man lived in a world of disillusion and believed that I felt something for him once, that I’d destroyed something precious between us.

Fool. My Seer blood knew from the beginning what he was. It knew that I could never love such a despicable man.

If you should read this, Draco, know that the moment you take my life, I shall look into your eyes and curse you. I will bind you to my blood. As long as Seers of Light inhabit this earth, you will feel my hatred of you. You will see yourself only through my eyes. You will never be loved by anyone. You will never know peace. You will never be my king. You are nothing.

I gasped at the horrifically malicious words. Had she really cursed him? Did such things actually exist? After everything I’d seen, perhaps it wasn’t such a farfetched notion. But Draco wasn’t a monster. Hagne was insane and had pushed him into a corner. She’d orchestrated a tragedy that should never have happened. No, I didn’t believe that killing her family was justice served, but at the same time, if I were to put myself in Draco’s shoes, it wasn’t hard to imagine being so overcome with despair that I might do some seriously messed-up things in retribution. Sometimes it’s the things we are driven to do by our circumstances that are bad, not the person. Make a man hungry enough, and he might rob a store. Back an honest man into a corner, and he might lie to save himself. Push a man, beat a man, make him feel desperate enough, he might kill. Could I say I agreed with what Draco did? No. Could I condemn him? No.

So what lesson was I to learn from all this? I wondered.

I write to you, Hagne, knowing that your earthly shell has long since passed, as did that of your daughter. I know not if she was mine or truly Callias’s, but she was my blood, nonetheless, and received an honored burial. And though I know my cruelty toward you killed her even before her birth, I do not regret allowing you to rot in that cell. You were not worthy of the kindness or love I bestowed upon you. But our people were worthy, and I should have had the strength to prevent them from going to war with one another after Callias’s death. Thanks to your evil heart, I had not the will to see a future or breathe or care as everyone around me died. So it is not simply my or Callias’s death on your hands, but that of our people.

I paused and reread that last sentence three times.
“My,” he said, “my.” But…but…
I reread it one more time. Did he mean his death in the metaphorical sense?

It has taken me many years to write these words, to acquire the powers that grant me a piece of the life I once had. But despite all that I have, I cannot overcome the pain and regret, the deep sorrow you have cursed me with. It has robbed me of the emotions I once felt for those I loved or anything else of value in this world, just as your curse robbed me of my body. However, I will not allow you to win, Hagne. I will search the ends of the earth to find a way to raise you from the dead so that I may enjoy watching you die once more. Meanwhile, I will hunt and kill every last Seer on this planet to which my spirit is bound, and I will take delight in knowing that I am killing a piece of you.

I will not be a ghost forever, Hagne. And even in death, I am still your king.

Oh my God
. I closed the book and stared at my trembling hands.

King is Draco. And he’s…dead?

“But how is he still walking around?” I whispered to myself.

Oh God! And he’s killing off the Seers?
My blood pressure dropped to the floor.
Oh God. King is a ghost. A goddamned ghost. Who wants to kill me!

I shook my head in disbelief while my mind started sliding those little loose threads into gruesome knots, forming a ghastly and implausible tapestry.

Oh my Lord…it can’t be. He can’t be.

But there they were, the strange, undeniable facts staring me in the face. The way he appeared and disappeared. His ability to get inside my head and know what I was thinking. The way he behaved—like a barbarian from another time who followed only one set of rules: his. Then there were his other strange “gifts,” like killing a person with the flick of his hand.

My heart hammered away inside my chest. My temples throbbed.
This is what he wanted me to know.