Dying Is My Business

Twenty-four

With nothing more to be done for Thornton but wait and let the Methusal spring do its job, Isaac decided it was as good a time as any for a good old-fashioned interrogation. His questions ran the gamut of predictability: Who was I? Why had I lied to Bethany and Thornton? What was my mission? Who was Underwood, what was my connection to him, and what did he want with the box? Easy enough questions to answer—most of them, anyway—if I were at all interested in cooperating, but I wasn’t about to tell him anything. Someone had sent the shadowborn to the safe house to kill us and steal the box, and the more I thought about it, the more Isaac became my prime suspect.

Bethany said mages like him were powerful enough to carry magic inside them without becoming infected, but what if she was wrong about that? I’d seen proof that Isaac carried magic inside him. What if it had infected him after all, made him decide he wanted the box for himself and the rest of us out of the way? The clues were as clear as day in my head. Isaac had sent us to the safe house. He knew where we would be, and with his knowledge of the safe house he could tell the shadowborn exactly where to go so the ward couldn’t hide it from them. But why would Isaac send the revenant of Bennett to get me out of the way? What was the point of that?

“I asked you a question, Trent,” Isaac said, interrupting my thoughts. He stood in front of me, crossing his arms over his chest. Philip and Bethany flanked him, waiting, their faces like stone. Bethany was finally looking at me, but there was a coldness in her blue eyes that felt like ice. I liked it better before, when she wasn’t looking at me at all. “What were you planning to do with the Van Lente Box?” Isaac pressed. “Give it to Underwood? Sell it?”

I smirked up at him from where I sat tied to the chair. “You know, you didn’t need magic to put me to sleep. Listening to you talk would have done the trick just fine.”

“Just answer the question,” Bethany said. “The sooner you do, the sooner we can figure out what to do with you.”

Her voice was colder than I’d ever heard it. I’d blown any chance she would trust me again. She probably hated me. I deserved it, I supposed, but that didn’t make it any better.

“You told me you wanted to destroy the box because it was the only way you’d be free,” Bethany continued. “What did you mean? Free from what? Or was that just another lie?” I kept my eyes on Isaac and didn’t answer. She continued, growing more frustrated, “So what was the plan, Trent? You knew the shadowborn were coming to the safe house, so you came back to … what? To look like a hero? To get us to trust you so we’d take you to the box? It’s not like you were in any real danger from the shadowborn, right? You knew they couldn’t kill you. Not permanently, anyway.”

Damn, she really knew how to push my buttons. I wanted to tell her she was wrong about me, but I couldn’t risk giving Isaac any information. Instead, I turned away from her. It was just as well. I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at me.

“Bethany said you claim to have amnesia,” Isaac pressed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe it. Pretending not to have any memories is a long con to play, Trent. Sooner or later, you’re going to slip up. It’s inevitable. You might as well come clean now.”

I looked up at him sharply, trying to bite back my anger, but the floodgates broke. “It’s not a lie.”

Standing next to Isaac, Philip said, “Sure it’s not. You know who lies about who they are? Criminals. Thieves. Spies.”

I glared at him, forcing myself to keep my mouth shut. Why couldn’t the others see it? Why couldn’t they piece it together the way I had? Maybe Isaac had cast some kind of spell on them.

Philip let out a frustrated groan. “This is bullshit. Give me five minutes alone with him and I’ll get him talking.”

“That’s not how we do things,” Isaac said. “You know that.”

Philip shook his head. “Humans. I’ll never understand you. Trust me, the best way to loosen his tongue is to tear part of it out. But if you’re not going to do that, and he’s not going to talk anyway, you might as well just get Gabrielle to do her Vulcan mindmeld thing and get it over with.”

Isaac nodded, taking a deep breath. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but I don’t think he’s left us much choice.” He turned to Gabrielle, who was still kneeling on the carpet beside the clawfoot tub where Thornton lay submerged, still holding his hand in the water. “Gabrielle? I’m sorry, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, but we need you.”

She turned to Isaac, the golden hue of the water reflecting on her face. She looked angry. “Not now. Find some other way.”

“I would if I could,” he said. “None of us have your special talent. You’re the only one who can get inside his mind and tell us what you see.”

“Wait—what?” I stiffened in the chair. Were they serious? Could Gabrielle really do that? Of course she could, I realized. At this point it was foolish to be skeptical about anything these people were capable of. Still, withholding information from Isaac was the only leverage I had, and if she told him everything, I’d lose that.

Gabrielle let go of Thornton’s hand and stood up with a sigh. “Fine, but let’s keep it quick.” She walked over to me, inhaled a deep, steadying breath, and held my face in her hands. One was still wet from the tub, the spell in the water tingling against my skin like the brush of a feather. I tried to pull away from her, but with my wrists bound behind the chair there was nowhere to go.

“Don’t do this,” I said.

But it was too late. She was already in my head. I could feel her there, leafing through the pages of my mind as effortlessly as she might a magazine on the beach. She closed her eyes and bent closer, close enough that I saw the wet trails her worried tears had left in the corners of her eyes and along the sides of her nose.

She pulled my memories to the surface, dredging them from the swamp of my mind. In my head, unbidden, I saw the abandoned Shell gas station on Empire Boulevard. She saw it, too. Then she peeled the image away like the outer layer of an onion, and beneath it was my room in the fallout shelter, sparse and dreary, the overhead light flickering dimly. She peeled that one away, too, and beneath it she found what she was looking for.

“It’s Underwood,” she said. “I see him.”

The memory of Underwood’s face hung like a ghost in my mind, remaining frozen there no matter how hard I fought to keep my mind blank. Gabrielle was too strong. Now that she was inside my head, she could look wherever she wanted and I couldn’t stop her.

“Do you recognize him?” Isaac asked. “Is he someone you’ve seen before? Maybe under a different name?”

She shook her head, her eyes still closed. “No, I don’t know him.”

“But Trent does,” Isaac pointed out. “Tell us what he knows.”

She burrowed deeper into my mind, sorting through random images as if they were photographs: Underwood slapping my cheek and calling me a good dog. Underwood handing me a gun. Underwood sliding the address of the warehouse across the table to me. I was surprised at how vivid it all was, the colors, the sounds, even the smell of Underwood’s plentiful cologne. With Gabrielle along for the ride, the memories felt as fresh as if I were living them for the first time.

She laid open my mind, picking over my most private memories like Thanksgiving leftovers. She effortlessly pried them free and told the others what she saw—a thief who couldn’t remember his past, the low-level Brooklyn crime boss who took him in, and the mission to steal the box for an anonymous buyer in return for the information Underwood claimed to have found. I felt exposed, helpless, but most of all, hearing it spelled out so matter-of-factly, I felt foolish for having believed Underwood for as long as I did. He was a criminal, a master of lying to get what he wanted. I’d been an idiot to think he wouldn’t lie to me, too.

“So Underwood gave him the address of the warehouse,” Bethany said, talking about me as though I weren’t there. “That explains how he got past the ward. I thought there was something off about his story. But how did Underwood know we were there?”

Gabrielle found another memory: Underwood disappearing behind the black door. “He heard it from a mobster named Bennett, who belonged to a syndicate that owns the warehouse,” she said. “Underwood tortured him for the information. He killed him.”

“So Trent was telling the truth about that, at least,” Bethany said. “Bennett was the name of the dead man he saw at the safe house. He told me he knew Bennett, he just didn’t say how.”

“Now we know,” Isaac said. “Bennett is connected to Underwood, too. They all are. So who is he, and why haven’t we heard of him before?”

My breathing fell into sync with Gabrielle’s, to the point where I couldn’t tell which breaths were hers and which were mine. The longer she spent inside my head, the more our minds became entwined, knotting together like tree roots. Other memories began to bleed through into my own, memories I didn’t recognize until I realized they weren’t mine. They were hers. Most of them were of Thornton; her thoughts of him were still the rawest, closest to the surface. The fallout shelter faded from my mind, and I saw Gabrielle and Thornton kissing on a hilltop beneath a bright full moon and a sky full of stars. Their hands were clasped, their wrists bound by shiny white ribbons that reflected the moonlight. Figures moved around them, squat and low to the ground, dressed in ceremonial robes and intoning in high-pitched voices. Her memory filled in the blanks for me: They were goblins, and with that knowledge came a sudden understanding of what it was I was seeing.

Gabrielle and Thornton were engaged to be married. They’d done it in secret in Prospect Park, in a ritual the goblins called the Binding Oath, but they hadn’t told the others yet. They’d planned to surprise them with the news once Thornton had finished securing the box, but now … Now she didn’t know what would happen. Her concern for Thornton, her deep regret at not being at his side when he needed her, the overwhelming fear she felt at the prospect of her beloved dying in pain, the infinite sadness she’d pushed down just so she could function—it all put a crack in her heart, a crack that I felt, too. I knew with certainty now that she wasn’t the traitor. She loved Thornton too much to ever put him in danger.

She winced suddenly, and the memory was yanked forcefully from my mind. I felt her defensiveness, her outrage that I had seen something so private. It shouldn’t have happened. Distracted by her worries, she’d carelessly allowed her own memories to seep through.

Isaac spoke again. “Does Trent know who Underwood was planning to sell the box to?”

Gabrielle dug tentatively through my mind once more, this time making sure to keep her own memories shielded. “He doesn’t know. Underwood never told him. The buyers are always kept anonymous.”

Isaac grunted, frustrated. Suddenly I was very happy that Underwood hadn’t told me anything. Probably, Isaac only wanted to know who his competition was so he could send the shadowborn after them, too. The longer he was in the dark, the harder it would be for him to keep up the charade. Sooner or later he would slip up and the others would learn the truth about him.

“He doesn’t trust you, Isaac,” Gabrielle said. “He thinks you’re the one who summoned the shadowborn to kill them at the safe house. He thinks you want the box for yourself.”

Damn. That was stupid of me. I should have realized Gabrielle could do more than see my memories while she was in my mind. She could hear my thoughts, too.

Isaac bent closer to me. “You don’t trust me? That’s a laugh, coming from a thief and a liar.”

“So why did you do it?” I asked him. “Why send the shadowborn after the box when Bethany and Thornton were going to bring it here anyway? Was it because you wanted it all to yourself, or were you just impatient?”

His eyebrows lifted in indignation. “What? You’re the one who summoned the shadowborn, not me. You were gone when they came to the house. That’s a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

“How long do you think you can keep this up?” I asked. “You’ve got them all trusting you, but sooner or later they’ll figure out all roads lead back to you. What are you going to do then? Kill them all?”

The confusion on Isaac’s face looked real. He was a good actor, I’d give him that. He straightened up and said, “He’s lost his damn mind.”

“No, he’s just gotten very good at lying,” Bethany said.

I ignored her and kept my focus on Isaac. “You almost got away with it, too. Luckily, I came back to stop you.”

He shook his head. His eyes dipped down to the blood on my collar and shirt. “That blood is yours, isn’t it? Bethany told us what happened, how you died and came back.” He pulled something white and crumpled out of his pocket. It was an old, used bandage, stained dark on one side with dried blood. “We took this off your back while you were sleeping. There was nothing under it. No scratches, no scars. Your wounds were gone. No more games, Trent. I want the truth. What are you?”

I laughed in his face.

Isaac clenched his jaw. “This is getting us nowhere. Gabrielle, find out what he’s hiding. He’s obviously something more than human.”

She dug deeper, a drill boring through my mind. Images sped by like a flip book as she moved back through days, weeks, months, a year—all the way back to my first memory: the brick wall. She tried to peel that memory back, too, to see what was under it.

She flinched suddenly, opening her eyes and letting out a small gasp. “I can’t.”

Isaac put a hand on her shoulder. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I know you’d rather be with Thornton right now, but I wouldn’t ask this of you if there weren’t so much at stake. You have to try.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “I can only see what Trent knows, and he doesn’t know what he is. Beyond that, there’s a barrier, a mental block I can’t get past.”

“Can you force your way past it?”

She blew out her breath. “I don’t know.”

“We need to know exactly what we’re dealing with,” he said. “Please try.”

She sighed and closed her eyes again. Her mind pushed hard into mine, trying to force its way through the barrier to whatever lay on the other side. There was nothing I could do to stop her, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Because if it worked and she got through, she could unearth the answers I’d been looking for.

Then the pain came. It was excruciating, like a razor-sharp knife filleting my brain. The harder she pushed the more a sharp pressure mounted in my head, as if someone had put my brain in a vise and was turning it tighter. Bright spots flashed behind my eyes.

“Push past it, Gabrielle,” Isaac said. “Push past the barrier.”

Blood trickled from my nostrils, and still she pushed. It felt like my head was going to explode.

Gabrielle screamed suddenly and broke contact with me, both physically and mentally. She stumbled suddenly, thrown back as if some invisible force had pushed her away from me. I slumped forward in the chair, as far as my bound wrists would let me. Breathing hard, I spat on the carpet between my feet. My saliva was tinged with blood. The pain in my head dampened slowly, the vise unwinding.

Gabrielle swayed, dizzy, and put her hands to her head. Bethany held her steady. “Are you okay?”

“What happened?” Isaac demanded.

Gabrielle shook her head and stammered, “I—I don’t know. It felt like something attacked me. Pushed me away when I got too close. It was like touching a live wire.”

Isaac turned to me, his face red with anger. “What did you do to her?”

I spat more blood onto the carpet. “What did I do to her? I’m the one who just had his brain squeezed like a sponge, and in case you hadn’t noticed, you fucking overgrown leprechaun, I’m the one who’s bleeding.”

Isaac took a step toward me, his hands balling into fists. “If you hurt her…”

“Don’t, Isaac, I’m okay,” Gabrielle said. She shook her head like she was trying to clear out a thick layer of dust. “It wasn’t his fault. Our minds were locked, I would know if he meant to do it. This was involuntary, some kind of defense mechanism. It was like feedback in my head. Psychic feedback.” She stared into my eyes so intensely it was like she thought she could see into my soul if she just looked hard enough. “What are you?”

“If I had a nickel for every time I’ve asked myself that, I could buy this place,” I told her. “You’re the one who was digging around in my head. You tell me.”

She stared at me for a long moment. “All I know is that there’s something very powerful inside of you, Trent. Something I’ve never experienced before.”

“All the more reason to keep trying,” Isaac said.

“No,” Gabrielle replied, shaking her head. “I’ve had enough, and so has he. It’s time to let him go, Isaac. I know you’re worried, I know how important it is that the box stays safe, but he’s not a danger to us. I don’t think he ever was. He didn’t even know magic existed before yesterday.”

“Are you sure we can trust him?” Isaac asked.

“He’s a thief,” Bethany interrupted angrily. “He tried to steal the box, remember? He pulled a gun on me, for God’s sake! As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in that chair.”

“Underwood was manipulating him, he knows that now,” Gabrielle explained. “As strange as it sounds, he really was trying to protect you, Bethany. He likes you.” Gabrielle smirked at me. “Also, he likes your tattoo.”

Crap. What other memories had she seen in my head?

Bethany blanched. “He what?”

“Trent made some really stupid choices, I won’t argue that, but he never would have hurt you. He’s kind of sweet on you.”

Oh God, could this get any worse?

“He’s got a funny way of showing it,” Bethany said.

“Can I just say something?” I interjected.

“No!” Bethany snapped.

Gabrielle turned to Isaac. “There’s no need to keep him bound. Let him go.”

Isaac took a deep breath. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He freed me. With a wave of his hand, the magical bonds around my wrists vanished. I pulled my arms forward from behind the chair and rubbed my wrists and sore shoulders.

Bethany crossed her arms and turned away.

“You’re going to have to trust me, Trent,” Isaac said.

“You’re going to have to trust me, too,” I told him.

“I trust Gabrielle,” he said. “She vouched for you, and that’s good enough for me. But I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you, Trent. Don’t prove her wrong.”

I turned to Gabrielle. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

She shook her head. “You’ve had so many second chances, Trent. Most people don’t even get one. Maybe it’s time you started putting them to good use. You can start by stopping all the lies. And you, Isaac, instead of tying people up and using my abilities to satisfy your own curiosity, don’t you think you should make sure the box is secured before the equinox gets here?” She walked back to the tub, knelt down beside it, and reached into the water to take Thornton’s hand again. “Thornton went through hell to help you both get to this point. The least you can do is stop this pissing contest and make sure the sacrifice he made was worth it.”

Isaac nodded, his jaw tight. With a quick, final glance at me, he walked to the desk at the far end of the room. Philip went with him, leaving me alone with Bethany. She still had her back to me. I couldn’t blame her for being furious.

I stood up out of the chair. “Bethany, I’m sorry—”

She turned around and slapped me hard across the cheek. “If you ever point a gun at me again…”

I rubbed my cheek. It stung like a bastard. The others stared at us, the slap catching their attention, but they didn’t interfere. I supposed they thought this was something we needed to hash out ourselves. I also supposed they were right.

“Okay, I had that coming,” I said. “I’m trying to apologize, Bethany. I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. I just—I didn’t know how to tell you about Underwood. I didn’t want you to…” I trailed off, feeling foolish. What was the point? She would never forgive me. Why should she?

“You didn’t want me to what?” she demanded, her hands on her hips.

I struggled for the words. They didn’t come easily. “If I told you the truth about who I worked for and the real reason I was at that warehouse…” I trailed off and started over. “You and Thornton are the only friends I’ve got, Bethany. I don’t think I could have handled it if you turned your back on me.”

“So you thought it would be better to pull a gun on me instead? How crazy are you?”

I sighed. “I wanted to get the box away from you before it was too late, before Underwood’s enforcers showed up. That’s who those two men were. It was clear you weren’t going to just let me take it, so yeah, welcome to the way my brain works. It’s kind of messed up in there. Just ask Gabrielle. She had a front-row seat.”

“You really thought I’d turn my back on you? You didn’t think I would help you?”

I shrugged. “It’s not like anyone’s ever given a damn about me.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then crouched down instead and took a tissue from her pants pocket. She used it to dab up the blood-tinged saliva I’d spat on the carpet. That was Bethany in a nutshell, I thought. Everything had to be just so. “You’ve got some on your face, too,” she said, not looking up at me.

I touched under my nose and my fingers came back tipped in red. I wiped the blood off with my sleeve. “Thanks. I don’t know what happened, only that it hurt like hell when Gabrielle tried to force her way into the parts of my life I can’t remember.”

“That’s probably what made the defense mechanism kick in,” she said. “Are you okay now?” The question came out robotically, a matter of courtesy, not concern. Maybe the chasm between us was too wide for a simple apology to bridge.

“I’m fine,” I said. I crouched down next to her on the carpet, glanced over my shoulder at the others, and lowered my voice. “Bethany, whatever you think of me right now—and I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me—I need you put it aside for a moment and listen very carefully. You can’t trust Isaac. He’s dangerous.”

She kept dabbing the tissue over the stain on the rug and moving it in tight circles.

“Think about it,” I continued. “He knew we were at Ingrid’s house. He sent us there. You said yourself the enemy knows our every move. It could only have been an inside job, and Isaac is the only one who could have pulled it off.”

She put the wadded-up tissue in her pocket and finally looked at me. “I know.”

My eyebrows shot upward in surprise. “You know?”

“You’re right that it could only have been an inside job, but you’re wrong about Isaac. I know him a lot better than you do, Trent. He’s a good man. He’s done a lot for me. I spent my whole childhood being shuffled from one foster home to another, and after I turned eighteen they kicked me out onto the street. It was another ten years before Isaac found me. He cleaned me up and gave me a job. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. What you said before about no one ever giving a damn? That’s how I felt my whole life, until I met him. He wouldn’t betray us. I trust him with my life. I trust all of them with my life. I can’t imagine any of them betraying us.”

“But someone did,” I said. “It’s the only explanation.”

She nodded. “Here’s the problem, Trent. Someone tried to kill us at the safe house, someone who must have told the shadowborn we were there, but I know these people. It couldn’t be any of them. There’s only one wild card in the deck. Only one person it could be. You.”

I blinked. “It wasn’t, I swear.”

“I know it wasn’t,” she said, standing up again. “But now you see the problem.”

I did, and it was made all the more vexing by the fact that Bethany had an annoying habit of always being right. Frankly, she hadn’t been wrong about anything yet. Which meant I probably owed Isaac an apology. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

Still, if the traitor wasn’t any of the others, and it wasn’t me, who was left?