Everyone watched me flip the pages, looking as confused as I did.
“Sorry, folks, that’s all she wrote. And it doesn’t help. All we now know is that the secrets Sarah was asked to keep involved the location of the relics, and that she was bade to write them in the books. But she didn’t, and she made her clues obtuse on purpose. Then her memory was wiped.”
Magog’s raspy voice echoed Blondie’s obvious disappointment.
“The tombs of political megalomaniacs are a dime a dozen here on the Great Island. Between human leaders and supernatural ones, I can think of a dozen possibilities off the top of my head. We need to narrow it down.”
“We need,” rumbled Anyan, “to talk to Sarah.”
“What good will that do if her memory’s been scrubbed?” I asked.
“Brains aren’t easy to wipe entirely clean. Traces of things come back, just in odd ways. Sarah might not know what she knows, but she might be doing something that tips us off. We need to talk to her.”
“And fast,” Magog said. “Because if we need to talk to her…”
“So does Morrigan,” Blondie said, already moving for the door.
Once again, we were too late. I was beginning to feel like that was our modus operandi, as really bad superheroes: “Too Late To Save Shit! But We Gave It A Go!”
Sarah was in very bad shape when we arrived. At first I thought she was dead, as she was laying in a fetal position in a huge pool of blood, her arms wrapped around the center of her body. A horrible smell permeated the air—shit, and blood, and fear. For a terrible second I was back in the Healer’s mansion, surrounded by his victims and his instruments of torture. My head spun, but Anyan’s hand on my nape settled me until my concern for Sarah could do the rest.
It was only when we were closer and could see her failing powers attempting to change her into versions of all of us, that we realized she was still alive. But barely. Her eyes were closed, and I prayed she had passed out. The pain must have been excruciating.
“Shit,” Blondie swore, diving in with hands and healing powers extended. But when she managed to peel Sarah’s arms from her body, we saw how bad the damage was. A slash across her body had her guts spilling out. I was no doctor, but I knew enough about anatomy that I understood, from the smells in the room, that Sarah was not long for this world without some major magical intervention. But her wounds resisted even Blondie’s powerful healing magic.
“It won’t close,” the Original sobbed, tears streaming down her face as she pressed Sarah’s guts into her belly and held the wound shut.
Anyan, unspeaking, added his power to hers, but still nothing happened.
“The Red did this,” I said, remembering what I’d read in the history books. I choked back the bile that rose in my throat, as Sarah didn’t deserve any weakness from me, and continued. “Wounds from her claws won’t heel with normal magic.”
Blondie looked at me, her face splotched and swollen in grief.
“Try the ax,” she said. “Try the creature’s magic.”
I did as she asked, calling forth the labrys and pulling on its power. I glanced at Anyan, who directed all that strength for me in a healing spell.
Still nothing happened.
“Call an ambulance,” I urged. “Call the human paramedics. They’ll know what to do.”
Blondie gave me a stricken look, before she turned to Magog and nodded. The raven frowned, but eventually she stood with her cell phone, then began pressing buttons and speaking rapidly as she left the room.
When we turned back to Sarah, we saw that she had come to. Her eyes were opened, her gaze resting on Blondie with an expression curiously serene. She reached with shaking hands to touch Blondie’s face as she tried to speak. Her fingers left streaks of blood, like exclamation points, down Blondie’s cheeks.
Slowly, weakly, Sarah began speaking.
“I don’t know what she wanted,” she whispered. “But I think I told her what she needed. She seemed pleased with me. Then she did this. She asked, about my research, so I told her. Have I ruined everything?”
At those words, fat tears spilled from Sarah’s eyes. She probably couldn’t even remember what she might have ruined, magicked as she was by Alfar spells. But she knew the stakes were high and that something had obviously gone the wrong way in that room.
“No,” Blondie said, nearly choking on her words. “You haven’t ruined everything, beautiful girl. You were brave and strong, as you always were. And clever. But we must know your research too. Where is it?”
“She took my laptop, but I have Dropbox. Check my work comp. My password is Cyntaf.”
Sarah’s body convulsed then, with pain or in the throes of death, I don’t know. Blondie cried out as if she were the one wounded, and I realized I was crying. Even Hiral looked misty-eyed. Only Anyan’s face showed grim resolve, but I knew inside he would mourn this brave woman who’d risked and lost so much, simply because she’d been given an arbitrary task by the Alfar.
The doppelgänger died a few seconds later, her excruciating whimpers something I will never forget. Blondie held her hand throughout. Only with her death did Sarah’s face stop shifting entirely to settle into that of a thin, plain girl.
Covered in blood, Blondie sat back on her ass with a thud, looking at Sarah’s body with the expression of a lost child. My heart nearly broke, and I went to crouch behind her, wrapping my arms around hers. She was shivering.
Anyan stood, then, and went to the work computer. He pressed a few keys, moving the mouse around a bit.
“She was working on a biography of Anna Gibson.”
Then there was more punching of keys, and some more mouse movement. Then he had what we needed.
“Anna Gibson was Cromwell’s granddaughter. She has a tomb in Bloomsbury. We have to go now.”
Blondie visibly shook herself, lurching out of my arms as she stood.
“Tell Magog to stay and take care of the human police.”
Anyan looked uncomfortable for a moment, but when he spoke his voice was gentle.
“She didn’t call an ambulance, Cyntaf,” he said, using the name that had become Blondie’s formal moniker, even for us. “You know that.”
My own expression revealed my confusion as Blondie looked like she’d just been slapped. Then she nodded as if accepting a heavy burden.
“Of course,” she said, her voice dull. “How silly of me.”
And then she walked out of the room.
I stood, trotting after Anyan who’d followed Blondie.
“What just happened?” I asked, tugging on his elbow.
The barghest looked at me sadly, letting the emotions he hadn’t shown to the others show to me.
“She was as good as dead when we got here. Magog would never have risked revealing the location of the library to average humans. She probably called Jack to alert Griffin to get a clean up crew into the library. And a new librarian.”
“But why?” I said, asking so many different things at one time.
“With a wound like that, which can’t be healed by magic and that’s obviously not natural, we die. There are no hospitals for us, not unless we know it won’t get out of hand. We can take care of a lot of things with magic, but lighting up every police scanner in the area with a murder is too much for us to cover up without a massive amount of work. Blondie knew that when we walked in and her healing didn’t work. She knew, but she didn’t want to know.”
I blinked, feeling about a thousand emotions crashing over me at one time. But I was still blindsided by the force of Anyan’s anger at the words he spoke next.
“It’s what we do best, letting things die,” he said, bitterness lacing every word.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but all thoughts of Sarah flew out of my brain as I slammed once again into that impenetrable wall which was Anyan’s history. It didn’t happen that often, but when it did, man did it hurt.
What had he suffered? And what had it done to him?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Crouching low behind one of the many small crypts dotting the former graveyard, I kept my eyes on Anyan, waiting for his signal.
We were in the cemetery in Bloomsbury, named St. George’s Gardens, where Anna Gibson had once had her tomb. It was a lovely place, long since turned into a park. All of the crypts’ bodies had been removed, and the headstones had all been relocated to line the park’s stone walls. Only the crypts remained, in various states of disrepair, while in front of the tombstone-lined walls gorgeous gardens full of roses would soon bloom. Taken altogether, the place was a lovely—if melancholy—haven in the middle of the city, although its beauty was currently marred by the enormous magical dome that had appeared near one of its stone walls.
Morrigan and her people were using the ultra-powerful version of the nullification-charm that the rebels used for their safe houses. Unlike ours, which only showed a blank magical space, Morrigan’s made a real blank space. It looked as if a dome of onyx had fallen in a wide circumference around what must have been Anna Gibson’s former crypt.
