Strike at Midnight(82)

“Amana is currently brewing a potion that will change her into you, and me into Jeremiah,” he said after rolling his eyes. “Once Amana weds the prince as you, she is going to convince him that poor little orphan Jeremiah needs a family. That will be me.” He pointed to himself as if I wasn’t moving along with his asinine plan. “And then, once we’re in the castle, we can get access to things like you wouldn’t believe.” He stood up and started to walk across the room, flinging his hands out with his words. “Treasure. Top-secret plans. Gold. Anything we want. And it’s all thanks to you.”

He bowed in my direction as if I had just applauded him, and I wanted to take the dagger he still held in his hand and give him a new asshole.

The prince and the king were now in danger because of me and my stupid, stupid plans. Not to mention trusting too damn quickly when Rem had turned up on my doorstep. Why hadn’t I seen it before now?

The kid had such little information about his brother and had been reluctant in providing more information. He had been too eager, too keen for me to sweep the hunt for his brother to the sidelines, and part of me had thought that maybe it was because he had finally had a home.

But then the thought of how Rem had turned up on our doorstep hit me, and the way he had behaved that night. He wasn’t that good a pretender if the state of him had been anything to go by, and he’d had a haunted look in his eyes that couldn’t be faked when he had come to ask for help. The kid had been through some shit, that was obvious.

“What is Rem to you?” I asked, and he looked at me slightly confused before figuring out who I was talking about.

“That’s what he calls himself, is it?” he asked, sitting down and stroking his chin as if there were more than a slight growth on his beard. “Well, you could say he is working for me to pay off his brother’s debt, and until he has given enough service, he’s mine.”

“What do you mean? His brother’s debt?” At least Rem hadn’t been lying about the fact that he had a brother.

“His brother owed me money after I had loaned him sufficient funds, and he was working for me to pay it off. He had an accident with his horse and broke his neck, leaving me with both a burial and his debt burning a hole in my pocket. It was only fair that Jeremiah, being the younger brother, pay off his brother’s debt in his stead by working for me. So I hunted him down and brought him on board.”

“And he knew about his brother’s death?” I asked, not sure if that had been the case from Rem’s behavior. Thinking back, there had been hope in his eyes when I said I would try and find his brother.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, waving his hand at me. “What would I do with a grief-stricken child?” He shook his head in disgust. “Seriously. I just told him that he had fled with my money and a girl called Emily and that Jeremiah was responsible for the debt if he wanted to see his brother again.”

“You sick son of a bitch,” I said, barely able to get out the words at his audacity. Memories of what Billy had said about replacing a guy who’d had a fatal accident came back to me, and it was pretty clear that Rem didn’t know his brother was dead. The poor kid was just a slave to this crazy bastard, and he had been spying on me to pay off a debt in the hopes of finding his brother. A brother that he didn’t even know was dead.

“Where is the real duke?” I asked Piper as he started humming a tune. He seemed completely unfazed by the words he had just spoken.

“Oh, he’s safe enough. So are the others.”

“Others?”

“A few,” he replied. “But they’re not here if that’s what you’re thinking. Or dead. That would have left too much of a trail.”

“So where are they?”

“Well, that’s the brilliance of it, you see,” he said, crossing one leg over the other. “Amana gave them a change-of-memory potion, and my two best fellows standing guard outside took the duke off to another city far, far away.”

“He doesn’t know who he is anymore?” I asked, not quite believing the brilliance of it. But fear rolled around in my gut at the thought of the duke thinking he was someone else and living another life elsewhere. How the hell are we going to find him?

“Just like you won’t know once we’ve copied you and Jeremiah when he returns back here and we give you the potion. Brilliant, isn’t it?”

It was. But I wasn’t about to admit it.

“No,” I said, glaring at him. “It’s fucking stupid. The prince will know that this Amana bitch isn’t me. He knows me quite intimately.”

“Does he, now?”

“He’ll know,” was all I said as I held his gaze. I put all my distaste and anger in that look, and I was glad when it wiped that stupid expression off his face.

“Amana!” he shouted without removing his eyes from me. “Get out here.”

The gasp that involuntarily left my lips was a worthy one when I saw the witch come through a door from the back end of the cottage. She was a sight to behold, and not in a good way.

Her wrinkled skin seemed to hang off her bones as she shuffled forward towards us with a big hooded cloak draped over her body. A large, protruding nose stuck out from her face with too many warts on it to count, and her eyes sparkled with crimson irises. Oh, she was a bad, bad witch to have ended up looking like this.