Tell the Wind and Fire(38)

Ethan’s key turned in the lock. A flare of light followed as it clicked open and the mahogany door followed, and I stepped over the threshold into the apartment. I was already thinking of the luxurious softness of the cloud-colored couch, of resting and being consoled by wealth that felt like security, and Ethan’s arms.

Behind me, Ethan fumbled and dropped his keys. The tiny jangling sound of metal on marble made me spin around as if it had been the sound of a sword scraping from a sheath. It was only Ethan, though, stooping to pick up the keys with an apologetic smile on his face.

I turned away again. The walls were windows, clear glass, and it seemed as if the city was spread out at my feet. It looked bright but small, a child’s toy town, not full of human unrest and danger. The other city, the Dark city, my old home, was nothing but a black ribbon on the edge of the Light.

“Sorry about that,” said Ethan, swinging the door shut. “I just—I saw my father’s coat hanging there, but I thought my father was wearing it when he left today.” I turned back toward him and saw him pause, hope and fading sunlight warm on his face. “Maybe he’s already back. Dad? Dad!”

Ethan’s call echoed off the high ceilings. The large chandeliers, each crystal in them lit with magic to create a huge, coruscating proof of wealth, tinkled overhead.

That sound was the only answer he received.

Ethan glanced back at the coat on its hook. I saw his face change.

“Dad,” he said, his voice sharp with alarm. He set off for the kitchen, calling for his father. I stood there and let him search.

Ethan was wrong about which coat his father had taken to work, I told myself. We had the apartment to ourselves, that was all. We were alone together and could make a plan. His father would be home soon, ready to shield Ethan from any threat.

That was what I told myself. Except Ethan came back from the kitchen shaking his head.

“Dad!”

“Wait,” I said, but Ethan didn’t wait.

He was already running down the corridor toward the bedrooms and I was running after him, fast enough that I seemed to outrun all the assurances I was giving myself. All possibilities of comfort seemed left behind, trailing me uselessly like ghosts.

We burst in through the door of Charles Stryker’s bedroom. It had a vaulted white ceiling, skylights set like a cupola in the center. The wall on one side was all mirrors, and the wall on the other was all windows, and in the wall facing us was an entrance I had never seen before: a hole that led to a shadowy passage.

Aside from that no-longer-hidden doorway, the whole room was bright. The sheets around Charles Stryker were brilliant white, and the blood on the sheets and on his white shirt was a vivid spreading stain.

Ethan shrank from the sight of his murdered father, back against the mirrored wall. I glanced at him over my shoulder as I advanced toward the bed, and it was as if there were two of him watching me with haunted eyes.

Charles Stryker’s face had always seemed to exist in relation to the stronger personalities about him, and that had not changed even now. He looked like a stone likeness, a death mask that could be lying under dust in a family tomb. I could see Mark Stryker’s death in this face, I could see Carwyn’s, and I could see my Ethan’s.

A knife had been driven into his heart. It had pinioned him as if he were a butterfly transfixed against a corkboard. The hilt was decorated with writhing shadows, Dark magic making the markings twist and turn. Around that shadowy hilt was a crumpled strip of pale paper, fluttering like the frill of a petticoat.

Ethan made a thin, terrible sound as I reached for the paper. “Lucie,” he whispered. “Don’t—” But I straightened it in my shaking hands and read the words written there in ink made of shadows that curled darkly and obscenely across the page:



Put him down into the dark. —The sans-merci.



Bury him, the buried said.

As soon as I had read the note, the shadows swallowed the paper at a gulp. Dark magic turned the paper into black ashes slipping between my fingers.

“We should . . .” Ethan said, and swallowed. “We should call the guards, but we can’t, can we?”

I was not surprised Ethan wanted to call the guards. I was surprised that he realized we could not: I’d thought I would have to fight to make him understand that he was suspected of treason already and he could not be found at a murder scene.

Charles Stryker’s death meant the Strykers’ power was more than halved: one less member on the Light Council, a blow to the perception that the Strykers were invulnerable. I did not know if Ethan realized that we were all in danger.

I looked at his lost, hurt face—the face of an orphan child, which is what he suddenly was. I remembered that moment, when the whole world felt like it had turned on me like a wild animal and gone for my throat, when I understood that the world had always been a cruel, hungry thing.

“Call your uncle,” I said as gently as I could.

Ethan took out his phone and called his uncle. His hands were shaking as he did so, as mine had shook unwrapping the message around the knife.

“Uncle Mark,” Ethan said, and his voice trembled as he burst into tears. “They murdered Father.”

I leaned in, my forehead touching his, so we could both hear the voice of our salvation. The voice of the man who had hit Ethan less than an hour ago, the voice of the man we were nevertheless going to obey.