Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(90)

The screen of the jumbotron behind us fizzled out, our image replaced by static snow. The scythe dissipated in my hands as we turned and watched.

“What the hell is going on here?” Another host looked around for help, but the staff was too busy running around trying to get the jumbotron working. With a frustrated shrug, he brought his mic up to his mouth, pasting a phony smile back onto his face. “Okay, folks, we’re having a little bit of technical difficulty, but hey, it’s live TV! You know what that means, right? Despite our best efforts, anything can happen.”

He was trying to spin this as some kind of wild ride typical for teenager-targeted TV, but I could see the beads of sweat dripping from his face. He was worried. He was right to be.

A few staff members in black clothes rushed up to us. “Ladies, please come with us. We need to get you offstage,” one said.

But before we could move, the screen turned to darkness.

The crowd fell silent.

“Good evening, everyone,” called a voice from the screen. My breath hitched.

Saul’s voice.

The darkness receded to show bright lights shining from the ceiling before the camera panned around the room. From what I could tell, it was a cabin: The walls and floors were made of logs. As the camera panned, I saw first a chair, then a tall standing lamp. But the camera didn’t linger. A hung oil painting of an old man eating soup with Death. Boarded-up windows. A potted plant . . .

Then the camera panned around to the desk, where Saul sat with his legs crossed on the chair in front of it. He was surrounded by phantoms in the shape of wolves, snapping at his feet. Those wolves . . . It’d been a long time since I’d seen them. Like the ones he’d used to attack me in New York and Argentina, their mouths frothed as they snarled. His metal hand tapped the armrest in a steady rhythm. The knife in his other hand glinted underneath the ceiling lights.

So did the white stone of the ring he wore.

An old man in a respectable suit lay bound and gagged at Saul’s feet, his chest heaving, his gray hair shaking with the rest of his body. His eyes bulged as he watched the black wolves leave Saul’s side and circle him silently.

“Oh my god!” The host dropped his mic, and the sound interference split my ears.

Lake scrambled back to her feet. “What’s happening?” She tugged my arm. “What’s going on?”

“I recognize that man,” whispered Belle. “I think . . . Is he not . . . the Ontario premier?”

I had no idea one way or the other. Belle paid more attention to politics than I did. I could see her hands twitching, aching for her sword, aching to fight, but she couldn’t fight an image on-screen and she knew it. Frustration crinkled the skin around her eyes.

Chae Rin immediately turned to us. “We can catch him. We should try to figure out where he is. We can save him, can’t we?” She grabbed Belle’s arm and a little too violently yanked her around to face her. “Come on! We have to do something!”

Belle didn’t appreciate being manhandled, or maybe it was the tension of the situation itself. She pulled her arm out of Chae Rin’s grip and shoved her back.

“What?” Chae Rin spat, once her feet stabilized onstage. “We’re just going to stand here looking like morons? Oh, I guess if it’s not about Natalya, you don’t give a shit, right?”

Belle responded to Chae Rin with a livid glare, which Chae Rin matched.

“You know me. My name,” Saul said, grabbing our attention once more, “is Saul.”

His voice, though forceful, carried with it the kind of well-mannered, gentlemanly lilt I’d associated with Nick. But this brutality . . . The premier’s face had been bludgeoned; his saliva was dripping over the white binds in his mouth. That was Alice.

The last time I’d faced Saul in France, he’d made it clear that the drives of both were the same: to find the rest of the stone from which the rings had been made. To find Marian. To make a wish. Even if their wishes were different, both personalities, the body and the Effigy ghost inhabiting it, had proven well enough that they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their goal. A relationship that had started out with antagonism now seemed to have become a begrudging partnership—the kind Natalya and I had shared, for a fleeting moment, before she’d tried to take me over again. Nick’s calm, calculating personality with Alice’s vicious bloodthirst.

“My name is Saul,” he declared again. “I am an Effigy.” He shoved the point of the knife into the desk behind him, his eyes never leaving the camera. “And you should fear me.”

In that moment he raised his arms. Black smoke dripped up from the floor, limbs forming before our eyes. More shadow wolves shivered into existence, their dead flesh clinging to their bones, the smoke curling off of their black furry hides into the air over the trembling body of the poor man I knew we wouldn’t be able to save.

“I come to tell you that I am not acting alone. I come to give you a message.”

I clenched my hands into fists.

“And that message is this.” Saul sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “The pain and terror you’ve experienced thus far is only a shade of what lies ahead of you. And the people you’ve foolishly trusted to protect you can’t save you. No. They won’t save you. They’ll betray you.” He flicked a hand and his wolves descended on the senator.