Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(31)

“Real girl, I promise.”

“I had a feeling you weren’t dead when I saw your parents on the news last year. Do I need to worry about them showing up here, too?”

“I banished both of them to the Æthyr months ago,” I said. Not a lie. Not the whole truth, either. “They tried to ritually sacrifice me, so I can assure you that any loyalty I once had for them has vanished.”

He looked mildly shocked for a moment but recovered quickly. “Enola was always one for high dramatics.” He flicked curious eyes toward Lon. “And who might this be?”

“Someone who watches over her,” Lon said, slipping his hand around the back of my neck. “We need your word that you’ll keep this meeting quiet.”

Mr. Rooke gave Lon an amused smile. “I’m not sure who you think I’d tell. I haven’t had contact with another E∴E∴ member in years, and I don’t plan to change that. Although I must admit, I’m rather interested to hear why you think I can help you.”

I lifted my chin. “Perhaps you could start by telling me if a private detective came to see you about me?”

“Ah.” Rooke stared at me for a moment before gesturing toward the inner door leading into the gardens. “I knew this would come back to haunt me. Why don’t we take a walk outside and discuss it privately?” When I protested, he cut me off and gestured to Lon, saying, “Your watcher here can follow along with Evie, but I can’t talk about other Ekklesia Eleusia members with an outsider. I’m still under magical oath.”

“You discussed it with Robert Wildeye,” Lon said, slanting Rooke a cold look.

Rooke tugged the lapels of his smoking jacket together and shuffled toward the garden door. “And I hope you are smart enough to realize what this tells you about that man.”

Wildeye was one of us.

“Come, Miss Duval. I’m an old man with limited stores of energy.”

I didn’t want to be separated from Lon. And I definitely didn’t want to leave him alone with Tits Ahoy, but the magical oath was a real thing—all the lodge leaders had to undergo it. And I needed information he had, so I tamped down my uneasiness and followed him out the door.

The night air was warmer here than on the coast, and the wide cement path that snaked through the lush grounds was lit by tiny white lights and the occasional gas lamp that stood over benches or the warm spotlights artfully installed at the trunks of trees. I walked side-by-side with Rooke, who didn’t speak until we were several paces ahead of Lon and Evie.

“Quite a showstopper, that guardian of yours,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of odd things in my life, but that was new.”

“Puts other Hermeneus projections to shame,” I agreed. But I didn’t come to swap magical pointers with him, so before he asked how I’d managed to end up with a guardian like Priya, I said, “Wildeye was E∴E∴?”

“Vancouver lodge in the 1980s. His family’s there. He apparently never broke with the order officially—”

“Unlike you,” I said.

He shrugged casually, a smug smile on his lips. “No, he never caused a stir. I asked an old friend to look into him when he first contacted me last fall. His family had been in the order since the 1930s, but they were quiet and forgettable.”

But memorable enough for Dare to want to use him. “Did he tell you who he was working for?”

“He wouldn’t give me a name, but he indicated that it was a client with more cash than sense and someone powerful enough to make his life miserable. I felt a little sorry for the man. He was warded to the hilt with charms when I met with him in September.”

Rooke’s words came easily, and it felt as if he was being honest, but I wished Lon could verify it for me. I briefly glanced over my shoulder to spy him talking with Evie, who was smiling and using sweeping hand gestures to point out things along the path. I supposed if Lon heard something in her emotions to raise his hackles, he’d let me know.

“What exactly did the detective want to know about me?” I asked Rooke.

“If I knew whether you were alive and, if so, where you’d been hiding. As I said, I suspected you might be alive when I saw the Duvals on the news. But it was just a passing curiosity, and I didn’t care one way or another, to be perfectly honest. No offense.”

“None taken. What else did he want to know?”

“Mostly about your parents. How well I knew them, for how long, whether I believed they were capable of all those killings.”

“Believe me, they were.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, my dear. Enola was one of the reasons I left the order.”

“I remember you fighting with my parents. And with the caliph.”

Rooke sniffled and glanced at me. “You heard he passed away last month?”

I nodded stiffly.

“Made me sad to hear it, frankly. I don’t know how he’s fared over the last decade, but when I knew him, the caliph was a decent man.”

“Not decent enough to keep you in the order?”

“He wasn’t the reason I left, but I’ll admit that his lack of action frustrated me. He was blinded by his loyalty to Enola and her New Occult Order malarkey. Anyone could see she had no interest in uniting all the orders. She was a power-hungry manipulator who’d use anything at her disposal to get her way—sex, medicinals, dark magick. Nothing was sacred. The E∴E∴ was her playground, and she used every resource it had for her own personal agendas.”