The Witch Hunter (The Witch Hunter #1)(40)

I shrug. “It’s a means to an end.”

“Money, I presume.”

“For starters. Enough to get out of the country and to live on for a while. And safe passage.”

A pause.

“And?”

“And what?” I say. “That’s it. Your life in exchange for mine. A fair deal.”

Nicholas doesn’t reply. He’s still standing, gazing at the parchment on the table, Veda’s prophecy written on it in his careful hand. I didn’t understand it all—any of it, really—but I do see the word death written there. Twice. Other words jump out at me, too: darkness, end, break, betrayed. Last breath. I feel a momentary twist of fear. Are those words meant for him, or for me?

“I’m not going to hurt them,” I say. “I don’t even care about them.” Though this isn’t exactly true. I’ve come to like George, and Peter is kind. Fifer I could do without, but she’s not worth the trouble I’d have to go through to kill her. And John saved my life. The idea of hurting him bothers me more than I care to admit. “Did Veda say I would?”

“No,” Nicholas says. “She didn’t. In fact, she implied the opposite. That you may actually—” He breaks off, running his finger along Veda’s words, lost in thought. “Even taking that into consideration, there’s no guarantee. And the risk—”

“Becomes a certainty,” I say. “You turn away my help, you die. Without your protection, Blackwell will find them. And they die, too.”

Nicholas scowls at me. But it’s the truth and we both know it.

“Blackwell always told us to remember the greater game,” I say. “The greater victory. It’s good advice. You should remember it, too.”

He looks at me and shakes his head, as if he can’t quite understand me or doesn’t know what to do with me. “How exactly did you become involved in all this?”

It’s the same question George asked me. So I give Nicholas the same answer: the truth. There’s no reason to keep it from him now.

I start with the plague, with Caleb finding me and taking me to Ravenscourt. I tell him about working in the kitchen, about Blackwell asking Caleb to witch-hunt for him. About my going along. I even tell him about training, something I never talk about.

“We trained for a year,” I say. “There were tests along the way. We had to pass them in order to move forward.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Fighting, mostly. Swords, knives, archery, unarmed combat. We fought one another at first, then Blackwell brought in creatures for us to fight. At first, they were fairly regular. Snakes, scorpions, storks—”

“You fought a stork?”

“Yes. It was seven feet high, with bright red eyes and a steel beak. The scorpion was probably twelve feet long with a stinger that dripped poison that killed on contact. The snake had a head that if you cut it off, it grew two more in its place.”

“These creatures were, as you say, fairly regular?”

“I just meant they were recognizable. After that, we had to fight things I couldn’t name. Things that looked like giant rodents but had six legs and a head like a crocodile. Or reptiles with wings and metal feathers that would fly off their bodies and try to impale you. Something that, just as you started to kill it, changed its appearance so it couldn’t die. So if you tried to poke its eye out, it would change into something that didn’t have an eye. You see.”

“I’m starting to,” Nicholas murmurs.

“Then there were endurance tests. Like spending the night in a severely haunted house.”

I particularly hated that one. I spent the night huddled into a ball, a foul-smelling, frigid wind swirling in the air, the ghosts’ hateful voices echoing around me while they scratched frightening messages to me in blood on the wall. I thought it couldn’t get much worse than that test. Of course, as I came to find out later, I was wrong.

“There was a hedge maze we had to figure our way out of. The walls would shift. Things would come after you. We had no food, no water. No supplies. It took me three days to get out.” The only person who got out in less time than I was Caleb. It took him two and a half days.

“What happened if you couldn’t get out?” Nicholas asks.

I don’t reply. What does he think happened? We lost three prospective witch hunters to the maze test. I never did see them again.

He’s quiet for a while. His eyes shift from me to the parchment on the table in front of him, then back to me again.

“Well?” I say. “Do we have a deal or not?”

Nicholas starts to speak but is cut off by a knock at the door. It’s George.

“We’ve got a problem.”

Nicholas pushes past him into the other room, George and I behind him. Immediately, I see what’s wrong. Veda is standing in the middle of the room, arms held stiffly by her sides. Her tiny body is rigid, but her head lolls from side to side, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Avis and Fifer are kneeling next to her.

“What happened?” Nicholas demands.

“I don’t know,” Fifer says, looking frightened. “We were sitting on the floor, playing with the doll I brought her. Then she jumped up and started doing this.”

Nicholas crouches in front of her. He’s so tall that he’s practically on his hands and knees to get eye level with her.