Page 26 of The Grip of Death
I shook my head. “That’s why I’m all fucked up about this, man. It took a goddess to stop Xander from dying.”
He pursed his lips, taking a moment for himself. I hadn’t meant to throw that in his face, but this had to be done. I wanted to think Xander would have liked it this way, too. Upstairs, in our room? There was little I could do to change things. But out there? There could be answers.
“So that’s where we’re going?” Reza asked, frowning. “To question Giuseppe. And you taking me along has nothing to do with the fact that my presence as a SEER officer would intimidate him.”
I frowned at the accusation. “We’re only going there to talk to him, Reza.”
“And this has nothing to do with retribution,” Reza continued. “Answer me honestly.”
“No.” I threw my hands up, my fingernails digging through my hair. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t fucking know. It’s not like I’m planning to punch Giuseppe in the face. I just have this awful feeling that he’s a part of this somehow. He could have warned us, maybe. He could have said something.”
“Jackson,” Reza said, both hands on my shoulders now, holding me tightly in place. “Consider this. Why in the world would an old artificer come out of retirement and go through the trouble of tuning up a machine just to murder your fiancé, someone he previously didn’t know or care about?”
I raised my hands between his arms and carefully brushed them aside, freeing myself. “Then you can see why I have so many questions in the first place.”
He clenched his teeth, but relented and sighed. “It’s hopeless. You’re hopeless. Let’s just get this over and done with before Xander comes to and wonders why his beloved lump of a husband is incognito.”
“Future husband,” I said, tutting as I wagged a finger in his face. “There’s still a wedding to attend.”
And guests, and decor to worry about, and parents. I gave the Wright house a quick glance as we turned down Mystery Row. I knew that they were out of town. A weekend in Italy or something like that, something about Wilhelmina wanting to visit a very specific Milanese tailor to make sure that Edric would look perfectly sharp in all the wedding pictures.
Guilt stirred somewhere in my stomach. I hadn’t told them what had happened to Xander yet. My mind was still too foggy, and there was also the question of the time difference between Milan and the Black Market. Why didn’t I have either of my in-laws’ phone numbers? Did either of the Wrights have phones, for that matter?
Later. There would be time for that later. I didn’t like the idea of Edric glaring at me sharply the next time we met over the faux pas of waking him up on a Milanese midnight, and we also needed to get to Giuseppe’s place and sort this out as soon as possible.
But what if Reza was wrong? What if Giuseppedidknow all along? What if he already made a run for it?
I ignored Reza’s complaining. I made a run for it.
12
“Jackson,”Reza shouted, jogging to keep pace with me as I hurried down the cobblestoned streets. “Jackson. Hey, Pryde. Slow the fuck down, will you?”
I came to a stop so suddenly that he almost bumped into my back. I glowered as I motioned for him to follow me into an alley, away from the busy streets, from the watchful eyes and prying ears of the Black Market’s shoppers and merchants. Reza glowered back, red-faced from being forced to rush after me, and maybe from being a little bit pissed off, too.
“Why are you so certain that sabotage is involved in this?” He jabbed a finger at the air, not quite but nearly poking the side of my face. “Can’t you accept that this comes down to human error? I’m being real generous here. One word and I could have everything shut down. That machine is a menace to the entire Black Market. It’s only the benefit of the doubt I’m giving you as a — ugh — as a friend that’s keeping your guild afloat.”
And I knew he wasn’t trying to lord that over me as someone with authority, for once. Reza was absolutely right. And that was the problem: he was absolutely right.
“This all comes down to the safety of the Black Market, doesn’t it?” I watched his eyes intently. “The machine is amenace. That’s a given. But wouldn’t you want to know who was responsible for this? Dredging up the schematics from the past, building it to functional completion a second time despite the risks? Whitby’s systems were fried by the blast. He couldn’t have known. But someone who was there — someone who used to be an artificer — they must have known. They must have.”
It didn’t sit right with me at all. Artificers were insufferable when it came to talking about their work. I knew because I was guilty of the same little quirk. Woe betide the innocent sap who tried to ask me about what I was working on.I could kill a man through sheer boredom if I was allowed enough time to babble on about the Gauntlet.
So how come Mom and Dad never talked about the arcane engine? How come I didn’t know it was one of their active projects — their final active project, in fact, from right before they died? I was a carbon copy of my father, down to how we looked so much alike. Dad couldn’t shut up about the smallest of projects, and I was the exact same. And Mom would be there to roll her eyes and chuckle fondly over how much of a nerd Dad was.
That was why they worked so well together, how their processes blended. Octavian was a productive, prolific whirlwind of chaos, but Luciana was always there to shine her guiding light and set them on the right path. A ship on a stormy sea and a lighthouse, until one day it all came crashing against the rocks.
Dinners after work, all three of us sharing and comparing our artificing projects at the table — how come the arcane engine had never once been mentioned? This didn’t make a lick of sense.
“I say we examine every possibility before we conclude that this was all down to a simple mistake. A flaw in the schematics. Human error.”
Just like Hecate described it. A knot settled in my stomach, heavy and hard as a fist. I still hadn’t dealt with the very real possibility that my own mother and father had been responsible for injuring if not destroying both the people and reputation of an entire Black Market guild.That was going to be a whole lot of fun to unpack.
“And I say we leave the poor man alone,” Reza said, eyes narrowed.
I scoffed. “And you call yourself a cop. Where’s your sense of justice? Your love of investigation? Isn’t that what SEER is supposed to be about?”
Reza crossed his arms and turned up his nose. “Oh, no. You’re not getting me with this guilty conscience nonsense, Pryde. That only works if the person you’re talking to is guilty, or has a conscience, and I famously — hey, where are you going? Pryde? Pryde!”
