“I did, actually.” I put my palms flat on the counter behind me, resting them in plain sight, where he could see them. “By my inaction, I caused those people to die. If I had stepped up sooner, some of them would still be alive. So I’m responsible.” I turned my voice more chipper. “Like you, with Zack’s death. You’re responsible. You, Clary, Eve—I know she wasn’t there, but let’s be honest, she would have been involved in a heartbeat if she had been—Bastian, Winter … and me. You all took Winter’s orders, and you carried them out, and let my power do its work. Zack’s dead, the rest of us are all alive.” My eyes narrowed. “I intend to correct that imbalance.”
He let out a ragged breath. “You’ve already failed. Maybe if you’d planned better—”
“My plan’s going just fine,” I said coolly and looked to my right. The gun was still there. Out of reach.
He watched me eye the Walther and pulled up his grip on the shotgun, tightening the butt of it against his shoulder. “You’ve got a gun pointed at you after you failed to breach properly. If that was part of your plan, then I’m afraid I’ve misjudged you.” He let out a long breath, and the gun swayed by millimeters as he did so. “You were my favorite student, the best pupil I ever—”
“Do you kill the lovers of all your best students?” I saw him blanch. “Or am I special?”
He let hang a moment of silence between us. “You’re special all right. Or you were. Now you’re so blinded with rage you can’t even think straight enough to come up with an operational concept and carry it out with a clear head.” He waved his hand at my pistol on the floor and then let it come back to mop the sweat pouring down his brow. “Whoever got that gun for you oughta get their ass kicked; all they did was set you up to commit suicide.” He smacked his dry lips together again; they were dark in the low light of the kitchen, almost blue.
“I’ll make sure to let Kurt know what you think of his efforts,” I said.
“You have to analyze your target’s weaknesses—”
“I know that,” I snapped.
“Well, you didn’t do it!” He looked like he was ready to yell again, but then a calm settled over him. Beads of sweat hung heavy on his forehead and I saw him open his mouth slightly, move his tongue around inside, then he blinked three times in rapid succession. “Oh. You did.”
I watched him without flinching. “I did.”
The shotgun lowered and he started to slump, falling down the counter until he rested on the floor, his back against the wall. “How?” His eyes were clouded, and then he nodded once in understanding. “The vodka.”
“The vodka.” I took slow, easy steps over to my pistol, where I stooped to pick it up. “You’ve been going through so much of it, once I sapped the delivery guy’s memory it wasn’t very hard to figure out which box was going to you. I saw you get one of the marked bottles from outside the window. The ones with the yellow label.”
He gasped a little, his breathing unsteady, and he looked up at me. “How did you know I wouldn’t kill you outright?”
I nodded. “It was a little bit of a risk, but this was the first test.” I walked back over to him and put my foot on the barrel of his shotgun, pinning it to the floor, before I slid it out of his unresisting grasp. “The poison wasn’t enough to kill you, by the way, even if you drank the whole bottle. You’d be fine in an hour or so, I’d guess. Metahuman metabolism works fast, you know.”
He looked at me, his eyes half-lidded. “You picked me first?”
“I picked you first,” I said quietly. “It had to be you first.”
“Why?” It came out as little more than a gasp, his lips blue from the cyanosis that he was fighting against, the lack of oxygen getting to his brain from the poison I’d laced his vodka with.
“Because you were going to be the hardest.” I watched his eyes, and they were warm again, even as I watched him struggle to stay conscious. The sweat was rolling off him now, dripping off his forehead and soaking his white t-shirt.
He smiled. “I’m a tough target. Taught you everything I know. Everything.” His smile evaporated. “You really were my best student.”