I stumbled once. I was nearing the entrance, my body could feel it. However, as I turned to look at what I’d tripped over, all movement ceased and any thought of an end goal vanished. There, in the middle of the walkway, lay a cane. Gus’s cane.
“There you are, pretty girl,” a man’s voice spoke in front of me. “You just about made it out of here. Brava, darling, brava.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked, clutching the spellbook to my chest and willing my voice not to crack. “What’d you do to Gus?”
“Turn your pretty head around and follow me,” he said, gesturing at my hands. Ribbons shot from his fingers, binding my wrists together as the book fell to the ground. He picked it up, stroking the cover with mild affection. “Come along now, come along. We have some fun waiting for you.”
Chapter 23
Though it felt like I’d been walking for ages, I must not have gone very far at all. In a matter of minutes, we arrived back at the cauldron.
“What do you want from me?” I held my wrists out, the thin bindings straining against my skin. “These really aren’t necessary.”
“It won’t be much longer.” Thomas hummed a little ditty as he peeked into the cauldron, balancing the spellbook in his other hand. “It’s almost ready.”
“That looks like a potion invented to treat my cousin’s blood-intolerance issues. It’s not dangerous.”
“Not yet.” Thomas reached a long, thin stick into the potion and gave it a few swirls. He tapped the side of the cauldron to shake off the excess drops before facing me. “While we’re waiting, entertain me. Tell me how you found out about everything.”
I hesitated, but Thomas was looking over with an expression in his eye that told me he wasn’t feeling generous. I cleared my throat, figuring it best to keep talking before his patience waned. “I overheard you talking with Gus and Harpin, but it didn’t sound like the three of you were getting along.”
At this, Thomas threw his head back and laughed, a clipped, calculated sound. His black cloak danced in the wind, the orange ribbon around his hood signifying his status not as a beginner, but also not as a master. “Many people work together without being friends.”
“What were you working on?”
“Some people think they can change the world for the better.” He shook his head, his eyes holding amusement that made my nerves rattle from my head to my toes. “It’s funny. Naive, rather, especially when it’s coming from a man of your grandfather’s age.”
“It’s never too late to change the world.”
“Even if your mentor, or whatever you call him, managed to bring about change for the better, what would that get him?”
I waited in silence.
“It’d get him nothing,” Thomas finished. “Because he wouldn’t be here to enjoy it. What’s the point? Why not let someone else worry about it?”
My teeth ground against one another, and I wished my eyes could burn holes in this man’s skull.
He sighed. “Then again, I suppose that’s exactly why I’m here. Leaving the job for others to finish is never a good idea. I might as well do everything myself.”
“What job?” My heart started thumping. “Are you with The Faction?”
“That’s the whole problem with The Faction,” he said, a flare of anger passing quickly across his face. “We started out small. Tight. Adaptable. Now, they’ve turned into a corporation. Meetings and budgets and rules and yada, yada, yada. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started handing out medical benefits and a 401k.”
“So you don’t belong to The Faction anymore?”
“It’s complicated.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, his robes curling with the effort. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He hesitated, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “I brought a solution to the leaders, a solution that would end all of their problems, and do you know what they told me?”
I shook my head.
“They said they’d think about it. Think about it! I was their most loyal member, and after giving years of my life to them, they come back with…they’ll think about it?”
“Maybe there were better options,” I suggested reasonably. “That doesn’t mean no.”
“My plan would have worked,” he said shortly. “You know nothing about the way we work. They forced me to go out on my own.”
“What was the plan?” I had a second thought that caused my stomach to flip flop. “Is Harpin working with you? Does he have Gus?”