Taken

A pause, then Crystal spoke again. “The end of the tournament, obviously.” Another pause. “That’s impossible. You’ll just have to wait.”

It sounded like she was on the phone with someone. I sized up the corridor and decided to take the risk of getting in close. A stag’s head was mounted above the door, antlers reaching almost to the ceiling, glass eyes staring at the opposite wall. I put my ear to the door and listened.

“No,” Crystal said sharply. The door looked like it had been well crafted, but it was warped from long neglect and there were gaps between the planks that let sound through. “Absolutely not.”

Silence, then Crystal again. “I don’t care. It’s too risky.”

Something was odd: I could make out Crystal’s voice clearly but I couldn’t hear anything else. If she was on a phone or speaking into a headset I should be able to hear something, even just a buzz. I looked into the future in which I opened the door to peek inside.

The room within was a bedroom that looked like it had been abandoned for years. A four-poster bed was piled with dust, the hangings moth-eaten. Old and darkened pictures hung on the wall and Crystal was standing in front of one of them. The angle caught her in profile, showing off the beauty of her features and making her gold hair shine against the murky background. She was frowning, though, and she wasn’t talking into a phone or headset. She seemed to be talking to the wall.

“The whole point of this plan was so we didn’t have to keep picking at random,” Crystal said. “There’s virtually no chance we’d get someone who’d meet—”

Crystal cut off. Looking again into the immediate future, I saw she was staring at one of the pictures. “Then wait,” she said abruptly. “We’ve been preparing for months and you’d risk it all for this?”

There was no answer but Crystal threw up her hands. She was acting as if there were someone right there talking to her. “I don’t care! It’s too dangerous.”

I tried to figure out what was going on. Mind mages can communicate by telepathy but that didn’t explain why Crystal was saying her half of the conversation out loud. She was speaking as though to someone in the same room. I tried looking into the future and focusing with my mage’s sight, searching for someone cloaked or invisible, but all I could make out was the background noise of the wards.

Crystal had gone still all of a sudden. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Are you threatening me?”

Silence. I couldn’t hear any movement; we were alone in this part of the mansion. “Remember our agreement,” Crystal said. A pause, then she let out a long breath. “All right. But this is going to be the only one. Understand?” Whatever answer she got seemed to satisfy her. Footsteps sounded from the room, heading for the door.

Even forewarned, it was a near thing. I made it to the next door and slipped inside just as Crystal stepped out into the corridor. Holding the door shut, using my divination magic to watch Crystal, I saw her turn away and head down the corridor without a backward glance. The clack of her heels on the wooden floor grew quieter and quieter until there was silence.

I gave it three minutes just to be safe, then stepped out, looking after where Crystal had gone. I hadn’t checked to see what her exact reaction would have been if she’d discovered me there but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been positive. She’d been careless, letting me eavesdrop like that. Probably she’d assumed that no one would be able to sneak up on her without her sensing their thoughts, and to be fair, most of the time she’d be right. But it’s never a good idea to rely too much on your magic, no matter how powerful it is. My mist cloak had kept me hidden and given me some interesting little snippets into the bargain. It seemed like Crystal had been making a deal with someone. But who?

I entered the room in which Crystal had been talking and gave it a quick once-over. Like all the inner rooms of Fountain Reach it was windowless: The only illumination was the glow of the electric lights. I couldn’t sense any signs of life, in either the present or the future. It looked as though the room had been dead for years.

Crystal seemed to have been talking to one of the pictures, and I took a closer look. It was an old portrait done in oils, its gilt frame dusty. It showed a man in his late middle years, thin and stooped with sunken, commanding eyes. I studied the picture but found no magical aura, no special devices. The painting had no name or signature either. The man looked out of the portrait with a fixed stare, his gaze following me.

I searched a little longer but found nothing. Tired and weary, I finally retraced my steps to my room. I hung up my mist cloak, set a few basic safety measures, and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

chapter 9