I sighed and carried the book to the office, deposited it in my purse, and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. It seemed the oracle, rather than warning Wallach directly, had decided to put the burden on my shoulders. Since Wallach was experimenting with something world-changing, if I failed to get him to take me seriously, those negative effects could include widespread destruction and maybe death. Like I needed that kind of responsibility. I could barely manage myself and my personal demons.
I heard footsteps on the basement stairs, running ones, and emerged from the office to see Judy slam the basement door shut and run toward me. “Another attack,” she panted. “Someplace in Louisiana I can’t pronounce.” She displayed her phone, whose screen was filled with a long text from her father.
I squinted. “Natchitoches,” I read. “I’m probably saying it wrong, too. What happened?”
“Father says the Wardens were there in time to save most of the population. Only a couple hundred deaths. But that’s a problem.”
“Yeah, any number of deaths is a problem.”
Judy shook her head. “The problem,” she said, “is every time the Wardens stop the invaders after they’ve begun their attack—whenever the city is identified publicly as a victim of the ‘biowarfare’—we run the risk of having someone wonder what, or who, is keeping the disaster from becoming greater. Right now—” Her phone chimed with an incoming text, and she held up a finger for me to wait while she read. “The news outlets are reporting it as an attack gone wrong, like the terrorists failed to properly deploy their weapon. Their words. But if this continues, somebody’s going to start asking inconvenient questions.”
“How could they possibly figure out the truth? Failed ‘attacks’ might be suspicious, but there’s not enough evidence to reveal what’s really going on.”
“I don’t know,” Judy said grimly. “But Father’s concerned, and he’s the most cautious thinker I know. If he thinks there’s a problem, we should be worried.”
I leaned against the door frame. “I’m worried that the oracle didn’t warn me like it did for the Bridgerton Node attack. It was too busy warning me about Mr. Wallach’s augury. The oracle’s priorities aren’t the same as ours, but if it’s more concerned about what Mr. Wallach might do than about a city being destroyed—”
“Crazy Wallach might be in over his head, you mean?” Judy sighed. “I don’t see what we can do about either of those things, except keep doing our jobs.”
“I just wish it didn’t feel so much like this is the end of days,” I said.
I sat in my bed with the notebook on my knees, laid down my pen, and flipped back through my pages of notes. The Old Tin Sorrows augury had me stumped. Three crimes, many suspects, a powerful motive…there was an obvious interpretation, but it was so obvious I was reluctant to go there.
I turned back to the end, where I’d stopped halfway down the page. Not a bull in a china shop, I wrote. The main character admitted his method for solving crime was to go stomping around until the bad guys got nervous and made mistakes, but I was certain the bad guys in my own situation were invaders, and they weren’t likely to respond to that method. And this augury had been in response to the first attack and the destruction of the Fountain, and I knew who’d done that. It was why that was eluding me. And how, to a lesser extent.
I sighed. I’d eliminated every possibility I could think of but the first, most obvious one. I turned to a fresh sheet and, at the top, wrote: Invaders are eliminating Neutralities one by one until only one is left.
It was at the heart of the book. The old man had written a will that divided his fortune among his surviving family and staff, and one of them had been killing off potential heirs—though that person’s motive had turned out to be not what I’d expected. It fit really well. The invaders destroyed powerful Neutralities, winnowing them, but why? Again, the invaders had a motive I couldn’t fathom. And why the ones they’d chosen?
Not all are equally powerful, I wrote. The Cracchiolo Node in particular was an average-size node, smaller than the Gunther Node and out in the middle of nowhere. If there was a pattern to their attacks, I couldn’t see it. Need to ask Lucia about the pattern.
What about cracks? The oracle had said sealing cracks was important, and I had a feeling that was related to the business with the Neutralities being destroyed. If it wasn’t about Wallach’s project, maybe cracks referred to the damage to the wards, warping them, and if we sealed the cracks, we could protect the Neutralities? Something else to suggest to Lucia, since I didn’t have the power to do anything like that.
So the Neutralities were being destroyed. It reminded me of something else the oracle had said, something about holes being plugged until there was only one. That made me wonder if the Wardens should be doing anything about the destroyed Neutralities. Those might be considered “holes.” Holes, I wrote, then chewed the end of my pen. What else might this augury mean? Drawing each letter with deliberate slowness, I wrote The villain is the least obvious suspect. I didn’t know what that meant, because we knew who the villains were, but it felt right.
I turned that page over and hesitated at the top of the next blank page. I’d been studying the augury so I wouldn’t have to face this, and that had been a good excuse for a while, but now I was just being cowardly. I squeezed my eyes tight shut for a minute, then blinked at the page and clicked the pen open and shut a few times. Mitch Hallstrom belonged to the Mercy, though we didn’t learn that until later, I wrote. Judy and I believed he was the killer who’d been draining magi of their magic…
I wrote until my hand was sore. Details I’d forgotten, like the smell of arborvitae and the greasy feel of concrete under my face, swarmed down my pen onto the paper. I remembered how it had felt when Hallstrom splayed his palm against the bare skin of my stomach and had to set my pen down and swallow hard to keep from throwing up. Then I wrote Malcolm shot me and stopped, reading those three words over and over again. It was the only way, I wrote, and stopped again. I swore loudly and crossed out those words so violently my pen tore the paper. He shot me, I wrote, ignoring the splotches where my tears struck the paper. I loved him, and I thought he loved me, and he looked at me as if I was a bug and sent that twisted piece of metal through my shoulder. And it doesn’t matter that I understand why he did it, it doesn’t make me forget that look on his face. But because it hurt him—I crossed that sentence fragment out too. I can’t let it affect me because it would hurt him so much, all over again, because it wasn’t true, he did love me, and—
I tossed the pen aside and wiped my eyes. I’d told him I’d forgiven him, and I’d meant it, but I’d been strong for all the wrong reasons.
I went in search of Malcolm and found him in the office, answering email. “Are you busy?”
He shook his head, but his eyes were still on the monitor. “I’m…not now,” he finally said, clicking Send. “Is everything all right?”
“I was writing about Mitch Hallstrom,” I said, “and how you shot me.”
His face went very still. He said nothing.