Ilya arrived early for this secret meeting between humans and Sanguinati, slipping through the narrow space at the bottom of the outside door before flowing up the stairs to the unoccupied apartment above Lettuce Reed. Once inside the main room, he shifted from smoke to his human form.
“I know you’re here,” he snarled. At this time of night, the heavy drapes Julian Farrow had over all the windows kept out every sliver of outside light—and made sure that no one outside would notice lamplight and wonder who might be up there above the bookstore and what they might be doing.
He didn’t think Farrow intended it as a bolt-hole. The human would have a better chance of escaping an enemy if he stayed on the ground floor of the building. But the couple of times Ilya had come up here to look around when Farrow was occupied elsewhere, he’d had the impression of a fiercely private place, as full of lies as secrets.
Julian Farrow wasn’t a fool, which was why Ilya had made it easy for him to purchase the bookstore in return for being the Sanguinati’s informant.
The quiet click of a lamp being turned on. Then Stavros Sanguinati stepped from behind the reading chair in one corner of the room.
“You knew.” Ilya spit the words. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”
“I told you why Grandfather Erebus sent me here,” Stavros replied.
“Not about that. About Nicolai being here.”
He saw the surprise on Stavros’s face.
“Nicolai is here?” Stavros stared at him. “Are you sure?”
“I saw him.” Ilya smiled bitterly. “He was wearing a cape made of black feathers and carried a hollow gourd full of bones. The warning rattle made us hesitate when Grimshaw, Farrow, and I went to investigate that flea market storefront. Probably saved us from being caught in the explosion.” He tried to push down the anger—and the feeling of betrayal—he felt for Erebus Sanguinati, who was the leader of the Sanguinati throughout the continent of Thaisia, and for the problem solver standing in front of him. “Nicolai has taken on the mantle of this Crowbones, hunting here, killing here, and you didn’t tell me!”
“He isn’t Crowbones,” Stavros snapped. “He isn’t the Hunter, and he wasn’t supposed to be here. When Tolya acknowledged that Nicolai would never fully recover from the injuries he received during the fight to hold on to Bennett, he told Grandfather that the shadow of Sanguinati in that town was too small and too exposed to properly take care of someone that damaged. Nicolai was supposed to be taken to Lakeside, but he slipped away from the Sanguinati who were sent to escort him to the Courtyard there. He just . . . disappeared. This is the first sighting any of us have had.”
The anger drained out of Ilya as he absorbed Stavros’s relief—and remembered that Stavros and Nicolai had lived in the Toland Courtyard for many years as friends and comrades before the terra indigene abandoned that city just ahead of the Elementals’ and Elders’ wrath and destruction.
“Did he know you were sending him to Lakeside?” Ilya asked.
Stavros nodded. “He enjoyed the stories about Broomstick Girl. More so after he was injured. Grandfather thought being in the same Courtyard might help him mentally. Emotionally. But . . . Tolya thinks Nicolai may have been shown a vision drawing done by Hope Wolfsong and that’s why he slipped away from his escorts. There’s no proof, and Tolya said his source of information, an Intuit woman who had seen the drawing, insisted that she didn’t recognize the woman in the drawing and can’t guess where the woman is located. But she said the woman in the drawing had curly brown hair and was holding a book.”
Ilya released a long breath. “Victoria is The Jumble’s Reader.” Was Nicolai here to find Victoria—or harm Victoria?
“Another human whose stories are entertainment and lesson,” Stavros said. “I don’t think your Victoria’s adventures have traveled as far west as the stories about Broomstick Girl, but they have reached Lakeside, Talulah Falls, and Great Island. She sounds . . . interesting. Definitely not a run-of-the-mill human.”
“She is an unintentional trouble magnet,” Ilya replied. “But the Elders and Elementals are curious enough about her to interact with her and a few other humans, so Victoria is a vital link between the human village and the terra indigene settlement.”
The two Sanguinati studied each other.
Finally Stavros asked, “How vital?”
CHAPTER 75
Grimshaw
Earthday, Novembros 4
Grimshaw opened the map that had the colored dots indicating the possible attacks by Crowbones, based on police reports of humans savagely killed who had a couple of small bones removed and had the signature crow’s feet attached to some part of what remained. Some police stations had also mentioned Crowgard dying in the same area—and how several times it looked like they had been killed by other Crows.
“Perhaps these . . . collisions . . . between Crowgard and humans is an experiment,” Ilya said. “Like that professor having a student dress up like Crowbones so that he could observe Aggie, Jozi, and Eddie’s reaction.”
“Maybe it’s an experiment,” Julian said, “but I would lean toward brainwashing—and the use of mind-altering drugs as a way to reward and control. Look at the police reports. Most of the humans who were victims of Crowbones’s alleged attacks and were somehow connected with Crowgard being killed were in their late teens and male. An ideal age for this kind of work if you know how to manipulate someone.”
Crap. Grimshaw had hoped nobody else had been thinking along those lines. Especially because the Crowgard weren’t the only form of terra indigene who routinely brushed against humans.
He didn’t like the way Ilya and Stavros stared at him and Julian now that Julian had brought up a possibility that could trigger another purge of humans if a human was behind the killing of terra indigene.
“You’re not fools,” Julian said. “You must have considered it. But things spun out of human control when the Elders and Elementals closed off any way to escape Lake Silence and Sproing after the first killing—spun out of control enough to have the Sanguinati’s problem solver show up, in secret, to help hunt down whoever is responsible.”
“How were the Sanguinati youngsters chosen for this opportunity to interact with humans—or at least a select handful of humans?” Grimshaw asked. “I imagine there were plenty of youngsters who might like the adventure. Did you pull names from a hat? Or was there something about at least some of them that made the Sanguinati uneasy, that made you all want to observe these youngsters in a different, more contained setting?”
“Or get them away from a bad influence?” Julian suggested.
“Take Lara out of the mix,” Grimshaw said. “She’s a kid and doesn’t fit the profile. I think having Lara stay with a different . . . shadow? . . . and exposing her to Vicki and The Jumble’s residents is like sending a human child to a summer camp experience of working on a farm, for example. It’s an adventure and a chance to meet different individuals. Select individuals.”
“The profile of what?” Ilya asked in a voice that held a cold warning.
Grimshaw ignored the question and the warning since he was certain that Ilya Sanguinati, canny attorney and leader of Silence Lodge, knew perfectly well what he meant. “The boy who dressed up as Crowbones. The boys who blew up the store, intending to kill some of us. The two Crows who were connected with those human boys. Three of the Sanguinati fosterlings. Humans, Crows, Sanguinati. I think what they all have in common is that they’re teenagers.”