Logan’s eyes met hers.
“Surprising,” he said, “the lengths I’ll go to, Max, to get back on your good side.”
For a guy who’d been the guest of Ames White and the snake cult, he didn’t look so bad — they hadn’t let him shave, and the beard gave him a scruffy cast; his clothes — jeans, pullover blue sweater — were filthy and wrinkled. But there were no obvious signs that he’d been beaten or tortured, and — despite the Familiar at either arm — he was standing on his own two feet; they obviously had not deprived him of the exoskeleton that allowed him upright mobility.
She smiled at him and said, “You’re not forgiven yet.”
He grinned and shrugged, and she grinned and shrugged.
“All very brave and touching,” White said, and he withdrew a Glock from under the raincoat, “but if he speaks again before I have my boy, I’ll kill him.”
Max held her palms out and up. “White, I need you not to do anything rash...”
“Where is Ray?”
“You need to listen. You have the advantage here. Wait until you’ve heard it all.”
White’s frown revealed an inner battle between rage and curiosity, impatience and willpower. “Heard what, 452?”
Max raised her hand, issued signals, lowered her hand.
“Nothing rash,” she advised him.
White’s frown deepened.
Mole and Joshua emerged from the shadows, their arms filled with the terrible cargo; it was as if they were two somber grooms carrying brides over the threshold. Mole put the dead Familiar on the ground in front of the silver-haired leader. Joshua put the smaller, sheet-wrapped body down before the boy’s father.
Ames White did not have to lift the sheet to know — the small form said it all. In a voice that he was obviously straining to keep emotion-free, White said, “Ray.”
“Yes,” Max said. “But I didn’t do this.”
The gun in White’s hand swung up and he leveled the barrel at Logan’s temple. White’s lips were peeled back over his teeth in a skull’s smile, and Logan winced...
“My people did not do this terrible thing!” Max screamed. “Or don’t you really care who did do it!”
White remained poised there, ready to shoot, for several long moments. Then the gun came down, his eyes narrowed, and he turned his homicidal gaze on Max.
“If you didn’t, 452,” he said, “who did?”
“Ask him!” Max said, and pointed at Bostock.
Alec ripped the duct tape from the man’s face. Bostock spat the rest of the gag, the knot of cloth, onto the snowy ground.
White said, “Do you have something to say, Franklin?”
Bostock stood frozen.
Max said, “He was talkative before. Maybe he’s a little intimidated in the presence of the father of the child he ordered killed.”
“Explain,” White said.
The silver-haired leader gripped White’s arm and whispered in his ear. But White shook his head and yanked his arm away.
“Explain!”
Max quickly told White that she’d first encountered Bostock trying to get ransom aid from Lyman Cale.
“That makes sense,” White said, astonishingly self-composed, but not looking down at the little sheet-wrapped corpse. “Approaching Lyman Cale for the ransom... but how did you recognize Franklin as a Familiar?”
She explained tracking Ray down. “When we got to the house, we were too late, only by moments, but too late — two men had executed Ray and his aunt. One got away, but we stopped this one...”
She gestured to the dead Familiar in the snow.
She went on: “I recognized him as one of the security guards employed by Bostock.”
Mole stepped forward and flipped the corpse over, giving White a good look at the face of the Familiar.
Almost gently, she asked, “Recognize him?”
White nodded.
Max said, “He was assigned to Lyman Cale, wasn’t he?”
White nodded, his gaze on the secretary now.
“We’re enemies, White,” Max said. “But I wouldn’t have killed your boy. For one thing, I needed him, to get Logan back. For another, I’m not a sick son of a bitch, like Franklin, here.”
The secretary tried to break away from Alec, but the X5 grabbed him by the arm and shoved the gun back in his ribs.
“What do you have to say, Franklin?” White asked, in a tone that was all too reasonable.
Bostock said nothing.
“Is it true, Franklin? Did you kill my son? Why would you do such a thing... to a Brother?”
Ignoring White, Bostock turned toward the tall, silver-haired monklike figure. “Matthias! You know I would do anything to further the goals of the Conclave — anything! And White, here... he’s failed so many times. Open your eyes, Matthias! Look who I have delivered unto you! How many times has White failed, and who is it that brings her to you — the One!”
Disturbingly, White was smiling, his arms folded, the gun casual in his grasp. The robed figure — Matthias — listened to Bostock’s pleas impassively, his expression blankly unreadable.
Bostock was saying, “And when she’s gone, there will be nothing that can stop the Conclave’s directives from being carried out. I brought her to you — on this, the night of nights!”
Bostock’s voice echoed across the grounds.
“The Coming,” he was saying, “is but minutes away — we are close to final victory, total victory... because of me. I brought her to you! Not White. Not this... spawn of Sandeman, the father of all of our problems.”
Still, Matthias said nothing — his eyes bright, as he stared at Bostock. A hint of approval...? Max wondered.
Finally, the secretary said, “Yes, I had Ray White killed, another weak spawn of Sandeman — but it was part of my design, the plan to bring her to you... and here she stands. She is here. She is ours — yours. Kill her now, and the future is ours.”
White glanced, almost casually, at the silver-haired man. Their eyes met for a brief instant, and Matthias — almost imperceptibly — nodded.
White raised his pistol and shot Bostock in the head.
Bostock went straight back, flopping onto the snowy ground, sending up puffs of white; the black hole in his forehead was ringed with red, and he lay looking at the sky with wide, empty eyes, as if even in death he was anticipating the arrival of the comet.
White brought his pistol to bear on Max. “The fool was right about one thing, 452 — you do need to die.”
“The comet!” someone in the crowd shouted, and others blurted the same. They milled, wide eyes raised, arms and hands upraised, a sea of faces salted with the ritual markings, some paint, some inked flesh.
White’s eyes went to the sky, too, where a stream of sparks flew across, exploding in a shower of color.
The rocket provided the diversion Max needed — she would kiss that spudhead Dix the next time she saw him — and, as White realized the ruse of the fireworks and swung the gun back around, firing it at her, the shot sailed wide, Max diving toward the two Familiars holding Logan’s arms. She flung one off, kicked the other in the head, and held her hand out to Logan.
He took it.
More rockets streaked across the sky, and not all of the Familiars were wise yet, though several had taken time out from the display to attack Joshua, Alec, and Mole in a flurry of martial-arts moves, bizarrely awkward coming from the robed warriors, yet formidable. The snow-dusted grounds glowed yellow and orange under the momentary daylight.
“It’s fireworks, you fools!” White yelled.