Emotion strained his voice when he said this last and he had to look away a moment.
“Max hated us all, after that. The Veil. Legends. Magic. Anything of the sort, and Smith most of all. He blamed the Wayfarer for not telling him the truth before he and Melisande had children. Max feared for them. He kept me around because his wife had been fond of me and because he thought I could help him if Oliver and Collette exhibited any strange behavior or physical attributes. He grieved horribly, and at the same time, he worked to extinguish any spark of legend in his children, so that they would never wander afar, never discover what they were, never be revealed to those who would do them harm. He failed, of course. And I failed. I promised Wayland Smith I’d look out for Melisande, and then I promised her that I would look after her children if anything happened to her. I failed them all.
“I don’t know how they learned of Oliver and Collette’s existence. The only one who knew of them was Wayland Smith, and he’d practically orchestrated their parents’ meeting, so he’d have no reason to expose the truth.
“But someone knew. Someone who wanted them destroyed. The Sandman came to kill them-killed Max and took his eyes, and lots of others after him, since someone was stupid enough to free him. Now they’re both across the Veil, on the run-if they’re even still alive-and Julianna and Detective Halliwell, your father, miss, are trapped there.”
Sara found she had been holding her breath. She trembled a bit as she inhaled. “Trapped for now, you mean. If all of this is true…if any of it is true…then the Veil might not last forever.”
Friedle nodded, practically bowing his head. “As you say.”
“Sara?”
Sheriff Norris had turned to stare at her.
“What?”
A cop wouldn’t speak his mind while the object of his investigation was sitting right there in the booth with them. Sara knew that. The fact that he’d questioned her at all with Friedle present had been a lapse and now Jackson tried to wave it away. But Sara knew what that one word-her name-had been asking. She understood the question. Was she buying any of this? And if she was buying it, was that only because it gave her hope that her father hadn’t been murdered, that whoever had torn out Max Bascombe’s eyes hadn’t done the same to her dad, and left him lying in a ditch somewhere?
Sara stared at the sheriff. “You’ve got a hundred little mysteries wrapped up in this case, Jackson. You and the FBI and the police and governments in half a dozen countries. All this stuff is connected. You know it is. And you all know-every goddamn one of you knows-that you’re not going to find the answers to any of them. If you were going to, you would’ve figured it out already. You think about those mysteries, Oliver popping up in foreign countries with no record of travel, the kids all over the world killed the same way as Max Bascombe, what happened on that island in Scotland, and dozens of other little questions-and you tell me this…can you explain any of them? Even one?”
Sheriff Norris stared at her a moment, shifted his gaze to Marc Friedle, and then looked at her again. “You know I can’t.”
“But the story we just heard explains them all.”
“It’s impossible, Sara. All of it.”
She couldn’t argue the point. The sheriff was right. Impossible. But the story they’d heard was also the only thing so far that seemed to make any sense.
“Maybe when the questions are impossible to answer, that’s because the answers themselves are impossible,” she whispered.
Friedle smiled.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “When we first came up behind you on the sidewalk and you turned around, you said something about somebody finally coming for you. But you said ‘us.’ Who’s us?”
His smile faded. He looked around, as though despite all of the wild things he had told them, this was the one thing he did not want anyone else to overhear.
“Some of us-Borderkind-we don’t ever want to go back. We want to live here forever, in the ordinary world. We like it here. But whoever wanted the Bascombes has been sending Hunters into this world, killing my kind. After what happened in Maine, I came down here to stay with friends. All of us at Bullfinch’s, we’re Borderkind. I thought you were Hunters, come for us.”
Sara studied him. “So you have this other face; your real face.”
Friedle glanced away, perhaps ashamed of his true self. “Of course.”
“Can we see it, just for a moment? Just so we know what’s real?”
“Here?” he asked, glancing around.
Sara looked at Sheriff Norris. He seemed genuinely baffled, but he focused expectantly on Friedle.
“Here,” she confirmed.
The glamour dropped for a single eye blink, but that was enough. The waitress screamed, then looked embarrassed at the attention she had brought upon herself. Confused, she kept looking over at them, trying without luck to confirm that she hadn’t had a hallucination.
Sara looked at the sheriff, but Jackson only stared at the goblin sitting across from him.
“All right,” Sheriff Norris said. “What now?”
“What do you mean?” Robiquet asked.
“You made a promise. You screwed up. But as far as you know, Melisande’s children are still alive. We want to find them, and Julianna and Sara’s father, too. You said there were Doors.”
The human-faced goblin shook his head. “Oh, no. The Doors are always under guard.”
Sheriff Norris smiled thinly, a little bit of strain around his eyes. His understanding of the world had just been broken into pieces, so Sara didn’t blame him. She knew she must look much the same, but her own worldview had been shattered slowly, over the weeks since her father had vanished and she’d had to come to terms with the possibility he might never return and she might never know his fate.
Maybe that had changed.
“Under guard?”
Robiquet nodded.
The sheriff left forty dollars on the table to cover their lunch and stood up. He glanced at Sara, then at the goblin.
“That’s what guns are for.”
CHAPTER 13
T hey fought their way out of Palenque. Black pillars of smoke rose above the city-fires burning somewhere near the palace.
Cheval Bayard had forsaken her human form and now the kelpy galloped along the cobblestones. Hours had passed since Oliver and Julianna had escaped from the dungeon, and the word had spread.
A full-scale rebellion had erupted in the heart of the city. It would spread, just as the smoke and fire would spread. But here at the edges of Palenque, the spirit of revolution had yet to arrive. A single building disgorged a band of Encerrados-horrid twisted little creatures whose mouths were crusted with gore-and the monsters rushed through their human neighbors to get at the escaping Borderkind. Cheval crushed one of them under her hoof with a sound like the bursting of rotten melon. Li stepped forward, fire roaring up from his eyes, and held out both hands. The very air around the little cannibals exploded into flame, charring their flesh instantly.
Cheval Bayard sideswiped a huge serpent. It coiled around her legs and brought her hard to the ground. Blue Jay would have gone to her aid, but Leicester Grindylow arrived before him, swinging a stolen battle axe with ruthless abandon. Grin had once been a sweet, amiable fellow, but in these past weeks a darkness had come into his eyes. The water boggart hacked the serpent’s head off and helped Cheval to her feet. She neighed and tossed her head, and he took that as a signal, grabbing hold of her mane and throwing one leg over to sit astride her back. They charged together along the widening cobblestone street.
Blue Jay saw it all.
He lagged back, letting others take the lead, so he could keep close to Oliver and Julianna, who were still on horseback. A pair of soldiers-some kind of city guard-came from an alley toward the exodus. Blue Jay spun, dancing in a swift circle that lifted him from his feet. He whirled around, summoning mystic wings that blurred the air beneath his outspread arms. When the soldiers tried to attack him, his wings sliced through bone and meat and muscle, severing reaching hands. With a final twist, he swept his wings out and cut off their heads.