“I said there wasn’t a book to explain why Grandmother summoned me.”
“Ah. Why didn’t you say any of this before?”
“Because you were focused on the meeting? Because there were two ways this could really go? You’d either get upset or distracted, and that would throw you off your game, or you wouldn’t, and that would throw me off mine?”
“If it helps,” I said, “I’m feeling pretty off my game. I feel pretty horrible.”
“Yeah? Well now we’re more on the same page,” she said. “Question is, what do we do about it?”
“Can I just spend a minute or ten feeling like a shitheel?” I asked.
“You can, but we’ll need to figure something out after that.”
“We will,” I said. “Fuck.”
I stood there for a minute, in the middle of the room, so I could see where Rose sat at the desk. I felt the weight of the book in my hand.
“I’m here for a purpose, Blake,” Rose said. “And I’m only here for a little while. We need to figure out what that purpose is.”
“Fuck that,” I said. “I made a promise I’d help you. That doesn’t mean using you and throwing you away to fall apart.”
Again, looking at her, I could see her withdrawing, a trace of anger in her expression. As if me speaking out on her behalf was somehow worse than me being a jerk.
I didn’t get it.
“What, then?” she asked. She was managing to hide the expression, now. “What do you do, if you’re so bent on helping me?”
“Like Maggie said, knowledge and power. They’re one and the same, and they go a long way. Let’s figure something out.”
“I don’t need rescue, Blake.”
You do, I thought. But I said, entirely honest, “I need help. I meant it, and I need your help above all else. I’m going to do what I can to keep you around.”
“That’s just selfish enough I can believe it,” she said.
“Good,” I said. “So, let’s talk strategies.”
“Strategy?”
“Tell me how this sounds. If you like the idea, we’re going to hit the books, and we’re going to make sure it won’t come back to bite us in the ass. Dear Mr. RCMP Officer, you should know that Laird Behaim was at a function at the church last night. He has admitted in earshot of several people that he knows something about who murdered Molly Walker and how.”
“There are a hundred ways that could bite us in the ass.”
“We’ll double check each one,” I said. “What are they going to do? Try to kill us more? He wants to use us as leverage? We throw something other than horrifying hell-beasts his way. Question is, what do you think?”
“I think it’s something. Provided we double check the rules, make sure we’re not getting ourselves executed. You want to attack his position?”
“Throw him for a bit of a loop,” I said. “We can build on it. Get some people pulled in for questioning. Put them on the spot, see how they do when they’re interrogated and can’t lie.”
“Kids,” Rose said. “Get the kids in that interrogation room somehow. They won’t be as savvy. They’ll let something slip.”
I thought of how the Behaim kids had done a poor job of concealing their fear and surprise.
“It’s dirty,” I said. I smiled some. “Dirty is good.”
2.03
“Two more books for our reading list,” Rose said.
I groaned a little, grabbing one of the fancy fountain pens from my grandmother’s desk. It was still dark outside. “It’s too early for this.”
“You wanted to go on the offensive while he was otherwise occupied.”
While Laird was sleeping. “Right. Titles?”
“Title is Standards, subtitle is ‘A history of practices for dealings between the gifted’.”
“Which shelf?”
“Ummm… Bookshelf seven, shelf five.”
I looked at the sheet I had sitting beside me. I’d drawn out two octagons, with numbers at each side, excepting the sides that opened out into the second and third floor hallways. I identified bookshelf seven, looked, and was pretty sure I could see the book she’d mentioned. I wrote it down. “Standards. Sounds like a thrilling read.”
“The second book, bookshelf six, bottom shelf, right at the bottom, we’ve got ‘Deaths in the Eastern Realm of the White Tailed Deer.‘”
“Not sure I follow,” I said, even as I wrote the name and location of the second book down. I put the paper and pen down beside the folded letter Rose and I had written the previous night.
“It’s not about deer. It’s about the general area. A straight list of practitioner deaths, times of death, and causes of death since we settled in the new world. It’s only as recent as twenty-eleven, but I think it covers a list of executions and reasons for execution. You can skim it for the executions and see if there are any trends.”