She paled. “I didn’t think so. Lionel trusted no one. Not even his mistress as it turns out.”
Her voice was soft. I crouched in front of her. “Lady Ardman, who did you pay for the Met robbery?”
The tears began to fall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I put my hand on hers. “Lady Ardman, financial transactions can be tracked. If you tell us what happened, we may be able to stop more murders. Please tell us before it’s too late.”
She sobbed and fumbled with a handkerchief. “I don’t know who she is, Mr. Grey, but she knows everything about me. She has my soul stone and would give it to me if I gave her money. She said if I didn’t give her the money, she would destroy the stone.”
“Did she give it back?”
Ardman shook her head. “She said she’s not ready yet.”
“Ready for what?”
“I don’t know! All I wanted was the stone. I didn’t know anything about murders,” said Ardman.
“Why is this stone so important?” Murdock asked.
I shook my head at him to let it go for now. I dropped my voice. Meryl told me once that I lose sight of the human emotion of a situation when I’m investigating. “Rosavear, she’s killing people connected to Viten. You’re more connected than any of them. I don’t think she’s going to give your stone back.”
She hit her knee with a clenched fist. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t over.”
“We need you to help us catch whoever this is. Can you do that?”
She nodded vigorously. I gestured for Murdock to join me in the foyer.
“We have to bring the Guild into this,” I said, when we were out of earshot.
“I’m not going to argue,” he said. “What the hell is a soul stone?”
“It’s an old custom between fey lovers. They give their souls to each other. It takes a lot of ability. You branch off the soul and infuse a ward stone with it.”
Disbelief swept Murdock’s face. “The fey have detachable souls?”
I kept my eye on Ardman. “I doubt it. If I understand the theory behind the spell, it’s not really a soul like you think. It’s more their basic life spark, the core of their essence.”
“And Viten made one for Powell and Ardman,” he said.
I nodded. “Right. Only lovers do it because it’s an enormous trust issue. If you crush a soul stone, it’s like physically crushing someone’s heart. The person dies.”
If anything, Murdock looked even more stunned. “Are you kidding me?”
I held my hands up. “That’s what I’ve heard. It may or not be the soul, but it’s one helluva powerful spell.”
He shook his head with an odd look of anger. “That’s bullshit. Souls don’t work that way.”
I was about to say something flip but stopped. Murdock’s Catholic. Talk of using a soul in a spell was treading way too hard on his theology. “Think of it as essence, then. Here’s the key part, though. Whether it’s the soul or essence or whatever, if you fatally injure the body of someone who has a soul stone, the soul stone can revive the body.”
Murdock shook his head several times before speaking. “God, I can’t believe this.”
I nodded. “Viten shot Rhonda Powell in New York while her soul stone was in Boston. She’s not dead.”
CHAPTER 21
Things moved quickly once Ardman agreed to cooperate. Given her history with the case, the Guild allowed Keeva’s participation in the investigation. I suspected it was to keep her out of the way with a crime the Guild thought was unimportant. Ceridwen had bigger issues to worry about.
Sitting in Keeva’s office and planning a Guild surveillance operation after so much time was surreal, yet oddly comfortable. Keeva had been surprisingly compassionate in debriefing Ardman. Caring on her part made red flags go up for me, but then the cynic in me found a reason for her kindly attitude. When all else fails, royalty closes ranks, even if they’re not of the same line.
“It’s a huge leap to think it’s Rhonda Powell,” Keeva said.
“It fits,” I said. “No one else is alive. No one else knows what she knows.”
“Correction. No one is alive. Powell is dead,” she said.
“I guess we’ll have to see who’s right,” I said.
She smiled. “I guess we will.”
Ardman had a prearranged signal with her blackmailer for setting up meetings. We had her send the signal. The idea was to stage a meeting, keep Ardman protected, and trap Powell — or as Keeva would have it, whoever — before she had a chance to escape. After going over the security plan for the umpteenth time, I stretched in my chair and exhaled loudly. “You still haven’t told me where you are going to be in all this.”
She compressed her thin lips into an even thinner smile. “Monitoring everything. That’s all you need to know.”
I shrugged. “Be that way. Just remember what Gillen Yor told you.”
“I can take care of myself, Connor.”
Dylan stuck his head in the doorway. “Can I steal Connor for a minute?”
Keeva shooed me out the door with a flutter of her hands. If anything confirmed why I’d rather jump off a bridge than work for her, that gesture did. I joined Dylan in the corridor.
“Follow me,” he said. He kept his head down as we made our way across the department. When we reached his office, he checked the hallway, then closed the door and leaned against it. “Meryl’s been arrested.”
I pinned him against the door. “What are you pulling, Dylan?”
He tried to push me off, activating his body shield, but I clung to his jacket. I shook him. “What did you do?”
He released his shield and raised his hands to the sides. “We’re not going to get in a fistfight, Connor. I didn’t do anything.”
We stared at each other. I knew him like I knew few people, the way he looked when he lied, when he was afraid, and when he was telling the truth. I dropped my hands. “What the hell is going on?”
He straightened his jacket. “I’m not sure. Remember that knife we found at Belgor’s?”
“The Breton dagger?”
He nodded. “It wasn’t the mate to one here like you thought. It was the one here.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
He held his hand up to silence me as he tilted his head to the door. He waited a moment, then continued. “I asked Meryl to bring me the other dagger you saw in the storeroom. When she released the essence field on it, we discovered it was a counterfeit. The dagger from Belgor’s was the original.”
“So why is Meryl under arrest?”
Guilt crept over his face. “She says someone else switched the daggers. I had the logs checked, but Meryl is the only one who entered that storeroom. When Keeva and I were called down to the Weird because of Carmine’s attack, someone entered my office and took the knife.”
“And what has any of that got to do with Meryl?”
He compressed his lips a moment. “Meryl’s the only person who had high enough clearance for the storeroom and access to the department floor. She was seen on the floor that afternoon. I was debating what to do when Ceridwen caught wind of what was going on. She’s charging Meryl with theft, tampering with evidence, and assaulting Belgor.”
Hot anger gripped my chest. “This is bull, Dylan. Meryl comes up here for work all the time, and you know it. You and Ceridwen want her to answer questions about Forest Hills that she doesn’t know the answers to.”
Dylan shook his head. “Don’t throw me in that pile, Connor. You know this is Ceridwen.”
Frustrated, I spun away to keep from hitting him. It would have been dumb. It would have been striking out at the nearest thing, and he just happened to be it. Besides, Dylan could hold his own against me, even without his shields. “I want to talk to Meryl.”
His worried look was genuine. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. You’re on Ceridwen’s list, too.”
I rubbed my hands across the stubble on my head. “I don’t answer to Ceridwen. I want to talk to Meryl, Dylan, and I want to do it now.”