I was tempted to ask.
Forsooth must have seen the conflict and temptation on my face.
That, or he simply had other places to be.
Before I could ask him anything more, he gave me a low, very polite bow, and swept off in his dark, metallic-blue coat, hands clasped at the base of his spine.
His bear paused a second longer to lift a paw to me, looking all the world like it was waving either hello or goodbye or some combination of both.
I lifted my hand in return.
The bear growled and grumbled at me in a friendly sort of way, then lowered its paw and shuffled off after Forsooth, trailing gold and brown light behind as it went.
They were maybe ten yards away when the magical shielding around me dissolved.
Sound rushed into the vacuum it left, filling my ears with the crashing, watery sounds of the fountain, clinking glasses, thumping music, chattering voices, and shrieks of laughter from the surrounding party.
“Huh,” I said to myself, watching Forsooth disappear into the crowd.
14
The Party That Wasn’t
Ididn’t see Graham anywhere nearby after Forsooth left.
It occurred to me that I still held the goblet he’d given me, although I hadn’t taken so much as a sip since he first handed it to me. Now I drank down a few swallows, and the liquid burned down my throat, but also managed to calm me enough that I took a deeper breath, gazing around at the clusters of people loitering in the rough vicinity of the fountain.
A lot more people had arrived at Forsooth’s party by now.
I mostly saw faces I recognized from Grathrock, and now the Valarian dining halls, but a number of older students were there, too, presumably as dates or crashers. A handful looked between me and in the direction Forsooth had just gone, which made me think our littletête à têtehad piqued a few people’s curiosity.
I didn’t really care right then.
My mind was buzzing about the conversation itself. I was positive I hadn’t misunderstood any part of Forsooth’s careful words. He’d invited me to a group investigating Dark Cathedral, likely working completely outside of official channels.
Could I trust him, though?
My instinctive answer was yes, of course I could trust him. My aunt’s memories of Forsooth before she died remained crystal clear in my mind, especially the way he’d looked at her while questioning her fitness to be guardian to two hybrid children.
Yes, I could trust him. More than most, I strongly suspected.
I only wished Alaric was around, so I could talk to him about it.
If he had been, I wondered if Forsooth would have invited him to the meetings, too. Regardless, Forsooth’s invitation was the closest thing to areallead I’d been offered so far, and I wasn’t about to refuse it. Forsooth as much as said they were looking for Alaric, and looking into his disappearance, and he had to have more resources for that than I did. Maybe they’d even attempt to intervene with Lord Greythorne to bring him back.
I could still attempt to eavesdrop over the course of the night, see if I could learn something that way, but it no longer seemed like a particularly worthwhile risk to push my attempts too far. I could listen without risking being caught with elaborate spells meant to probe more deeply into their magic or minds, especially that of the royals.
And really, the royals were the only minds that interested me at that point. I’d already likely gotten as much as I would from the rest of the second years.
Which meant I was now at a party, with very little I needed to be doing.
I downed the rest of the goblet, tilting back my head.
I thought about Alaric, and how afraid of their fathers both Alaric and Bones seemed to be. Would Lord Greythorne really hurt his own son? Would he kill him, if he saw him as some kind of traitor or direct threat to his “Project of Worlds”? Just how bad were the Bones and Greythorne patriarchs, really?
One of Forsooth’s vortices opened directly in front of me.
I didn’t think, beyond being faintly relieved for the distraction.
