Or maybe she knew Prospero was cold-blooded enough to handle the crisis.
Or that it’s my fault.
Sondre nodded but held his tongue.
“If the sickness is blood- or airborne, I needed Mae contained,” Prospero explained, obviously reading his silence as anger, not guilt. “If it’s not via our air or water, if it’s something else, I needed to keep this secret, so our people are calm. I didn’thurtMae, Sondre. I simply did what seemed most likely to keep the crisis—or knowledge of it—from spreading. If she’s caught it, she would spread it through the whole castle. I need her in quarantine, and I need that to be a secret.”
“But you’re telling me,” Sondre pointed out; the reminder that he was not her usual confidante seemed important in the moment.
Does Prospero know what I’ve done?He honestly wouldn’t be shocked if the Victorian witch had figured some of it out by now.It’s more of a hammer than subtle as far as plans go.
Prospero took a long drink before answering. “We just had thirteen healthy witches go from a cough to death. Is this a plague? Did the water or the foul odor in town kill them? Probably the latter, but… it doesn’t matter what it is. We are dying unexpectedly of late. Now, with these deaths, we’ve lost severaldozenpeople, Sondre.Dozens. In Crenshaw. It’s unheard of.”
She’s here because Mae works in the castle where the students are,he reassured himself.Just informing me because of the students.
He shoved down his guilt and finished his beer before replying, “And you think Mae might be sick, too?”
“Yes. Maybe? I have no idea, honestly. She didn’tseemsick so far.” Prospero looked away. “I wanted to contain her—and hopefully the illness—ifshe was carrying it, but I hope she’s not. She’s a kind witch, and, honestly, we’ll need her if this continues. But I had to quarantine her. Please, don’t fight me on that.”
“She likely expected it, probably agreed with quarantine, but felt guilty not being available to help,” he suggested. “I wouldn’t have done it if she came to me.”
“You don’t know th—”
“You’re colder than me, Prospero. We all know it.” Sondre didn’t mean it as an insult this time. That ice-cold blood of hers was useful in a disaster—and if Mae was sick, it was a disaster.
“True, but this could be something contagious. We couldall die.” Prospero’s voice was far from cold now.
“Maybe. I was a kid when they cured TB, and the cure for polio was right around when I left… and in between, I was in a war in Korea.” Sondre shook his head. “I think expecting to die of something awful was normal. So, no, I don’t know that I would’ve quarantined Mae.”
He sat on the sofa in his suite and stared up at the woman he often thought of as his nemesis. Not that he was completely shifting his stance—he still thought they needed to change the way they lived, the location, and a lot of things. He could admit—briefly, privately, in this moment—that Prospero was not completely without redeeming qualities if she had saved Mae.
“Are you and Mae entangled?” he asked awkwardly.
Prospero laughed humorlessly. “No. In fact, I may have made her think she was exhausted from having sex with you.”
“Oh.”
“She had quite the detailed memory of you,” Prospero said lightly. “I pulled it forward, so it seemed recent. It was a hasty patch so I could convince her to rest.” She paused and lifted her can in his direction. “To never seeing that much of you naked again.”
He chuckled.
She drank quietly, and Sondre couldn’t decide if he was proud orembarrassed. Either way, it was far down the list of things he needed to ponder. “Mae may be sick, and the students are to be kept in the dark longer. Anything else?”
Prospero stared up at the ceiling for several moments. “We need to work together, Sondre. Table my plan and yours. Figure something out.”
They sat in silence for several moments until he finally stood and walked to the counter.Am I doing this?If he turned against the rest of the New Economists, if he revealed what Prospero likely suspected, he was signing his own assassination order.
He grabbed two more beers, crossed the room, and held a can out to her. “While we’re sharing, you need to know that Monahan is an amplifier.”
“Damn it.” Prospero rubbed her forehead. “No one caught that?”
“I caught it. He boosted both Lynch and Brandeau that I know of, so far.” He watched Prospero as he added the next words. “I withheld that detail because he’s loyal to me.”
Very softly, so quietly he wasn’t sure he heard her at first, Prospero asked, “Are you confessing things now?”
He paused, increasingly sure she knew he was at the thick of the rift’s cause.Do I tell her?Sondre still believed they ought to let people have families, let them choose to live normal lives, but had they gone too far when they polluted the water table?Was the rift a mistake?
He couldn’t answer that, so he said, “Step one: we keep the students locked down in the castle.”
