“I’m not,” I said.
“Because I was just helping protect you and the humans,” he said.
“Get up on the stand, Vic,” Eddie said, voice hot.
“Please,” I said.My voice was soft, cajoling.“For me.”
“And for me,” Nagisa said, voice grandiose.
“Fine,” Vic said, and his hair snapped angrily as he got to his feet.“You go through the same events twenty odd times trying to save everyone and this is what you’re up against.People who don’t want to trust you.”
Vic pushed Eddie out of the hot seat and sat, cross-armed, and in a foul, petulant mood.
“I don’t have anything prepared,” Brynholf said.
“I actually have a series of questions for Vic,” Abe said.“Starting with the following.When Stacey and Eddie departed on their own, and you met up with them.How did you know to meet them at the entrance to the Arcade?”
Vic blinked rapidly.
“I already told you,” he said.“I’d done all that a few times before.”
“But isn’t it true you never quite got to the end game before having to complete another T-flop?So how would you know the layout for where everything was?”
Vic paused, stammered for a moment, and then laughed.
“Look, these Bruiser things, they’re gigantic,” Vic said.“I could see it from streets away.”
“Of course,” Abe said.“But how did you know to meet Eddie and Stacey at the Arcade entrance?”
“We’d got there once or twice before a couple T-flops back,” he said.
“Right,” Abe said.“And the enchantment with Grynfelda.According to Stacey’s witness testimony, wasn’t that a timed release enchantment?Didn’t you push her to go back to the docks again?Possibly endangering her life with the risk of another Paradox being created?”
Vic looked taken aback.
“Look, she was the one who thought it would be a good idea,” he said.
“And what about pushing her out of a moving car over the edge of the highway?”
Vic moved his hands again, lifting them in supplication pose.
“Look, I’m on your side,” he said.“I have been all along.I knew what was going to happen.I even knew there was going to be a truck there to catch her, though I admit it was a bit of a risk.”
“But why would you put her in that kind of risk?”Abe asked.“You knew she’d lost the Tarot card that could reset the T-Flop arrangement.”
“I’d done it a few times,” he said.“A few broken bones doesn’t mean she’d die.”
“Who was driving the truck?”Abe asked.
Vic paused.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I do,” someone called from the back of the ritual room.
The whole of the audience turned and gasped.Brother Al was there, walking in, half-bubbling from a monstrous, demonic visage, back into his normal priestly state.He had a wizened, mummified looking figure dangling from the closed talons of his right hand.
“I thought I killed him,” Vic snapped.
