Man, the level of disapproval in her expression should be enough to make me cower. Seriously, it’s like she thinks I’m still sixteen, not twenty-six.
“You rang, Madame,” I say, arching my eyebrow. Or at least I try to. I’m not sure Icanarch my eyebrows, so there’s a strong chance I’m staring at her bug-eyed.
“As I said in my message, one of our weavers has gone missing.”
“Wren, I know. I met her reaper.”
She tilts her head to one side. “Did you indeed. He visited you?”
“And brought me to their garden.” I smile brightly. Maybe if I act like it’s no biggie to be here, she’ll forget that I’ve been on the run for the past few years and won’t feel the need to throw me in the dungeons.
Not that they have dungeons here, but you get the idea.
“Indeed?”
I give a nod. “It was nice.” Not sure what else she wants me to say, so I just smile at her.
“Was it indeed?” She gives me an intense look that I don’t understand. “I’m sure you can understand why we contacted you, Echo.”
Nope, not really. When I stare at her cluelessly, she clears her throat impatiently and gives a huffy little sniff.
“You, of all people, are the best suited to finding a wayward weaver, particularlythisweaver.”
Ding ding ding, that’s two of my guesses in one.
I frown at her. “You think she was… like me? She was… unhappy being a weaver or with the role she was given?”
Madame looks at me for a long moment, steepling her fingers like she’s thinking deeply. I get the impression she’s deliberating over how much she wants to tell me.
“I couldn’t tell you. Wren was a diligent weaver, very impressive during her training.”
Not like me. I sucked at the whole academic, sitting behind a desk and learning part of weaver training. Which just so happened to be most of it.
She pauses, her eyes still focused intently on mine. “That garden has had… several issues to deal with recently.”
“Oh, really?”
She waves a hand airily like this is all by the by. “Attacks on their gate and such.”
I nod like I understand what the heck that means.
“Okay, well, I’m not really sure what you think I can do. I’m not an investigator and it really seems like you should call someone else in, someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“Soren will lead the investigation. He will need your help in traveling between worlds in order to search for our missing weaver.”
He seemed pretty capable of traveling all by himself when he was turning up in my kitchen and manhandling my soul. I mutter something to that effect, and Madame LaFontaine scowls at me.
“I sent the reaper to you. As I’ve stated, you are the best equipped to assist with looking into this incident. You will focus your attention entirely on this and on assisting Soren until the missing weaver is located and returned home.”
“I can’t just drop everything. Plus, who knows if she wants to be found?” Although the thought that maybe this isn’t the same as it was for me gnaws uncomfortably at my gut.
Ugh. What if something’s happened to her and I act like today never happened? If it was Jet that didn’t come home one day, I’d want people to at least care enough to look into where she might have gone.
“Have you tried, you know, tugging on her leash like you did with me?” I mime her pulling at the cord in my gut, the same one she used to bring me here today.
“I have. There was no response. That’s another reason you are so suitable for this. In all my years, there has never been another that could withstand the summons back to the Ether.”
I bite my lip, considering all the probable reasons Wren might not have responded to the summons. “And you’re sure she’s… alive?”
