Helooked at me. ‘You won’t believe me. No one believes me.’ He laughed – a hard noise with no humour in it. ‘That’s why old Vancey is here.’ He looked at me. ‘I did plenty of bad things,’ he admitted. ‘I stole, I fought, I lied. But I would never hurt no kid. Never hurt agirl. No, I would never do that.’ His horror was so visceral that I trusted he believed his muttered ravings.
I’d dealt with raving criminals plenty of times, and oddly, that settled me a bit more. He was a prisoner, a criminal, and I knew them well.
‘I’m not interested in your history of petty thievery. If you didn’t hurt me, who did?’
He wrung his hands. ‘I was just a passenger. I couldseebut I couldn’tdo.Couldn’t speak, couldn’t act. It was horrible.’ His eyes pleaded with me to believe. ‘I could never hurt anyone like that. It washim.’
‘Give me a name,’ I pressed.
‘A doppelganger. A doppelganger called Jude Jingo.’
Ice filled my lungs, and I froze.
My brain stuttered, refusing to accept what my ears had heard.
Jude Jingo.
All this time, I knew he was a monster. I just hadn’t known he wasmymonster.
Chapter Nineteen
Broadlake could be lying about Jude Jingo possessing him. I didn’t discount that. Yet somehow, against all odds, I found I believed this shell of a man.
And according to him, my father had believed him too.
If Vance Broadlake was telling the truth, then he’d survived possession by a doppelganger. That meant there was a chance Troy could too. I just needed to find out how. I couldn’t lead with that, couldn’t let him know the import of what he was telling me, so I began with something else.
I licked parched lips. ‘Convince me you hosted Jingo. Tell me things about Jingo that I can verify.’
He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘He calls people by their titles,’ he said. ‘You’d think it’s him showing respect, but it’s not. It’s because he has already lived so many lives that he always needs to remind himself what you are to him.’ His hands twitched against the chains. ‘He doesn’t eat in front of people. He’ll order food,push it around, and drink instead. He watches everyone all the time. He loves to collect rumours, hearsay, gossip. He likes to blackmail. Likes to have powerful people do his bidding through means fair or foul. He doesn’t care which. It’s all about power. Control.’
My stomach dropped. He was right. He was absolutely right. Jingodidcollect information about others; he had told me so himself. But if I knew that about Jingo, others surely did too.
‘Tell me more,’ I demanded.
‘When he tells a lie that matters, he touches his throat once. Just once. A brush of his thumb across his Adam’s apple like he’s steadying his words, the lie, before he speaks it.’
‘That’s not proof,’ I said, but I wracked my brains, trying to remember if Troy had touched his throat at dinner.
It might not be proof, but if true, it could be invaluable to know. A tell in every body.
Broadlake leaned forward. ‘I know more. I can tell you more. Jingo always has a second – someone who holds the boring parts of his life for him. Properties, bills, keys, bank accounts because he can’t keep anything in his own name for long. He sheds identities like a snake sheds skins.’ His eyes were bright with the need for me to believe him. ‘Thesecond he had when he possessed me had served him longer than most. Jingo recruited him when he was a young lad. Django Reed. That’s the name you can verify. Pull his finances. You’ll see rents on places no one lives, utility bills that spike and then go flat, cars bought and sold and bought again. Reed keeps the assets safe while Jingo steals bodies.’
He hesitated and then decided to divulge something else, something darker that gave him pause. ‘He started the Kellmoor War. He killed a centaur diplomat and staged it to look like a rival clan did it. I know it’s a wild claim, but it’s true. I swear it.’
I studied the man as dispassionately as I could. ‘Why would he start it?’
‘Because they denied him. Refused to work with him. And because chaos is always a win for him. While people watch the fires burn, that’s when he steals from them. He likes watching people burn and calling it politics, calling itpower. He doesn’t care about collateral damage.’
That hummed. I remembered a conversation with him, when he called a young dryad he’d killed with a pair of scissors ‘collateral damage’.
Goddamn it, I believed the prisoner. I fucking believed him.
Broadlake continued, ‘There’s a file you can find. A date. A name. A groom gave a statement and vanished two days later. Joshua Green. Jingo was in him then. He killed the centaur.’ His gaze locked onto mine, pleading and raw.
I leaned forward. ‘What more can you tell me? What more did you see?’
‘I didn’t see it all, couldn’t accesshismemories the way he could access mine, but whatever he thought, I could hear. Gods, how I wished I couldn’t.’ He shuddered and started to shake. ‘He doesn’t care. Doesn’t feel. Just wants more. More money, more success, more praise. Morepower.Power is the one thing that drives him beyond anything else. He was helpless once, and it moulded him.’
