“Slate!” Cadence gasps.
Geoffrey grins and slides the phone back into his jacket. “Deal. And don’t renege on it, or I’ll have you arrested.” He pats his pocket. “I have our entire conversation recorded and have already sent it to my email accounts. Plural.”
“And you wonder why Camille committed suicide.” De Morel’s smile is so vicious it douses Geoffrey’s.
“Rainier, that was uncalled for,” Adrien snaps.
“Apologies.” De Morel doesn’t sound apologetic. “Thank you for your visit and subordination, Geoffrey.” His chair squeaks as he leans back into it.
The mayor doesn’t smile. Not even cockily. For someone who got what he came for, he doesn’t seem particularly victorious.
He stares down at Emilie, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I’ll let you dispose of the body. And don’t tell me what you do with it.”
“Her, notit,” I grit out.
Geoffrey’s eyes meet mine. “I don’t want to know what you do withher.” And then he turns and strides out of the study.
Once the front door clangs shut, Adrien asks, “So, what do we do with her?”
Gaëlle gnaws on her bottom lip. “The lake.”
There’s something inhumane about dumping a body into water. Especially a little girl’s.
I want to do what they do in the fairy tales: cover her with flower petals and keep her in a glass coffin. “Dump her in the lake, and she’ll be fish food. Not to mention that during spring melt, parts of her could resurface.”
“Then what do you suggest, Roland? Incinerate her perhaps?” De Morel suggests.
“What if once the Quatrefoil’s reassembled”—Cadence studies the framed photo on De Morel’s desk, that of a woman holding an infant, a woman who looks a lot like Cadence—“what if it reverses the curse?”
I want to tell her that hope is dangerous, that it disappoints far more than it gratifies, but bite my tongue.
Gaëlle reaches out to Cadence and squeezes her hand. “Unless we succeed soon, her body will start to decay. There’s a reason necromancy has always been considered a forbidden art.”
“You mean, she’d rise a zombie?” These are the first words Bastian’s said in almost an hour.
“It’s just a hypothesis.”
“A sound one.” De Morel’s gaze drifts to the frame on his desk, and I recall his wife’s state of decay.
If only I could delete that sight from my mind. That entire night. Except the part when I stood next to Cadence during the countdown. I want to hold on to that.
“So, the crypt or the lake?” Adrien asks.
“The crypt’s too easy to break into. Wouldn’t want some drunk vagabond stumbling upon her body.” Rainier’s stare, although not as poisonous as the one he fired at Geoffrey, hits its mark: me.
I don’t react, because I deserved that.
Adrien heaves a deep sigh. “So the lake it is.” He crouches and bundles up Emilie, wincing every time his fingers graze her limbs.
I swallow down a painful ache in my throat. “I’ll do it.”
I shove Adrien away. He puts up no fight. I lean over and cradle the small body, trying desperately to get into the zone where nothing can touch me, a zone that saved me from losing my mind more than once in foster care. But she’s so light . . . and the length of her hair that tumbles down over my forearm smells like kid: strawberry toothpaste, waxy crayons, and rainbows.
Cadence tucks the sheet tighter around Emilie’s body. “I’ll go with you.”
“No.”
“This wasn’t me giving you a choice, Slate.”
