On the far side of the room, the other Gold Towner grunts and shifts, starting to wake, and my lips peel back in a savage grin. Looks like I get to have both wishes at once.
“I’ve got a better idea.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“THERE IS NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT THE HERALDS. THEY WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO HELP US PROSPER, TO SHOWER US WITH RICHES; WE ARE THEIR CHILDREN. BUT THESE BLESSINGS CANNOT COME WITHOUT SACRIFICE.”
—TREATISE NO. 3BY MOST HOLY PREACHER HAL LOURDE, ORIGINAL CHAPEL FOUNDER
Before either Dani or Orion can react, I phase across the room, reappearing by the Gold Towner just as he starts to blink open his eyes. He’s still groggy, barely awake, which gives me the leeway I need to grab him by the front of his shirt with both hands, haul him partially upright, and roughly slam him against the wall to prop him up.
He grunts in pain, but I ignore it, crouching in front of him, balancing Wrath point-down on his thigh. “Wake up, lunkhead.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Orion hurries over, holstering his pistol as he goes. “Let’s not get too carried away here.”
The Gold Towner’s head lolls a little as he fully comes to, his eyes slowly focusing in on me. I bare my teeth at him. Trinity’ssong screams, wild and fierce. It thrums in my throat, in my ears. It’s all I can hear, like the rest of the room has gone silent.
“You’re going to tell me where the Bruinn sisters are.”
He swallows hard, shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“Wrong answer.” My blade flashes, and he cries out as a gash opens up along the top of his thigh. “You’ve got a lot of skin to work with here, and I just sharpened this one recently.”
Blue-white light haloes the edges of my vision. It’s the same shade and intensity as those flares, out in the Copper Plains. My vision swims, and the Old Clock Tower dissolves around me, replaced by green plants, dripping with water, spiraling out of the ceiling and wrapping around my face, my neck, my chest—
“Stop!” Orion’s voice cuts through the melody, and I feel his hand on my arm, pulling me to my feet and then drawing me backward, out of earshot. Dani stands nearby, watching everything with shrewd eyes.
“I’m fine.” I shake my head to clear the vision from my eyes. The halos are gone. Trinity’s song has slipped away again, nothing more than a murmur, hardly audible over my pounding heart. “I’m getting answers.”
Orion frowns. “No, you’re not. You’re getting whatever nonsense he can spit out just to keep you from hurting him. Do you want to find your sisters? Or do you want to chase ghosts until it’s too late?”
I drag Wrath across the sleeve of my forearm, wiping the blood off both sides. “Fine. You think you can do better? Go ahead.”
Orion motions me to step back, and then he kneels down next to the Gold Towner, grabbing a scrap of cloth from his pocket topress against the cut. “Hey, I’m so sorry about that. You got a name?”
The man eyes me, wary, and then finally says, “Clint.”
“Clint, that’s a nice name. I’m Orion. That’s Dani.” He nods over his shoulder at Dani, who has her pistol back out and is spinning it in her hand, occasionally and abruptly stopping it so that the barrel points right at Clint’s face. “And this is the Butcher. You’ll recognize them by all the knives and blood.” He gestures at me, and I stare back, flint-eyed. “You guys took something from them. You know about that, right, Clint? You seem like a smart, high-up kind of guy.”
Clint swallows hard, his whole throat bobbing as he tries to strain backward, away from the wild trajectory of Dani’s gun. “I heard—I heard about it.”
“Good, good.” Orion follows his terrified gaze, clocks what Dani’s doing with the gun, and rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna make him pee his pants doing that, Morales.”
Dani suddenly stops moving the pistol, looking like she’s just noticed that it’s making Clint nervous. “Oh, god, is this making you uncomfortable? I’m so sorry. You don’t have to be afraid of us, Clint. We’re all friends here.”
“Bestfriends,” Orion adds enthusiastically.
I grumble a little, in the back of my throat. “Can we stay on track please?”
Orion pats Clint heavily on the shoulder, drawing the man’s attention back to himself. “Since we’re such good friends, you can tell me. Where are the Bruinn sisters?”
“I—I haven’t seen them. But”—he adds quickly when he sees me start to step toward him with Reason—“there were rumorsthat some of Kilpatrick’s inner circle had bait that they were gonna use to draw out the Butcher. In case they survived the grenade at their lodgings.”
Made sense. They were looking for revenge for taking out their boss. Well, if they wanted to stand between me and my sisters, they could all die the same. Didn’t make any difference to me. “Draw me out where exactly?”
“I don’t know. But some people have mentioned South Parish.”
I sheathe Reason, spinning on my heel toward the door. “That’s where I’m going, then.”
