“No,” I said.
“No. It’s time to sow seeds of doubt. It’s time to turn the conjurers against each other. I want them to tear each other apart. Until . . .”—he stared at me—“none of them remain.”
“That,” Roumelade said, setting a glass jar full of electric-blue liquid on the table, “would be a lovely thing indeed.”
Justice frowned at the glass jar.
“Justice. Make yourself look like the Smith.”
Justice looked over at Jagger and then held out his hand, twisting an illusion into place. I blinked. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even great. But Justice looked close enough to Finn that it made my heart thump painfully. I stared at him, and he gave me a half-smile—one that was all Justice and zero Finn.
“Good,” Jagger said, eyes narrowed on Justice. “The three of you, at dark, take that—it’s blue fire—near enough to the Smiths that it’ll do. Justice, make certain you are seen. Not well, but well enough that you can be identified as the Smith. Mari, you won’t let yourself be seen. You’ll slip into the Bards’ home, the Clarks’ home, and the Wards’ home. Tonight. Burn them down. Burn them with blue Smith fire. Griff, stay out of sight. If trouble arrives, fly them out. Tomorrow, I expect Hell Gate will have company. We’ll be playing host to some new friends.”
“You truly think the Clarks, the Bards, and the Wards will believe the Smiths attacked their homes unprovoked?” I asked. It didn’t seem likely.
Jagger pinned me with his stare. “They’ll believe it because they want to believe it.” He tapped his finger against his knife. “Just like you believe things you know to be untrue because you want to believe them. Like . . . hmm . . . Justice didn’t want to kill you. He did, Mari. He did. Or the Smith is somehow the same man you knew in the games. He is not. Or that you are still . . . perhaps . . . maybe good. Happily, no. You are not good. Yet you believe the unbelievable. So, yes, they will too. They will believe it because they want to. And that belief will be what flings them down to the gates of hell. Now, go. Go.”
Justice and I stood quickly, shoving our chairs back. Griff stood more slowly. I grabbed the jar of liquid blue fire.
As we strode out of the kitchen, Jagger called after us, “Oh, I almost forgot. Have fun.”
He laughed.
I did not.
16
Two down. One to go.
I crept through the marble halls of the Bard mansion, tiptoeing around moonlight, burying myself in shadow. The sightless eyes of the marble statues lining the hall pressed into me. Could they see me, even in the dark? No. Statues couldn’t see. Not even Bard statues.
The mansion was a silent mausoleum. The entry was filled with hundreds—thousands?—of white roses. It was a snowy landscape of crystal vases filled with roses in varying states of decay. There was the perfect waxy white of lead-paint petals; the curling, yellowed edges of half-fallen petals; the brown, soggy petals with their pungent, fetid stink; and finally, the dried near-translucent petals that crackled like molted grasshopper husks under my feet. Even after I’d left the entry, the sweet-decay stench lingered with ghostly persistence. The Bard mansion was haunted with funeral roses.
It was different than it had been only a few weeks ago. Before, there’d been an air of drama, opulence, and danger. Now, the mansion had an eerie, abandoned feel.
No one was here.
No one had been at the Ward mansion either, although Justice had made sure to be seen in his Finn illusion by both cameras and passersby.
The Clarks were home, but I hadn’t lingered, especially not when Primus had roared, “Smith! Take note! A headless corpse cannot wear a crown!”
Rou’s fire concoction worked fast. At both the Wards’ and the Clarks’, I’d hurried for the office. I’d quickly sprinkled the liquid over desks, books, couches, fabrics—anything combustible. Then I’d set it ablaze. The blue inferno had consumed both homes in less than a minute.
Both times, Griff had asked, “Did it work?”
He couldn’t see beyond the façade illusion the conjurers had built around their homes.
“Yeah,” I’d said, watching the wall of flames devour the Ward mansion. “It worked.”
Justice had smiled when I said it.
“Having fun?” I’d asked.
He’d lifted his eyebrows. “I have to, don’t I?”
He did. So did I.
Even as I’d burned my family’s home, there’d been a joyful throb pulsing through me. It was a giddy, drunkenly happy feeling that reveled in the destruction of something beautiful.
