“Truth is, love,” said Madam, “other than getting paid, I’ve really no horse in this particular race. So, if you’d?—”
“Look . . . Madam. I know you’re working for Brach. All I want is for you to tell me about the wraith and anything that might show Brach ordered the hit on Henry. A note. Hell, an email.”
“Sorry, dear,” said Madam, “I’m afraid I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Have it your way.” I got out my lantern and bow.
“You going to serenade me?” she asked. “I hardly think I’m your type.” “Nah, more like a game of shadow tag.”
The smile fell from her lips. “Don’t play with me, boy.”
I spoke my ghost stone alight. I’d never looked deep into a shadow with my own thanaturgic light. But maybe Madam’s shadow could show me what I needed if I looked deep enough.
My hand trembled as I drew my bow across one of my lantern’s rods in a long, slow pull—a revelatory stroke like the one Mick had used at Rats Castle. Thanaturgic light lit up the entire backstage area.
Madam stomped the floor. “You go on ahead and look at the real stuff, then, boyo.”
I knew as well as anyone how dark a person’s secrets could be. Part of me didn’t want to look. If it wasn’t a violation of Precedent Law, it certainly crossed a moral line. But Brach needed to be stopped, and Henry’s murder needed justice.
Her shadow shimmered with gleam notes in the lively triplet pattern of a tarantella. They lit up in circles mostly around the dark, twisted scars inside her. I concentrated there, hoping to find something that might reveal her part in Brach’s assassination plans or some knowledge about the wraith, but I saw nothing of the sort.
“See something you like?” she asked. “You know, it’s not nice to tell a girl’s secrets.”
“And it’s not nice to kill my friends,” I said.
I pulled the revelatory stroke again, concentrating on who she was and what she’d done. The light flared, and one occlusion came into sharper focus—an eight-pointed star with a tobacco leaf at the center.
There was more beneath the scar, but I could tell I was fighting myself, trying to discern with light and not yet truly seeing. So, as I’d done with Mick, I hummed softly under my breath—trying to follow the pattern of her gleam notes—thinking I might brighten the image, like blowing on an ember.
The memory of a mother walking away from a child eddied in the darkness beneath the awful black scar.
I knew that wound. That feeling.
Something else swirled in the darkness—another figure, the child’s father, choosing to send their mother away.
After a minute or so, my vision blurred from the strain and I stopped singing. I was either too new or lacked some critical context to pull it all into view.
“You have a child.”
She looked shocked. “How did you see that far inside?”
I whispered my stone out, suddenly not sure I should have done this, even to save lives. “And the father won’t let you be with the child?”
“Then you should know,” said Madam, raising her chin, “I do it all for love. Truly.” She’d lost her snark.
I put my catalysts away. “I’m sorry about your kid. I know what it’s like to lose a mother.”
Madam was quiet a moment. “The child’s father . . . is Muster Brach. We used to care for one another before his ambitions seized him. Now he uses our son as leverage to make me do things Precedent forbids. But not murder. I won’t kill for him.”
I believed her. I also didn’t see her as the monster I had just a moment before. Made me feel a bit better about exposing her secrets.
“My son has the same star and leaf imprint on his soul from all this,” she added with a bitter laugh. “So, we have, at least,thatbond to share.”
I let the quiet sit a moment before asking, “And the wraith?” “I honestly don’t know anything about it.”
This felt true, too. She’d been separated from her son. She hadn’t chosen it. And it seemed she just wanted to get him back. That might make her an accomplice, but it didn’t make her immoral. And it certainly didn’t make her a liar. The Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” cycled into my head.
“Look,” I said, “pretty soon they’re going to put me on trial for things I haven’t done. You could testify that they blackmailed you into abducting me, that they’re trying to keep me from finding the wraith and saving the Iron Horse, saving lives. In exchange, I’ll help you get your kid back.”
