That was supposition, but Waring had to have started to study magic at some point. That gap in the timeline was as good as any.
“At some point you or she worked out there was something off about her family—more than their piety and happiness to spend a son on the Proverbial’s mission back in Europe. Your family was less proactive, but they don’t think the Senate is right either. So something that was bad enough you thought you had to intervene, something that didn’t just affect Annabelle, but her friends.”
Took dealt the missing-person leaflets out onto the table. Annabelle Franklin, the three Aron siblings, the Ford twins with their matched casts, Kerry Davison, Brendan Colt, and Paul Imran. Waring looked at the faces the same way he had his mother’s, like someone in a desert who’d just seen water.
“This is what you did first,” Took said. Now that he’d seen the faces, the ghost images he’d picked up from Waring’s mind filled themselves in. The only Aron daughter they’d been able to get out pressed up against the window of the car as she cried for her sister. Annabelle was in the front seat, her face a terrifying mix of guilt and resolve. “You got the children away. Most of them were easy. Children do disappear, and no one involved could really kick up too much of a fuss. The Davisons could hardly tell the police that the connection between their daughter’s disappearance and that of Brendan Colt was that they were both dhampirs and their families belonged to a cult that had kidnapped them from Europe.”
Despite all his practice, Waring couldn’t stall the flash of surprise that flicked over his face. Took wasn’t sure if that was because he was right or if Waring hadn’t known that detail. He wanted to know, for the sake of completion, but that could wait.
“It went wrong at the Arons,” he said.
A bitter smile tucked the corners of Waring’s mouth at what must have seemed like an awful understatement to him. “They were ready for you,” Took said. “And Hunters know about magic, know where to buy it from the alley witches and how to disrupt it too.”
He’d spent enough hours in the river near their house as a kid, feet bruised and hands shriveled, as he caught toads for his mother to thread onto thorns. It was surprisingly easy to defang a sorcerer if you had prior warning. They might fight each other with storms and starlight, but a human with a dead, mutilated toad and a knife could end one easily enough.
“After that….” Took paused as he took in the freaked-out expression on Waring’s face. It was ridiculous that a sorcerer who could hop bodies like a cuckoo hopped nests would be disturbed by just thinking things through. Madoc was the only person who’d always found it reliably entertaining as a party trick. “Well, I know you hid Annabelle and the others. Then you turned up bloody handed at the end of a trail of murders that nearly bisected the country.”
Waring licked his lips but hesitated to say anything. He didn’t consider his own innocence important enough to break his silence. Took supposed he could see why Lawrence had read that as guilt. But he had some extra information.
He took out a photo of one of the dhampirs that Waring had been accused of murdering and laid it on the table. Matthew Kennedy had the same stamp as the cult’s stolen children—eyes like green glass and skin like pearls—but he carried himself as though that made him exceptional, not a freak. He’d been eighteen, older than Waring but still a child as far as the Anakim were concerned.
The first time Took had seen him was in that filthy trap house, hung up to bleed like a deer carcass. Guilt scratched at the back of his throat that he hadn’t realized the monster was just a boy in a box that Took couldn’t see. It was just self-indulgence. He couldn’t help Matthew anymore, no matter how much he beat himself up, but maybe he could make up for it a bit by rescuing the others.
“I know the cult got him,” Took said as he tapped the image. “The Proverbial missionaries had kept them stocked with… new blood… for years. But ten dhampirs? Even in Europe that many vanished children would raise questions and the Empire ask those sharply. So they had to hunt closer to home, right?”
Waring barely nodded, but the magic jolted through him anyhow, and his lips and fingertips singed. He shuddered, and pinched his lips tightly, and tucked his chin down into his chest.
“You wanted to help,” Took said sympathetically. “You tried to, but whoever it was in Appleberg that was behind this had better information, better connections, right? They got there first, and by the time you caught up, the family was dead and the dhampir children were gone. That’s how you got caught red-handed in the mess these people had left behind.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question. That might give Waring… wriggle room… in his bargain with magic.
Waring opened his mouth cautiously, afraid of the backlash, and tested his voice with a ragged "I…” When nothing crackled under his skin, he exhaled slowly and tried again, his voice broken and rusty. “I tried to stop it. I wanted to warn someone, tell my dad or—”
Sparks flickered in the pit of his mouth, and the smell of singed spit filled the room. He shut up, and Took finished for him.
“You didn’t know who to trust,” he said. “And you couldn’t afford to trust the wrong person, because then the spell would be broken and the cult could find Annabelle and the others. You’d die rather than let that happen, right?”
Waring stared at him with a flash of fear in his eyes but braced his hands flat against the table and waited. Some people would guess he’d fallen in love with a dhampir, but Took thought the boy had just picked up honor somewhere. Or both.
This time Took spread out a map of Appleberg on the table. Annabelle and Waring were resourceful and smart, but they were still kids. Where else would they go than somewhere they knew?
“Prove it,” Took challenged him. “They’re here, aren’t they? And if they’re this close, then someone will see them, maybe even someone who just wants to help. But will they trust the right people?”
Waring took a ragged breath and jabbed his finger down on the map. His blistered fingertip flattened against the fenced-in space outside of Appleberg where Annabelle Franklin had spent so many summers—the summer camp that the Proverbial Church had just stopped using for no reason that year.
This time the magic lashed like a whip. It scorched through Waring and made his veins stark and black against his skin as the blood burned. Then it bounced back into Took. Heat lashed through his veins and rattled around inside him like a pinball of electricity. He flinched backward and crashed into the wall. Bright streamers of power arced between him and Waring, as though the magic itself was pissed at Took for interfering. It pushed into his head, pressed against his ears as though they were going to pop, and he felt the staples that held his mind together stretch and rip. Something black and harsh snarled from the darkness he kept down there.
“No,” he rasped out, and the cold flushed through him. It filled him from ears to fingertips, until there was no room left for the crackle of sorcery. Then, with one last whip kiss of pain, it left him.
For a second, Took hung in the static comfort of that cold anger. It felt like nothing—numb and still.
Then Madoc stepped out of the shadows and dropped to his knee next to him. His hand on the back of Took’s neck was icy, but it flickered the memory of warmth through Took’s bones—a kiss on his knuckles, the look in his eyes when he tilted Took’s face up for a kiss.
Offended by the saccharine sentimentality of it all, the cold anger slunk back to where it lived.
“Are you all right?” Madoc asked as he hooked an arm around Took’s shoulders.
“Fine,” Took said. He let Madoc haul him back to his feet. “You know it’s maybe twelve feet from the observatory to the door? It was a bit dramatic to take the shadows.”
