“Are you in the Conclave?” Lexi asks. “You must be, to have this level of knowledge.”
Crankshawe shakes her head. “No. No I'm not. I’ve downplayed my power and sat on the sidelines. I can do more good on the edge of that society, rather than in the center.”
Right. I can’t stop myself from sneering. “That seems like a chicken-shit answer. You’re complicit by your in-action.”
A hand rests on my arm. “Settle, Max.”
I shake my head and look out the dark window. “What’s that Einstein quote, Lex? The world will burn not because of evil people, but because of the ones who don’t try to stop them?”
Of course he can’t handle my paraphrasing and has to correct me. "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
I hear a click of the tongue and turn back to see Crankshawe looking mega-frustrated. “Before you decide I’m being willingly blind, take a moment to consider my situation. If my brother suspected my sympathies, he’d have me bound under his sigil in a flash; then I’d be useless. It’s impossible to free yourself from an Elite binding.”
Alexis looks down at his knuckles, and flexes them.
“But I have not been apathetic,” Crankshawe continues, showing us some indignation. “For years, I’ve kept Thomas under a Cord of Compulsion spell.”
I raise an eyebrow at my cousin.
“Consanguineous Compulsion,” he tells me, not that it clears anything up. “A subtle spell that works best between siblings. The recipient always has the urge to share personal secrets with their brother or sister.”
The dean grimaces, as she grips the edge of her desk. “It has been…a trial, but it’s worth it to keep an eye on the Conclave’s progress. I’ve stayed one step ahead while keeping in the shadows.”
She looks at Alexis. “But the spell broke. A few weeks ago, I sat across from him and asked about something Conclave-related and he didn't answer. Just looked at me, and for a second, it almost seemed as though his pupils turned into swirling pits of that oily black smoke."
Alexis shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Because he ‘ascended’ as the Conclave call it.”
She shudders. “Now he’s filled with rotandhe’s immune to my magic.”
Fucker. “You realize a child had to be tortured, maybe killed for him to have that power?” I lean back on the chair and think about all the ways I can kill Thomas Crankshawe.
Her voice cracks. “I know. He’s always been a bad person, but now he’s irredeemable. And I’ve lost my advantage.” She moves her gaze from me to my cousin. “It’s the reason I decided to expose myself to you, Alexis. I trust you, and, I guess, reluctantly, Maximus.”
Aww, she trusts me!
“Don’t worry, Larissa,” I say, trying out her first name to see how that lands. “You’ve got Team Sparkles at your back now.”
“Max!” Alexis hisses.
Oh yeah, probably keep that under wraps.
I touch a throbbing finger to my forehead in a salute. “So, lay it out for us. We need to know everything.”
It turns out, for all her big words, she doesn’t have much more information than we’ve already gathered. I tick off what she says on my fingers.
“Secret bunker under the building site, check.”
“Using child-witches as batteries to store the whack energy, like a whole Matrix thing, check.”
“They want AUA’s because the Harts think they’ll be the ace-in-the-hole conduit, check.”
“Conclave wants to take over the whole world…er, kind of check?”
I look at Alexis.
“It’s an obvious progression of where they are headed,” he says.
Fine. “Check, then.”
