Black Spring (13 page)

I explained what Nathaniel and I had heard, how we had found Evangeline dying outside our door, how we had been unable to save her but had saved the child at her request. Throughout my narrative Lucifer showed no emotion.

When I was finished he said, “And none of you thought to investigate the area for her attacker? Did you not care that a murderer has managed to kill my fiancée in my own home?”

“We were kind of preoccupied with trying to save her and the kid,” I said, my natural inclination to defy authority reasserting itself. It wasn’t fair of Lucifer to act like we’d somehow been negligent. “Where were you, anyway? How come she was up here all alone in the first place?”

“I am not answerable to you, Granddaughter,” Lucifer said, and for a moment I felt the surge of his anger. Then he leashed it again, and I realized how tightly he held himself in check. He was saving his wrath for the culprit, and when he found whoever had killed Evangeline, there would quite literally be hell to pay.

“However,” Lucifer continued. “I will tell you that I do not know why Evangeline was here. Perhaps she wished to speak with you.”

“In the middle of the night?” I asked.

“You and your party are among only a few guests who have retired. Many others remain awake. It is not unthinkable that Evangeline would think she could approach you at this hour,” Lucifer said.

“I can’t imagine that we would have much to talk about,” I muttered, but Lucifer heard me.

“I realize you and Evangeline had quite a difficult history, but I requested that she attempt to make amends with you for my sake,” Lucifer said. “After all, you are both precious to me. She may have decided not to wait until tomorrow.”

“Or maybe it had nothing to do with me at all,” I said. I started to say, “Maybe she was meeting someone else,” but didn’t think that would sound too good.

It implied that either she was cheating on Lucifer (unlikely) or she was up to some nefarious plot, and I don’t think Lucifer would believe his darling Evangeline capable of such a thing.

He seemed oddly naïve about her. Evangeline would never in a million years have shown up in the middle of the night to apologize to me. She might have come looking for me to threaten me, or to make sure I understood the order of things now that she was to marry Lucifer. But to “make amends”? Never.

I’m not sure I would have accepted her apology in any case. I tend to get unreasonable when people try to possess me from beyond the grave and use me as a tool of their will.

“Whatever she was doing here, someone took advantage and murdered her,” Lucifer said. “I intend to find that person and punish them.”

“How are you going to do that?” I said. “There are dozens of guests here. You have servants and whoever else normally lives with you. Plus, most of the creatures you invited to your wedding are magical and know very well how to hide their tracks.”

“But not from me,” another voice said.

My eyebrows rose to my hairline as Puck appeared behind his brother. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Your room isn’t on this floor.”

“Not happy to see me, niece?” Puck said, but the merriment that usually danced in his eyes was banked.

“Why would I be?” I said. Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it in warning.

Puck ignored me and turned to Lucifer. “As you know, I can see into the past. There will be no need to interrogate the entire household. I can show you what happened and you will be able to identify the culprit.”

“How can you do that?” Jude asked.

“With a wave of my hand and some pixie dust,” Puck said offhandedly. “How it works is really none of your business. But the fact remains that I can do it.”

“Yes, he can,” I said, thinking of the way Puck had “animated” the lost tribe on that faraway planet, a race of faerie dead for centuries. “He can show the past, but he can also manipulate it.”

“How do we know that you will not show Lucifer some trick?” Nathaniel asked. “You could use this as an opportunity to present an enemy of yours in a bad light.”

“Worried I’ll put my own offspring on the chopping block, dear boy?” Puck said.

“You’ve done it before,” I replied. He’d killed Bendith, Nathaniel’s half brother, just to set me up for the fall. He knew I would have to get rid of Titania, Bendith’s mother, whose rage knew no bounds. And because I had killed her to defend myself, he was now free from the chains that had bound him to the Faerie queen for centuries.

I knew Puck was angry that I had “ruined” Nathaniel, whom he had designed as a kind of walking time bomb to assassinate Lucifer at some future point. This would be the perfect opportunity for Puck to clear the board of me or Nathaniel or both.

I turned to Lucifer. “He can show you the past, but I wouldn’t necessarily trust it.”

“I know quite well what my brother is capable of,” Lucifer said, his voice cold as winter. “You and Nathaniel have nothing to fear as long as you have done no wrong.”

That wasn’t true. Titania hadn’t believed a word I’d said despite my protestations that I’d had nothing to do with Bendith’s death. The murder looked like I could have committed it, and I was on the spot when it happened. Therefore it was my fault.

Now Evangeline was dead outside my door, and I was covered in her blood. No matter what Puck showed us, I had a feeling things were not going to end well for me. Somehow I was always blamed when things started to go wrong.

Puck waved us away from Evangeline’s body. We all moved to one side, even Lucifer. Puck held his hands over her for a moment, murmuring quietly.

At first nothing seemed to be happening. Jude shifted restlessly against the wall, his nose sniffing the air.

“What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I can’t tell. It may be the shifter.”

“Silence,” Lucifer said, and Jude and I ceased our whispering.

Then, suddenly, Evangeline seemed to rise a few inches from the floor. Everything that had occurred in the hallway happened in reverse, as real as if we were watching a live performance. We saw Nathaniel remove the baby (which looked even more horrible the second time around), saw me cut Evangeline’s stomach open (also not particularly pleasant on review). Since the “film” was running backward, it looked like we all went into our bedrooms instead of coming out of them, and Evangeline crawled the wrong way down the hallway, away from our doors. At the end of the hallway, near the windows, Evangeline came to her feet.

A second figure materialized in the frame. Someone in a dark cloak stabbed her, a shiny silver knife sliding into her chest over and over. Evangeline struggled, throwing her arms out. The figure stepped away from her, back into the shadows. Just before the figure disappeared, the face under the hood turned toward our end of the hallway.

It was my face under the hood.

Of course it was.

I sighed. “Seriously. You could have predicted that would happen.”

I expected Lucifer to dismiss what he had seen out of hand, or turn on Puck and accuse him of manipulating the memory of what had happened here. But he did neither of those things. Instead, he turned on me with a look so cold and frightening that I took a step back.

“I thought you did protest too much, Granddaughter,” Lucifer said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You believe all that? You think I killed Evangeline? Why? I have enough aggravation without adding on a murder rap.”

“We all witnessed it,” Lucifer said. “My eyes have told me the truth.”

“Your eyes have lied to you, or he has,” I said, pointing at Puck.

Puck shook his head. He looked at me with speculation and, I thought, surprise. “I have done nothing to change what happened here, niece.”

“And you believe him?” I said to Lucifer. “You do know what he’s been up to for the last few months, don’t you?”

“Puck cannot lie to me,” Lucifer said.

“Since when?” I said.

“Since always,” Puck said. “We cannot speak or show falsehoods to one another. It is a price of our magic.”

“Madeline could not have done this,” Nathaniel said. “She was with me for the duration of the evening. She never left the bedroom.”

“We are all aware that you would lie for Madeline,” Lucifer said. “It is the natural instinct of the protector.”

“Yeah, and how did I get in and out of the bedroom without anyone seeing?” I asked.

“There are paths in these walls, just as in Amarantha’s home,” Lucifer said. “And you discovered those easily enough.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “Just how closely do you watch me?”

“Closely enough,” Lucifer said.

“Then you should know I didn’t kill Evangeline,” I said.

“I was not watching earlier this evening,” Lucifer said smoothly. “I had guests to attend to.”

“It was the shifter,” Jude said. I could tell that he was strongly resisting the urge to pick a fight with Lucifer. He had a grudge against the Morningstar to begin with, and now Lucifer was casting aspersions on my character.

“Damn right,” I said. “And it framed me for the third time.”

“What shifter do you speak of?” Lucifer asked.

Nathaniel, Jude and I fell over one another trying to explain about the shifter and what it had been up to—how it had slaughtered one of the Retrievers, how it had murdered Chloe, how it had betrayed and hunted Jude’s pack.

Lucifer listened, his expression unchanged. “And you say this creature is something created by Alerian? How is it I have not heard of it if this shapeshifter was formed to fight me and my armies?”

“Daharan said that he made Alerian destroy the creatures. I don’t know why you never heard about them. You can take it up with Daharan and Alerian,” I said. “And Alerian claims that the current iteration has nothing to do with him.”

Lucifer appeared deep in thought, brooding. He snapped his fingers and another servant appeared at the end of the hall.

“How does that work?” I said. “Do they lurk just out of sight or do you have little portals for them to use to walk through the walls?”

My grandfather only gave me another icy glare. It was shocking that he was taking all this so seriously. Not Evangeline’s death—of course he would take that seriously, especially if he truly loved her as much as he seemed to. But I couldn’t believe he was actually considering the possibility that I had been the one to harm her.

He told the magically appearing servant to fetch Alerian. He also gave instructions for the removal of Evangeline’s body and the cleanup of the hallway. A second servant appeared while he was speaking to the first.

“Search Madeline’s room for a black cloak or a large knife,” Lucifer said.

My indignation was growing by the minute. “There won’t be anything in there. And even if there is something in there, do you know how freaking easy it is to plant a murder weapon? Don’t you ever watch TV?”

“No,” Lucifer said shortly.

“Well, Beezle watches a ton of it, and I’ve picked some stuff up by osmosis over the years,” I said.

“Again, the protestations,” Lucifer said, his voice silky. “As I said, you will have nothing to worry about if you have actually done nothing.”

“I
have
done nothing, and yet I’m still getting worried,” I said. “Because you’re obstinately refusing to listen to reason.”

Lucifer turned on me then, his eyes blazing like the sun. “I am still master in my own house, Granddaughter. Whatever leniency I had allowed you in the past will not be considered if you are Evangeline’s killer. My justice will be swift and absolute.”

I covered my stomach with my hands, an unconscious gesture that drew Lucifer’s gaze there.

“My grandson will not be harmed, of course,” he said. “But you will certainly suffer.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “It sounds like you’ve already decided.”

He turned his back on me then, saying nothing.

I knew I shouldn’t have come to this damned wedding. I should have stayed at home and taken whatever consequences came with ignoring Lucifer’s invitation. Anything would be better than being trapped in his house, at his mercy.

The only way we would get out of here was if Nathaniel and I joined our powers and blasted the whole place into oblivion. And even then it was a certainty that Lucifer and Alerian and Puck would put aside their differences to stop us. The resulting boom would probably look a lot like a nuclear apocalypse, and a lot of innocent people would be killed in the process. Lucifer might not care about those innocents, but I did.

It came as no surprise when Lucifer’s flunky emerged from my bedroom holding a bloody cloak and a knife covered in rust-colored stains.

“I’m being railroaded,” I said to Nathaniel as Lucifer turned to me in triumph, the cloak and knife clutched in his fists. I felt strangely dazed about the whole thing. It seemed as if it had all been planned from the start.

“You certainly are,” Nathaniel replied.

Through the haze of my bewilderment I became aware of something. Nathaniel was angry. He was very, very angry. The connection between us was choked with his rage. He kept such a leash on his emotions that I was almost never aware of him and our connection. But now I felt it acutely.

I took his hand, forced him to look at me before he did anything foolish.

“Don’t,” I said. “I’m already in trouble. Don’t give him an excuse to hurt you, too.”

His eyes were brilliant blue in his fury. “Do not ask me to stand by and watch harm come to you.”

Puck watched us with avid interest. “And what will you do to prevent it, my son? The evidence points in one direction only—toward Madeline.”

“Quite conveniently. We are all very well aware that Madeline would not and could not have murdered Evangeline,” Nathaniel said through his teeth. “Lucifer is allowing this farce to continue for reasons of his own. I know what you wish to do with Madeline.”

“At the moment I wish her in a cell,” Lucifer said. “Which is where she will go, to be held until the court of the Grigori can be assembled for her trial.”

Samiel looked at me in panic. He’d been captured by Lucifer’s men and held once before. I’d intervened on his behalf and ended up as Lucifer’s Hound of the Hunt. The outcome had been better than Samiel’s execution, but had saddled me with another connection to Lucifer. No matter what was decided at this trial, Lucifer would get something he wanted out of it. Lucifer always got something he wanted out of every situation.

“You haven’t asked Alerian about the shifter yet,” I said. “Wait until your brother gets here before you decide to lock me up for no damned reason.”

Alerian appeared at that very moment, silently entering the hallway.

“Waiting for your big entrance?” I said.

He did not dignify my remark with a response. Instead, he looked at Lucifer with no small amount of resentment. “You requested my presence?”

It was pretty clear that Alerian didn’t think much of Lucifer’s request.

“Yes,” Lucifer said, passing the “evidence” back to his servant and waving him away, along with anyone else hanging around. “What do you know of this shapeshifter that Madeline claims has been lately in Chicago, and now here?”

“I know nothing of this creature,” Alerian said calmly.

“I thought you couldn’t lie to one another,” I said.

“I am not lying,” Alerian said, narrowing his eyes at me. The sound of the ocean crashed inside my head. Every time Alerian got angry with me, I felt like I was about to drown in some metaphorical sea.

“If you’re not lying, then you’re definitely parsing the question,” I said. “You know something about this kind of shifter in a general, if not specific, sense. Especially since it’s your personal Frankenstein’s monster.”

“I answered the question my brother asked,” Alerian said.

“Ask him more directly,” I told Lucifer.

“I do not take orders from you, my granddaughter. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. You are beholden to me and my will, as my Hound of the Hunt.”

The implications were clear. Because I carried this curse as Lucifer’s Hound, he could make me do whatever he damned well pleased. And that meant that if he ordered me into a cage and told me to stay there, I would have to do it. I’d been afraid for a long time that it would come to this, and now it finally had.

The second implication was that he would not challenge Alerian, or make him answer any further questions. Lucifer was steering this event so that he would get the outcome he wanted. All that remained for the rest of us was to wait.

The only people left in the hallway were my group—Nathaniel, Samiel, Jude, Beezle and myself—and the three brothers.

And Evangeline, whose body had been left in the middle of the floor like an accusation.

“Don’t you want to cover her with a sheet or something?” I said to Lucifer.

“Cannot bear to see the evidence of your crime?” Lucifer asked.

“No, I just think it’s unseemly to leave her out in the open like that, all carved up,” I said. “You were going to marry her. You’d think you would have more respect for her remains.”

Lucifer reached for me then. I don’t know what he would have done—slapped me or grabbed me or just put his hand on my chin—but Nathaniel stepped in front of me before he could do it.

“Do not touch her,” he said. His voice vibrated with an intensity I’d never heard before.

Nathaniel had always been the one who counseled calm, who recommended the wisest course. He always kept a lid on his feelings. He was always impatient when I lost my temper, or when I defied a being much older and more powerful than I.

Now he was facing down Lucifer, practically chin to chin. Lucifer had finally crossed some line that Nathaniel would not tolerate.

Or maybe it was just that he really, truly loved me. But my head was already on the chopping block, and I didn’t want his there, too.

“Nathaniel,” I said, taking his face and turning it toward mine. “Don’t. Don’t do something that can’t be undone.”

His anger was a palpable thing. I was shocked that Lucifer hadn’t struck Nathaniel down for insubordinate behavior already.

Nathaniel’s eyes searched mine. I wished desperately for the ability to read his mind, and for him to see into my own thoughts. Everyone in the hallway was watching us with varying levels of concern and curiosity.

Lucifer had taken a step away from us. He was probably calculating how to turn this to his advantage, but I didn’t care. I needed Nathaniel to know that it was not acceptable to me if he died defending me from Lucifer’s wrath. I would not go through that again. I would not watch someone else stand in the path of a sword meant for me.

There was only one way I could show him without speaking, and so I kissed him.

I am not usually a fan of public displays of affection, especially when I am being so closely observed. But if Nathaniel and I were physically joined, it tended to strengthen the emotional bond formed by our magic. So I kissed him, and I poured all of the things I could not say into that kiss. I told him that I cared, that I needed to protect him as much as he needed to protect me.

In that kiss I felt his love, his anger, his frustration and, finally, his resignation. He would not challenge Lucifer. For now.

I pulled away from him, put my mouth close to his ear. Everyone except Samiel and Beezle could probably hear us anyway, but I wanted at least the illusion of privacy.

“I’ll need you to get me out,” I said.

He nodded, though his anger had merely been banked, not eliminated.

Then I moved away from Nathaniel and toward Lucifer. “All right,” I said. “Arrest me, since that’s what you obviously want.”

“No,” Jude said, and Samiel shook his head rapidly. Beezle watched me carefully. I couldn’t tell whether he approved or not. I know Nathaniel didn’t.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What game do you play now, Granddaughter? First you proclaim loudly to have nothing to do with Evangeline’s death, and now you quietly permit me to lock you away?”

“I did have nothing to do with Evangeline’s death,” I said. “And I’ll be proven right. In the meantime, you can stop wasting everyone’s time with this farce.”

Puck looked at me like he was trying to figure me out. “I cannot tell if you are being very wise or very foolish.”

I shrugged in what I hoped was a mysterious fashion. Let Puck and Lucifer try to fathom my motivations for a change.

“I am certainly not going to allow the opportunity to imprison my fiancée’s murderer to pass,” Lucifer said. “Particularly not if you are going to be cooperative for a change.”

He snapped his fingers, and for the third time two servants appeared. I didn’t know whether he could communicate with them telepathically or what, but these two appeared to be just what the doctor ordered—big, burly characters that looked like prison guards.

For a moment I thought Nathaniel would not go along with my half-assed plan. The sight of the two men flanking me seemed like it might be too much for him to take. But he stayed in control.

Outwardly, I did the same as the two guards led me away from the scene in the hallway. Inwardly, I was trembling. I hoped that I was making the right decision.