Silver-Tongued Devil (38 page)

“That proves nothing,” the Queen said. “The damning evidence Alexis has presented combined with your notorious history of violence and your record of aggression toward both the Despina and the High Councilman…”

She trailed off as Rhea came forward, as if in a trance. My mentor’s eyes were glued to the exact same space on the picture as my own. She pointed slowly to the screen. “It can’t be,” she whispered. Her eyes moved restlessly between the image and me as her mind pulled all the pieces together. Then, suddenly, she looked at me. The same horrible conclusion I’d already come to darkened her gaze.

“Rhea?” the Queen said, her voice shrill.

She turned slowly to the Queen. “Your Benevolence, Sabina is telling the truth. She is not the culprit of any of the crimes for which she’s been accused this night.”

“Sabina,” Giguhl said, running up to me. “Is it really possible?”

I took a deep breath and grabbed his claw for support. “We need to find her.”

Alexis snorted. “What scheme are you concocting now—”

“Shut the fuck up, Alexis,” Giguhl snapped. “Sabina is not the killer.”

“Who—” the Queen began, but Rhea cut her off, completely disregarding all protocol.

“Tell them,” Rhea said to me, as if she couldn’t stomach being the one to say it out loud.

I took a deep breath, but it did little to ease the pressure building in my chest, threatening to consume me. “The real killer is my sister, Maisie Graecus.”

33

W
hile the chaos exploded around us, Rhea, Giguhl, and I stared at each other, trying to wrap our minds around the horrible rift the revelation ripped through our lives.

I tried to piece everything together. Tried to sort through my scattered memories of the last few weeks. To look for clues I should have seen. But I couldn’t figure out what would cause Maisie to perform such uncharacteristic violence. She’d not been herself for months, but she never showed any signs that she was capable of murder. Or had she?

Obviously, she must have. No one makes such a one-eighty personality reversal without some signs. So I guess the real question was, how could I have missed something this huge?

But I knew if I allowed myself to ponder the whys, I’d never have the nerve to see this through to the end. So I sucked in a breath, shoved my feelings way deep down into the shadowy place where I kept my fears, and started barking orders.

“Alexis, you go with a few guards and make sure the grounds are secure. Rhea, we’re going to her studio.”

“Wait just a min—” the Queen began, offended that she wasn’t the one calling the shots.

“Look, I don’t have time to argue with you,” I said, my tone hard. “We’re going to find Maisie. You can punish me later.”

Rhea threw her arms around Giguhl and me. “I’ll flash us up there.”

The magic rose quickly, surrounding us in a wall of static. The last thing I saw before we flashed out was the Queen turning to tell her guards to follow us on foot. Two seconds later, we rematerialized in the hallway outside the Star Chamber.

“Be careful,” Rhea warned. “It might be warded.”

I nodded and stepped forward to test the wooden panel. But when my fingers brushed it and nothing happened, I pressed my ear to the door. Frowning, I turned to the others. “It’s quiet.”

I reached down to turn the knob but found it locked. Since this was Maisie’s private studio, she’d had a dead bolt installed to keep unwanted guests out. I’d kicked in my share of doors in the past, but I needed to be ready for anything once it burst open. Luckily, I had my very own demonic battering ram.

I turned to Giguhl. “All right, tough guy,” I said, patting him on his massive bicep. “Break it down.”

The demon smiled in anticipation and cracked the knuckles of his claws. “Stand back, ladies.” He ran at the door with his head down like a charging bull. Before I could warn him that method was a great way to dislocate his shoulder, he slammed into the wood. The frame splintered and cracked off its hinges. His momentum carried him into the room. Two seconds later a loud crash echoed into the hall, followed by a groan.

“Giguhl,” I called, running after him. I skidded to a halt when I saw the demon tangled up in pile of wood shards and canvas.

“Oops,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “Guess I underestimated my own power.”

I held out a hand to help him up, my eyes doing a quick scan of the space. Because the Star Chamber was built in one of the manor’s round towers, the room had curved walls. High above, the ceiling was painted blue with silver leaf constellations. In the center of the floor, a large worktable was scattered with paint tubes, brushes of every size, and cans of turpentine. The solvent’s sharp, penetrating odor permeated the air.

But it didn’t disguise the scent of blood.

I rounded the large table and froze. Behind me, Giguhl cursed and Rhea gasped. The bodies lay in thick, oily pools of blood and gore. My head swam from the overpowering stench of dirty, coppery blood and sandalwood. Counting the bodies took three tries. I didn’t breathe again until I was sure there were only four. I hated to feel relieved not to see Adam among the carnage. I knew each of those Pythian Guards. They had families and friends who would mourn them. I would mourn them, too, once I was sure my sister hadn’t also murdered the man I loved.

Rhea rushed forward to check for signs of life. I didn’t say anything, but I knew she wouldn’t find a pulse among them. Finally, she stood, her expression stoic and her skin pale. “Dead. All of them.”

I acknowledged this with a curt nod. “Spread out.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” Giguhl asked.

“Evidence that will lead us to Adam. And anything that can explain why the fuck she’s suddenly turned into Lizzie Borden.”

We dispersed, each heading to a different area. The last time I’d been in the Star Chamber was when I found the canvas left by Lavinia with the word “checkmate” written in blood. She’d left it for me to find after she’d kidnapped Maisie. Now, just a few months later, Lavinia was dead and Maisie was a killer.

Lavinia’s canvas was gone, but other works of art filled the space. Ranging in size from small pieces of painted paper to huge canvases on easels, they represented the manifestations of my sister’s subconscious.

Before Maisie had lost her mind, the paintings had a sort of Chagall dreaminess to them—lots of swirling colors and fantastical images. But now, every canvas I saw looked like evidence one might gather for a commitment hearing. Monstrous forms with sharp teeth and claws. Daggers and guns and other weapons. Lots of red slashing through every picture like blood spatter at a crime scene. No wonder Maisie hadn’t allowed anyone in the room. One look at these canvases and there’d have been little doubt my sister had completely lost her fragile grip on sanity.

A small canvas near the window caught my eye. I frowned and approached it, my palms sweaty. Giguhl came up next to me, his claw on my arm, as if the contact would protect both of us from whatever dark magic waited on the canvas.

The image was about the size of a hardback book. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the odd technique Maisie had used to render the image. From far away, the shapes came together to form something resembling a male face. The features seemed to be carelessly tossed across the bone structure, leaving individual elements to lie in unorthodox spots. The nose, for example, appeared where an ear should be. The eyes and mouth were reversed.

I moved closer and noticed that in addition to the decidedly Picassoesque composition, the image was composed of thousands of tiny dots. I wracked my brain for the art term for the technique. Pointillism? Yes, only creepier than any Seurat I’d ever seen. In the eyes, the dots of blue and yellow butted against each other so that when you backed up they combined to form vibrant green.

Despite the unorthodox composition that fractured the features, the green eyes and the thousands of bloodred dots that formed the hair told me whose face this was.

But it was a detail higher up on the image that made clammy fear spread across my skin. On top of Cain’s head, Maisie had painted two large, red antlers.

I looked up slowly, my heart thudding in my chest. “It’s Cain.”

Rhea frowned. “How do you know that?”

“He’s visited me in my dreams, remember?” Pointing a finger to the horns, I said, “Just as I suspect he’s visited Maisie’s.”

Rhea frowned and came in for a closer look. “Cain is the white stag?”

I started to respond, but another grouping of canvases across the room caught my eyes. “Shit,” I breathed. Raising a hand, I pointed them out to Rhea and Giguhl. It appeared my sister was building herself quite the themed art show. The title of these particular images might be something like
Murder: A Retrospective
.

They were all there. The human’s broken body hanging out of the garbage. The mage suspended from hooks like a side of beef. The twin to the glove we’d found at the Vein crime scene was pinned to the canvas’s upper corner.

But it was the last piece of art that made bile rise. It was a triptych. On the left, Orpheus bent over the table in a puddle of black. On the right, Tanith exploding like a supernova. And in the center…

I wiped the sting from my eyes and forced myself to look at it. Really look. Because in the center, my twin had painted Adam. His golden head hung low over his chest, but there was no mistaking the Hekate’s Wheel just under his navel. Worse, his body was strung up and covered in angry red slashes and bite marks.

“Gods, Sabina,” Giguhl said. “We’ve got to find him.”

“If it’s not already too late,” Rhea said in a dead tone.

“It’s not too late. We’ll find him.” But tears sprung to my eyes even as the denial burst from my lips.

In the next instant, magic rippled through the room. I ducked down, prepared for attack. Giguhl and Rhea put their backs to mine, forming a defensive circle. But no blows—magical or mundane—came at us.

Instead, a female voice began humming from somewhere across the room. My gut went cold. The sound seemed to come from behind a massive canvas. The position of the easel it rested on blocked our view of the person standing behind it. But I knew it was
her
.

My sister had finally decided to join the party.

“Maisie?” The humming continued as if I hadn’t called out.

I flagged down Giguhl and pointed for him to approach from one side while I would take the other. To Rhea, I held out a palm, telling her to stay put.

“Maze?” With careful steps, I picked my way across the floor, past the bodies of the four dead mages, and toward the right-hand side of the canvas. When I came around it, I gasped.

Maisie was nude. Her right hand gripped a large paintbrush soaked with crimson, which she methodically scraped back and forth across the painting. More red—paint or blood?—streaked like wounds across her torso.

To distract myself from the panic rising like vomit in my throat, I looked up at the image she was defacing. The painting was one of the few left over from Maisie’s pre-trauma days. She’d originally shown it to me just after my vision quest. The one where I found out I was a Chthonic.

The image showed a female that Maisie claimed was me flying through the night above a garden. The painting was supposed to prove I was the prophesized “New Lilith” who would unite all the dark races. Rhea believed that our victory in New Orleans, where members of all the dark races fought with me to defeat Lavinia and the Caste of Nod, was proof of that prophecy but I still wasn’t convinced. After all, tonight’s drama had thoroughly destroyed any chance at peace.

“Maisie, honey?” I said, taking a cautious step toward her. Her eyes stayed on her task; her mouth continued to hum. “What are you doing?”

No answer.

“Adam?” Rhea called, her voice panicked.

“Adam isn’t invited to this party,” Maisie said in a voice that chilled me to my marrow. If monotone can sound evil, this did. “He’s been a bad boy.”

My heart thumped like a fist against a door. “What did you do to him?”

The brush went back and forth, back and forth. “He needed to be punished for touching what belongs to another,” she said in the same dead tone. “It’s part of the plan.”

My mouth went dry with fear. “If you hurt him, I’ll—”

“Shh,” she said. “It’s the plan.” Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Faster now, harder. “He said I had to follow the plan.”

“Who did?” But I already knew.

“He who kills to get gain.”

“Maisie? Look at me.” Her eyes stayed glued to the canvas. Now her restless side-to-side brushstrokes were harder, bowing the canvas in on itself. “Did you kill Orpheus and Tanith?”

The brush stilled. Her breathing went shallow until she was panting. Her body began rocking back and forth now. She lifted the brush like a dagger. With a hard downward stroke, she stabbed the brush into the female figure flying through the night sky. Her arm reared back and stabbed again, again, again. Each thrust stronger than the last until, finally, the brush broke through the canvas with a loud rip.

But still, the hand stabbed. Still, my twin rocked. Still, she panted like an animal.

I leapt at her, grabbing her wrist in a punishing grip and forcing her to stop. “Stop,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please stop, Maisie.”

As she fought me, my sister looked up at me with dark, haunted eyes. When she spoke, her voice was no longer her own. It was deeper, echoed, sinister. “Maisie’s not here anymore.”

Magic slammed through the room. It sizzled past my skin, followed by a hot wind. Maisie’s body collapsed in my arms like someone had flipped her off switch.

I looked up, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. Rhea stood just on the other side of the canvas. She rubbed her hands together, as if to release excess energy. Her expression was as solemn as a dirge.

“Thanks,” I said quietly.

I was so scared I wanted to vomit. Scared for Maisie. Scared for Adam. Scared for all of us. Whatever magic Cain had woven around my sister’s fragile mind was blacker than midnight. I could feel it on her skin. Smell it in the sour sweat coating her body. Hear it echoing in the words she’d spoken.