“Why?” Mary asked, gently stroking her friend’s hair.
“Because we’re the ones behind the fucking bombs and the attacks,” Holly admitted. “Darius’s inner circle is the ones doing it, and they’re trying to keep it secret even in the Clan. I found out we bombed the Tenerim Den, and demanded answers—by right, an Alpha’s supposed to answer questions from the Clan.
“He told me to keep my mouth shut or he’d shut it for me,” she finished, shivering.
“I take it you didn’t,” I asked quietly, and she shook her head.
“I told someone I thought was a friend that I was going to go to Clan Council, that he couldn’t do this without the vote of the Clan,” she admitted, and I glanced questioningly at Mary.
“Fontaine are one of the largest Clans—Calgary is just one branch,” she told me. “They were founded by refugees from Ireland and have one of the most authoritarian structures of any Clan—but they also have the Clan Council that stands above the Alphas and holds authority over them.”
“Did you get to this Clan Council?” I asked, and Holly shook her head again.
“I told Mary I was being threatened,” she continued, nodding to my girlfriend. “I was planning on contacting them once I was safe, but then those...men arrived. They told me that Darius had ordered me killed for talking too much, but they were going to have some ‘fun’ first.” Her entire body shook now, and Mary pulled her closer.
“Darius is up to his neck in this mess with the Enforcers,” I said quietly, meeting Mary’s eyes. She nodded silently, holding her friend as she sobbed.
“Can you contact the Council now?” I asked Holly, who shook her head.
“The first things those fuckers did was break my phone,” she told us. “Without the protocols from it, I can’t reach them.”
We sat there in quiet for a long time, Mary holding and comforting her friend while I tried to solve our growing puzzle. Darius had his part in this plot—a seizure of power? As Speaker, he could take the Clan out of the incipient war, leave it a clash between the Enforcers and the Court.
That would leave the Court weak enough that assassination would appear to have been a likely choice. If McDonald died then, with the Clan stepped aside and the Court fighting alone, the Wizards would descend on us like a hurricane. They would probably accept Oberis’s death alone to save the Court, but that would gut us, leaving either Talus or Laurie in charge. A new Covenant would be negotiated, likely including the cabal, with the Enforcers as a power in their own right.
Even if I’d guessed the plan correctly, though, I didn’t see a way to stop it. So many gears were in motion, grinding toward catastrophe. I needed a way to slow some of them. If I could stop one or two, maybe we could bring the whole thing crashing down.
“Holly,” I asked slowly, thinking aloud. “What happens if you show up to the Speaker election and accuse Darius of all of this? Bear witness against him in public, before the Clans?”
“He’d be called to account, allowed to defend himself,” Mary said slowly.
“It’d be his word against mine,” Holly said quietly.
“In a room full of Alphas,” I reminded them. “They can’t force him to tell the truth, but they can know that you aren’t lying.”
Holly raised her head from Mary’s shoulder, brushing away tears as she looked at me.
“I know it’s a huge thing to ask,” I told her. “But we could stop him becoming Speaker at least, couldn’t we?”
“Stop him being Speaker?” she said harshly. “He ordered the murder of a Clanswoman—if he can’t prove his innocence, Clan Fontaine will tear him to shreds.”
The anger in her voice led me to suspect she wasn’t being at all metaphorical.
“The election will be at Tarvers’s funeral,” Mary said quietly, and a shiver ran down my spine.
Tarvers’s funeral would see the largest gathering of supernaturals in the city since I’d arrived. He’d been a signatory to the city’s Covenants, the voice for the shifters, a solid ally of peace—everyone had respected him. Every fae, every shifter, and most of the independent inhumans would be there. Every inhuman in the city—all five hundred-ish of us—would be gathered there.
At Tarvers’s funeral, a new Speaker would be elected for the Clans. At Tarvers’s funeral, Oberis’s deadline would run out, and he intended to ask the Clans for help in waging war upon the Tower and the Enforcers. At Tarvers’s funeral, Talus wanted to present incontrovertible proof of the vampires’ presence. Everything was gathering at that funeral, to take place before the assembled inhuman populace of the city.
“That’s going to be a big day,” I said simply. “We need to keep you safe until then, Holly.” I paused, eyeing my girlfriend. “I’d like you to stay with her, Mary,” I told her, “but I need somewhere to hide you.”
“Ask Shelly,” Mary suggested. “If she runs Talus’s properties, I bet anything she knows where there’s a safehouse or three that no one else knows anything about.”
As usual, my new girlfriend was demonstrating a better ability to think of allies than me. “You’re right,” I admitted. “Thanks.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed the lawyer’s number. She answered almost instantly.
“Hi, Jason, I was just about to call you—I’ve finished my digging for places to check out,” she told me.
“That’s good,” I said quickly. “Can I ask you a huge favor first?”
“We’re working together,” Shelly said slowly. “What do you need?”
“I have some information tied into our mess that we’re trying to deal with, and also the whole fight going on with the shifters,” I told her. “I have a young lady we need to get to the funeral to accuse certain people, but I don’t know if I can keep her safe in my place. Do you have a safehouse we can hide her in?”
“Place to hide, out of sight, concealed, guarded?” Shelly quickly reeled off the criteria.
“Only guarded if they’re people we can absolutely trust,” I said carefully.
“What do you know about goblins?” she responded.
“Goblins? They exist?” I asked, confused by the apparent change of topic.
“They’re rare. Mainly because they’re short, weak, ugly and prone to petty theft,” Shelly said bluntly. “But once they give their loyalty, they hold to it to the death. Talus rescued a Clan of them out of the Vietnam War, and they swore undying fealty to him. I don’t know if even Oberis knows they’re here, to be honest, but they are completely reliable.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“If you want to check out the sites I’ve picked out, I can swing by your place and pick up your witness,” she offered. “There’s an apartment building, much like yours, in the northeast that we bought for the goblins and they take care of for us. There are three empty units there that they keep maintained for if we need a safehouse.
“There are few safer places in the city—no one is getting into those apartments without fighting through forty or fifty goblins...all trained by Vietnam War veterans,” she said simply.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Where do you want me to check out?”
“Two places showed up when I went digging,” she explained. “There’s a hotel that was shut down a few years ago and is right by the big homeless shelter downtown. There’s also a condemned office building in the same area—the previous owners didn’t maintain it worth shit, and now it’s about ready to fall down in on itself, but that won’t bother vampires. They’re both on the east end of downtown; I’ll text you the addresses, if that helps.”