I took a deep breath before I said, “I think that can be taken care of.”
All eyes turned to me. Cameron’s gleamed and he nearly smiled. “He said you could do it.”
I cut my eyes away from them, not wanting to meet the gazes of two vampires or even Sarah’s half-hopeful stare. “I’m not certain, but I believe I have the resources. There is one problem—well, two, really. The Pharaohn can’t know it’s happened, so we need to divert his attention, convince him that even if Carlos is free, he’s no friend of Edward’s and more likely to do as Wygan wants.”
“Why?” Sarah asked. “Why would Wygan want Carlos to do anything for him? And why would Carlos do it?”
“I don’t know the details, but I’ve been told that the Pharaohn will have to call and trap the Guardian in some kind of spell before he can . . . kill it, I suppose. He can’t do it himself since he means to take its place—or maybe the process is too complicated for him alone, I don’t know—and he needs the . . . elements, I guess you’d say, that led him to this stage: Edward seems to be one of those. Carlos is the only dark mage powerful and near enough to do the work. If he’s become Edward’s friend, he would refuse the Pharaohn’s request. We don’t stand a chance of stopping the creep if he thinks we have the ability to oppose him, to hell with the drive. So long as he thinks we’re all his tools or too weak and divided to stop him, we might stand a chance. He is an arrogant bastard, and I think that’s the only viable weakness to attack him through. We may have to get very close to the endgame before we can destroy his plans. He’ll have to believe we are at his mercy, distracted, naive, or too weak to stop him until it’s too late.”
They all nodded, which made me feel giddy with nausea. I was making plans with vampires to save the world from monsters even worse than they were.
“For this to work, there has to be someone . . .” I continued, but I couldn’t finish; my head was too noisy and my throat clogged with disgust and inarticulate horror. I had to bite my lip to hold back the urge to throw up or start screaming. The emotionless separation I’d experienced before hovered near the back of my head, but even that didn’t pull me away from the loathing I felt at what I was saying.
“There has to be a new Prince ready to lay claim to the city,” Gwen finished. “It will not be Carlos and it cannot be Ned. It must be someone strong enough, but not of concern to the Pharaohn. Someone he discounts . . .” She looked at Cameron. “You.”
Cameron reared back, recoiling from the idea. “I’m no one. The rest of them would tear me apart—I’m a child to them. I have no power, no influence. Without Edward to protect me, and Carlos to teach me, I’d already be dead. And I can’t front for Carlos.” He made an angry gesture, pointing into the north and then chopping downward. “He doesn’t want the job, and as a figurehead to a reluctant Prince, I’m still nothing but dog meat. I don’t know enough to keep this pack of animals in line, even if I could convince them I had Carlos or Edward behind me.”
Gwen began laughing, a sound both musical and menacing. She clapped her hands, tossing her hair back and jumping to her feet in excitement. “Oh, but I do!”
She danced around the room, laughing and talking in spurts. “No one worries about poor, silly little Gwen. No one is afraid of sad, stupid little Gwen. They talk and talk and never guard their tongues; they never hide their dirty little secrets and nasty little plans. And I know them all. I know them all! But they’d never let me be Prince—no, no, not Lady Gwendolyn who couldn’t slay anyone, who could never beat a necromancer like Carlos in a battle. But Cameron of Edward? Oh, yes! Cameron who studied at Carlos’s knee? Oh, yes!” She threw herself down on the floor in front of Cameron, ignoring me, and reached up to grab his hand. “My Prince, dear Prince, say yes! I’ll be your hidden consort and I’ll whisper in your ear. I’ll tell you everything and they’ll all cower like dogs and wonder how you know. Take pity on me, poor, sad little thing that I am, the last of Ned’s sorry, sorry mistakes, your warm sister’s cold friend, an ineffectual nobody whom no one will suspect.”
He pulled his hand away from her, startled and appalled by Gwen’s outburst. “It’s crazy!” He glanced at Sarah and then at me. “I’m still no one, doubly no one with you as my only supporter. I’d have to have Carlos’s backing at the very least, and I’m only his student!”
Sarah gave a “don’t look at me” shake of her head. I didn’t have a chance to say anything before Gwen chimed in again.
“Then defeat him! If you beat Carlos in some combat or contest, then he’s your vassal. He has to support you, but he doesn’t have to support Edward!”
“Me? Beat Carlos at . . . anything? Impossible.”
“Not if Carlos throws the fight.”
Cam and his sister stared at Gwen in dumbfounded silence.
But I nodded, further thinking aloud. “Which, I think, is exactly what he means to do. He said you needed a talking-to . . . that we needed a diversion and commitment to show Wygan. . . . Not a commitment to the Pharaohn, because he wouldn’t believe that, but against—or at least not in favor of—Edward. I’m not sure this is exactly what he meant, but it could work. . . .”
Cameron still looked a bit unsure. “He said something like that, but I thought it was insane.”
Gwen smiled at me and it flipped my stomach over cold. Then she turned back to Cameron. “If you and Carlos have a public falling-out about Ned and who’s going to hold power while he’s missing, that’s not a move against him on Carlos’s part. If you come to blows and Carlos loses—even for a ridiculous reason—no one else would want to challenge you after that. The city would be yours! And the Pharaohn will believe Carlos is on his side if only to harm you and Ned.” Her eyes gleamed dreadful red. “Then Carlos can get close to the Pharaohn and destroy him. Before he can take the Guardian’s place. It will work. It will.”
I felt a little less sanguine about it but confined my comments to saying, “Now we just have to figure out the timing of everything else.”
Cameron looked at the rest of us, his expression hardening from dismay and incredulity to cold determination. “Tomorrow.” He gave me a hard look. “You’ll have to get to Carlos immediately—now!” He glared at Gwen and Sarah. “And we’ll have to start agitating tonight so it will look as if Carlos is coming after me as soon as word reached him.” He checked his watch—an expensively understated thing. “We can get to the After Dark by eleven if we leave now.” He glanced back to me, as if he heard the objection forming on my tongue. “It has to be now. Enough time’s slipped by us already, and the longer we wait, the closer Wygan gets to his goals. Our activity tonight will help mask yours, but there’s no margin for error. I can see you’re tired, that things are falling apart for you, but all the better reason to move as soon as possible. I’ll work out the details and send you the plan for tomorrow by e-mail.”
Then he paused, a moment’s uncertainty crossing his face. “I owe you my life—such as it is. I can’t give that back, but . . . maybe I can return the favor. The longer we wait, the less likely that becomes.”
Cameron stood up in a sudden fluid movement, pulling Gwen with him to her feet and holding his other hand out to his sister. “Come on, then.”
There was a flurry of grabbing coats against the summer’s moist night wind—vampires don’t need coats, but they do need camouflage—before Cameron herded us all out the door. He paused to give me one more odd look as Sarah and Gwen went down the hall. “Be careful, Harper.”
“If I were careful, we never would have met.”
He only gave me a sardonic smile in return and followed the women.
I called Quinton on my way to pick up the Rover and left him an undetailed update on my situation. I mentioned Will’s appearance and told him to keep an eye on the monitors for anything else that might lurk in the urban jungle nearby. I didn’t tell him exactly what I was going to do. In theory the line was clean, but I felt paranoid enough to speak in generalities and hope he would fill in the blanks.