As if to punctuate the statement, the Faerie in the circle screamed, features distorting. A guttural, male scream, cutting right to the core.
Maggie backed up further, and shot me a winning smile.
“Yes!” Evan said.
Green Eyes hissed, and Maggie practically jumped out of her skin. She jumped even more as Green Eyes snapped.
“No!” Evan said.
“Maybe don’t bite the allies,” the first Satyr said.
“Agreed,” Maggie agreed.
The other practitioners were moving. Reorganizing. Getting implements out.
I watched each.
Sandra’s troll emerged, from stoat to full size.
A fight. War.
Too many things to keep track of.
Hyena in hand, I put the point to Maggie’s throat.
It all settled. Things going quiet.
“No!” Evan said, louder than before. “What? No!”
I met Maggie’s eyes.
“Drop it,” I said.
She dropped the weapon.
There was a long pause. Very nearly silent.
“What gave me away?” Maggie asked.
“Green Eyes. I don’t think the reaction fit to Maggie’s. And I’m not so optimistic to think that things would go this well for me.”
“Yeah,” Maggie said.
“Fool me once,” I said.
“I fooled you quite a few times, in Toronto,” she said. “More than once.”
“Well you didn’t get me here. That’s your Faerie pal, in the circle there.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I could stab you,” I said. “Free Maggie.”
She shook her head. “Wouldn’t get the name back. But if you let me go, I’ll leave until all of this is over.”
“Suppose I have to,” I said.
She backed away, then ran, moving faster than any human should.
The other Maggie stood from the circle. She moved her arms and swept up the diagram, wrapping it around herself like a drape, as she backed away. I saw the Spellbinder fall in step beside her.
“That doesn’t end this,” Sandra said. “You’re outnumbered, and we’re positioned.”
“And, I’m guessing, the Spellbinder is nowhere near here.”
“Nowhere near here,” Sandra said. “I sent him home. He already left the city. You won’t get your seventh kill for the list.”
I nodded slowly.
She flicked a hand. The trench club flew to one side. When I looked down, I saw that Green Eyes had been inching closer to it.
“I’ll surrender,” I said, very deliberately, “I’ll end the fight, let you have Jacob’s Bell if you can earn it, even support you, if you so desire, with one condition.”
“One condition?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yeah. All I need you to do, is swear to me, on your family, on your title, on your power, that you’ll stop with the fucked up arranged marriages. You’ve told others in the family, you swore to them, you’ve implied, I want to hear it from you, that the Duchamp family will no longer continue catering to husbands like the ones I’ve killed.”
“You’ve killed a variety of husbands,” she said.
“Stop prevaricating,” I told her. “You know what I want. I want you to tell me, straight out, that I’m wrong. That the Duchamps aren’t going to take the lordship and then keep doing what they’ve been doing. Do that, you win here.”
The wind whistled.
There was no answer she could give.
I’d created the cracks. Created sides, fostered arguments and doubt. Put people on two sides with the six previous kills. All I needed was one more. A seventh.
“I can’t give you an answer, one way or another,” she admitted.
Which was, in its way, an admission of defeat.
I backed away slowly, my arms spread. The others joined me.
Nobody moved to stop me.
I hadn’t gotten my seventh kill, using the list.
I’d achieved my seventh win.
13.x
A cold evening of red bells
I never liked dates. This makes a fitting entry for tonight’s diary. I’ll remember it better than a number.
I skirt the truth. I portion it out and hand out thirds to make a whole, and the world lets us be. I like to think I amuse it.
I promise to leave, and I do, but I take a roundabout way to do it. A twisting path that, if I am careful to drag my feet, will not take me out of this place until things are very nearly over. I must only keep moving.
The one with the name Maggie Holt promises to leave, and she does. The guise is discarded.
I was asked to go because we are a threat, another form of interference for the blighted Rose to worry about. I agree to this as well. I do not participate any further.
In word, in name, in intent, I follow the terms of the agreement. I put pen to paper with cold fingers on the frigid streets of this accursed town, and I give these ideas weight.
But I am bound to this place by the orders of my Queen, and I am bound to it by my own perverse interest. It is interesting, is it not? I could hardly stay away. I observe, and I chronicle.