Cari was about to come off her seat. “Not good enough. The Houses protect and defend their own. He has injured my people. We discovered his identity and I will make him pay for what he did to my father. The rest of magekind can stomp on the leftover pieces. The Order may clean up the resulting smear.”
Mason had closed his eyes during this recitation. Spoken like the head of a mighty House.
She wanted Xavier’s absolute death. Mason expected nothing less from her. Angels were embodied souls. If they died on Earth, they died forever. Such was their sacrifice for dedicating themselves to the service of humankind.
Custo looked every bit the wolf when he responded. “You can’t track him. Not even Mad Mab can find him, or so Khan tells me.”
“I don’t need to track him.” Cari was too smart for her own good.
Custo knew what she was thinking, too. “He won’t go for you as bait. He’s old enough to know a trap.”
“If he wants me bad enough, he will.”
Custo shook his head. “You can’t defeat him alone. He’ll wait you out. He has patience to spare.”
“I have a fae queen.”
So she’d decided to embrace Maeve after all. Not that she had much choice, but still. “I’ve seen you in the thrall of power, Cari,” Mason said, “and you weren’t fighting an ancient angel. You’ll lose yourself and therefore your House, everything your father worked for. You know this.”
“I don’t, actually,” she returned. “Every time I’ve partnered with Maeve, I’ve been successful.”
Partnered? Sweet Shadow, Cari was already mad. He’d hoped for a minute there . . .
“It’s a viable solution,” she said. “A calculated risk.”
Mason could feel Custo’s interest shift to him. “You have another idea.”
Not really. He was looking for ways to mitigate the risks that Cari intended to take. She’d do something regardless of any warnings. She’d loved her father and she had to prove herself as his successor. Allowing the Order to go after Xavier and bring him to justice was not an option for the new Dolan. “Refinements to Cari’s plan, actually.” Besides, it was part of his agreement with the Council that he end the threat of the mage plague.
“Well, let’s have it,” she challenged, as if bracing against him, too.
Mason didn’t feel good about this. “You as bait, somewhere far away from other people, should things get out of hand.”
“I’m stronger by my wards.”
“Hundreds of people now surround your House, Cari,” Custo said. “Please don’t put them in the middle of everything.”
She smiled. “They are welcome to leave any time.”
“I’m thinking of my house,” Mason said. “Such as it is.”
He got a lifted eyebrow from Cari.
Custo looked like he was considering it, as if he had any say in the decision. He didn’t.
“It’s on a little island. I have water for my wards.” Mason smiled a little, remembering how he’d worked to make water obey him. “He’ll track my soul there, just as Jack Bastian tracked me to my cabin in New Mexico.” He glanced at Cari. “Since you and I have been inseparable, and my thoughts . . . occupied by you, he might guess that we’ve gone there for a retreat of sorts while the Order hunts him and your House is under siege.”
“We go to your house,” Cari mused.
“It’s not much.” Once, it had been everything. But it was the people inside the house that mattered, not the structure.
Custo was shaking his head. “He’ll know that angels are waiting. He’ll see their souls.”
“No angels will be waiting,” Cari said, but she was looking at Mason. He could feel her mind moving in concert with his.
Custo groaned with frustration. “You can’t mean to use Mab. You don’t know the danger of giving her any purchase in this world.”
“I was thinking meaner, hungrier,” Mason said to Cari. She was looking into his eyes now, deeper and deeper. They were connected by a strand of understanding cast years ago. Now it carried the weight of this terrible business. Blood and violence between them.
Custo suddenly frowned, disgusted.
Cari gave a magey smile, all edges. Would her father recognize her? He’d be proud.
“That’s vicious,” said the angel with a wild wolf trapped within him. “The Order would never even think to do something so bloody. Would never condone it. It is evil.”
Mason didn’t care. “That’s why it will work.” How many deaths had Xavier delivered to the Shadowed? Fletcher almost among them. In this, Mason felt completely the mage—vengeful. “He won’t know they’re there. He won’t expect us to use this means. Wraiths don’t have souls.” And they were super strong, healed quickly, and were driven by a hunger for one thing.
“They’ll go after you first,” Custo argued.
Mason shook his head no. “The wraiths will be contained by their traps. And when Xavier arrives, I’ll conceal my soul before releasing them.”
“What if he can conceal his, just like you?”
Mason slid his gaze over to Cari.
Cari dipped her head into a deep, satisfied nod. “I can part Xavier’s Shadow. I’ve done it to Mason. The angel will have nowhere to hide.”
Mason hadn’t even had to explain it to her. She’d come to all his conclusions, seen all the steps he’d take. A couple words and she could follow his thoughts step by step to their conclusion, no matter how ugly.
Custo stood and walked to the window. “It’s a risk.”
“Ours to take,” Mason answered. “Do you think Adam would loan me the use of a bunch of his monsters?”
“I want to watch the monsters feed on that SOB,” Cari gloated. “Gobble him down just like his plague took my father.”
“They’d be trapped on the island anyway,” Mason pointed out to Custo. “Easy to recapture. Not a great problem to the human population nearby.”
Custo swallowed the terribleness of the idea. “How fast do you think you can get this together?”
Was it decided so quickly then? No conference with the Order?
Mason’s attention narrowed. Custo wasn’t telling them something. “Depends on Adam.”
“Travel time,” Cari added. “Besides the obvious, why the rush?”
“Kaye Brand fell to the plague this morning,” Custo said. “She’s cycled through fire and resurrection twice already. Jack doesn’t know how long she can hold out. He’s past his breaking point himself, especially because Xavier must have been picking details from his mind to target the Houses he attacked. Bastian was the Council’s weakness.”
Mason’s heart knocked hard as the implications snapped into focus. The peace between Order and Shadow would break if the Houses knew. Would Cari tell them?
Further, Fletcher’s fosterage agreement had been made with Kaye Brand. She couldn’t die. There was no Brand heir as yet to succeed her and fulfill her part of the contract.
Mason thought of the way his Making magic worked—things remained animated or held their function until he lost his interest and released the Shadow from his control. He imagined death would accomplish the same thing—everything Xavier had made would become inert.
Mason looked to Custo for confirmation. “Kill the angel, end the cycle?” End Xavier’s control of the plagued Shadow?
Custo nodded. “That’s the hope, if there’s any left to be had.”
Xavier strode down an alley behind a pizza joint, the smell of tomato sauce heavy with garlic overriding the funk of the garbage bins. The smell intoxicated him, reminding him that his neglected body needed sustenance. But he didn’t have time to stop. He could feel the net closing around him.