My smile wavered. Was I that bad a kisser? It had been a while for me, sure, and I was definitely out of practice, but I wasn’t that bad, was I?
“We could give it another chance,” I suggested.
“That’s not it,” he said, looking down at the rubble around his feet. “Working with you this past week has been fantastic. And kissing you . . . Well, it’s just that I’m afraid after what I have to tell you, you won’t let me do it again.”
“Awesome,” I said, my heart already sinking. “That’s what I get for living in the moment. Out with it. What is it?”
“You remember back at Roll for Initiative when you were talking about Stanis?”
I nodded. “Yeah, and . . . ?”
He stepped back from me, and held his hands up in front of him. “You sound irritated already,” he said. “I don’t think going into this irritated is going to help.”
“You know what’s even more irritating?” I asked, the pit of my stomach twisting up on me. “Being told not to be irritated.”
“Fine, fine!” he rushed out, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. “It’s just that I’ve seen him—Stanis. Like, recently.”
I fell silent, making sure my jaw hadn’t dropped open. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Stanis,” he said. “Remember how Desmond Locke and I both told you I was a freelancer? Well, some of my projects outside the Libra Concordia are more freelance than others.”
I stepped toward him, my tone rising. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Look, Lexi . . .”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “Alexandra. ‘Lexi’ is reserved for my friends.”
He smiled. “We were pretty friendly a moment ago,” he said, trying to soften the situation, but I wasn’t about to let that happen.
“Funny how that’s gone away,” I said, suddenly furious. “What do you know about Stanis?”
“Well, Alexandra,” he started, choosing his words carefully now. “That’s the thing. I didn’t know much about him. From my side of the freelance experience, there wasn’t too much to know. He was a job that came in.”
“Caleb,” I said, grabbing him by his shoulders. “What are you trying to tell me here?”
“As I said, he was one of my freelance jobs,” he said, unable to meet my eyes, looking down at his feet instead. “A lot of what I do isn’t pretty. I was hired to help break down his will and gain control of him.”
“Jesus, Caleb. Did you ever stop to consider what you might be doing or to whom?”
“The pay was good,” he said with no pride in his word. “Great, actually, and when it’s that high, you learn not to ask too many questions, all right? I did what they paid me for. I brought Stanis back in line with what my employer, Kejetan, wanted.” Caleb broke away from me and stepped back, slipping on one of the broken statues, his arms pinwheeling before he righted himself.
“If you’re working for Kejetan, then you’ve met Devon,” I said.
“He’s a charmer, that one,” he said.
“My brother wasn’t any more charming when he was alive, believe me,” I said.
“I’m proud to say I don’t see any family resemblance,” he said.
I fell silent for a minute, going over everything he had said, my mind sticking on one point.
“What do you mean when you said ‘brought in line’?” I asked, feeling sick.
Caleb paused before reluctantly answering. “When you’re trying to bind something into servitude, you need to break down its natural resistances,” he said. “Stone, being the strongest, is the most stubborn of materials when it comes to a golem. You need to hammer away at its natural strength, breaking what I thought was its base animal will, then replace it with another ruling will.”
“You know what that sounds like?” I shouted at him, shaking. “That sounds like torture . . .”
“It was,” he said, finally meeting my eye.
“So, what?” I asked. “You tortured his soul right out of his body? Is that why he’s acting the way he is?”
Caleb shook his head. “No,” he said. “He’s in there still. You can’t quite force something that strong to give up its form, but you can repress it.”
“Who are you?” I said. “Does Desmond Locke approve of all this? He’s watched over my father and this family for decades. He says it’s to monitor us, to keep balance in the name of the Libra Concordia, which is supposedly a good thing if I’m supposed to believe him, but you—”
“The Libra Concordia has no idea of my other affairs,” Caleb said quickly, his eyes full of worry. “A good freelancer learns not to let his activity with one group of clients get in the way of profiting off another. I would prefer that my other freelance work not be something the Libra Concordia take notice of. I’m trying to come clean here with you after wronging Stanis the way I have. Jesus.”
“So you’ll do just about anything for money?” I spat out.
Caleb’s eyes sharpened, and he straightened up. “If I have to,” he said. “Yes.”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
“Don’t you judge me,” he said, defensive. “I have a talent. A skill. So I get paid for using it. I’m sorry I don’t have a guild hall downtown and a spare alchemical research library in Gramercy at my disposal.”
“There are more honest ways of making a living than working for madmen,” I suggested.
“Honesty is a luxury afforded to the rich,” he said, his anger matching mine now. “Yes, I have a pride in the skills I have. I live for the challenge of answering the question can I pull this arcane trick off? Everything I earn goes into my survival. Supplies for what I do, the thrill of the next great job . . . That’s where my money goes. I offer services most don’t, that most can’t, and sometimes those services go to those who pay the most. So, yes, I try not to ask too many questions because then that makes me a liability to my clients. One that might make them want me dead. But I keep it nice and clean. I go in, I do my job, and I get my money.”
“It makes you an accomplice to their crimes,” I said.
“When you don’t have the luxury of taking the moral high road, it’s better to think of it like this: If someone runs somebody over, you don’t go after the guy who made the car, do you? No. It’s simply a thing. How people use it is where it gets all ambiguous. So somebody comes to me wanting to be stronger or to cure something that ails them or whatever they want to do with what I can provide them, so I sell it to them. I don’t ask what they plan to do with it.”
“Oh that is such bullshit,” I said. “You know what they’re going to do with it. You just choose to turn a blind eye to it.”
Caleb shrugged. “I won’t deny that I’ve probably got a good idea sometimes, sure. In that case, I tend to charge a little higher to burden them more and maybe ease my conscience a little.”
“So noble,” I said, shaking my head.
“Nobility is for those who can afford it, too,” he said. “I won’t apologize for who I am or what I do, but I’m telling you all this because I am trying to help you here.”
I resisted the urge to shake him or drop the ceiling on him. “How is any of this helpful? And why now?”
“Because helping you helps me,” he said, his voice calming now. “Yes, I do jobs that I don’t particularly like, okay? But knowing you and your friends . . . knowing what Stanis means to you all now . . . I can’t do it anymore. If I can fix this, maybe I can not feel as shitty as I do right now about what I’ve done to Stanis. About what I am still doing.”