A Book of Spirits and Thieves (10 page)

Guilt cut through him. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t get along with his mother very well, but he didn’t want to hurt her. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and forced himself to change the subject away from something that was still so raw. “Dad spoke to me this morning.”

“About Adam?”

He nodded. “I tried talking to him. He’s upset.”

“I hope he’ll quickly make peace with what he saw at the meeting.”

“He will,” Farrell said with a confidence he didn’t completely feel.

“Good.”

This was, officially, the single longest conversation he’d had with his mother in well over a year.
May as well go for a lifetime record
, he thought. “Dad also told me that you two want me to start thinking about the future,” he said. “And I agree. I have to decide
about school. Either I enroll somewhere and take some courses, or I start working for him.”

If Farrell didn’t go for a college degree, it would be an early entry into Grayson Industries. Stiff suit, tight tie, miserable business lunches, pretty secretary. Buying and selling other businesses. Being cutthroat. Making billions.

It wasn’t Farrell’s scene. The secretary part sounded all right, but the rest didn’t interest him in the slightest.

He wished he knew what to do.

Isabelle Grayson’s small smile remained fixed on her lips. “Actually, it’s your father who’s insisting on this decision. It doesn’t really matter to me.”

“Really?” Suddenly, he was hopeful that he and his mother didn’t have as much distance between them as he’d thought. Maybe she understood him, understood what he’d gone through. Understood the nightmares he’d had to endure nearly every night since finding Connor’s body.

“Yes, really. With Connor, I had such high hopes—that he would be a famous artist, that he’d soon get married and give me grandchildren. That he’d carry on the Grayson name. For Adam, his teachers say he has an incredible mind, that he’s meant for medicine, law, business. Whatever he chooses, they believe he’ll be successful. But you . . .” Her discerning gaze swept him from head to toe. “I have no reason to think you’ll ever amount to anything of note. Therefore, I expect very little from you.”

Farrell’s throat was raw from listening to her little speech. “Thanks so much for clearing that up for me, Mother.”

He stood there, dumbfounded, as she left the room. He wasn’t sure why her words had blindsided him. He already knew what she thought of her middle-born son: nothing at all.

This only proved it.

He swept a gaze through Connor’s room one last time before he went back to his own.

“What the hell do I care?” he muttered to himself, angry now. “Her opinion means nothing to me.”

Back in his bedroom, he checked his phone to see he had a text message from Lucas.

Markus will meet with you tonight at 8.

Markus’s inner circle.

It might be a secret inside of another secret, but it was something special and überexclusive. It was proof that Farrell wasn’t nothing, wasn’t nobody. That he’d been chosen by a powerful, enigmatic man to be included in something incredible.

Something Connor had been a part of before his death.

Something that would show his mother that he wasn’t as worthless as she believed.

Chapter 9

MADDOX

T
he sound of a slap and the sting of pain drew him out of the darkness. He sucked in a big mouthful of air and sat up sharply.

Someone held him by the front of his shirt. Another slap brought more clarity.

Livius. It was Livius who was hitting him.

“Wake up,” the man snarled. “Wake up and see what mess you’ve gotten us into now.”

Maddox stared around at the small, shadowy room they were in, memories of what happened at the festival coming back with the force of another blow. “Where are we?”

“Where do you think we are? In the palace dungeon.”

He said this as if it should be common knowledge, but Maddox had never been in a dungeon before. It was dark, smelly, and dank, with stone walls and a black metal door. He’d also never been inside the palace; he’d only seen it in the distance, a massive and foreboding black granite structure that rose out of the earth like a giant crystal shard, visible for miles and miles.

“Why are you here, too?” Maddox asked, stunned.

“Because Cena told them I’m your father. Because I protested your arrest. And here we are. Because of your stupidity.” Maddox opened his mouth, but Livius raised a hand as if to strike him again. “Keep quiet. You’ve done enough already. Let me do the talking when the time comes.”

“When the time comes for what?”

“For introducing the witch boy to the goddess.”

Maddox shuddered with fear at this possibility. “But what if—”

“Shut up, you idiot. I don’t want to hear another word leave your mouth, or I’ll personally cut out your tongue.”

Maddox pressed his lips together.

“Can you get us out of here with your magic?” Livius asked when silence lapsed between them for a long moment.

“Don’t answer him,” Becca said, and Maddox’s gaze shot to the corner to see her standing in the shadows. She twisted her rose charm necklace nervously. “He just said he’d cut out your tongue if you speak again. I really don’t want to see how he’d do that—they took his weapons away back at the festival.”

He was surprised that seeing her again had quickly cast a measure of lightness into this gloomy dungeon cell.

“You’re still here,” he said, fighting a smile.

“What?” Livius snapped. “Of course I am, you fool.”

Becca shrugged. “I did say I’d haunt you forever, didn’t I?”

Maddox ignored his guardian and focused on the girl. “You said you would if I didn’t help the witch.”

She drew closer, her worried gaze locking on his. “I thought for a while I was only having a bad dream and that I’d wake up eventually, but this is real. You’re real. He’s real. . . .” She glanced at Livius, her expression souring. “He’s a total dick, by the way. How can you let him abuse you like that, without getting fed up
and kicking his ass? You’re not five years old. You’re, like, my age. At least.”

Kicking his ass?
He responded to this suggestion with an involuntary laugh. Livius didn’t own a mule.

“You’re talking to yourself.” Livius peered at him with his good eye. “Are you mad, boy?”

“That would be an excellent explanation,” Maddox said, nodding.

“Or perhaps . . .” Livius scanned the cell. “You see a spirit in here, don’t you?”

“Yeah, he does, you jerk,” Becca said, her hands now on her hips. “I swear, if I could, I would knee you so hard in your—”

“I don’t see anybody in here but you,” Maddox said quickly to Livius before Becca could finish.

He pointed at the door. “Break it down and get us out of here.”

“You know I can’t control my magic that easily. Even if I could, I don’t think I could use it to break down a heavy dungeon door.”

“If you controlled it at the festival, then you can control it now.”

“In case you were wondering,” Becca said, “the guard woke up. Let’s just say he was
really
pissed off.” She shot Maddox a smile, but it faded as quickly as it had appeared. “But I didn’t realize it would get you into so much trouble. When the guard hit you . . .” She studied his temple with a pained expression. He touched it, feeling the dried blood. “I—I thought they were going to kill you, and all I could do was stand there and watch.”

“They didn’t kill me.”

At least not yet
, he thought.

She played absently with her honey-colored braid as if she couldn’t keep her hands still. “My aunt taught me and my sister
some self-defense moves once. I tried to punch him, but it didn’t work. My hand went right through his ugly face. I was so scared you were going to die.”

No one had ever been afraid for his life before. It made him oddly happy that this strange and beautiful girl seemed to care about him. That was, until he gave it a little more thought.

“Why were you scared I might die?” he began. “Because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to help you get back to your home?”

Her concerned expression vanished and was replaced by annoyance. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I thought that was all you wanted from me.”

She crossed her arms tightly over her rose-colored tunic. “Actually, it is. But you never agreed to help me. Remember?”

“If I were dead, I couldn’t agree to anything. I’d be dead.”

This earned him a sharp glare. “If you’re trying to be funny right now, I’m not laughing.”

He glared back at her. “I’m not feeling all that amusing at the moment, actually.”

Livius regarded him sourly. “You’ve either gone mad as a nightbird or you are communicating with a spirit in an oddly friendly manner. Which is it, boy?”

“Madness or maddening spirits. Neither can help us at the moment.” Maddox tore his gaze from Becca’s and went to the door, in which a small, fist-sized window allowed a modest glimpse at the dark hallway. He could hear the moans of fellow prisoners coming from other cells.

“Is there a spirit in here or is there not?” Livius’s tone turned icy. “You’re avoiding my question.”

His annoyance at being trapped in a dungeon with two of the most frustrating people he’d ever known grew. “Me? Avoid your
incredibly important question that helps us not at all, Livius? I’d never do such a thing.”

“You insolent little bastard.” Livius grabbed Maddox and slammed his head against the hard, metal door. Fresh pain screamed through him. “If I hadn’t come into your life, you’d be nothing. You’d have nothing. You would have starved to death long before now.”

“Wrong. My mother provided for me fine before you arrived.”

“Ha! Before she lost her looks, she made most of her coin by taking men to her bed. I imagine your real father was just another face in the night.”

Blood dripped into Maddox’s narrowed eyes from Livius’s most recent blow. “My mother is not a whore.”

Livius grinned, an unpleasant flash of white teeth. “If you believe that, you’re more of a fool than I thought you were. How do you think we met? She offered herself to me for two pieces of silver. A very good deal, I thought. She was worth at least three.”

Maddox turned a look of pure fury on the man, and then, as if a large, invisible hand shoved him, Livius staggered backward and hit the stone wall. He gasped and clutched at his throat.

“See?” Livius said, coughing and wheezing as he recovered from the blast of Maddox’s magic. “You
do
have control . . . and much greater strength than I’d have guessed. Perhaps this magic of yours can’t be used on the door, but it will work on the guards. When they return, do what you just did to me, but worse. Kill them.”

A moment of heated emotion had triggered that burst of magic, just as it had at the festival, but it didn’t mean he could do it again on command. And stealing shadows, his simplest trick, wouldn’t help them at all today.

“Even if I could,” he snarled, “I wouldn’t. I’m not a murderer.”

Becca had watched all this in silence. “What kind of magic is this that you can do?”

His jaw was tight. “I honestly don’t know.”

Mere moments later, a group of guards entered the cell and marched Maddox and Livius out of the dungeon and into the palace. Becca kept pace with them, never straying out of Maddox’s line of sight.

He didn’t want to show her how afraid he was, so he concentrated instead on the painful grip the guards had on his arms and the fast pace they maintained, at times literally dragging him across the black stone floors.

He tried to use his magic again, but fear was the only emotion he felt, and it wasn’t doing anything besides making him even weaker than he already felt.

Up until they reached the throne room, everything in the palace had appeared to be chiseled from black granite: floors, ceilings, walls, staircases. There was no art, no decorations or statues or tapestries. Nothing to make the goddess’s residence or the dark jewel that was the Northern Mytican landscape inviting. A shiver sped down Maddox’s back. Sunlight shone down from the small windows onto the floor of the tall and wide hallway like ghostly spears.

They reached a set of large black doors. The two guards standing before them each opened one to allow the prisoners and their escorts silent entry into the throne room.

“Okay, this is different . . . ,” Becca said in a strained tone.

That was an understatement, to be sure.

The throne room was easily a hundred paces by a hundred paces square and twice as high, the ceiling a mosaic of colored glass. The floors were made of hard-packed earth.

“The goddess of earth and water . . . ,” Livius mused under his breath, eyeing the room with barely guarded awe. “Incredible.”

It was as if they’d entered an exotic forest—something the likes of what Maddox had heard tales of from far away. Intense heat pressed down on them in waves. Trees grew from the earthen floor, reaching up thirty, no, fifty feet toward the ceiling, thick and lush, with leaves the size of Maddox’s body. Large, colorful insects with translucent wings chirped and buzzed as they flitted through the air. Flowers—red and yellow and purple—bloomed, beautiful and beckoning nearby.

Becca moved closer to one of the flowers, as if to smell its honey-like scent up close, but before she could try, its thick petals snapped shut on a passing butterfly like the maw of a beast in disguise.

A butterfly-eating flower
, Maddox thought, his stomach turning. He would rather not know what else these plants would like to feast upon.

The pathway, overflowing with beings of both life and death, led to a dozen steps precisely chiseled into black rock. At the top was a large obsidian throne.

On the throne sat the goddess.

Valoria.

Maddox stopped breathing at the sight of her. The rumors of her beauty were all true. The woman was flawless, with raven-black hair and skin like pale gold. Her eyes were green chips of emerald, the same color of the leaves and foliage that surrounded her. Her gown, with its lengthy train that trailed down several steps, was crimson.

Maddox’s eyes were drawn to a sudden movement under the silk of the train. Then he saw something slither out from beneath it.

He gasped.

“Yes,” Valoria said, and Maddox could feel her smooth voice sink down to his very bones. “That is the reaction Aegus usually gets from my prisoners. But don’t be afraid. He only bites at my command.”

His heart pounded. He’d never seen an actual cobra before. Only in books—illustrations of incredible creatures found in other lands, other kingdoms—had he encountered these beasts. This serpent was much bigger than he would have ever imagined, easily six feet long.

He’d heard that the goddess had an affinity for serpents. That she used earth magic to command the creatures that spent their lives with their bellies pressed to the dirt. Lizards, beetles, rodents . . . but snakes were her favorite.

The cobra eyed him, its tongue tasting the air, before it turned its cold gaze away and slithered beneath Valoria’s gown again.

“Welcome to my palace, young man,” Valoria purred. Her hands, bejeweled with rings and golden bracelets, grasped the arms of her black throne. “I’ve heard some interesting tales about you.”

He kept his eyes to the mossy floor.

“The only question is: Are these tales true or not?” She stood up and slowly descended the stairs to where Maddox was forced to his knees before her. She touched under his chin, her skin as cold as marble despite the heat of the room. Perspiration trickled down his forehead as he raised his gaze to meet hers.

“Do you fear me?” she asked.

Yes, very much so
, he thought.

He wondered what response she wanted. “No, my goddess.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I don’t want you to be afraid. I want us to be friends.”

Becca stood to the side, clenching her hands together.

“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Despite Valoria’s vast wealth of fearsome magic, she didn’t seem to notice the otherworldly entity in the room with them.

Having Becca nearby helped him to be brave.

“We are honored to be in your presence, Your Radiance,” Livius said. He, too, had been forced to his knees beside Maddox.

“You are the father of this boy,” she said.

“No, I am his guardian,” Livius admitted. “But he is like a son to me.”