The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (5 page)

“He didn’t kill himself,” he said, his voice firm even as his emotions whirled. The madness of grief was always just beneath the surface, as it had been since the day he’d seen Fernand in a bathtub, dead. “I know that Olivia ruled it a suicide; I know she didn’t think it was worth bringing you in on, Will, but―but he
didn’t
kill himself! It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been over it a thousand times. He was fine the day before. We’d made plans. He was going to help Rosie and me. I have to believe he wouldn’t have done anything until he knew, really
knew
, that we were taken care of. We had an appointment with his solicitor
that night
. He―”

“Olivia
did
rule it a suicide,” Will said, turning his gaze to Chris. There was a silent plea in his eyes.
Let it go
.

But how could he?

“She says the knife he―the knife the
killer
used is in evidence,” Chris said, his voice getting faster and faster as he tried to get all the words out before Will could tell him to stop. “And all evidence is kept for five years, even in accidents, in case more evidence is discovered.” He’d learned all of this, patiently, from Olivia, from Maris, even from his own reading. “If we could get access to it, just for long enough to do a seeing, we could find out who did this to him, Will!”

“Hannah would have my hide if I went into evidence without her. I’m not authorized for any of that. She’s
still
got her eye on me from when I helped you get in to see Doctor Livingstone last spring,” Will mumbled. He stood up from his chair and crossed over to the tea cabinet, opening it and pulling out a pot, two saucers, and cups. “Let me make some tea. We can talk more about this suspect who pulled a gun on you and Olivia, and all the danger you’re getting yourself into, and―”

“Officer Burke wouldn’t have to know,” Chris insisted. William’s handler, the beautiful and soft-spoken Officer Hannah Burke, didn’t frighten him any more than a songbird would.

“Of course she would!” Will snapped, and then, after a moment’s pause, his voice was quiet again. He took the kettle that was always sitting on the salamander-fueled plate by the tea cabinet, filling the pot. “I’d have to use her clearance to get in.
Again
. Mine doesn’t have evidence access. Isn’t asking me to break the law for you
once
more than enough?”

Chris folded his lips.
Drop it
, a voice inside him warned, but he had his teeth in it, now. “I―”

Will turned away. “Honestly, there’s no point. Don’t you trust Olivia’s judgement? The woman is utterly mad, but she has a fairly reliable record.”

He trusted Olivia more than he felt he should admit. But he was also with her every day. He saw how often her first guess was wrong. He kept going back to the val Daren murders, how Olivia had been right about one small thing and based her entire case around it. Olivia Faraday was brilliant. But she wasn’t infallible. She said that she was certain beyond doubt that Fernand had killed himself, but somehow,
somehow
there must be a hole in that.

He wet his lips.

“What if I―what if I bargained something out of Olivia to get her to reopen the case?” he said.

Will’s hands stilled, hovering over the teapot. “Chris, you really need to just accept―”

“I can’t!” Chris cried, slamming both hands down on the table. “Will, you just―you need to understand, I
can’t
! Fernand was more of a father to me than my actual father ever was, and now I’ve lost him, too. I’ve lost
everyone,
all of my family! Even Rosemary is gone beyond my reach now, and Fernand
wouldn’t
have killed himself! I
knew
him! He wouldn’t have!”

Will didn’t respond for a long moment. He took the teapot into his hands and filled both cups.

“Will―” Chris began, losing patience.

William turned back, a saucer and cup in each hand. “You just don’t know how to let something
go
, do you?” he asked.

The venom in his tone took Chris aback, and he sat in stunned silence while Will dropped the teacup before him, rattling the little spoon still in it. He slumped back into his own chair, shoulders hunched and face stormy. Chris reached for his cup, and then stopped. He clenched his fists. “No,” he said decisively. “No, I can’t let it go. I won’t let it go. Not until you―”

“Do you
really
think that if there were
any
chance, any at all, we would just let you suffer?” Will demanded. “Youth and Maiden, it’s like you don’t know how someone―how much someone cares about you, how they―” He growled, and then, without warning, reached out and seized Chris’s hands.

Darkness closed in around them both.

He’d sat with William, held his hand, through four separate seeings, now. He’d gotten used to what it was like, losing his sense of self, being connected to and yet disconnected from his physical body, the way that blurred images of an object’s memory flashed past him as Will sifted through the sheer amount of information that poured into his head.

This wasn’t like any of that.

There was none of the feeling of wandering through history, none of the sense of Will’s mind pouring through it all. The images were defined but strange, angles incorrect and askew. It felt more like a memory of an event than a full recalling.

He was in Fernand’s bathroom.

He clearly remembered the last time he’d been there―the last time he’d
ever
be there―because Fernand’s nephew had swooped in and seized his inheritance before Fernand had even been buried. He remembered Fernand’s body, pale and lifeless, drained of blood, in the bathtub. Blood on the floor, so much blood. The letter his father had left for Rosemary, and the list―the list.

Chris was sitting in that tub. He was holding a knife.

As he watched, unable to do anything―anything at all―he placed the knife between his knees, the blade pointing to the ceiling. The edges gleamed. His hands trembled as he brought them to either side of the blade, and tears fell onto his bare chest. He felt the frailty of age. He felt the weight of exhaustion. But he didn’t feel any
emotions
, and he wished he could as much as he was glad he couldn’t.

The knife was cold against his wrists. He hadn’t mastered being both Chris and the person in the memory. He couldn’t speak during a seeing, like Olivia, like Officer Burke, like Maris. But he was aware of his own self enough that he squeezed Will’s hands hard, so hard.
I don’t want to see this,
but he’d brought this on himself, hadn’t he?

“Christopher,” he murmured, his own name on his own lips. Not his own lips. “Young master. I… I am so sorry…”

No
, Chris wanted to scream.
Fernand, no, you don’t have to do this! Why would you do this?

But no matter how much he begged, he was trapped in the future, a lifetime away, and couldn’t say a word. He took a deep breath. Made his hands fists. Brought his wrists together and pulled them up. The knife bit into the skin―pain like nothing else he’d ever experienced―blood draining―

And then Chris was gasping, light and reality slamming around him and he fell forward, sobs wracking him.

It only took moments before he came back from the seeing, but when he did, he found himself wrapped in Will’s slender arms, face against his chest, and his shoulders were shaking. “I―” he said, trying to get words out. “That―”

“We just thought it would be
easier
,” Will said, and despite the tenderness of his fingers as they combed through Chris’s hair, his voice was irritated, frustrated. “We thought it would be better for you if you didn’t have to know for sure, if you could cling to hope. But you just keep pressing, Chris! Why must you always
press
me so?” His fingertips brushed Chris’s scalp, and a curious tingle ran down his spine.

He yanked away.

“You should have―Gods,
we
? You and―who?”

Will’s face crumpled, but then―then his mouth snapped closed, his full lips pressing tight and thin. “Me and Olivia and Maris, of course.”

“Of course,” Chris repeated, and he hated the way he wanted to collapse back into Will’s arms, let himself be held and comforted by someone who’d lied to him. Gods, they’d
all
lied to him, hadn’t they? Every last one of them. A fury grew in him. Fernand
had
killed himself, and they had let him hope, let him make a fool of himself talking about what he “knew,” when in fact he didn’t know a bloody sodding thing, now did he? Not a single thing. He bit back a sob.

“Chris,” William murmured, and Chris stood up from the table.

“You should really be going,” Chris said, his shoulders shaking as he gripped the back of his chair so hard his knuckles turned white. “I don’t know why you keep coming by without invitation, it’s―it’s inappropriate. It’s―you need to leave.” He turned his face away. Gods, Fernand. Why.
Why?

Silence stretched long, and then came the scrape of a chair and the rattle of china. “Of course,
Mister
Buckley,” Will sneered, slamming the chair back to the table. “By all means, push me out of your life again. It’s what you do.”

A moment later, the front door slammed, and then…

Then Chris was all alone again. All alone in the ringing silence, alone with his regret, and his grief.

Would he ever stop grieving?

His shoulders started shaking uncontrollably, and he sank to the floor and sobbed.

livia Faraday dropped a stack of books atop Chris’s newspaper.

He jumped about a foot, letting out a startled gasp and reaching up to clasp his bowler hat tight against his head. She stared down at him, eyes narrowed in a glare. Her lips folded down tight and he heard her foot tap as the silence lengthened.

She made a disgusted little noise. “I think,” she pronounced, “that if you’re going to spend the
whole
week giving me the silent treatment and treating me like I killed your cat, the least you can do is tell me
why
.”

“I don’t have a cat.” Chris tried to push aside the stack, only to find that it was heavier than Olivia’s tiny frame should have been able to manage.

Olivia planted both hands atop her tower of books, leaning her weight onto it, and glaring down at him. “It’s only proper. You like things being proper, don’t you?”

“It’s not actually very proper,” Chris pointed out. “Grievances should be kept quiet.”

“Aha!” Olivia slammed down a fist atop the stack of books. “So you
do
have a grievance!”

Chris ground his teeth.

It had been days since William had seized his hands and plunged him into a seeing he hadn’t wanted to see, and Chris had tried to go about his normal life, intending to avoid this very conversation. But it would seem that he hadn’t been as circumspect as he’d hoped. He looked helplessly up at Olivia, who stared down at him with more imperious entitlement than even Queen Gloria could have managed.

He didn’t want to talk about it. The more time passed, the less certain he was that Will, Maris, and Olivia had been wrong. But neither was he ready to admit they’d acted in his best interests and forgive. All these months, babbling nonstop about how Fernand Spencer had been murdered, and they’d known all along. They’d known that Fernand had abandoned him, and it didn’t seem fair that they could just have been allowed to watch him make a blasted fool of himself.