Page 59 of The Lies We Conjure
“Thank you. Accepted.” Evander raps his knuckles on Ursula’s desk like a gavel, and my mind’s eye pictures more fissures snaking through us, cracking, bleeding, and everything else Ursula warned me about. My cousin rolls back his shoulders—the cut of his jaw could etch glass. He’s immovable in his glare, danger in the low tones of his voice. “It’s ours. Can we move on?”
He asks it of Hector, but Luna answers. “Please.At this rate I’ll be dead by the time I hold my master.”
Infinity rubs their temples. “Grandmama, don’t say such a thing.”
“Why not? I’m ninety-seven, I’m being pragmatic.” Luna gestures to her chair. “Scoot me up to the desk. Let’s have a look at this fiddly map.”
It takes a solid hour, and three maps—a delicate illustration of Shadrack’s original parcel, a modern-day printout, and one from the year Ursula became High Sorcerer, before we identify six likely locations based on their ties to hints within the clue, their age, and their uses.
Clockwise from the north compass arrow: Field of Stars, Shadrack’s Lookout, the Bat Cave, Little Bear Den, the Pool, and Horace’s Last Stand.
From there, we divide into teams, minus Luna who won’t be testing her ancient bones on the treacherous grounds—a relief, honestly.
I’m assigned both Blackgate girls and Ada, and before we inspect our two locations, the Pool and Horace’s Last Stand, I determine that perhaps first we should take a detour to visit Horace of the last stand himself.
Which is how the four of us end up in the first-floor tearoom,with me standing on a chair, using my magic to delicately probe inside the jaws of the massive head of a 130-year-old grizzly bear.
Horace is roaring—teeth staggeringly long, eyes fierce, ears flat with anger. He’s packed with wire and cotton, but I want to make sure there isn’t something relic-shaped within before we hike out onto the grounds.
Kaysa stands beside me, squinting up. She’s the only one who seems interested in this actual bear. Lavinia is taking in the wall of Hegemony portraits a few feet away, and Ada is inspecting her cuticles in a chair by the door.
“So, Shadrack shot this poor bear, mounted him, named him Horace for shits and giggles, and put the location of his murder on a family map?” Kaysa asks, squinting up at both me and the enormous bear head.
“Correct.” I nod to the heavy metal body of the Colt .45 revolver mounted on the wall right over his left ear. “And that’s the gun he used.”
“Jesus Christ. No need to wonder if Shadrack had a healthy ego,” Ada mutters. “Look, this is a waste of time, Auden. There’s no paw—it’s just the head. The clue says, ‘Streaming down from the Great Bear’spaw.’ The clue clearly refers to the Great Bear in the sky. We’re not going to find the master relic here, or anywhere until the stars come out.”
“There’s no actual paw in the Ursa Major constellation, just a representative star,” Lavinia reports, and I can nearly hear Ada roll her eyes. Lavinia’s voice comes closer along with the sound of footsteps as I finish up my inspection of Horace’s skull cavity. “But thisisa bear, so I think Auden might be—”
“Lavinia and Kaysa Blackgate!”
I nearly fall off the chair as Evander’s shout beats him to the doorway. He’s panting, looking exactly like he’s just run here. My stomach drops.
My magical gamble from last night has been discovered much sooner than expected. So soon I never got a chance to ask the sisters if they’d learned anything with the time I’d bought them.
And now time’s up.
“There’s a dead man on the driveway,” Evander spits, livid and sweating. “Your grandmother’s driver. The car’s missing. Outside.Now.”
CHAPTER19
RUBY
“Textbook Death magic.”
Hector is squatting down next to the driver who’s exactly where we left him last night. Hex is at his shoulder, like a second examiner, and they both are far too close to the man’s ruined face. “God, such anuglymagic. Turning people into moldering fruit to kill them. Completely unnecessary.”
He’s not wrong. And I’d agree with him if I wasn’t supposed to be so offended. The driver’s worse in the daylight, and the coffee and croissant slosh violently in my gut, half-digested.
I look away and immediately find myself connecting with Auden’s calm expression. His eyes only slide my way for the briefest of moments, not betraying anything we discussed last night.
“It is ugly,” Evander agrees, “which is why he was very obviously covered up by an invisibility spell.”
I can’t tell if Evander knows Auden was the one who obscured the body, or if he assumes Marsyas did. And I don’t know how to defend him if it comes out.
Wren, however, keeps to the only script we’ve got.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this,” she repeats, disbelief in every syllable. Her body crumples just enough, her shoulders caving, fingers curling into her palms. “I didn’t hear him say a bad word toward her. Just offered us cinnamon candies and still water and kept to himself as drivers do. Had the partition up most of the way. Lavinia,” she turns to me, amber eyes expertly teary, “you didn’t notice anything else, did you?”
