Page 119 of Honey Cut
But this is holy too, in its own way. A way to pacify my uncle, a way to keep Mark alive.
I put the watch back together, a tedious process, and tuck the chip into one of the small plastic bags I keep in my office for the occasional stray artifact fragment. I need to return the watch, and then—well, and then I should get as much as I can, as quickly as I can. I’d considered taking the entire watch and trying to get into the server rooms tonight, but with the club so active and so patrolled for the Samhain celebration, it feels like an unnecessary risk.
But so long as Mark doesn’t need in his safe or in the server room in the next few days, I could find time to get what I need and then somehow replace the chip before he ever knows it was missing. Maybe I could get the Scales to clone the chip too…
I’m setting his watch back on the bathroom counter when I settle on a decision. The safe tonight. I could take a peek in there. I don’t think it will hold near the value of whatever’s in the server room, but it’ll still be something, and it’ll be so easy, and Mark and Tristan are so deeply asleep that I can hear their breathing all the way in the bathroom. It makes me smile.
I shut the apartment door and go into Mark’s office, the bag with the chip in it tucked into my robe pocket. I see my honeysuckle knife on top of the credenza and have the vague memory of setting it there as we were coming up from our playroom, too preoccupied with touching Tristan and Mark to have it in my hands any longer.
I decide to pour myself a glass of something from Mark’s credenza, a useful prop if anyone finds me in the office before or after I’m digging through the safe, and also it sounds nice.
I make myself a glass of neat gin, since I don’t have any ice to complete Mark’s signature drink, and then take a long swallow.
And then pause.
I lift the glass back to my mouth, sniffing before I sip. Juniper and citrus peel and coriander. It’s undeniably thescentof gin and even the taste. But there’s no burn of alcohol, no bite.
I take another sip and then pour more from the decanter into the glass, try again.
No, this is definitely gin-flavored water. I hold the gin up to the moonlight currently pouring through the window. I can see the faintest ribbons curling through the glass, almost like syrup. Like a gin syrup mixed with water and then passed off as gin in a decanter.
I… I am not sure what to make of this.
I set the glass down, pull on the archival gloves I brought with me from my office, and go to the picture on the wall that hides Mark’s safe. I’ll puzzle out the gin-water later.
I swing the frame open and then use my freshly liberated chip. It works like a charm; a flash of green and a soft pop. The door is unlocked.
I remove the items in the safe. Three wooden boxes, all told. Identical, slim.
The top one must be the one that Mark pulled out for Tristan last night. Mementoes of his dead husband, pictures of a grinning, charming man. I indulge my curiosity for a moment or two, using gloved fingers to wade through the pictures and clippings, holding one or two up to the moonlight. In one of the pictures, I can clearly see Eliot wearing the same silver wristwatch I just disassembled. Mark must have taken the watch for himself after Eliot was killed. I replace everything and close the box. My uncle will be interested in Mark’s past marriage, but I don’t know if it will be enough to convince him that Mark should stay alive.
Onto the second box, then.
I open the lid and set it aside, getting ready to flip through it as quickly as I did the first…and then I freeze.
There is a picture on the top, a candid shot.
It’s me.
I’m at a gala, I think, on the arm of my father. It was before I graduated high school, before I’d met Mark Trevena in my dojo.
And then there’s another picture, me at a karate tournament accepting a medal. First place in sparring.
And then another one, me in London, walking side by side with my uncle in Hyde Park while his black simar blows around his ankles.
The faded clippings and printouts of internet articles underneath the pictures are a mix of my uncle and me, going back to my mother’s death. Sometimes earlier, in the case of Mortimer. An article about his appointment to cardinal a couple decades back. An interview about the Catholic perspective on the Carpathian war. And then?—
Our engagement announcement, folded neatly in half.
A floor plan of Cashel House.
Another floor plan I don’t recognize, but with labels in Italian. My uncle’s name is typed at the top.
First stop, Ys; second stop, Rome.
Mortimer was right. Mark is planning something—but it’s not about theChurch, not about the pope, it’s about my uncle.
And…me?
