Page 9 of Truthfinder’s Promise

4

No one emerged from the building, but an earthen bridge formed across the moat. Marco’s face took on a pained expression.

The bridge completed itself and a staircase branched off, descending into the moat for the fallen members of their party to climb. They did so, waterlogged and pissed off. As soon as the last one reached the bridge, Siren let go of her hold on the alligators, looking paler than usual.

“Are you okay?” Meredith asked Siren. Holding a few alligators in place should have been a cakewalk for a Life Aspecter. Especially since Siren housed enough of that raw Life Aspect inside her to obliterate everyone present with a snap of her fingers. The obliterating tended to come with intoxicating kill-happy side-effects, which was why they’d brought the backup team instead of relying on Siren alone to handle everything.

At least, Meredith thought that was why they’d waited. Looking at Siren now, she wasn’t so sure.

“I’m fine,” Siren said.

“You look sick.”

“No, I just—” Siren clapped one hand to her stomach and one to her mouth, like she was about to throw up. Which should be impossible. Siren was Life. She didn’t get sick. Siren swallowed, hard, shook her head and repeated, “I’m fine.”

Meredith didn’t buy it for a hot minute, but now wasn’t the time to argue.

They crossed the earthen bridge, which mercifully did not dissolve while they were on it, but did disappear once they reached land, removing any quick means of escape.

“Nova, you and five others with me, the rest of you cover the perimeter,” Valkyrie ordered.

The front door opened onto an expansive, rectangular foyer that did nothing to diminish the insane asylum vibes Meredith picked up from the place. She was beginning to strongly suspect the building had, at one point in its history, been an insane asylum.

The Truthfinder affinity, while most widely known for giving its bearer the ability to tell if someone was lying, did have other facets. They were ones Meredith had suppressed while her mother lived, not wanting to give the bitch another tool to use. But her mother had been dead long enough that those secondary abilities were more and more often refusing to be ignored.

Lately, Meredith had been feeling the truth of places and things. It wasn’t like she could view an object and tell you its entire history, but she frequently got a sense of whether it agreed or disagreed with certain thoughts she had. And her thoughts that this place felt like an asylum were ringing firmly true according to her talent.

“Is Elijah really dead?” The voice was soft—young—but it echoed off the foyer walls. Echoed, and demanded an answer with a power kin to Meredith’s own.

Weak Truthfinders required straight yes or no answers to differentiate truth from lies. Stronger Truthfinders could handle more complex statements, but most required an initial physical connection to a speaker to use their ability. Meredith didn’t, though in her years of playing dumb and useless, she’d intentionally tested low enough that people believed she did.

The strongest Truthfinders could compel an individual to answer a question. Meredith had done it twice. Both times, it had required the whole of her Aspect to force the answer. Whoever this Truthfinder was, not only did they not require physical connection, but they’d cast the compulsion out in a wide net with enough raw power to demand an answer from anyone caught beneath it. Meredith had never seen anything like it.

She called her own Aspect, tossed it up to meet the net and braced herself as the two clashed. The other Truthfinder added more power, expecting a brute force conflict. But Meredith simply tugged on her rope of Aspect, drawing the net away from the others, collapsing the shape of it until it coiled into a ball in her hands.

More power poured into the ball and the urge to answer the asked question burned like acid in Meredith’s veins. Holy shit, this kid was strong. But Meredith was too, and she had more experience. The easiest way to beat this much raw talent was to sidestep the question altogether. If you could work up the will to say something other than the answer to the asked question, you could break the original compulsion.

“You don’t need to compel us, little Truthfinder. We’ll answer your questions, but we don’t take kindly to being forced.”

The ball of Aspect in her hands twitched, shuddered, and winked out.

“To answer your question, yes. Elijah is really dead. Perhaps introductions are in order?”

Time stretched out, the silence broken by the soft murmurings of a discussion Meredith couldn’t quite make out. Then two figures stepped into view on the mezzanine floor above them, a boy and a girl. The girl was around twelve. The boy looked about sixteen, maybe seventeen, and Meredith guessed he was in charge, if the protective hand he had on the younger girl’s shoulder was any indication.

“Hi,” Meredith said, when it appeared no one else in either group was going to talk. “I’m Meredith. I’m a Truthfinder too.” She spoke the last to the girl.

“I’m Veritas,” the girl said, and Meredith wondered if she’d chosen her own name. “I’m stronger than you.” She said it with absolute certainty. No condescension, no question, just simple declaration of fact.

Meredith laughed. “Probably. But strength isn’t everything.”

Veritas frowned, like she thought there was something deeply flawed with what Meredith had said, but her Aspect couldn’t find the lie in it.

“And you?” Meredith asked the boy.

“You can call me Rath.”

Meredith could feel the shape of the name on her tongue like a living thing. Rath without a W. A nickname?