Page 112 of Blackwicket

“You’re not just a driver for the Brom, or an informant for Barrick. And your wife,” I shoved a finger in Hannah’s direction, and she raised her chin. “She can almost make a body whole again? I’ve never witnessed magic do more than barely cauterize a cut!”

“It can’t do more than that,” Hannah said. “Not in this sad little world.”

“Hannah,” Ramsey barked.

“How are you involved in this?” I insisted, aiming for the tender spot Hannah had revealed. “Are you Authority? Veil? Brom?Who?”

Fiona had moved towards me as well, standing silently at my shoulder as I interrogated them. Neither my sister nor Victor was inactive, they were bullets loaded into a gun, cocked and ready for me to pull the trigger.

“There’ll be an inquest,” Ramsey cautioned his wife.

“There’ll be an inquest anyway,” she cried, two spots of red blooming on her cheeks. “They deserve to know. They’re involved!”

“You’re both from Dark Hall.” Victor interrupted the back and forth. “That much is clear. Now you’re welcome to reveal the rest before we decide you’re responsible for Thea and Jack’s current circumstances.”

Ramsey ran a hand over his face, long-suffering, muttering a string of words in a language I wasn’t familiar with, but it was clear as day they weren’t polite.

“Make it quick,” Victor said, his form deviating beside me as the anxiety of the moment drew too taut, encouraging the Drudge.

“They’re Authority,” Fiona said in their stead, taking their narrative power, her voice icy as fingers of frost on glass.

“Not the one you’re familiar with,” Hannah said. “Not the one that’s failed so miserably to protect you all.”

“What other Authority is there?” I asked.

“The one responsible for annexing this world, removing the magic,” Ramsey answered.

My instinct was to reject what I was being told as drivel to cover some worse thing, but Hannah’s eyes were pleading,begging me to accept what they were saying despite the implausibility. I turned my face up to look at Victor. He said nothing, but his Drudge ceased its attempts to take the forefront.

“I guess we have no choice but to tell you the rest, but it’ll have to be later,” Ramsey said, an urgency in him. “We’re running out of time. I don’t know what William Nightglass has in mind with Thea and Jack, but we have reason to believe he wants to open Dark Hall.”

“For what purpose?” Victor remained menacing, just as he’d always been when dragging information from unwilling mouths.

“To release the Fiend,” Fiona said with resigned certainty.

My breath stalled, and I spiraled back to the claustrophobic study at the Nightglass Estate, the taste of bourbon on my tongue, the smell of William gagging me.

“Jack’s the key.” I blurted it out in panic. “That’s what William said. He wants to use Jack to open a portal.”

My sister’s eyes became wild.

“No,” she said. “Thea can open the portal. He wants Jack as a new vessel.”

“For what?”

“His Drudge.”

There was too much missing information, secrets and wounds, all the horrible knowledge my sister had collected without me. And though she was here, there was no time to know it all.

Victor was aware of that too.

“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen,” Victor replied, taking the coat from my white-knuckled hands, opening it with a snap, helping me into it like a gentleman taking his lady to the theater, not to face a madman she’d already killed once.

“We can’t get in,” Ramsey said. “That’s the problem. We’ve been working most of the night, trying to break through thedoors, a window, anything, but it’s all magically sealed, and the magic is strong. More than William should be able to do. Nothing in, nothing out.”

“There’s a way in,” Fiona muttered.

All eyes were on her.