Chapter 23

Rosabel La Rouge

I found Graveyard Junk fairly easily. Nobody was in the cabin in front of the gates. There was a trailer inside, and the lights were on, but nobody was coming out of it, either.

Not that I waited long before I went to look around, barely a few minutes, but still.

A black Range Rover was parked behind a pile of metal scraps far to the right of the gates. It was covered in a thick layer of dust, and I didn’t need to wonder if it was the car Taland had left here because the door clicked open when I was still two feet away from it. The ignition turned on and the wipers did a great job in clearing out the windshield and the rear window.

I drove it away without really thinking, without checking the trunk or under the seats or anything at all—I just drove it away slowly.

The gates of the junkyard were still closed, and whoever was inside that trailer remained there. Nobody stopped me, nobody asked me questions. I went right through the town and to the other side where I’d come from. Where I’d left Madeline’s Mercedes right there by the welcome sign.

I stopped the SUV next to it, and I waited for a car to disappear in the distance before I raised my hand and called for a fire spell, one that continued to intensify in the first ten minutes when it caught onto something. It hurt to unleash it through the open passenger window and onto the windshield of the Mercedes, but it was worth it. A scream slipped from me, but the ball of flames that shot out of my hand and broke the glass was incredibly satisfying. I drove in reverse until I was far enough away so that the explosion didn’t reach Taland’s SUV and waited.

Sure enough, the Mercedes exploded a minute later with a deafening sound. The magical fire was going to consume most of its pieces by the time they put it out, and it was going to take these people a while to find out who the car belonged to, if they ever did. By then, I’d be long gone.

The tank was full and the road clear, and I apparently didn’t look like me at all. There was an old 44 Magnum in the glove compartment, fully loaded. Different than my M17 but it would do just fine in case I needed bullets, which I doubted. The radio worked and I left the volume on low, just to have some background noise so that my thoughts didn’t get the best of me.

Like that, I drove all the way back to Baltimore.

The Mergenbach siblings.

Taland had mentioned them a few times—the ones who basically ran Selem together with his brothers. And it had seemed familiar at first when Taland said it, that name, but I had no idea why until I was all alone in a foreign SUV with a vulcera made out of wood on the dashboard, and my heart in pieces. Until I was so desperate to find out what the hell I was going to do next, how I was going to try to find Taland.

You really haven’t heard of the Mergenbachs before?— that’s what Cassie had told me back at Headquarters. She’d kept on mentioning that name, mentioning her cousins, and she always looked at me a certain way when she did, like she expected me to react. Like she excepted me to know .

Now I did. Now I knew exactly who she was talking about, and whether that meant she knew Taland or knew about Selem didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was going to talk to her, and I was going to find out.

The problem was that I had no phone, and even if I bought one, I didn’t know her number. I had no idea where Cassie lived, either—we’d never really talked about it, but I knew where to find someone else who could help me. I’d been there once for a birthday party, and I’d been itching to go back since the Iris Roe, but I’d stopped myself.

Now, I wasn’t going to stop myself anymore.

The McMurray twins lived in this one-story house that their mother had bought them, with a large, half withered oak tree in the front—because they’d been playing and had accidentally hit it with magic when they were drunk one day, they said, and now half the tree had died, but the other half somehow remained alive. It was a small place and they even shared a bedroom, something Erid had found out by snooping around their place that night of the party. It had been a good night. I’d laughed a lot, had drank a couple glasses of wine. We’d played pool and Monopoly and I hadn’t gone home until two in the morning, so I’d had to sneak in through the back, afraid Madeline or her guards would hear me.

A good night, indeed—and I was thankful that I’d been here so that I knew how to find them now. I wasn’t going anywhere near the Headquarters building, so they were my best bet.

Unfortunately for me, I had to sit in the car and wait for three hours before they came home, possibly from work, but the vulcera kept me company. Whatever connection I’d shared with that animal during the game, it had left an imprint on me forever even if it hadn’t been real.

The twins were each holding a bottle of liquor in their hands when they parked their truck in the driveway and jumped out. By then the sky was already dark, so that’s why I was confident enough to leave Taland’s charm in the car. These boys needed to see my face if they were going to be persuaded to talk to me, and I wasn’t planning to stay long.

I drove closer and I left the SUV right behind their truck so they couldn’t escape even if they tried. Then, I put the bracelet around my wrist, the gun in the waistband of my pants, and I went and knocked on their door.

The music was on inside—some heavy metal I didn’t much enjoy myself. I had to slam my fist on the door so hard it hurt, but finally, they heard me.

“Go away!” one of the twins called from the inside.

I knocked harder with all my strength.

Shouts and screams, curse words from the other side of the door. Footsteps—then Jim was in front of me.

Could have been Jam.

The moment he saw me, mouth open and ready to scream at me to leave, I gripped him by his shirt and said, “Hello, Jim. Invite me in?”

Of course, he didn’t have to—I invited myself. I pushed him back inside and closed the door behind me with my foot, while he, still in shock, just raised his hands to the side in surrender.

It could have been funny if I wasn’t feeling so bloodthirsty right now.

“Where the hell is that music coming from?” I said through gritted teeth. It was so loud I couldn’t even hear myself thinking.

Jim pointed to his left, toward a doorway on the other side of the foyer, so I started toward it with my gun still in hand, down the corridor and into their kitchen and living area. The sound was coming from a large speaker in the middle of the dining table connected to a laptop, right next to two identical staffs—their anchors.

Jam was outside on the porch that went around half the house, a cigarette between his lips and his head thrown back as he moved slightly to the beat. When I paused the song and my ears stopped fucking bleeding, he turned around to see me there through the screen of the backdoor that was wide open, and Jim came through behind me at the same time.

“What the fuck!” said Jam, as shocked as his twin by the sight of me.

Then he screamed. Not because of me, but because the cigarette had burned his fingers—he’d grabbed it too close to the lit end.

I almost rolled my eyes.

“Listen to me closely because I will only say this once,” I said, standing in the middle of their kitchen, trying to ignore the smell of rot that hung to the cabinets, and the brothers watched me, one on either side. Their staffs weren’t in their hands, so they couldn’t attack me with magic even if they wanted to.

“Holy fuck, Rosabel. What the fuck? Are you…you’re alive ?” said Jam.

Or maybe he was Jim? I couldn’t tell—both of them had their hair down, the ends touching their shoulders, more or less the same length.

“I am—and I’m a fugitive, and I won the Iris Roe, drained the shit out of that Rainbow, so I am a very, very dangerous woman right now. Do you understand?”

The boys looked at one another, but I didn’t give them the chance to say a word.

“I asked you what happened in the forest that day at Headquarters, and you lied to me. I’m here to give you another chance to tell me the truth.” I raised my gun at Jam through the screen door, and my hand with my ring on it toward Jim.

“Whoa, whoa, Rosabel,” the latter said, but they both raised their hands.

“Tell me the truth about what happened right now, and nobody gets hurt. If you don’t, I will kill you.” The lie flowed easy—I doubted they could tell I didn’t mean it. The anger I felt helped—these fuckers had saved my life, but when they could have avoided all of this mess, they chose to stay put. When they could have done something to stop Erid and Michael from attacking me, they just stood there and watched.

“There’s no need to threaten us—we’re friends here,” said Jam, coming closer to the screen door from the outside.

“Friends don’t let friends get killed by their colleagues, asshole,” I spit, and my arms didn’t shake. My aim would be true—they knew this. We’d worked together for over a year. “Come inside. Right there, by the door.”

“But friends freeze a room full of people, including Madeline Rogan, to help you escape,” Jim said from the other side. “I need to light this up.” He produced a cigarette and put it between his lips, then reached for his pocket and pulled out a lighter before I even had the chance to say, don’t move.

Fucking Jim and Jam.

At least the other was slowly pushing the screen door back to get inside.

“And we also sent you your friend to help you get out—that was us ,” said Jam when the door closed and he leaned against the wall, then looked at his brother. “Got one?”

Jim then threw something at him from across the kitchen. “Light’s inside.”

I was in awe of their interaction and watched, dumbfounded, as Jam pulled out a cigarette from the pack and lit it, then dragged the smoke with his eyes closed like he was having the time of his life. Like he couldn’t see my gun pointed at his face.

And it wasn’t just because they knew me and they knew I wouldn’t hurt them—they didn’t. They’d have done the same with anybody else, and I didn’t know whether to congratulate them on their bravery or to laugh at their stupidity.

I chose violence instead. It was the only way these boys were going to take me seriously.

As much as I’d have liked to use my magic pain free, I wouldn’t dare show the twins colorful magic for fear of who they would tell. So, I chanted a spell and I chose my ring to lead my magic, which strangely almost felt like it was complaining, like it wanted to be released through the bracelet instead, like it had already connected to it and it knew how much easier it flowed through it.

Either way, I whispered and forced it toward my ring, sending a powerful blow of air to hit Jim straight in the face, while I slammed the butt of my gun right on the side of Jam’s head.

“What the fuck?!” said Jim, cigarette on the floor as he struggled to breath against the current.

“You’re crazy—you’re fucking crazy!” cried Jam, holding his bleeding head with only one hand because he refused to let go of his cigarette even now.

It was just a scratch because I hadn’t used my full strength, but I stepped back and said, “Yeah, I am. I’m fucking crazy. And if I don’t get what I want, I’m going to set these on fire first…” I leaned back and touched their staffs on the dining table. “And then I’m going to kill you.”

“No, you won’t,” Jim said when he bent over to grab his cigarette again. “You just want to scare us, and I get it. But we can’t tell you the truth.”

Gritting my teeth, I raised my hand and called for a fire spell, first-degree, very fast. “Don’t test me.”

I would set their staffs on fire, even if I wouldn’t kill them.

“Just chill, Rosabel. Chill, ” said Jam, and I almost lost it again.

I could drag this on and on, could tell him to not tell me to fucking chill, that that might the worst thing you can possibly say to a person when they’re pissed— so fucking patronizing!

But if I did that, we’d be here till sunrise, so I just got straight to the point instead.

“ Why did you lie about that catfairie?” I said slowly. “You were there. You saw that Michael and Erid tried to kill me. Why did you lie?”

The boys clamped their mouth shut and gave each other a look.

I didn’t hesitate—I grabbed the first staff in my still burning hand and watched the flames spread up to the tip of it as fast as magical flames do.

Now they screamed— no, don’t, what are you doing, stop it, let my staff go, get out of our house, stop-stop-stop!

I stopped before the flames could consume the staff completely, and I pulled the magic back inside me again.

“How about now? Are you going to talk now?” The brothers, now pissed, took a step closer to me. I knew they were IDD agents, and they could fight (though not well) but they also had no weapons on their person and I had a gun, and they couldn’t use magic on me because I had their staffs.

And most importantly—they were drunk.

“We can’t tell you anything,” Jim said, although he knew all those things just as well as I did.

“We can’t, ” Jam emphasized.

“Why not?” I asked, the staff still in my hand, and when they exchanged another look between their bloodshot eyes, I raised it a little. “ Why not?! ”

At this rate they were going to drive me crazy for real. And a part of me thought that maybe I didn’t have to do this, waste all this time, just have them put me in touch with Cassie and be done with it, but I couldn’t. I needed to know, damn it. It felt like I was up to my neck in secrets, and they were going to drown me soon.

“Because they’ll kill us,” said Jim. “They’ll kill us, Rosabel.”

“ Who will kill you?” They said nothing. “In case you didn’t get the memo, I am a fugitive now. I am not going back, nor am I ever going to tell anybody whatever you tell me.” Because if I stuck to threats only, it wasn’t going to work half as well as I’d hoped.

The brothers narrowed their brows in confusion.

“That’s right—I am not going back. You can’t tell anybody that you saw me. And I won’t tell anybody that I saw you, either, because I am not going to return to the IDD.”

Finally, Jam sighed. “You’re a fugitive.” Like the word just now made sense to him.

And Jim nodded. “Yes—a criminal.”

“They’ve got two teams on you. They really want to find you,” said Jam, and when ice-cold shivers ran down my back in a rush, I didn’t let it show on my face.

“They really want to put you away, drain you and lock you up,” said Jim, and more shivers washed all over me, and I’d lie if I said that didn’t scare me a little.

Well, a lot.

Because draining was no joke, and I’d been without magic once. I never wanted to feel like that again. Not because of how easy life was with magic. I was already used to living without it.

It was because of how vulnerable I was without it, how I became easy prey against predators that had magic, how hard it was to survive without it. So, I really, really didn’t want to be drained again, lose this magic that I had, despite the pain.

In those moments, I didn’t even think about the bracelet and the colorful magic at all.

“They can’t,” I ended up saying. “They can’t find me or drain me or lock me up. But you will tell me why you lied, boys. I need to know what happened in that woods.”

The twins continued to smoke their fucking cigarettes.

I stepped forward to the middle of their kitchen now and showed them their burnt staff. “Tell me what the fuck happened in that woods!” I was going to scream it at the top of my lungs next if they didn’t start talking soon.

“Okay, okay, okay, fine! Just-just move back!” Jim finally said, raising his hands, and Jam hopped and sat on the countertop, knocking down a few empty beer cans in the process. I only gave the rest of the countertop a quick glance and realized the smell must have been heavier in here than I allowed myself to register because there was an ungodly number of old pizza boxes, and ashtrays full of cigarette butts and plastic containers that had once carried food. That probably still contained pieces of food, leftovers that had gone bad a long, long time ago…

“We’ll tell you, but just know that if anybody finds out, we’re both dead,” said Jam. “And we did save your life that time.”

“We’re no fugitives so we’re not gonna try to run away,” Jim said.

I pointed the burnt staff at Jam. “You left me there to die first so saving me that time doesn’t count.” It absolutely did, but I was really desperate to get them to just tell me the truth right now, so I was willing to say anything, no matter what that made me.

“We had no choice—it was Michael. You’d have done the same,” Jim said.

Bitter laughter burst out of me so fast it even took me by surprise. “I wouldn’t have! Never, not in a billion years! I wouldn’t have stood back and let anyone try to kill you!”

This I said with a hundred percent certainty. I would have never let Michael and Erid kill the twins if the roles were reversed. Or at least I’d have gotten in front of them and fought against them until my dying breath.

The twins knew it, too. That’s why they sighed and closed their eyes and shook their heads, shoulders hunched in regret, so that when they looked at me again, those fucking cigarettes still between their fingers, I felt like shit.

These guys had really saved me two times, and here I was, threatening their lives for a secret.

“We’re sorry, okay?” Jam said.

“We had no idea what the hell was happening.” Jim.

“It was our team leader—I swear I thought I was dreaming.” Jam.

“Or that the catfairie had killed me and I was just making shit up on my way to hell.” Jim shrugged.

Fucking hell, now I felt even worse.

Closing my eyes, I released a long breath— what the hell am I doing? I put the staff back down next to the other, put my gun under the waistband of my jeans, and I rested against the edge of the table.

I was a fool to think I could come in here and force these guys to tell me the truth. A fucking fool.

“Erid was our friend,” Jam whispered, and I died a little.

“Yes, she was,” I muttered. I’d cared about her a lot. More than about the twins, if we were being honest.

“I always knew she wasn’t trustworthy, though,” said Jim, shaking head. “It’s bad to throw shade on the dead, I guess, but she was weak.”

“Of course, she was—why do you think she talked the way she did?” said Jam, nudging his brother on the shoulder.

And Jim smiled sadly. “Yeah, she loved to trash-talk everyone, remember that? I hated it.”

“I bet she hated it, too,” said his brother, while I remained there across from them and just listened. “She could be bent so easily…”

A second of silence.

“In a lot of ways, too!” Jim countered, and suddenly they were both chuckling, and they hi-fived each other.

Fucking idiots.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time, boys,” I said, forcing myself to keep my face neutral. These guys were drunk and just plain assholes even if they’d saved me, and I realized that I wasn’t going to hurt them even if they didn’t tell me anything. Fuck it—it just wasn’t me. I didn’t want to have to fight with myself for that as well.

“Just tell me the truth. Tell me what happened.” I sounded defeated now—probably because I was, and I was already spending energy to keep my face neutral. “I didn’t kill that catfairie. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. I couldn’t have killed that catfairie even if I hadn’t been wounded at all.” A seven-foot-tall beast with claws and illusion magic to spare?

Yeah, I knew my limitations. I wouldn’t have won that fight—not then.

Jim and Jam were no longer chuckling or smiling or even looking at me. At that point I was ready to accept that they weren’t going to tell me, and I was going to just ask them to call Cassie for me. If they didn’t have her number, they could call work and get it. I’d do it myself if they gave me their phone.

Except…

“We did.”

Both Jim and I looked up at Jam in surprise, as he sat there on the counter surrounded by empty bottles and cardboard boxes, staring at his knees.

Then Jim sighed, as if he was giving up, too. “Yeah. We killed the catfairie.”

White noise in my ears for a second. “Then…why would you lie?” It made no sense—if they killed that thing, why wouldn’t they want to take the credit?

“We were watching when that thing killed Michael and Erid,” said Jim with a shrug. “And when he came to you, we thought it had already killed you, too. So, we came closer, and we trapped it in time.”

“Couldn’t keep him frozen for long—he was powerful,” said Jam. “But I kept him locked down and kept his attention on me while Jim did an extraction spell on his heart.”

Again, the guy shrugged like what he was talking about wasn’t a big deal at all.

“It worked. He died,” said Jam.

“And we told the guy in the green suit—we told him what happened. All of it—about Michael and Erid,” Jim said. “He told us that we weren’t allowed to say that we were even near the spot where the whole thing happened. We were made to sign reports that we’d been knocked out cold before Michael and Erid were killed, that we didn’t see anything at all, and when we woke up and came looking for you guys, they were already dead and you were just killing the catfairie before passing out.”

Goose bumps broke all over my skin. “By whom ?” I whispered. “Who’s the guy in the green suit?” Because I’d seen a guy in a green suit once, too, and I hated him with my everything to this day. He’d been the one to take Taland away that night at the school. I never even found out his name.

“No clue,” said Jam with a shrug. “But he said that we were forbidden from speaking about witnessing Michael and Erid trying to kill you.”

“Yes, yes—no matter what, we had to tell everyone that we weren’t there. That we were knocked out, that we barely survived.” Jim.

“We saw nothing, heard nothing. Nothing at all.” Jam.

“Only you finishing off that catfairie, after Erid and Michael had already died.”

“We didn’t see them chasing you or shooting you or trying to kill you—nothing. We saw nothing, just you killing it.”

All of a sudden, it was perfectly clear why they were made to lie—because whoever had sent Michael and Erid to kill me hadn’t wanted anybody to know.

For a moment, I just stayed there against the table, closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, tried to silence the screams of rage in my head, but they wouldn’t hear. A voice, the loudest of all, insisted that I already knew who had ordered Michael to kill me, and who had the authority to order the twins to not say a single word about it. To lie about it. Conceal it from the IDD itself.

David Hill, the director.

If only I could think of a reason why, then I would believe that voice. If only I didn’t know for a fact that Hill still needed Madeline because she still had a lot of power over the Council. They still respected her, and she could still influence their decisions.

If only I didn’t know this for a fact, I’d have believed that it was Hill behind this all along.

Except it didn’t add up. Hill ordering Michael to kill me—it didn’t add up.

“We’re sorry, Rosabel,” Jam said after a moment.

“We always liked you,” said Jim.

“We didn’t want to lie, but we had no choice. They said we’d die.”

“And we will if someone finds out.”

Jam shrugged. “If they haven’t already.”

Jim met my eyes. “You’re not going to tell on us for real, right?”

I sighed. “Of course not. Who would I even tell?” I was a fugitive, wanted for helping a criminal escape from Headquarters, and I didn’t even want to know what more they’d put on my name.

“Cool,” Jim said.

“Cool,” Jam agreed.

Just like that.

They were seriously goofs , and I smiled as I watched them grab another cigarette from their pack, then Jim went and got the bottle Jam had apparently left outside—it was red wine. They drank off it right there atop the counter, and smoked, and watched me as if to say, well, aren’t you going to leave now ?

“I need one more favor from you guys, and you’ll probably never see me again.”

Their eyes lit up. “Sure thing. What do you need? Booze? Weed? The strong stuff? We got you covered.”

Did I even want to know what the strong stuff was? Highly unlikely.

“I actually just need to use your phone for a minute.”

“Oh. Cool,” Jam said.

“Cool,” Jim agreed, and offered me his battered phone without hesitation.