Tags
Andre, Annelise, crime, detective, Elio, George, George Gervais, Lilah, Lilah Bay, Lucy, magic, noir, Rob Ashtree, spells, time, time travel, wizard, Zinnia, Zinnia Rose
- The note
1.
My dear Lilah,
I am given to understand that you have a new position. I’m quite sure that you will do an excellent job. I too have been experiencing professional success, and look ahead to a major promotion. Wouldn’t it be interesting if it turned out that we were working for the same people?
We really should get together and exchange reminiscences. Your humble servant is in possession of a number of interesting tidbits of information about your current situation. I could also offer you advice on how to stay out of the kind of trouble you’ve been in these last few years, but you’re probably not inclined to listen, so I will keep it to myself.
Still, what you’re looking into may find its way inevitably to matters I understand better than you, and when that causes confusion, just call on me. I’ll be waiting. And however you do decide to call on me, for help or otherwise? You may be sure I’ll be ready for you.
All the best,
E
PS: I finally got myself a new wand. Did you?
It was written by spell in large, flowing script. Anyone could have written it but Lilah knew who had written it. “Elio,” she muttered.
“Where did this come from?” asked Annelise, moving next to Lilah. No one else seemed to have noticed the note in her hand.
“From on high,” Lilah replied. “But not exactly from the celestial spheres.”
“Wait, is this—?”
“My ex,” said Lilah. The two of them stood there on the roof, just in the light of the left floodlight, while the other four stood under the right floodlight and chatted as if they were at a party.
“Is he just writing to be obnoxious?”
“Yeah, ah, yes and no, I think. He’s being obnoxious but you can’t tell if he’s also trying to actually manipulate me, or not. I suppose he can’t not be trying to manipulate me. It used to be what he did best.”
“What’s this thing about wands?”
Lilah let out a breath. “Sometimes, Annelise, when people break up, it’s kind of peaceful. They agree to disagree, they decide it’s for the best if they part ways, if they each see other people. With Elio and Lilah, not so much. I threw him out, and we traded spells. He came back and tried to convince me to join him and his new friends, and I told him I’d rather not, and he threw a hard death spell at me that my wand took, and it broke, it was one he’d given me, and he had this nice white number, and I threw a spell at him, not a hard death, not a death at all, but a big spell, and that white wand of his he was so proud of pretty much blew up. Then I gave him a taste of my newest seven word spell at the time, which was Time-Space Throw. I didn’t pay much attention to where I was throwing him.”
“But he’s back.”
“Evidently.”
“Lilah, if there’s any way we can help, if there’s any way I can help—Lilah, what does he mean about working for the same people?”
Lilah scrunched her brow. “Trying to get in my head,” she said, “but you know, he probably knows some little tidbit, as he puts it, and he’s going to blow whatever it is up into something to make me doubt what I’m doing.”
“But of course,” said Annelise, “you don’t know who you’re working for or what you’re doing. It’s all a mystery. We don’t even know if someone didn’t put us on this Lucy thing for some nefarious ulterior reason. We don’t even know what the Violet Council is, other than that Marius has to do with it and we sort of trust him, right?”
“I’m gonna have some questions for that dude,” said Lilah.
“I mean, I do trust him. Not as much as I trust you.”
“Thank you.” Lilah took another look up and down the note, then folded it and gave the same look to Annelise. “I trust you too. But you do understand, now, right? I can’t think of any reason you shouldn’t trust me, but I can think of lots of ways I shouldn’t trust you. Or Rob. Or George. Or definitely Miss Zinnia Rose. And Marius? Seriously.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Wondering as always.” Lilah shook her head, glanced at the others, then gazed off into the night. “But it’s not that different from what I’m used to. On Padva, and definitely after Padva, whatever it was I was doing, what I didn’t know was a lot bigger than what I did know, and who I couldn’t trust was a lot more than who I could trust.” She met Annelise’s eyes. “But I trusted the people I was closest to. Garik, Inez, Neal. Gregoria. Yeah. I should have trusted them, I had to trust them, and I found I could trust them. Kinda tough that they’re all dead.”
“Yeah,” said Annelise.
“And as for the other stuff, well, if there’s something evil going on in the back of all this, we’re going to find out because we’re going to solve this thing, and whoever’s up to something, even if it’s just screwing around with three people’s lives, if they’re doing it for reasons of, you know, evil: we’re going to find out and they’re going to be sorry we did.”