A Maze of Glass, Chapter Eighteen, Pt. 1
Everything slowed down after the suicide.
At least, everything seemed to slow down. But Zoe knew better. The withdrawal of immediate surveillance and on-site operatives from Jill’s school and neighborhood was little better than a lampshade. The White Ravens charter forbade murder and so all active aggressors had to make a show of recoiling at the results of their ongoing campaigns. Even the Belgian had to pretend contrition out of etiquette.
Nobody wanted to look like they were having a parade over a corpse. Even when they were.
The reality was that Altan Woeser’s suicide was proof that the campaign was working. All the psychic magic, dream magic, illusions magic, all the pressure of late night phone calls, of surveillance both obvious and occulted—nobody had ever planned to storm the school with guns and handcuffs. The plan had looked like this all along.
Nobody needed to kill Earnest Hemingway. They just needed to not follow him.
(they didn’t follow him right up until he—)
So while Malleus and the Belgian reined in their more visible and aggressive efforts, they doubled down on everything else. They only tucked away the things that might grab attention from a White Ravens’ grigori or an everyday detective.
“…considering everything that’s happened,” Leo was saying, Zoe using yet-another burner phone in a treehouse she’d found in the woods, “I was able to make some leeway with the Board regarding their proposal.”
“The terms of surrender,” Zoe corrected bitterly.
Leo sighed. “Maybe it is, but what else is there?”
“Hum me the tune.”
A few scattered beer bottles and crumpled up bags of chips sat in the strew of dead leaves and dust. Zoe sat on the floor, a series of boards slabbed between boughs and branches. Judging from the cobwebs and mold, nobody had used the place in months. Maybe years.
“Jill and Darnell will remain together in Malleus custody while their children are processed and released into the foster system.”
Zoe shook her head. “No way.”
“You know the Board can’t let them walk away free.”
“So they stay together.”
“If the children enter our custody, they’ll remain there for life. At least this way, after processing, they can…”
“What?” Zoe barked. “What can they do?”
“Live.”
“And what about Karen?”
“That will be up to the Belgian, I’m afraid.”
Zoe closed her eyes and banged the back of her head against a wall. Dust fell all over her. She took a deep breath. “This isn’t a deal, this is…I don’t even know what this is.”
“It’s the best option we’ve got.”
She opened her eyes. Stared at the ceiling.
Leo continued: “Zoe…I think it might be best to take the deal.”
She blinked. “Let me get back to you.”
“Zoe—”
She hung up, turned off the phone, stared up for a while, and sighed. Taking out a second phone, she dialed a number. She rolled her neck, small pops breaking the night silence. The line trilled. Someone connected on the other side. A pause followed.
“Hello?” Zoe asked.
“I heard about what happened,” Shoshanna said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Well. I need that evac we talked about.”
“I can still only take five people.”
“I figured it all out.”
“I see.” A soft sigh fuzzed over the line. “They told me he hanged himself.”
“I—I don’t have all the details,” Zoe replied.
“Hanging can be so sudden if it’s done right. Even if someone found him in the act, he could’ve snapped his neck in a split second.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“If he’d cut his wrists, someone could’ve used healing magic. If he’d taken an overdose, someone could’ve rushed him to the hospital. But he hanged himself.”
“So?”
“With all the psychic and dream magic pointed at that house, I wonder if he really thought of it, himself. I wonder if the things that pierced Jill’s wards planted the idea in his head, embedded in a dream or tingling his earlobe during some storm of angst and depression.”
“They planted it,” Zoe said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Can we ever be sure?”
“They sent a distraction. They knew he was doing it, or planning to.”
“How do you know it was a distraction and not an assassin?”
“Maybe it was both. When can you have an evac team ready?”
“How soon do you need them?”
Zoe thought through a tangle of timelines and mathematics. She estimated how many days it would take her and Omar to weaken all the spells tracking and spying on Jill and her found family, how long it might take to perform an actual extraction, how long it might take to lose any tails or combatants… “Six days? Seven?”
“I can do that.”
“We can meet—”
“We shouldn’t discuss that, yet,” Shoshanna interrupted. “That should be a decision we make the day before. Just in case.”
“Right.”
“I’ll call you back in three days for the final timeline. I’ll have everything ready.”
“Thanks. Talk then.”
They echoed each other their goodbyes and Zoe hung up. Collecting her backpack and kit, she climbed down the rope ladder to the forest floor and started back toward the safehouse where Omar and Frank awaited her. She tried to figure out how to tell Omar what she’d just done. Maybe he’d feel satisfied with the truth: that either they fell back to the Smash and Grab plan or they lost.
And hopefully Shoshanna Winters had space for a second Malleus defector.
Turn Back
...coming soon...
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