A Maze of Glass, Chapter Twenty Two, Pt. 2
Zoe sat in the parking lot in a rental sedan, watching the sun stew closer and closer to the western horizon. Omar and Shoshanna were twenty-two minutes late and neither of them had picked up her phone calls or radio transmissions. While low-volume music played through the speakers, she scribbled symbols against a handheld chalkboard, focusing on a psychic ritual spell that might let her reach out for a couple seconds of contact. Enough time to confirm what, if anything, had gone wrong.
It took a well-trained witch like herself twenty-five seconds of labor to create a psychic communications link one second long. Having had little to eat considering the day’s labors, and wanting some physical resources on reserve in case things had gone wrong in a dangerous way, Zoe hoped that five seconds would give her enough time for an update.
Assuming Omar decided to respond.
On her fourth repetition of the brief ritual, the song changed.
She noticed because it had changed in the middle of another song.
Once Upon a Time There Was a World. Piano music opened it up. Outside, thin strata clouds knifed across the bleeding sunset. Zoe dropped the chalk, tears welling up immediately. As Orlando Vasquez set his guitar to wail apocalyptic, Zoe wiped at her eyes and peered at the rearview. A limo pulled into the lot, the only other vehicle present. Throwing the chalk board on the passenger seat, Zoe brought her hand to rest on the grip of her sidearm.
The limo stopped twenty feet away.
Leonid Singh climbed out of the passenger seat. He carried a manila folder in his hands.
“Fuck you!” Zoe shouted, spilling out of her car. “Fuck you!”
Leo held his hands up, surrendering in gesture only. “Zoe, please—”
She jerked her pistol out of its holster. Held it next to her leg, shaking. “Fuck you.”
“I’m so sorry.” He stepped back, hands up. “Please.”
She dropped her gun. She didn’t want to shoot Leo. She wanted to hurt a lot of people, in that moment, but Leo wasn’t one of them. When she spoke, again, all the volume had gone out of her voice. “What…happened?”
“Ten years ago, you saved a young man’s life. Today, he returned the favor.”
“What?”
“Omar dropped the students off somewhere. A bus station, a train station…nobody knows. They’re ‘in the wind,’ as the saying goes.” Leo slowly lowered his hands until both of them held the folder. “He reappeared not long after with an offer for the Board. He had Gillian Briar and Karen Woeser with him.”
“He turned them over?”
“Jill came voluntarily. And he had terms. Most were easy to meet. Some were harder. He wanted you to go formally un-accused and unpunished for any doings—that was the hardest. Especially after this morning. But as far as the Board or the Belgian are concerned, you were never even here.”
“What happened to Jill?”
Leo gestured with the manila folder. “We’re getting to that.”
“Karen?”
“She’s in the Belgian’s custody, or will be soon. We’ve alerted the Ravens and they’ve sworn to send someone to watch over her and ensure against any kind of physical or psychological torture, any violence or duress of any kind.”
“But they’ll keep her imprisoned? Interrogated?”
“Until the day she dies, yes.”
Zoe stumbled backward until her spine met the side of her car. “Leo, how could you?”
“Because I had to make a choice.”
“What’s in that folder?”
“Someone had to take a fall for everything that happened in Salem.”
“No. No, no, no, Leo, no…”
He opened the folder and turned over the first page inside. “The story the police are putting together reads like this: Gillian Briar, after a lifelong struggle with addiction and mental illness, started a cult. She sought out troubled people, children especially, and promised to teach them magic. Unfortunately, the cost of running her fraudulent school, as well as the general cost of everyone living in the house, became overwhelming. Jill became paranoid and started talking about secret societies and covert conspiracies, using these scapegoats to cover for her own mistakes. She told the people who trusted her that they were being targeted by spells and hexes, that she could only protect them inside the house. Eventually, the isolation and abuse led to a young boy’s suicide. Later, it led to murder.”
Zoe sucked air through a half-closed throat, trying not to let her ragged breaths turn into sobs. “You can’t. You can’t.”
He turned over the next page. “She’ll be found mentally incompetent to stand trial. Her break from reality, the delusions she’s suffered for her whole life…the legitimate belief she seems to have in literal magic and extant secret societies…she’ll never see prison.”
Zoe sank to the asphalt, shaking her head. “You killed her. You son of a bitch, you killed her.”
Leo blinked, stepping back. His own gaze shone glassy in the sunset. He cleared his throat. “Due to overcrowding at state institutions, Gillian Briar will be held in a specialized Winters-Armitage facility, newly constructed.”
Zoe couldn’t stop shaking.
Leo took a quivering breath and wiped stray mourning from beneath his eyes. “She will be treated with the utmost care. Due to her current legal status, you will assume conservatorship. Naturally.”
She couldn’t stop shaking. She felt like her bones were crumbling. She felt like an apocalypse was happening inside of her.
“I need you to sign one affidavit affirming Jill’s—Gillian’s—lifelong and legitimate belief in the literal supernatural, and I need you to sign these papers to begin the process of gaining conservatorship.”
“How could you do this?” Zoe asked, unable to look at anything or even stop shaking. “How could Omar?”
“We had to.”
“He could’ve met me here. He could’ve just kept driving. He could’ve just kept…”
“For how long? How long do you think you could hide from the Board, from the Belgian and his Consortium? And is that really the life Jill and Karen wanted for those children? To live either imprisoned in some secret bunker or running eternally away from one or another active operative? Zoe, I—” his voice cracked. He swallowed. “I didn’t want this, either. Believe me. But the kids have disappeared and I believe Omar is good enough at what he does that nobody will find them any time soon. I believe he’s good enough that he can make it a waste of time and resources to try. And at least Jill and Karen are still alive.”
Zoe barked a laugh, still struggling for control over her own nervous system.
Leo angled his body away. Face drawn low, he sighed. He didn’t look back up as he continued. “It’s a far better resolution than any that looked likely before. And now it can be over.”
(every story)
Zoe pushed herself up, tendons still jumping randomly through her meat, and wiped a sheet of grief from her face. Her hands shook. “It’s not over, Leo.”
“Perhaps it never is. But if you sign this, nobody has a reason to make anything worse.”
“I’ll sign it for the kids. But this isn’t over. I’ll figure out how to get her out of there, one way or another.”
“I hope you do.” He turned the manila folder toward her and plucked a marbled pen from a jacket pocket. He hesitated before holding it out to her. He didn’t watch as she started writing.
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