Jeweled (37 page)

Anatol gave the Temple of Dreams a wide berth on his way to and from Belai every day, directing his carriage to go several streets around the building. Normally he’d go directly past it twice a day. He and Gregorio had not given up on Evangeline and they never would; they were simply giving her a few days to realize she’d made a mistake and come back to them.

But it had been three days. Evangeline had not returned.

A cold little voice he tried never to listen to whispered that maybe she didn’t think she’d made a mistake and that maybe she would never return. That voice also whispered that perhaps Evangeline had already left the city.

Maybe she was lost to them forever.

That’s why he never went past the temple. He was certain that little voice would scream at him as soon as he saw the building. If that happened, he would surely stop the carriage and run inside yelling for Evangeline. If he had to endure any more days of her absence and this maddening silence, that was exactly what he was going to do.

Gregorio seemed to be handling her abandonment of them even worse. He hardly said a word, sulking and storming around the house and Belai like a wounded bear in bad temper. He’d sent his cook and cleaning woman away so no one but Anatol would be witness to his grief. They were eating takeout from the cookshops every night and the house was a mess. Most people had learned to stay out of his way. Gregorio was heartbroken and that pain manifested as anger. Anatol was heartbroken, too, but he understood Evangeline better than Gregorio did.

She was terrified of being abandoned again, so she’d done it first.

But surely the ties of love they shared were strong enough to see them through this. She couldn’t mean it. She’d remember she loved them, that they loved her, and she’d return. Wouldn’t she?

Damn that little voice.

The carriage came to a stop and Anatol pushed the curtain aside to verify that they’d arrived at the cookshop. He pushed the door open and entered the shop, barely even noticing the patrons or the delicious smell of food wafting around him. He headed straight for a waitress to put in an order. Then, like every evening, he’d return to the carriage to wait for them to prepare it and box it up for the ride home.

“Anatol?”

He turned to see Lilya smiling at him. It was a courtesy he couldn’t return. It still hurt him that Lilya had turned them away that night. “Hello, Lilya.” He continued past her toward the waitress.

“Anatol? Is something wrong?” she asked behind him.

How could she even ask him that? Gritting his teeth, he turned. “Just about everything at the moment, yes.”

Her smooth brow crinkled. “Did Evangeline leave you again?”

“Again?” He took a step toward her, his anger rising. Gregorio wasn’t the only one on the edge of his temper these days. “What do you mean,
again
? She left us once and that was enough.”

“I’m confused, Anatol. Why are you speaking to me this way?”

He forced himself to take a breath and speak in a measured tone. They were drawing attention in the cookshop with their conversation. “Because you wouldn’t let us see Evangeline the night we came for her. If you had allowed us in perhaps things might have turned out differently. Maybe she would have come back to us.” He paused and swallowed hard, glancing away. “How is she?” Joshui, he feared her answer would be that she’d left for another province.

“How is she? Anatol, I have no idea what you’re talking about! She left the Temple of Dreams when you and Gregorio called for her out on the street. She felt your heartbreak with her magick and it broke through to her. She realized the mistake she was making, and she practically ran me over to get to you. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

Anatol went silent for several long moments, processing what she’d said. He could detect no lie in Lilya through his magick—she believed everything she said was true.

He pushed a hand through his hair. Evangeline had wanted to come to them? Then why hadn’t they ever seen her come out into the street? “She never made it.” His voice sounded as hollow and cold as he suddenly felt. “We haven’t seen her since the night she left.”

Lilya went pale. She grabbed him by his upper arm and pulled him out of the shop. It was a good thing; he wasn’t sure he could move on his own. She rounded on him as soon as they were out onto the street. It was early evening and there was a chill bite to the air, he noted numbly. “Then where is she?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head, contemplating what he didn’t want to contemplate. “Maybe it was just an act. Maybe she only said she was going to meet us, but in fact she was running away from all of us. Maybe—”

“No.”
Lilya shook her head. “It couldn’t be that.” Lilya turned and began to pace. “She raced out of the room and met someone in the hall. They spoke and I heard Evangeline say
thank you
as she hurried away.”

“To whom was she speaking? What did she say?”

Lilya stopped and looked at him. “I couldn’t hear their conversation, only the louder thank you. I think it was Dora in the hall, but I can’t be certain.”

His shocked numbness eclipsed into icy purpose. If Evangeline was missing, they were going to find her. He grabbed her arm and hauled her toward his carriage. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll stop and get Gregorio, then we’re headed to the Temple of Dreams to talk to Dora and anyone else who remembers seeing her that night.”

 

 

It was perhaps a mistake picking up Gregorio before they went to the Temple of Dreams because finding out Evangeline was missing threw him into a rage.

“Which one is Dora?” Gregorio growled as soon as they’d cleared the threshold.

Lilya halted in the foyer with a hand on her hip. “I’m not going to tell you until you calm down, Gregorio.”

He paused in his restless, predatory examination of the sitting room and everyone in it to look at her. “I’m calm.”

Anatol didn’t need his gift to see that was a lie. His hands and jaw were both clenched. He also knew it was a lie because Anatol felt the same way; he was just better able to control it.

Lilya sighed. “Come with me.”

They followed her up a flight of stairs and into a large room decorated with a couch and a couple of comfortable-looking chairs. “Wait here and I’ll bring her in.” She wagged a finger in Gregorio’s face.
“Be nice
.
”

Lilya left and he and Gregorio shared a look of anger borne from a sense of helplessness. Then Gregorio began to pace while Anatol watched him.

Dora came in a few minutes later. She was a tall, thin woman with long black hair and very white skin. Her dark blue eyes regarded them with suspicion. “Lilya said you wanted to talk to me?” She closed the door behind her.

Gregorio made a move as though to jump on her, but Anatol swiftly stepped in front of him. “Were you here the night Evangeline Bansdaughter came to see Lilya? She was distraught, wanting to stay here for a while.”

“Yes. I’m the one who answered the door when she arrived. I summoned Lilya for her.”

Gregorio muscled his way past him. “Did you see her as she was leaving the Temple of Dreams? In the hallway? She’s been missing since that time. Lilya said Evangeline met someone in the hallway on her way out.”

Dora went silent for a moment. “Yes, I think I do remember that.”

“What did you two discuss before she left?” asked Anatol.

She glanced away from them, licking her lips, as though thinking back—or stalling for time. She shouldn’t have had to think that hard, it hadn’t been that long ago. “Let’s see . . . I asked where she was going in such a hurry and she told me she needed to get away, go somewhere quiet. She didn’t want to see either of you.”

Anatol’s jaw locked. Lilya had said Evangeline had hurried out of the room to meet them in the street. He could detect no lie in either woman’s story. Who was right? He looked at Gregorio. Pain was evident on his craggy features.

“I haven’t seen her since,” finished Dora.

“Neither have we,” growled Gregorio.

“She was very upset. She ran out the back door of the house and down the street.”

Anatol flinched. His magick gave him a flash through the illusion Dora presented. She hadn’t been lying about Evangeline saying she’d needed time alone. Lilya was wrong; Evangeline hadn’t been running out to meet them in the street—she’d been running to flee the onslaught of emotion. That was Anatol’s best guess anyway.

The part where he’d glimpsed the lie had been when Dora had said Evangeline had run out the back door and down the street.
That
was a lie and he saw it clear as day.

The room went silent. Finally Anatol cleared his throat. “Thank you, Dora, You can leave now.”

Dora smiled at them and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Gregorio hit a nearby wall open-handed. “That was a waste of time. She told us nothing of value.”

Anatol stared at the closed door. Gregorio was wrong. Dora had been very helpful. “She’s lying.”

“What?” Gregorio turned toward him. “Lying? How do you know?”

Anatol gave him a look.

“Right. Lying.” Gregorio rubbed his hand over his mouth. “All right, we need to question everyone in the house about that night. What they saw. The people who came in and left. Everything.” His expression turned savage. “And I want to talk to Dora again.”

And this time Anatol would let him do it without intervening. They wouldn’t do that right away, however. First they needed to arm themselves with as much information as they could glean from the rest of the staff. That meant they needed to talk to everyone individually.

“I’ll get Lilya.” Anatol headed for the door.

It took them until the early morning hours to gather the information they needed. Men often came in and out of the Temple of Dreams, of course, but there had been an above average number of them on the night in question. That was remarked upon by several of the people who worked there.

In addition one of the cooks had told them she’d seen Evangeline entering one of the rooms off the kitchen. The cook said she’d seemed like she was desperate and in a hurry. The door had closed after she’d entered and the cook hadn’t seen anything else.

Gregorio closed the door behind the last employee they could interview. “Time to talk to Dora again.”

They brought her back in and this time Anatol stood back.

At first she played innocent, but Gregorio threatened her quite convincingly. Anatol imagined the whole house could hear the shouting. A scant hour locked in the room with them and the woman was crying. Anatol did not pity her.

“The Revolutionaries took her,” Dora sobbed into her hands.

The room went silent. It was Anatol’s worst fear made real.

Gregorio grabbed Dora roughly by the upper arm and muscled her toward the door. “You’re under arrest for conspiring with a terrorist organization,” he growled. “You’re lucky if you ever see the light of day again.”

Anatol watched them leave, Dora trying to pull away, screaming and crying. He was sure that Gregorio wasn’t done with her yet. They needed to know more. Where they’d taken Evangeline. What they planned to do with her.

The Revolutionaries.
Sweet Joshui
. He hadn’t been this scared since his head had hit the chopping block on the steps of Belai.

Evangeline’s eyes opened to slits. Slowly becoming aware, she noted how cold she was. The iciness of the concrete floor beneath her seeped through her clothing and bit into her skin. Directly across from her stood a wooden table and two rickety-looking wooden chairs. The walls of the room appeared to be thin wood as well. The ceiling of the room had been discolored in several places from leaks.

She pushed up slowly, touching her aching head. Her mouth tasted as though it had been stuffed with fabric and her eyes were sticky from watering—crying?—while she’d had them closed.

Flashes of memory returned to her. Entering the room at the Temple of Dreams with her chest bursting with despair, needing to find a quiet place where she could parse her feelings and think about what she’d done. The strange men. Confusion.

Then the hood.

It had frightened her into complete immobility for a heartbeat and then she’d driven herself out of the shock and fought. But three men on one blinded woman hadn’t been good odds. She didn’t remember much after that, though she did recall that the fabric of the sack had been slightly damp and had smelled sweet. Perhaps they’d drugged her?

Oh, Joshui,
Dora
. She’d been the one to lead her into the trap. Had she been a sympathizer to the Revolutionaries? Had Dora called her friends when she’d shown up that night to the Temple of Dreams? It was beginning to seem that way.

After the burlap sack she remembered waking for short periods of time, drowsily consuming food and water, taking care of all the necessary things it took to stay alive. The faces of her captors swam in her mind’s eyes. Harsh faces. Harsher hands. In those brief periods when she’d been aware she had been so confused by the drugs they’d given her that she hadn’t even fought.