The Thief (36 page)

Gabriel lifted the latch and pushed. The
door swung open with a grating creak.

The soft sounds of someone stirring came
from inside. “Who’s there?” a weak voice called.

My eyes widened. “There’s someone in there?”
I whispered to Gabriel.

“
How would the door have put
it...it’s me, but it’s not me,” he said, mouth twisting, and pushed
me through the thin opening.

The cellar was as large as one of the
science labs at school, and every inch was made of solid iron. In
the center was a cage about twenty feet square. Inside it stood a
pale, haggard man with emerald green eyes and long, scraggly
pine-green hair. I’d seen him before somewhere...Where had I seen
him...

The look on the man’s face was pure horror
as he stared at Gabriel.

“
What a hell this would have
been,” Gabriel said, looking around at the dark metal room. “No
sun. No earth. Not a thing green or growing. I do believe I would
have gone slowly insane, and withered to nothing. Maybe even died.
That
was
your
plan, wasn’t it?” he asked the other man.

The emerald eyes of the man behind the bars
burned.

“
I see you’ve fared a bit
better than I would have,” Gabriel commented. “Found yourself a
little minion, have you? Has he been bringing you little presents?”
He looked at the books, magazines, and comics in neat stacks around
the cell.

The man remained silent, expression
guarded.

Gabriel shrugged. “Details. You know what
the really disappointing thing in all this has been? Not being able
to use your powers. I kept hoping I’d figure them out, but it
appears that’s part of the spell. I mean, I hadn’t had time to work
out all the kinks of the body switch. I’d only just discovered the
spell when you sprung this stupid trap on me. It really was the
back-up plan’s back-up plan. But you should be grateful the body
switch represses powers. If I could use yours, well, I wouldn’t be
here right now. And you probably would have gone insane if you had
access to mine, trapped in this hole for a hundred years...from a
certain perspective, it’s like I did you a favor.”

The man’s mouth pressed into a hard
line.

“
Perhaps not, you’re right,”
Gabriel said with an exaggerated sigh. “The world has changed,
hunter. It’s not the place it was when I left you here, if you
haven’t already gathered that from your imp book club,” he said,
glancing at the stacks of reading material. “The humans have
forgotten us completely. They don’t believe in anything but their
own ingenuity anymore. Except for a few. Your own students, in
fact. The Uminos have gone far, far beyond their original purpose
in your absence. I might have egged them on.” Gabriel shrugged.
“Meanwhile...in the Afterlands, the Ryans are in Angwar preparing
for a final war. They’ve almost closed their grip on the other
kingdoms. The ferals of Farpeak are all that stand between them and
total dominance. You know how those Ryans are, they just can’t ever
be satisfied with what they have. But with no more traveling
mirrors, we’ll be safe until another Mirrormaker gets their act
together.”

My heart thumped. Rhys’s powers were
problematic, but Dad had made blades of the school windows as if it
were nothing. I had no idea what he was capable of, not
anymore.

“
So. Why am I telling you
all this?” Gabriel asked the man, his voice turning cold. “What is
the point of giving your enemy any information at all?” He gave a
little smirk. “Because you care too damn much. Oh, wait ‘til you
see what Meredith and I have been up to. You’re going to love
it.”

The green-haired man’s lip curled into a
snarl.

Gabriel and Meredith? Working together? What
was he saying? And his tone had become so cruel, so devoid of
empathy. My head swirled with information. Had I made a horrible
mistake?

“
She’s still around, of
course. Back to murdering people left and right when the mood hits
her. No one really knows how to stop her, after all.” Gabriel faked
a realization. “Oh wait, you do. Well I should let you out,
shouldn’t I, so you can stop her from terrorizing the villagers?
Just like old times.” He lifted a long cord from around his neck -
from it hung an ancient skeleton key.

The man backed up slowly, unsteadily. He
eyed Gabriel with deep distrust as the key went into the cage’s
padlock.

“
I’m letting you out,
hunter, aren’t you grateful?” Gabriel taunted.

“
What’s the benefit to you?”
the other man spoke at last, his voice creaky with disuse as the
lock clicked open.

“
You say that like I think
only of myself,” Gabriel said, opening the cage door. “Can’t I just
offer you a helping hand?”

He reached out and grasped the other man’s
hand tightly, a rune on his palm suddenly flaring to
brightness.

Swirls of energy arced between the two men -
bright, stabbing bursts of acid green flowing from Gabriel to the
green-haired man, and pinwheeling, icy blue whorls moving the
opposite direction, almost like the energies were combating each
other even as they barreled past to a new destination.

Or, if what Gabriel had said was true, an
old destination.

As the energies balanced, both men
collapsed. Gabriel was the first to snap awake, reaching up for the
padlock, key in hand. Was he going to lock the other man back
inside after all?

Then I remembered - that wasn’t Gabriel. Not
anymore.

Gabriel - in his pale, starved, green-haired
body, leapt at the other man, tackling him to the floor. He curled
a hand around the other man’s throat. “Who am I kidding?” he said,
grinning wickedly. “You know me too well.” A sickly green light
pulsed under his fingers.

“
No!” the man shouted, but
then made choking noises even though Gabriel took his hand away. A
spiky, acid green design covered the man’s entire throat like a
tattoo, except it seemed to glow slightly.

Gabriel sat back, panting, pine-green hair
sticking to his unfamiliar face, narrow with high cheekbones and a
wide, cruel mouth. His hand held aloft a ball of whorling frost,
that seemed to do war with the green arcs twining from his fingers.
His other hand reached into a pocket of his rotting, dated clothing
and lifted up a bell, no larger than an acorn. The frost seeped
into the little item, disappearing, and with a burst of green light
it was gone. Then the bell was still, looking not the least bit out
of the ordinary. “How fortunate that was still there,” Gabriel
laughed, and it sounded strange with this unfamiliar form. “Thanks
for hanging onto my stuff for me, pal-o’-mine. Though I can’t say I
appreciate what you’ve done to my hair.” He plucked at the tangled
mess that cascaded over his shoulders.

The man’s hand was over the seal at his
throat. Hatred burned in his narrow, dark eyes, eyes that I had
thought were Gabriel’s.

“
Oh, fume all you want,”
Gabriel grinned, pushing his unruly hair out of his face. “We both
know you’re nearly useless unless you can speak. So welcome back to
the world, Katsura. You still can’t lay a finger on me.” That
twisted half-smile. Those glittering green eyes. It was the same
face, the exact same expression I’d seen on the painting in the
lab.

The Thief. Hemlock, the one who’d been
missing for a century. The immortal who was counted among the
greatest villains of history. Gabriel was Hemlock. What had I
done?

He tucked the bell into an
interior pocket. “I’m sure your voice will come in handy some time.
It
can
be
marvelously persuasive.”

Expression furious, the man
dove at him; Hemlock caught his wrists and snapped,
“Haurio.”
The man
immediately began to weaken, even as the hollows in Hemlock’s
cheeks filled out, his posture becoming steadier. Finally Hemlock
let go, and the man hit the floor with a metallic smack. It looked
like that had hurt, but he couldn’t even groan - not with his voice
missing.

“
That should be familiar to
you.” Hemlock said conversationally, nudging him in the side with
his foot. The man was breathing, but he seemed too exhausted to
move. Hemlock knelt and retrieved the hand mirror from the interior
of the other man’s jacket, where he’d stowed it when he’d taken it
from Dad. “I was worried I’d have trouble getting back into the
swing of things, it having been so long.” He tucked the mirror into
his belt, flexed his fingers, and cracked his knuckles. “Where
we’re going, I’d rather you not follow. Come on, Juliet, love,
we’ve wasted enough time here as it is.”

He reached out to me; I shrank back. “I
don’t bite, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m here to help you,
remember?”

“
You’re the Thief!” I
shouted, backing up toward the door. “You were the Thief the whole
time!”

He sighed. “Not ‘til just now, love. I can’t
very well be the Thief without my powers, can I? I needed to get my
body back.” He smirked. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

My heart hammered in my chest. This was all
my fault. I had done it. I had opened the door, given him
everything he needed. If I’d only done what Bea had asked -

“
We’re short on time, but I
suppose I owe you a small explanation. My name is Hemlock, but you
can go on calling me Gabriel if you like. This fellow here is Gohei
Katsura. Gohei and I have had a bit of an ongoing misunderstanding
for the last...how long, would you say, pal?” he asked the mute
man, who was still struggling to sit up. “Let’s just say we’re into
centuries now. It’s all very complicated and tedious.”

“
You lied!” I
insisted.

“
I may have lied about my
identity,” he said, “but I wasn’t lying about helping you. There
are no limits to what you and I can do together. Simon is on his
way, girl, and while I may not be the most upstanding citizen on
either side of the mirror, you will fare far better with me than
with him. He’ll use your powers to take over the world.”

“
And what will you use them
for?” I demanded.

His grin was unsettling. “To free it, of
course.”

“
I wasn’t aware that
anything needed freeing.”

“
You’re woefully
misinformed.” He raised his head and called out, “Imp, to
me.”

The spindly little monster materialized as
if falling through the iron ceiling, to land atop the cage. It
blinked its large, yellow eyes at us, clinging to the rim.

“
All the hard work you’ve
put in taming the thing and now it’s mine,” Hemlock smirked at
Gohei. “Come here,” he beckoned the creature.

The imp’s head cocked, birdlike, a sort of
trilling sound in the back of its throat.

“
You know me,” Hemlock said
smoothly. “You know this voice. Now come here and port me
out.”

The imp fidgeted, lamp-like eyes wide. Gohei
snorted something like a laugh on the floor, and the creature took
notice of him. It dropped, landing on his shoulder, tail curling
protectively around his neck.

“
You have got to be kidding
me,” Hemlock said, incredulous. “There’s no way it can tell the
difference - ”

He took a step towards them, and the lanky
little monster hissed at Hemlock, bat-like ears slicked back,
showing a mouth full of slender, needle-sharp teeth.

Hemlock recoiled, expression sour. “Live
this long and you can still learn something new every day,” he
muttered to himself. He suddenly looked up, as if hearing something
I couldn’t. “Oh that’s not good,” he said. He grabbed my hand and
began to pull me towards the hallway. “We need to get to the
sanctuary, now.”

“
I’m not going anywhere with
you!” I shouted. “I want to go home!”

“
Be careful what you wish
for,” Hemlock said, distracted, eyes on the ceiling.

The imp clinging to Gohei screamed at us as
Hemlock pulled me up the stairwell. I struggled in his grip,
reaching for the mirror’s opening and the forest beyond.

Hemlock gave me a yank up the stone
stairwell instead. “I said the sanctuary. Control yourself, girl,
because I can get you out of here just as easily if you’re
unconscious,” he snapped.

I stilled, heart hammering. What had
happened to the kind man who gave out hot chocolate and looked at
Camille like she was the most important thing in the world?

We passed a silent, blank-faced Porter in
the foyer. Throwing an anxious glance at the library curtain,
Hemlock swept us through the opposite one to the sanctuary.

“
All that remains,” Hemlock
said, his green eyes glittering, “is the Hearthstone.” He knelt by
the base of a pillar, pulling the edge of a tile free.

He was so much stronger than me - I couldn’t
overpower him. But my power was to negate power, and almost
everything inside this mirror was conjured of magic. I looked up. A
row of Rhys’s glass lanterns hung overhead. I focused all my
thoughts on them, willing the magic tying them to dissolve. After
all, they weren’t real, right?

Hemlock’s fingers curled around something
small, with a short laugh, just as a lantern crashed over him. He
sat back hard, a trickle of blood running from his hairline.

“
Juliet!” he
roared.

I ran back through the curtain and nearly
collided with Rhys coming out of the library.

“
Jul!” he exclaimed. “What -
”

I had no time to feel relief to see him. My
heart dropped into my stomach as I beheld the man I’d called father
ascending the stairs, eyes on me and clutching the iron sword in a
gloved hand. Where on earth had he gotten that?