"So you were a soldier?"
She didn't catch him. William nodded. "I was."
Her posture was still wary, and her eyes tracked his movements. But she no longer looked like she was about to bolt into the wilderness. He was going in the right direction.
"What unit did you serve in?"
"The Red Legion."
"The red devils?"
He nodded again. "Look, I want to kill Spider. The only lead I've got right now is you. Spider wants you, which means you're my bait."
"Don't I feel special." She cocked her to the side. "How do I know you didn't make the lot of it up?"
He spread his arms. "You could ask Zeke, who'll tell you the same story. If you've got a way of learning things outside the Edge, you could ask about the Massacre of Eight in the Weird. But all of that takes time. You need me, Cerise. You don't know how to fight the Hand. I do. We're on the same side."
"Is there anything else you need to tell me?"
Every time I look at you, I have to put a leash on myself. "No."
"If you lied to me, I'll hurt you," she promised.
He showed her his teeth. "You'll try."
She sighed. "You worry me, Lord Bill. You're trouble."
He won again. William hid a laugh. "You should be worried, and I am." He folded the arms of the crossbow and headed toward the boat.
She put her hand on her hip. "Where are you going?"
"To the boat. You called me Lord Bill again. That means we're cool."
Cerise slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand and followed him.
"Fine. I'll take you with me. But only because I don't want to run into the fight blind."
They walked to the boat side by side. He breathed in her scent, watching the way her long hair shifted as she moved. She was graceful and she stepped so carefully, picking her way along the mud, almost as if she was dancing. It finally sank in - he'd spend the next few days under her roof. In her house, filled with her scent. He would see her every day.
She would see him every day. If he played his cards right, she might even do more than see. He had to stay cool and bide his time. He was a wolf. He had no problem with patience.
"I just want to know one thing," Cerise said.
"Yes?"
"When you kill Spider, are you going to chop off his head and have Zeke stuff it to make sure he's really dead?"
Chapter Twelve
THE porch boards creaked under Lagar's foot. The whole manor was rotten. The inside of the house smelled musty, the paneling damp and slimy, dappled with black mildew stains.
He'd wanted the manor so much, he got in bed with the Hand for it. Fucking freaks. He shrugged his shoulders, trying to shed the memory of their magic, hot and sharp, brushing against him like a bunch of heated needles. And all for what? For this piece-of-shit house.
The only reason he'd wanted the damn house was because it belonged to Gustave. Gustave had everything: he ran his family and they worshipped him, he was respected, people asked him for advice . . . And Cerise lived in his house.
Chad appeared from behind the house, hands clutching the rifle.
"What is it?"
"I can't find Brent."
Lagar followed the guard around the house to a garden overgrown with weeds and ickberry. A small puddle, burgundy-dark in the gray dawn light, slicked the mud on the edge of the bushes. Blood.
Chad shifted from foot to foot. "I came to relieve him ..."
Lagar raised his hand, shutting him up. Long scratches marked the wet slime, wide apart, driven deep by a massive weight. Footprints approached the tracks. Brent must've seen the scratches and hesitated in this spot. The momentary pause cost him his life. Something leapt at him and carried him off.
Behind him Chad shifted from foot to foot. "I thought maybe a Mire cat ..."
"Too big." Lagar peered past the sea of weeds to the crumbled stone wall that separated the once cultivated piece of land from the pines. Quiet.
"Where is the rifle?" he thought out loud.
"Uh ..."
"The rifle, Chad. Brent had one. Why would an animal take it?"
It began to drizzle. The rain wet the gray-green ickberry leaves, the red milkwort, the tall spires of laurel that kept their purple flowers locked in green against the rain. Cold wetness crept from Lagar's scalp down his neck and across his brow. He didn't bother wiping it away.
"Pair the men," Lagar said. "From now on, nobody stands watch or goes anywhere alone. Send Chrisom to town and have them buy some ervaurg traps."
"The nest kind or the shredders?"
"The shredders." There was no need to be subtle. "Put a shooter up in the attic to cover the garden, make three teams of two, and comb it. Let's see if we can find that rifle. After you're done searching, trap the place."
Lagar waved him off, and Chad departed at a brisk run. Lagar crouched by the tracks and spread his hand, measuring the distance between the scratches. The front paws were almost ten inches across. Lagar moved into the thicket. There it was, the deep indentations, marking a place where an animal had crouched. He glanced back to the claw marks. Seven and a half yards.
He touched the edges of the paw prints and dipped his fingers into the imprint to measure its depth. Round, thick fingers. If this was a cat, then it was male, four yards long and weighing near seven hundred pounds. His mind struggled to picture an animal that large. Was it something from the Weird? Why did it come here?
Lagar walked out of the thickets and rubbed the claw marks with the sole of his boot until only slick mud remained. Panic was the last thing they needed.
He paused before reaching the porch, stopping where mud had been churned by many feet two weeks ago. The rain had obliterated the tracks. They had taken Gustave down here. He fought for his freedom, fought for his wife, but he lost.
Lagar tugged at a loose strand of hair, thinking of the way Gustave looked when the web spawned by the Hand's magic finally let them wrestle the sword from his fingers. It had been a sweet sight, Gustave helpless in his fury, but they paid for it with four of their men.
Four men who worked for him. He knew their families. He gave their wives money for their dead husbands. The way Emilia Cook looked at him when he gave her her cut made him want to drown himself. Like he was the scum of the earth.
A crazy thought danced in his mind. Walk away, abandon the manor, leave the Mire, and go someplace new, where nobody knew him. He was barely twenty-eight.
Lagar hunched his shoulders. A sardonic smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He had paid too much for this false diamond. Like a runner who had given all of himself to the race, he had reached his finish line but found he couldn't stop.