“Jonas,” I called, because Rhea was awake now, so there was no more reason for silence.
He looked up.
“Do you have a photo of Johanna?”
He didn’t answer, being busy putting another couple of pillows behind Rhea. But he made a gesture at the stretch of windows beside me, which abruptly changed, from night in Vegas to a photo of a girl. One with dark hair and beautiful green eyes, almost startlingly so against
an olive complexion.
I took in the face, but it didn’t help much. The damn Winnebago had been too dark, and too clogged with dust for me to be sure. It might have been her; it might have been anyone.
“Can I talk to Lizzie?” I asked, and that request seemed to be a bit more complicated. But by the time Rhea had polished off a third of the soup, a new face was in the window, one with dark circles under her eyes and matted blond hair, because it looked like Lizzie had gotten even less sleep than me.
And I’d just disturbed that. There was an unmade cot behind her, bolted to the floor, which she was attached to by what I assumed was a set of magical cuffs. A fact that reassured me not at all.
“She needs to stay drugged,” I told Jonas. “Until she gives back the power.”
“She is. We’re monitoring her closely.”
“Not closely enough! There should be an acolyte with her!” Hildegarde said.
“Are you volunteering?” I asked.
“You—” Her eyes widened. “You don’t have any acolytes?”
Rhea waved slightly from the bed. Abigail’s face went from worried to just slightly above horrified. Hildegarde cursed—rather inventively.
“Hilde—” Jonas began.
“Damn it, Jonas, what the hell have you been doing?”
“I didn’t know that fail-safes existed—”
“But you did know there were other acolytes! Even former initiates would have been better than nothing. Why on earth—”
“He wanted to keep control of the court,” Abigail said, softly. She looked stunned, almost hurt, like she couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t believe that she was twenty years older than me.
It’s not the age—it’s the mileage, I told myself grimly, and walked over to the windows. “I want some answers, Lizzie.”
“I’ve told them everything I know,” she spat. “A hundred times! They keep asking the same stupid questions—”
“Maybe I can think of some new ones.”
She looked at me resentfully.
“Johanna Zirimis,” I said. “You knew her?”
“Of course I knew her. She was an acolyte!”
“But did you know her well?”
“Nobody knew her well. She was some kind of weirdo.”
“What kind?”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Oh, there’re kinds now?”