Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

I closed my eyes, remembering Saul’s roommate, Donna Raun, and her comments about needing money for rent.

“He sold the snake oil,” I said, “to Sheena Kathreese. And she sold it to Bobby Kearn. When Bobby used it, Sheena was the closest person around. And she felt all that anger. She lost control.”

Vig waved his hands again. “Wait, wait, wait. If that’s the case, why didn’t it trigger the attack right away?”

“Because,” Vandie said, “Paulus had some kind of firewall between the manna bond. It wouldn’t go into effect until I snapped a wooden stick she gave me.”

I looked at the only sorcerer in the room. “Is that possible?”

“It was a stopper spell,” Auberjois said. He was getting excited. “It’s a magical safeguard. Paulus put a wall between the snake oil and the buzzing rocks. Then she tied the stick to the magical wall; break the stick, break the wall. It’s like pulling the cork out of a bottle.”

“So you popped the cork,” I said to Vandie. “Then what?”

“That was when I found out that Saul had sold the snake oil.”

I remembered the manna threads running between Vandie and Bobby Kearn’s corpse. I’d been sensing the remnant of her magical “cork.” But I also remembered the pained look on Vandie’s face when she’d seen the transformed body. My breathing slowed as understanding sunk in.

“You killed Bobby Kearn by accident.”

“I didn’t kill him,” she said. “The dancer did. I just brought the buzzing to the room. It was . . .” Her voice faltered. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Like getting someone drunk and sticking them behind the wheel.

“And the transformation?”

“I don’t know. She—Paulus, I mean. She never said anything like that would happen. I have no idea what caused that.” Vandie bit her lip, pinching the skin until it paled. “Maybe something wrong with the spell? I don’t know.”

“And when you didn’t manage to kill Saul, did you give up?”

She exhaled loudly. “No. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but then Saul called us. He demanded more snake oil, a bigger batch this time. He was blackmailing us.”

“That must have been so hard for you,” I said.

“Whatever. We had to try a second time.”

“Weren’t you afraid of getting it wrong again?”

“Yes.” She sounded emphatic. “Hells yes. That’s why she—Paulus—made the safeguard, the stopper spell or whatever, so that it would only work at shorter range. That way, if Saul had sold it, it wouldn’t affect anyone else. She had to get close, but triggered the magic herself. It worked, and Saul was killed. Except . . .”

I may have been kidding myself, but I thought there was genuine remorse in her words.

“Except he’d already diluted it and sold it to other people,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“So the buzzing attacks all over the city, they can be traced back to you.”

“To Paulus,” she said. “And to the rocks from the vents. And to whoever she had working for her. Keep searching that sinkhole, you’ll probably find something.”

Auberjois underestimated Vandie, and now she was playing him like a pro. What really galled me was that I’d underestimated her as well. The brash young revolutionary had been surprised by her arrest, but thought so fast on her feet that she’d used it as leverage to tear down everyone she hated, including Paulus, Gellica, and myself. If Vandie was going down, she intended to take her enemies down with her.

“I’m telling you,” she said, “Paulus just wanted to hide the bodies that were already down there. I don’t even think she meant to set off the sinkhole. But it happened, and now she’s desperate to cover it up.”

Another lie. The planted badge proved that Vandie knew the sinkhole was coming. But I couldn’t call her on it, because I was the one who’d convinced Jax to keep quiet, and I was the one who’d concealed the badge when I found it in the sinkhole.

“How’s she gonna do that?” asked Vig. “What could possibly cover up the sinkhole?”

Vandie’s voice lowered. “She’s got something planned at the festival. I don’t know what, but she was all over me, trying to get security info out of me. I think she may have sent someone out to scope out the place yesterday.”

I held in a snarl. She was good. That was when I’d gone up to the festival site. If anyone tried to do some digging, they’d have no trouble realizing it was me.

The trouble was, there might be hard evidence on Paulus. Everything in Vandie’s warehouse office had been seized, including the audio tapes. It’d take weeks for the whole thing to be processed, but it would happen. And when it did, someone would listen to those tapes, and maybe they’d start connecting dots. What else had Heidelbrecht said? Was there something on there that would implicate Gellica as her mother’s creation?

I pressed a hand against my temple. Vandie Cedrow had run rings around me.

“Why do you think she’s targeting the festival?”

Vandie took a breath. “She’s setting me up.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “She’s doing a pretty good job of it, considering we caught you right outside your little rabbit warren.”

“Paulus wants a distraction. She wants the world to think I did all this on my own.” Vandie looked around at the assembled cops and attempted to plead her case. “Look, I know I’m not without fault here. But Paulus is playing you, hoping that you’ll hang the whole thing on me, and give you a reason to let her walk. She’s so desperate, she’s got Gellica and whoever else is working for her trying to pull off something even bigger.”

“Bigger?” There was concern in Auberjois’s voice, and maybe a hint of excitement.

“Yes!” Vandie pounced. “You’re asking about her motive? It’s the simplest one there is. She wants to save her ass. If there’s an explosion or something at the concert while she’s in jail . . . She told me once that whales used to sing to each other. Maybe she thinks it’d be ironic if