Cursed

The section ended. I read it through twice more, then sat back in my chair. Something about that last one made me uneasy. A host …

I tried to figure out some way I could put the information in the books to use but came up blank. Bound or unbound, limited or unlimited, evil or neutral: Each book told a different story, and without knowing which was true they weren’t much help. The one thing they all agreed on was that the monkey’s paw was dangerous—and I’d known that already. I walked to my window and looked out over London.

The morning had been overcast but the clouds had vanished one by one and the sun was shining down out of a clear sky. Sunset was only a couple of hours away and the colour of the sunlight had changed to a rich yellow-gold, the chimneys and rooftops casting long shadows with the coming evening. The windows in the houses and flats were still illuminated by the sun but as dusk drew nearer I knew they would light up one by one, making squares of light in the darkness.

I was still restless. I’d tried to shrug it off all day and it hadn’t worked, and I didn’t know why. I’d done a job for Belthas and succeeded. Okay, I didn’t know everything, but Rachel and Cinder had been stopped. I wasn’t completely happy about the way things had ended, but I hadn’t had much choice.

Was it about Luna and the monkey’s paw? I thought about it and realised that wasn’t it. Working on the monkey’s paw wasn’t making me feel any better; the problem was somewhere else. Something was wrong.

But what?

It was because I didn’t understand. I’m like all diviners: I need to know things. I’d learnt bits and pieces but that wasn’t enough. I had to know how they fit together. The assassination attempts, Belthas, Rachel and Cinder, Arachne …

Start at the beginning. Which part related to me the most?

The assassination attempts.

There had been four. The construct in my shop, the sniper on the Heath, Cinder burning Meredith’s flat, and the bomb-maker in the factory.

Why did someone want me dead so badly?

The obvious explanation was because I’d stopped that first attack on Meredith. I’d prevented Rachel and Cinder from killing her so they’d turned their attention to me. The sniper and the bomb-maker had tried to kill me, and Cinder had tried to kill both of us. I remembered that last glimpse I’d had of Cinder, staring at me as Starbreeze snatched me and Meredith out of the window.

I frowned. Staring at me … There was something nagging at me. What was it?

It was the method. It didn’t fit. The construct and fire had been brute-force magical attacks. The sniper and the bomb-maker had used modern technology, precise and deadly.

And now that I thought about it, I’d never seen Rachel or Cinder use guns. Like most mages, they rely on magic for pretty much everything. If they wanted me dead, they’d either send a construct or do their own dirty work.

But that was stretching things. It made sense that the same group would be behind all the attacks. I knew Rachel and Cinder had been trying to get me killed …

…didn’t I?

Again I remembered how Cinder had looked when he’d seen me in Meredith’s flat, the way he’d stopped to stare. Except …

…if he’d been trying to kill me, why had he stopped?

I knew how fast Cinder was. He’d had more than enough time to get off an attack. But he hadn’t.

And the only way that made sense was if Cinder hadn’t been trying to kill me at all.

What if Cinder hadn’t known I was there? Meredith had been Rachel’s target when she’d sent the construct. Maybe Meredith had been Cinder’s target, too. It had been Meredith’s flat; even if he’d been expecting anyone else, Cinder would have had no way of knowing it was me. Which would mean he hadn’t known I was involved at all.

But the sniper had been targeting me, not Meredith. And the sniper had tried to kill me before I’d met Cinder at the flat …

A nasty feeling crept up inside me. That meant Rachel and Cinder hadn’t sent the sniper—and probably not the bomb-maker, either. Someone else had done it. Which meant that someone else was still out there. And odds were, they still wanted me dead.

But who?

I shook my head in frustration. It didn’t make sense. I wanted to blame Belthas. He had the contacts and the resources, as well as Garrick, who I still suspected had been the one shooting at me on the Heath. But I’d been working for Belthas—in fact, I’d just won a battle for him. Why would he want me dead before I’d told him where Rachel and Cinder were hiding? And if it was someone else, like Levistus, why would they choose to strike at me now?

I was missing something.

I tried calling Meredith and got her voice mail. I hung up and called Luna, and this time I got through.

Luna took a long time to answer, and when she did, her voice was blurred by the sound of wind. “Hi.”

“Luna, it’s Alex. Are you free?”

“What was that?” Luna said loudly.

“Where are you?”