The Whispering Echoes (Smoke and Mirrors Book 3) Read online

  “Your sister is an idiot. You both are sentimental fools. Even when we track down magic users, you always want to talk first—”

  “There’s no reason to spill blood!” Emile yelled. He pointed at Vernen. “Not everyone is a bloodthirsty murderer!”

  “You’ve known him for an hour and already you’ve made up your mind about him?” Michel snorted. “We should take the amplifier and kill both him and the dragon.”

  “That’s enough.” My voice came out steady, even though the rest of me was shaking as I got to my feet. “We’re done here. Come on,” I said to the others. “We’re leaving.”

  “No.” The anguish was clear in Claudette’s eyes. “Irina, no. Wait.”

  “Michel’s right,” I said. “We’ve only known each other for an hour. That means I can’t trust you. Any of you.” I sucked in a deep breath, my eyes burning with tears. “I risked everything to keep Vernen and Jaegger safe. Everything that mattered to me.” I didn’t dare look at Leonid as I said that. “I won’t let the three of you show up and destroy that because of your stupid quest for revenge. I’m sorry your city is gone, but if we don’t stop fighting and go after Aeonia, Ayres won’t be the only thing that’s lost.”

  “What are you talking about?” Claudette asked, her voice no louder than a whisper. Next to her, Emile and Michel had stilled. The tension in the air still existed, but at least some of the anger had cooled down. “Please, tell us. If she’s about to do something horrible, then we need to know. We need to stop her. All of us.”

  I looked to Elyse and she nodded, allowing me to proceed. “Aeonia stole something very important and very dangerous. She thinks… She thinks she has an amplifier.”

  Claudette fingers darted up, no doubt reaching for the disc that no longer hung around her neck. “Why does she want one of those? Her magic was strong, even when she was just fourteen… Emile.” The siblings stared at one another, their expressions troubled.

  “She mentioned once,” I said slowly, “that she needed it for someone else, but she cut herself off before she could say anything further.”

  “Is she working with someone else?” Claudette and Emile seemed to have forgotten about the rest of us as they had a hushed conversation, their heads bent close together.

  “Maybe she went back to the travelers?” Emile asked.

  I shook my head. “No, she said she left them three years ago.”

  “What?” Claudette gasped.

  Rage flashed in Michel’s eyes. “Are you telling me we just wasted the past three years searching in the wrong places?”

  “Did she like her family?” Leonid asked.

  Claudette nodded. “She did complain about them not allowing her to tell fortunes because she wasn’t old enough, but even after what they did to Ayres, she still left with them instead of staying with us.” Pausing, she wrapped her arms around herself. “She wanted us to go with her and her family. She was genuinely surprised—and upset—when we refused.”

  Leonid turned to me. “Did she say why she left her family?”

  I thought back to the conversation, frustrated when I remembered how Aeonia had cut herself off before relaying anything useful. “No. She only said she was searching for something.”

  “The amplifier,” Vernen murmured.

  “But why?” Leonid’s eyes took on a faraway look, reminding me of how he’d looked during the cases we’d worked together. I knew, without a doubt, that he was listening to his instinct. But what was it telling him? “What does she need an amplifier for? She held her own against Parnaby.”

  “She could have destroyed all of Dusk with an amplifier,” Jaegger spoke up solemnly.

  “But she didn’t even try,” I pointed out. “She took the… amplifier and ran. She’s heading north… Why?”

  Michel made a rude noise. “We just came from the north. If only our paths had crossed. Amplifier or not, I would have made her pay for what she did to Ayres…”

  The rest of us ignored him. Everyone but Leonid, that is. Instead, he stared at Michel. “What did you say?”

  “I said I would have killed that witch the moment I spotted her!”

  “Not that.” Leonid waved his hand, as if trying to brush aside Michel’s hateful words. “You came from the north?”

  “Yes,” Claudette replied. “We were in Fairfield up until three weeks ago. Now we’ve been heading south, unsure of our next location…”

  Leaning forward, Leonid rested his hands on his knees, his face alit with excitement. “What if you’re the one she stole the amplifier for?”

  “Me?” Claudette shook her head. “I can’t use magic. Why would she give something like that to me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Satisfied, Leonid nodded a few times, looking highly pleased with himself.

  “No,” Claudette said. The rest of us voiced our agreement. Leonid may have figured it out, but I couldn’t follow his train of thoughts. Why would Aeonia want to give an all-powerful magical artifact to someone who couldn’t even use magic? What would Claudette need it for?

  I gasped. The thought, unbelievable as it was, came to me in a flash. Catching my eye, Leonid gave me a nod of approval, knowing I’d figured it out.

  “She wants to use the amplifier to bring back Ayres,” I said, my body cold and hot at the same time.

  Paling, Claudette swayed on her feet. Emile caught her before she could fall and gently lowered her to the ground. Her hands started fidgeting as she bent forward, reaching for the grass at her feet, but Emile shook her slightly. “Claudette. Claudette.”

  “How can she bring back the city?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “That’s impossible. They’re dead. They’re gone.”

  “It won’t work,” Elyse said firmly, “because what she has isn’t an amplifier.”

  “But I have one!” Claudette pointed to the horses. “If I gave that to her—”

  “No,” Leonid and I said in unison. He continued, “We saw what she was capable of without an amplifier. You can’t voluntarily hand her one of those.”

  Twin spots of red blossomed on Claudette’s still pale cheeks. She turned to her brother, speaking more to him than the rest of us. “Emile, if she wants to bring back Ayres, that means she isn’t bad like we thought.”

  She’s worse. With a shudder, I remembered how Aeonia had held a knife to Quinn’s throat, and how easily she’d stabbed Raynard.

  “She always had a soft spot when it came to Claudette,” Emile mused. “I think my sister is on to something. We can trade our amplifier for whatever she took from you, and no one will be harmed.”

  Michel was already shaking his head. “You’re so stupidly naïve sometimes, Emile. Didn’t you hear what they just said? You can’t give something that powerful to that witch!”

  “But she’s trying to help Ayres,” Claudette began.

  Michel cut her off with a sharp, humorless laugh. “She’ll never help anyone but herself. You know this.”

  “Don’t tell me what I know or don’t know about Aeonia,” Claudette snapped. “I was the one who befriended her, Michel. You’re the one who pointed a sword at her throat and tried to kill her!”

  “I’m not going to let you hand her the amplifier—”

  “That isn’t your choice.” The two of them jumped to their feet, glaring at one another. “The amplifier belongs to me and Emile. We’re the ones who decide what to do with it. Not you.”

  Michel’s voice lowered to a growl. “Is that really how you feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emile?” Michel asked.

  Emile gave him a long, measured look. “You know I’ll always side with my sister.”

  “Of course. Why did I bother asking you?” Cursing, Michel shook his head. “Fools, the both of you. I can’t believe I wasted four years with the two of you. You do what you want to do, but don’t come crying to me when it goes horribly wrong. Not unless you want to hear me say, ‘I told you so.’” He stormed toward the horses.

  “Emi
le, the amplifier,” Claudette gasped. “Don’t let him steal it!”

  “I won’t.” Emile followed the dark-haired man to the horses, watching him carefully.

  “This plan… You agree to it, right?” Claudette implored.

  Leonid and Elyse looked as baffled as I felt. What just happened? How did we decide on this course of action? No one on my side said yes, but Claudette was nodding like everyone’s mind had been made up.

  “We can’t,” I said, realizing something. “How can we travel with an amplifier and Jaegger?” I tightened my hold on him. “He’ll die!”

  “Not if it rests in the hands of an innocent,” Jaegger said. “Which, in this case, would be a child.”

  Everyone swiveled to look at Quinn, who blinked in surprise. “What? Me?”

  “You did a good job holding it before,” Aden said gently.

  “Can we trust her?” Leonid was back to scowling. “She might end up taking it and running.”

  “Be quiet, Fancy Pants!” Quinn aimed a kick in his direction, but Leonid avoided it.

  “Ha, I learned your tricks, squirt. You’ll have to do better than—ow!” Leonid broke off as Quinn plowed into him, knocking him over, and he landed in an ungraceful heap at my feet.

  “Are you sure she’s innocent enough?” I asked Jaegger as I watched Leonid struggle to get up, one hand on his nose, which he must have jostled when he fell.

  The dragon laughed, the noise vibrating through his tiny body. “She’s perfect, little bird.”

  WE WERE FINALLY BACK ON the road, making progress in our journey. Even though they had their horses, Claudette and Emile opted to walk alongside us. Everyone agreed to let Quinn ride one of the horses, and she’d protested, telling us she wasn’t a kid, until Claudette’s horse had nuzzled the girl and she’d fallen in love with the brown steed. Now Claudette led her horse, the reins held loosely in her hands as she walked alongside me. Leonid had given me a questioning look, but I’d smiled to let him know it was all right. If we were going to journey together, I couldn’t keep pushing Claudette away. We had a common goal, and if she was willing to sacrifice her amplifier—which I could tell meant a lot to both her and Emile—to help us, then I had nothing but respect for her. Would I have given up my mother’s lark so easily to strangers?

  Before we set off, Leonid had addressed our friends, giving them the choice to go back to Dusk. No one had. They were seeing this to the end, which filled me with gratitude.

  And I was hopeful. We had a chance now.

  Unfortunately, we also faced a major setback. Thanks to the lingering effects of the amplifier, Jaegger could no longer track the prison stone. He reassured me, in private, that he would be strong enough tonight to try something. What, exactly, he wanted to try, he wouldn’t say, but the mischievous gleam in his eye made me nervous. I felt bad pestering him about it, especially when he couldn’t stop yawning. Instead, I resolved to watch him closely tonight, no matter how exhausted I would be after another day of walking. The others offered to take turns carrying Jaegger, but I declined. We’d tied our satchels to Emile’s horse, so I didn’t have that added weight slowing me down.

  Emile suggested we aim for a town he and his companions had visited two days prior. “We can restock our supplies and sleep in the inn as we plan our next move. If Aeonia is looking for Claudette, she’ll show up sooner rather than later. We need to be prepared for anything.” It wasn’t our best option, but since it was our only one, we reluctantly agreed.

  I thought, maybe, that we could use the amplifier to track down Aeonia before she found us first, but because of Jaegger and Vernen, it steadily burned white-hot. After realizing we couldn’t use it, Claudette instructed Quinn to tuck the disc under her coat, so no one else would see it. Quinn complied, looking excited that she’d been entrusted with something so important.

  “Thank you for agreeing to this,” Claudette said to me now. “We made a horrible first impression, and if you’d just walked away, I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  I thought about her city, and how everyone had been murdered in one night. What would I have done if the same thing had happened to Dusk? Losing the people I was currently traveling with would have been like a knife in my heart, but the entire city? How did Claudette find the strength to pick herself up and keep going?

  When I saw it from her point of view, I understood why she’d tracked down magicians for the past four years. I probably would have done the same thing, if I’d even been able to get up after watching Dusk fall.

  “I don’t think she’ll be able to revive your city,” I said, wincing at how harsh that sounded.

  Claudette smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think so either. There’s no changing what happened to Ayres, to my parents, to my friends. Maybe my fourteen-year-old self would have believed Aeonia could resurrect the city, but it’s impossible. No matter how strong the amplifier—or Aeonia—is.”

  She was only a little older than Quinn when Ayres fell, I thought, horrified. I knew she’d said she’d been traveling for four years, but it hadn’t clicked until just now how young she must have been when her life had been turned upside down.

  “What did you do? After you lost everything?” I asked.

  Claudette was silent for so long I wondered if I’d overstepped by asking such a prying question. Reaching up, she yanked her hair out of its messy ponytail and retied it before answering me. “Michel had family living in a town to the south of Ayres. We headed there first. His family took us in, but it was clear Emile and I were two extra unwelcome mouths to feed. We wanted to leave within the month, which Michel agreed to. We learned very early on how to take care of ourselves. We looked for the odd job in every town we visited, sometimes exchanging our work for information.” She shot me a sideways glance. “We didn’t attack magic users from such an early age, you know.”

  “I didn’t think you did,” I said. “I was hoping you didn’t, anyway.”

  Claudette smiled humorlessly. “Michel’s always been bloodthirsty. What I said earlier? About him looking to kill Aeonia? I wasn’t exaggerating. He dragged her back to the castle where we trained as squires, intent on killing her in front of everyone. It was only after the other boys and I stood up against him that we got him to back down. Well, that and the fact that Aeonia set nearly everyone in the room on fire.”

  I nearly tripped over my feet. “She did what?”

  “I’m not making excuses for her, but she was fourteen and frightened,” Claudette said. “If you thought you were about to die, wouldn’t you do whatever it took to save yourself?”

  I flashed back to that moment in the prison when Bantheir was seconds away from turning me into a puppet manipulated by his magic. I’d stabbed myself with his dagger, freeing me from his magic.

  What about the words I’d screamed at him, telling him I’d wished he’d died instead of Vernen, and what had happened next? As horrifying as it was listening to Jaegger devour Bantheir, I knew if I was forced to live through that again, I would wish for the same thing.

  “I know what you mean,” I said softly.

  “Because of Michel, Ayres fell. I’ve believed that from the moment it happened. Emile too,” Claudette said. “The travelers—her family—entered the city to rescue her, but they clashed swords with the Ayrens. Blood began spilling, and before long, the city was burning. We managed to escape—me, Emile, Aeonia, and later Aurora—but it was too late. The spell to destroy Ayres was already in place, and the travelers weren’t going to back down. Magic… It changes you.”

  “It makes you do horrible things,” I added, thinking once more of Bantheir.

  Claudette glanced at me again. “You’ve had experience with magic. That’s why Aeonia sought you out, isn’t it?”

  “Up until a few months ago, I didn’t think magic even existed anymore.” I shifted Jaegger in my arms, marveling at how far I’d come from that naïve girl who thought her magic tricks were just that—tricks. “But then people in Dusk started
dying, and Leonid arrested me.”

  Her laughter rang out across plains. “He arrested you? And you’re in love with him now?”

  “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?” I asked. My smile slipped away as I explained how Bantheir had been cursed and, out of desperation, looked for a way to make himself immortal.

  “The travelers again,” she said after she learned it was Aeonia’s cousin who had cursed Bantheir. “We’ve tracked a few down over the years. It seems like after what happened in Ayres, they split up. I don’t think everyone agreed with what they did that night. But when we questioned them about Aeonia, they would never reveal anything.” She went quiet, hugging herself. “Even when Michel tortured them. We never did the killing—me or Emile, but because we let Michel do it, that makes us just as guilty, doesn’t it?”

  I had no response to that.

  “Do you think your dragon will be able to track Aeonia?” she asked.

  I had to laugh at that. Jaegger, my dragon? If anything, I was his. “I guess we’ll find out tonight.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me how you ended up with a dragon?”

  Why not? “Remember how I said Bantheir wanted to make himself immortal? He needed Jaegger’s help for that…”

  HOURS LATER MY BODY ACHED from walking, while my throat was sore from talking to Claudette. After our initial clash, I found myself warming up to her. With the exception of Parnaby’s real identity and the prison stone, I easily answered all of her questions. The ones about Leonid had me blushing, but I got my revenge by asking about Michel. She’d turned bright red at that and called me an idiot. A few minutes later, she apologized, saying she used to like him, but after she’d seen his true self, she’d cooled considerably toward him.

  “He’s tried plenty of times to woo me, but with Emile around, his every attempt has been thwarted,” she explained.

  “It’s amazing how close you are with your brother.”

  Claudette smiled fondly. “He’s my best friend. We swore when we were kids that we would always have one another’s back. That’s never going to change, no matter what happens to us. Do you have any siblings?”