“Wow.”
Cornelius smiled wider.
“So, are you happy with your current position and compensation? Is there anything I can do on behalf of House Baylor to make you feel more valued?”
The smile vanished. He turned toward me. “Catalina, your family is my family. My sister and brother both feel the same. You, Arabella, and Nevada are the only older sisters Matilda will ever have. You never have to worry that I would harm any of you.”
Awww.
I pulled into Linus’ driveway. Cornelius’ electric BMW waited in front of the garage next to one of our armored Humvees. A guard stood by Linus’ front door, one of our Warden people. He held a submachine gun and was doing his best to look as conspicuous as possible. The public at large had no idea what happened to Linus and knowing Linus’ ties with the military, his neighbors wouldn’t find the presence of an armed guard alarming. But if Arkan was watching—and I was a hundred percent sure he was—we wanted to show that the house was well protected.
“By the way, Matilda told me that she felt the spider,” I said.
“Did she?” Cornelius’ eyes sparkled.
“Yes. She said the spider was a she, and she was stressed out and scared. Is it possible she is an arachnid mage?”
Cornelius smiled. “It’s not that. Animal mages have degrees of power like any other magic discipline. At the very bottom of that power ladder are those who can bond with a single species. Then we start climbing up the hierarchy of zoological classification. Those with Average abilities typically can affect an order like Rodentia or Carnivora. At Significant and Prime levels, most of us are capable of affecting the entire class, meaning there are Primes specializing in Mammals, or Birds, or Reptiles. Those with remarkable power can affect more than one of these classes.”
“So, an entire series? Like Amniotes?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
Despite Cornelius’ best attempts to downplay his power, I had seen him bond with both birds and mammals.
“But arachnids are very far removed from amniotes,” I said.
He nodded again, the same quiet smile on his lips.
We would have to go all the way up, to a group that included both mammals and arachnids. “I’m sorry, my knowledge of zoological classification is lacking.”
“I suspect Matilda is sensitive to the entire Nephrozoa Clade. Almost all bilateral animals fall into that group. Over a million species. Of course, whether or not she can bond with all of them remains to be seen, but even if she simply feels them, it is already enough. I cannot sense a spider, Catalina.”
Cornelius was a reserved man. He wouldn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to. If parental pride had a glow, I would’ve gone blind because he would have lit up like a miniature sun.
The doors of Linus’ house opened. Runa emerged and waved me over.
“I think she wants me to talk to them.”
“Gus and I will wait for you. It would be best if we travelled home together.”
“Thank you,” I told him and got out of the car.
Bern met me in Linus’ study.
“Hey . . .” I started.
He held up the USB, put it into my hand, and he and Runa walked out and shut the double doors behind them.
Okay.
I sat down and plugged the USB into Linus’ desktop. A pair of headphones waited for me, already plugged in. Whatever it was, Bern clearly didn’t want it to get out.
I put the headphones on and accessed the storage stick. A single video. I clicked it.
Linus appeared on the screen sitting in the same chair I now sat.
“Hello, Catalina. This is the proverbial Things Have Gone Terribly Wrong video. I’ve left Bernard a nice trail of bread crumbs so I’m sure it didn’t take him long to break the encryption.”
My eyes watered, and I paused it. He wasn’t dead yet. He was a stubborn, mean old bastard, who wouldn’t kick it just because he injected himself with some stupid shit.
Damn it, Linus.
I wiped my eyes and restarted the video. On-screen, Linus raised a heavy cut-crystal glass with two fingers of whiskey in it. He sipped it and smiled. “Liquid courage. Let us get on with it.”
Yes, that would be good, because otherwise I would just sit here and cry.
“My name is Linus Stuart Duncan of House Duncan. My mother’s name was Fiona Duncan of House Duncan. My father’s name was Vassilis Makris. His father’s name was Christos Makris. His birth name was Christos Molpe of House Molpe.”
The name fell like a brick and knocked me right out of my chair and to my feet. The headphone cord came out with them and I yanked the headphones off my head and dropped them to the floor.