He hugged me. It was such a simple wordless gesture and so not like him. Christopher didn’t like to be touched. He’d spent too much time in Hugh’s cage starving slowly in his own filth. Any physical contact had to be initiated very carefully, but here he was hugging me, so I held still and smiled at him. For a few moments we sat on the floor next to each other with Christopher gently hugging my shoulders.

Someone knocked on the door. Barabas opened it. Julie stood in the doorway. Her face said she was clearly put upon and no adult could ever understand the full extent of her suffering.

“Mahon came to talk to George, but she won’t let him in her bedroom, so they are talking through the door,” she recited in a monotone voice. “Could you please come home because Luther and some knight of the Order are here to see you and Curran can’t talk to them because he has to stand in the hallway and make sure Mahon and George don’t break the door down and kill each other.”

Why me?

CHAPTER

20

I WALKED INTO my house to see the knight and the wizard sitting in my kitchen, drinking coffee. If you added in Julie’s thieving skills and my sword, we almost had an adventuring party.

“It’s too bad we’re missing a cleric,” I said.

They both looked at me like I had grown a second head.

Never mind. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

“The earring is gone and I can’t account for one of my people,” Nick said.

I sat in the chair and rubbed my face. Julie positioned herself on the couch with a notebook and several books.

“Go ahead and get it off your chest,” Luther said. “It will make things easier.”

“I told you not to leave it where people had access to it.”

“I didn’t. I put it into the Vault, into the wall containment unit, until an expert from Wolf’s Head could examine it.”

The Vault served as the Order’s repository of all things dangerous and magical, but too valuable to set on fire.

“Is the expert missing?”

Nick didn’t say anything. Great.

“What’s done is done. Let’s not point fingers,” Luther said.

“This is a waste of time,” Nick said.

“Why don’t you like me?” I asked.

Nick leaned back. His hair was cropped very short and his features looked like they were carved from granite. “I could fill the room with it, starting with who you are and what you did.”

He had to be referring to the claiming of the city.

“I had no choice.”

“No, there is always a choice.”

Luther was giving us odd looks. “Should I give you two some time?”

“No,” I told him. “I get it. You have a problem with me. What are you going to do about it?”