CHAPTER 61
For several seconds I think I’m dead. I can’t see or hear or even smell. Nothing I was touching is there anymore. Then warm wetness drips down my arm, and I realize I’ve cut myself with the voidstone, and it took all the magick from my blood, leaving nothing. After having so much power, normal senses are so inadequate I can barely tell which way is up.
The next strike of the clapper is soft as a whisper, though perhaps because I’ve lost my hearing, but it won’t swing any higher. I’ve saved Remi.
But now the real killer is only feet away.
As I ran along the roof to the tower, I’d tried to understand who could have done all this. The only possibility was Oudin. He despised Juliane like he despised his own mother. He knew all the women who had died. He hated Simon. His friendship with Remi drove him to frame Magister Thomas for the crimes so Remi could advance to master architect faster. And if he knew how Remi felt about me, going after Mother Agnes almost made sense, as her death would leave me with no one else to turn to but him.
But why this now? Perhaps Oudin told him what he’d done,and Remi wasn’t as grateful as he thought he’d be. Then damaging the Sanctum and attacking me was a message that Oudin could destroy us, too, but Remi still intended to go to the provost with what he knew, and so he had to die.
I shove the voidstone in my pocket and pull Athene’s necklace out of my shirt. If exposing my blood to moonlight is the only way to get the magick back, maybe I can do it with the stone. I press it against the wound in my arm, and to my relief the world appears again, though with much weaker light. Oudin is right where I last saw him on the walkway, reaching for Remi’s feet to pull him down.
“No!” I scream and tackle him from the side. Oudin is too solid for my weight to have much effect, but he’s standing on his toes, and I surprise him so much he loses his balance and stumbles over the edge, just managing to catch himself with one hand. He looks up at me, terrified, as I smash his fingers with my fists until he loses his grip, vanishing like he did from the scaffolding at the Sanctum the night he tried to kill me.
His fall is broken by the large bell, and he rolls down and then off of it. There’s nothing for him to grab at until the last row of bells which he hits with acrackthat echoes through the tower. He bounces off the crossbeam to land on the floor like a sack of flour and doesn’t move.
Crawling out from under the still-swinging bell, I push to my feet and grab Remi’s boot. “I’m here, Remi! Let me figure out how to get you down.”
I haul myself up to his level and sit beside him, straddling the beam with my legs. He sobs with relief as I pull the noose off, and I feel down his back to his bound wrists. My fingers are raw from trying to stop the bell rope, but I manage to loosen the knot enough to slide one loop over his hands, and then it’s easier to get the rest off. Once he’s free, Remi immediately reaches upto hug me, but his arms and hands are clumsy from being tied up for so long. I rise to my knees to pull his head to my chest as he cries. “Shhh, Remi. It’s over. You’re safe.”
My big, stupid Remi who loves me more than he ever had the courage to say. How could I have thought he was the killer?
He tries to speak around the gag, and I turn his face up and tug the wet, twisted cloth around his jaw and down.
“Cah,” he says, but his tongue and lips are as useless as his arms. “Am hur.”
Blood from my forearm is smeared across his face, but the wound isn’t deep. “I’m fine,” I say. “It’s just a scratch.”
“No, Cat.” Remi stretches his face in several directions. “Lambert.”
“What about him?”
“He did this to me.” Remi shifts his legs and groans. “He grabbed me on the street and put something on my face and the next thing I knew I was being hauled up here.”
“Lambert.” I stare at him, confused. “Lambert Montcuir?”
Remi nods as he works his jaw.
“Not Oudin?”
“Of course not Oudin.” Remi pauses to swallow, peering down at the dark shape barely visible below. “Is that him who fell?”
I sit back on my heels, still trying to understand. Not Remi. Not Oudin. Not even the Comte de Montcuir.
Lambert.
Who is now with Simon.